Sermon: Sixth Sunday of Easter. Do You Want to Get Well?

Do You Want to Get Well?

Sermon for Sixth Sunday of Easter by Rian Adams

A Sermon for the sixth Sunday of Easter..… A friend of mine is a retired Episcopal priest, but he was also a practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst for over four decades. We have the best talks when I visit. Once he told me a story of a patient who would make a significant step forward, then step backward. This repeatedly happened over a year. She would finally process her relationship with her father, only to find another reason to get mad at him again. 

My friend said, “Then one day I was so bored I went to sleep. When she realized I was asleep, she lost it and screamed at me. I woke up, looked at her, and I said, ‘did I make you angry?’. It infuriated her, and she said, ‘Yes, I’m paying you by the hour, and here you sit, asleep.’  ”  

That’s when he smiled and said, “Then I said, ‘Now you’ve just confronted your father in the room, we can get some work done.’  “Then I asked her, ‘Do you want to get well?’ “

It’s hard to believe, but not all people wantto get well or find healing for the soul. It’s so easy to get attached to our illnesses, or disabilities, or our diagnosis, we assume them as our identity instead of a small snapshot in time. Some of my friends from the military are so identified with their trauma, and they lost the essence of who they are.

The Gospel reading reminds me of the clinician’s question, Jesus said, “Do you want to get well?”

The question implies that the man had a role in his healing. 

It seems like the obvious answer is yes! He’s been at the pool for 38 years he wants to get healed. The man is tired of living off the pity and the charity of others. He’s ready to accept responsibility for himself, fend for himself, and exist very differently. Or… so we think.

However, just like Bill’s patient, before he got better, he needed to stop blaming others. The man by the pool said, “There’s no one to put me in the pool.” His circumstances in life are the fault of someone else. 

Keep in mind, there was a myth that the pool held magic powers. The tale said an angel occasionally made waves in the water, and it healed the first person to get in the water. The hope of healing drew people to the pool. John says dozens of people laid at the pool waiting and wishing they would be the first in the pool.

Here’s a curious twist: Archeologists discovered what they assume is the structure mentioned in John’s Gospel. It was outside the city walls and was likely a healing center devoted to the Greek god of medicine and healing, Asclepius.

Snakes were the pivotal attribute of Asclepius’s cult of health and healing and played a role in the ritual of divine healing.

That healing ceremony might shed further light on the Gospel reading. A pagan religious leader would toss snakes into the water, and as they swam, the waters moved, or “stirred” as the Gospel said. They called the religious leader, “The angel of healing.” Healing only occurred during the ritual if someone stepped in the pool while the snakes were still moving in the waters.  

Now, hear the Gospel again; the lame, blind, paralyzed, and sick were waiting for the stirring of the water. They were not waiting for the God of Israel to heal them. They watched, some for years, hoping to earn the favor of a pagan god who favored snakes. 

The man at the pool said he needed healing, but he abandoned the God of Israel and went against the most sacred commandments of his faith. I wonder if his desperation drove him to the pool.

Maybe he only wanted to stay a little while but got stuck.  

Let me pause here and say, when life is tough, it’s tempting to look for the answers in the wrong places, places outside of love. Places of certainty, places of resentment, places of worry. Some turn to the bottom of a bottle, a needle, an addiction to a job. There are so many things that draw our minds away from the love that is from God. These distractions intentionally steal our attention and leave us loveless, with venom instead of mercy.

If we want to grow, it begins with a straightforward answer to Jesus’s question: Do we want to get well bad enough to say, “Yes,”

The best decision I’ve ever made is to say yes to God. Saying yes is not a onetime event, it’s not some “sinner’s prayer” that makes sure I go to heaven when I die. “Yes” is an opportunity afforded to us dozens of times over our lives.

However, the second part of the story teaches me that healing occurs when we take action.

There’s more to healing than merely saying, “Yes, I’m tired of living like this.” The man in the Gospel did something for his restoration. When Jesus walked into his life, he knew he couldn’t feel sorry for himself anymore. God didn’t feel sorry for him, why should he?

Jesus said, “Then take up your bed and walk.” The word is strong in English, and it’s even stronger in the original language. “Pick up your bed” is in the imperative voice. It’s not a suggestion, it’s a commandment. 

He needed no magic, and he needed no snakes to find renewed hope. Jesus offered the man exactly what he needed. He offered him the opportunity to take charge of his circumstances; he offered him a chance to leave the poisons of life behind and chart a new course. 

Maybe that’s the real sermon for the sixth sunday of easter. When we own our life and our present circumstances, we’re ready for God to help us leave the snakes behind.  

If I want to get over our anger and our fear, we’ve got to get up when Christ shows up.

I always love listening to Bill tell stories about his 40+ year medical practice. I asked him once, “How many people actually get better?” He said, “Not a lot. It’s not enough to want the hurting to stop, you must do something about it, or it continues. Doing something is terrifying because it makes one confront themselves.”

That reminds me of the man at the snake pool. He needed to confront himself. Bill tells the best stories. Once he mentioned a woman who, in his words, “Never wanted to get over the death of her three-legged cat that died when she was a girl.” It turns out the woman couldn’t accept that her grief was actually about her mother who drove drunk, lost a leg, and later died. Bill said, “It masqueraded as the death of poor Misses Three-legged Jones.”

I heard another story too, one about a man who suffered countless atrocities in the Vietnam. “He’s one of the few who came to me wanting to get better, and willing to do the work. That man got tired of taking his pain out on his wife, and he got tired of blaming everyone, government, and politicians included. Finally, he accepted that the war didn’t begin in Vietnam, but was at war his entire life at home.” Bill said, “Get up,” and the man took his bed, and left the poison of war behind for the snakes.

The question that confronts us now is the same, “Do we want to get better? Are we prepared to get up and leave the pool behind and reclaim life and love?”

Amen.

Posted by Rian Adams: Sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter

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