Sermon on the Paralytic - Part I

Wherever Jesus appears, there is salvation. If He sees a revenue officer sitting in his office, He makes him an apostle and evangelist. Laid in the grave, He raises the dead to life. He bestows sight on the blind, hearing on the deaf. When, as now, He visits the public baths, it is not out of interest in the architecture, but to heal the sick.

By the Sheep Market in Jerusalem there used to be a pool with five colonnades, four of which enclosed the pool, while the fifth spanned it midway. Here large numbers of sick would lie (unbelief also was rife among the Jews). The physician and healer of both souls and bodies showed fairness in choosing this chronic sufferer to be the first recipient of His gift, that he might the earlier be released from his pains. For not for one day only, nor for two, had the poor man lain on his bed of sickness—nor was it now the first month, no, nor the first year—but for eight-and-thirty years. His long-standing illness, rendering him a figure familiar to passersby, now made him ocular evidence of the power of his healer. For the paralytic was known to all by reason of the length of time. But though the master physician gave proof of His skill, He was rebuffed by those who put an unfavorable construction on His work of mercy.

As He walked round the pool, “He saw.” He did not elicit the information by asking questions, for His divine power obviated any such need. Not “asking,” but “seeing” how long the invalid had lain there; “seeing,” He knew; indeed He knew before He saw. For if in in the case of secrets of the heart “He had no need to question anyone concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man,” much more was this the case when it was a question of diagnosing diseases with visible symptoms.

He saw a bedridden man weighed down by a sore sickness; for the paralytic’s heavy load of sins aggravated the long-drawn agony of disease. A question addressed to the sufferer hinted to him his need: “Wilt thou be healed?” Not a word more; He left him with the question half spoken. For the question was ambiguous; it was because he was sick not only in body but also in soul (compare His later saying: “Behold, thou art cured; sin no more, lest something worst befall thee”) that He asked him: “Do thou want to be healed?” What mighty power that implied in the physician, making relief depend only on the patient’s willing! It is because salvation is from faith that He asked “Do you want to be healed?” that his “Yes” might give Jesus His cue. This “Wilt thou?” is the word of Jesus only; it belongs not to doctors who heal the body. For those who treat bodily ailments cannot say to any and every patient: “Wilt thou be healed?” But Jesus accepts the will and freely bestows the grace.

Once when the Savior was passing by, two blind men were sitting by the roadside. Though their bodily eyes were sightless, their minds were open to the light. The blind men pointed out Him whom the Scribes did not recognize. For the Pharisees who, for all that they had been taught the Law—yes, had studied it from childhood to old age—had nevertheless grown old still uncomprehending, now said: “As for this man, we do not know where he comes from” (for “he came unto his own, and his own received him not”). But the blind men kept on crying out: “Son of David, have mercy on us.” Those whose eyes did not serve them to read knew Him whom the students of the Law failed to recognize.

Going up to them, the Savior said: “Do you believe that I can do this for you?” and “What will. you have me do for you?” He did not say: “What will you have me say to you?” but “What will you have me do for you?” For He was a doer, a maker—a giver of life, too—not now beginning to do for the first time (for His Father works always, and He works with His Father); He was the maker of the whole world at His Father’s command. Alone begotten, without intermediary, of the Alone, He questions the blind men, saying, “What will you have me do for you?” Not that He did not know what they wanted, for it was obvious: but He chose to make His gift depend on their answer, that they might be justified out of their own mouths. The reader of hearts could not be ignorant what they would say; but He waited upon their words; now His question was their cue.

He stood by the cripple, the doctor visiting the sick man, nor is it so strange that He condescended to attend the invalid by the pool, for had He not visited us from Heaven? He asked him: “Wilt thou be healed?” by the question leading him on towards the saving knowledge, raising a question in his mind. A gift, truly, of grace! No fee was charged; else the patient would not have had the physician coming to him.

He said to Him: “Yes, sir; for the long duration of my illness makes me desire health; but, desire it as I may, I have no man…” Do not lose heart, my good fellow, because you “have no man”; God you have standing by you, One who is at once man and God under different aspects; for both must be confessed. The confession of the humanity without the confession of the divinity is unavailing, or rather earns a curse. For “cursed is he who puts his trust in man.” So with us: if, hoping in Jesus, we hope in the man only, not including the divinity, we inherit the curse. But as it is, we confess both God and man, and both truly: in worshipping Him as God truly begotten of the true Father and as man not merely in appearance, but really and truly born, we receive a real and true salvation.

“Yes, I do want to be healed, but I have no man…” Maybe it was because of his dire straits that Jesus came to his rescue. For the generality of the sick had relative, friends too, and maybe other helpers. But the poor cripple, crushed by a literally universal want, utterly desititute, abandoned, alone, found the Son of God, the Only-begotten, coming to his aid.

“Wilt thou be healed?” “Yes, Lord, but I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool.” No, but you have the spring itself. “For with thee is the fountain of life,” the fountainhead of all fountains. “He who drinks of this water, out of his belly shall flow rivers,” not of the water that flows downward but of that water that springs up—for the spring inspired by Jesus’ draught, unlike man’s puny leap which lands him back on earth again, carries us up to the sky; the water “bubbles up unto life everlasting.” Jesus is the wellspring of all blessings.

Why, then, fix your hope on a pool? You have Him who walks upon the waters, who rebukes the winds, who holds sovereign sway over the ocean; who not only Himself walked on the sea as on a firm pavement but vouchsafed the like power to Peter. For when the night was black and the Light, though it was there, was not recognized (for Jesus, walking on the waters, passed unrecognized in face and features; it was the characteristic timbre of His voice that betrayed His presence), they, thinking they were seeing an apparition, were frightened until Jesus said to them, “It is I, do not be afraid.” Peter said to Him: “If it be Thou whom I know, or rather whom the Father revealed to me, bid me come to Thee over the waters”; and Christ, generously sharing what was His own, said: “Come.”

There stood by the waters of the pool the Ruler and Maker of the waters. To Him the cripple said: “I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool.” The Savior said to him: “Why do you await the troubling of the water when you can be cured with no trouble at all? Why wait for the movement that is seen? More swiftly is the mind’s command performed by the word. Only look down into the swirling power of the spring and glimpse there God clothed in flesh; consider not the man whom your eyes see, but the invisible God who works through Him whom you see.”

“I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool.” He said to him: “Why set such narrow bounds to hope, intent on some poor water-cure? Arise: He who commands it is the Resurrection.”

Everywhere the Savior becomes “all things to all men”; as to the hungry, bread; to the thirst, water; to the dead, resurrection; to the sick, physician; to sinners, redemption.

“Rise, take up thy pallet and walk.” But first, rise, cast away your sickness; afterwards you can put muscle on faith. Exert your strength first upon the bed that used to carry you; learn to carry away on a wooden stretcher those passions by which you were for so long carried away.