“Do you want to be healed?” Jesus asks the paralysed man in today’s Gospel. Now some might think: “that’s a very strange question to ask!”  But is it? There are people who want to be healed, sometimes desperately, but there are others who, while they claim that they want to be healed, deep down do not. This attitude of course is a spirit sickness, a problem of attitude to life and relationships. This is why, I believe, Jesus uses a very specific word here, often translated simply as “healed,” but which might be better rendered “made whole.”

The paralysed man is sick not just in his body but in his mind as well, in the sense that he is not being entirely straightforward either with himself or with Christ. When Jesus asks him: “Do you want to be healed?” His rather lame excuse is that he does not have anyone to help him into the pool when the angel troubles the waters. However, this is a man who has languished by this pool for no less than 38 years. Is anyone really expected to believe that in all that time he did not have opportunity to get into the pool? That’s just plain ridiculous. Of course he did. Maybe, just maybe, everyone who passed that way had sussed him out. He didn’t really want to be healed at all and so after a time everyone just left him alone.

Notice that when Christ hears this lame excuse, He doesn’t argue with him, He doesn’t plead with them, He doesn’t rebuke him, He doesn’t speak soft words to him either, He simply says: “Rise, take up your pallet, and walk.” And so the once paralysed man does. We shall perhaps never know what precisely brought him to his senses such that he immediately obeyed Christ, not even knowing who He really was, (as is revealed by his conversation subsequently with the Jews).  One thing is clear, however; at that moment he was made whole. Later Jesus saw him again in the temple and said: “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse befall you.” This confirms that the man’s healing was of body mind and spirit. His attitude towards his own sickness, which was his sin, had been forgiven. Our Lord warned him, therefore, not to fall again into that pathological, distorted way of thinking. It is at this second encounter, and with greater self-knowledge, that we read in the Gospel that the man then recognised who Jesus truly was, with the result that he began telling everyone.

We have much to learn from this Gospel reading. Let’s start with asking the question: ‘why do some people not want to be healed?’ Think again about the paralysed man. There he was, by the pool, for 38 years receiving alms and sympathy with attention; at least from new visitors who had not as yet sussed him out. He didn’t have any responsibilities. He didn’t have any difficult choices to make. Perhaps we could even say that he was reasonably content! His disability had become his own familiar friend. In effect it became an excuse for a lifestyle he had fallen into and then accepted, if not at first deliberately chosen.

Now we all know many, many sick and disabled people who do not trade their suffering for tea and sympathy. These may remain sick or disabled in their bodies but in their minds and spirits they are on their way to wholeness. They are not self-pitying inert people, relying on the generosity of others, but rather they are developing their potential to flourish and succeed notwithstanding the obstacles; indeed, even using these obstacles to overcome adversity. Look, for example, at the Invictus Games, developed and promoted by Prince Harry to enable disabled servicemen and women to achieve in sport and physical and mental ability generally. Those wonderful men and women are an inspiration to us all. They are not sitting by their respective pools for 38 years bewailing their lot! They are getting on with it. They are getting on with it because they get it. They have a good and positive and active attitude towards life. These are they who want to be healed. I like to think that this is how the paralysed man in the Gospels himself ended up. Let us hope that he did.

For those who know Christ, faith in His healing power is not just knowing that He can make us whole, but knowing also that He will do so, if we want it. What we need to do is to resist with all the self-awareness and strength that we can muster, and assisted by divine grace, a tendency we all have to a crippling self-limitation. We, just like the paralysed man, have to rise up, take up our pallet and walk. When we are dealing with others who exhibit this crippling tendency to self-limitation, we can do no less. Lovingly, but yet firmly, we also need to say to them: “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, rise up, move forward, engage, receive His life – WALK!” We are not showing true love for people if we are always (remember what that 38 years means) mopping their brows or offering soothing words. Sometimes the life-giving word must be a challenging one, one that shakes people out of a constricting comfort zone into the broad and open liberty of the children of God.

So, are all of us here today prepared to get up and walk at the command of Christ? I mean this of course metaphorically, a symbolic question. Are we prepared to exercise a faith that requires from us some action, some commitment, some desire to have God make a difference in our lives, making us whole, and through us, making others whole? What is truly exciting about the life of faith is that it is an open-ended journey with and in God into unexplored territory. The life of faith encourages us to step out, to travel lite, to depend upon Him and to seek that pearl of great price which lies far-off and yet also within our reach. When we acquire that, the kingdom of God no less itself, we shall be truly free.