Every Healing Reflects Jesus's Resurrection

Homily for the Third Sunday after Pascha (Sunday of the Paralytic)

Acts 9:32-42 and John 5:1-15

On this third Sunday after Pascha, the Scripture readings give us three stories of healing and three stories of faith.  People often focus on these healings as miracles—two men restored to mobility after years of paralysis and one young woman restored to life after she had died.  Because Jesus healed him, the paralyzed man gained faith in God and in himself.  Because Peter healed Aeneas and Tabitha, many people believed in the Lord.

But more to the point, these stories teach us the same lesson as the story of St Thomas that we heard two weeks ago—“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”  Faith comes from, and depends on, more than miracles.

Faith comes from our own healing.  When we call upon God in faith, we can be healed from whatever paralyzes us, even whatever is killing us.  This is true physically, but even more true spiritually.

So many things paralyze us spiritually, leaving us unable to move—unable to connect with other people because of anger, pride, greed, self-righteousness, refusal to forgive; unable to connect with God because of depression, doubt, fear, apathy; unable to connect with our true selves for many of the same reasons.  Sometimes, like the paralyzed man lying by the pool, we effectively give up.  We can’t even go to church, even though there we connect with God, with other people, and with our selves.  We feel that we cannot be healed because no one will help us, no one will lift us up, no one will carry us.

But our Lord Jesus Christ, in His great love and mercy for all people, does something better.  Not waiting for us to ask Him for healing—because He knows that we’re paralyzed and cannot ask—Christ asks us, “Do you want to be made well?”  Then He says, “Get up!”  He heals us, and all we have to do is respond.  Faith allows us to respond.  We need to believe that the Lord has made it possible for us to get up, to move forward, to get on with our lives, to return to church, to pray for God’s mercy—and, like the paralyzed man, “to sin no more.”

To be healed, we have to accept Christ’s healing, but then we also have to accept responsibility for our health.  If we go to the doctor when we’re sick, but fail to take the medicine prescribed, we will not get well.  In the same way, if we receive healing from the Lord, but fail to follow His teachings and obey His commandments, we will not be healed at all.  In both cases, we have to have faith in the healer, follow instructions, and cooperate in our own healing.

In this season of the Resurrection, these three stories of faith and healing take on another dimension, too.

Every healing of soul and body reflects Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead for our salvation.  Every time we rise, with God’s help, from the paralysis and death of our sins, we experience the Resurrection of Christ.  We know that Christ has died and is risen.  We believe that we die to sin and rise with Christ.  The Holy Mysteries, especially Baptism and Eucharist, reinforce this faith.  In preparation for receiving Holy Communion, we pray that it will be for “the healing of my soul and body.”  When we receive the Body and Blood of Christ, we hear that it is for “the remission of sins and eternal life.”  At Baptism, we pray that “he/she may become a member and partaker of the death and resurrection of Christ our God.”

This belief is the foundation of our faith, and every time we witness or experience the healing power of Christ our God, our faith is built up, we grow stronger, and we become more equipped to stand up and to sin no more, so that in faith we give thanks and praise and glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and ever and to ages of ages.  Amen.