Do I Want to be Made Well?

IN THE MIDST of Great Lent, we must remember to be walking always in the way of Christ.  Today's reading from the Coptic Lectionary is the story of Jesus healing the paralytic at the pool of Bethesda. This is my favorite story in the Gospels for the reading is very profound and also very relevant to the life of a Christian.

What strikes me most about this passage is when Christ asks the man: “Do you want to be made well?” I imagine in this instance, a doctor looking at a patient while holding the potential cure for the patient and then asking “Do you want to be made well?” I can't imagine being in his position and not looking at Him and saying sarcastically, "well what do you think?!"  I mean, it is a really ridiculous question.  I can't help but ask myself, why did Christ ask such an obvious question when, being God, already knew the answer?  The truth is, this is really a question of our faith and our willingness to accept the process involved in actually being made better.  Christ knew this man was willing to believe and therefore asked him so that we may have an example.

In our daily lives, we should be asking ourselves, do we want to be made well?  Not well in the sense of being healed from an infirmity, but rather healing of our souls.  Anyone in their right mind would answer yes, but do our actions reflect this?  What if being made well required us to stop our destructive habits?  Or be up early for liturgy, or up late for midnight praises?  Or read the Bible and pray many times daily?  We should then be asking ourselves if we are really want to be made well.  I am all too guilty of this myself, but remembering my salvation and the words of our Lord Jesus Christ to the paralytic man really pushes me when I am tempted to be lazy.

When we are struck with an illness or deficiency of any sort, we tend to feel as if it is of the utmost importance and we would be willing to do anything to let it pass.  This man was living homeless and paralyzed for 38 years.  Now, before the advent of modern medicine, God provided humanity with certain technologies such as an angel coming down and stirring a body of water giving it the power to heal the first to reach it.  Well, this man sat by this pool and watched as other beat him to the pool, because he had no one to push him in.  He had also endured people passing him by and spitting at him, because at that time people believed that deformities were caused by sin.  It made sense to them, for how else could a random person be struck with such an awful deformity?  This person had to be the cause of sin and the appropriate action was to disgrace him as people passed.  Thankfully, Christ came and corrected us.

After healing this mystery paralytic man, Christ instructed him to "Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you."  There is an important message in this.  Christ reminded us that there is something more important than our worldly well-being, and that is our spiritual well-being.  This man was paralyzed, homeless, and disgraced for many years, yet he was told that there was something worse, and that "something" is eternal damnation.  We should remember this after our repentance, for there is no reason to repent if you are just going back to committing the same sin repeatedly.  "Sin no more" Christ says, and that is what He asks of us to receive salvation.  So this is essentially the cliff notes of the passage; if you really do wish to be made well, do something about it, because something worse than you could possibly imagine is the consequence.