This Sunday in the Orthodox Church around the world we focus on the healing of the Paralytic and what our Faith teaches us about healing, which is always miraculous by whatever means God brings it. Healing is, in a very great sense, a sign-post, a manifestation, of the Kingdom of God, toward us. Sickness and death are the norm in this world: the tragic results of our willing disobedience of God, our participation in the environment of sin we experience all around us.
But sickness and, ultimately, death, while the norm, are not the way God would have things ultimately be: they are the enemies Christ God became incarnate, suffered the passion of the cross, and was resurrected, in order to destroy. Christ rescues us from an otherwise eternal pattern of senseless sickness and death. Instead, He beckons us to receive “new birth” by water and the spirit, to receive the adoption of sonship, new life in Christ. We live toward dying, but dying in Christ, we’re given eternal life because in Him, those who have put on Christ day by day, likewise become fellow victors over sin and death, inheritors of life with Him.
So in this light, in this truth of the resurrection, we can see the two examples of healing in today’s Scripture readings as interjections of the Kingdom of God into our otherwise sad, sin-sick and dying humanity. This is such good news! Here, the Gospel loudly proclaims: “true healing comes from Christ, from the Creator of all life, the One who has gained the victory over our sin and death on our behalf. Call on Christ who alone brings true healing, true life!”
It’s St. Peter’s communion with Christ God that enables him to be the means by which God heals the paralytic and then raises the woman of God, Tabitha, in today’s Epistle from Acts. He says to the paralytic, “Aeneas, Jesus the Christ heals you.” There’s no doubt who the healing is from, but the great thing is that the God of the universe chooses a man—and one who had just recovered from denying Him thrice—to communicate His life, His healing to others.
In the Gospel, it is, of course, Christ Himself in the flesh who heals; in the second, it is Christ through Peter who heals. Either way, it is God who is glorified, but in the Epistle reading, we should be stopped in our tracks: We’d expect God to heal, but now His healing is coming through His Apostle, through His Church, that is, through His abiding presence with us. This is truly remarkable; it’s a fulfillment of what Christ said would happen after the descent of the Holy Spirit: “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father” (John 14:12).
In many of the healings recorded in the Gospels, they’re preceded by Christ forgiving sins, by a step of faith and repentance. This is so natural, so fitting: Only God can forgive sins, only God can give and restore life. Our ultimate problem isn’t the weakness and infirmities of our physical bodies, as distressing, saddening, and limiting as they may be. Rather, it’s our sin-sickness, our willful removal of ourselves, our eternal souls, from true Life, from communion with God, that’s most to be lamented. Christ God in healing the paralytic says to him, “Go and sin no more!”
Sin itself is understood in the Orthodox Faith as sickness, self-willed removal from the Light of Life; the Source of Life. Sin is missing the calling of glory to which you and I are created. Our sin and disobedience, our rejection of God’s communion, His life, as individuals and as human beings, means we turn away from that Life, that glory, and, in this sense, embrace death.
The paralytic in today’s Gospel laments, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up…” He struggled with his infirmity, his disappointment at not being healed, for 38 years! Imagine! But in the end, his faith leads him to Christ; it leads him to healing—not only in body, not just temporally, but also in soul, that is, eternally, as well; Why? Because the paralytic is given a personal encounter with the living God, with Him who is Life and Healing.
The Lord doesn’t leave us alone either to fend for self. God offers Himself, His life, new life through repentance—the cure for our sin-sickness as we journey toward ever closer communion with Him. God pours out His grace and love upon us through His holy Church. He gives us the tools of healing, spiritual medicine in His Church—if we would just make use of them: He communes His life with us through the divine services and prayers, through the Holy Scriptures and lives of the Saints. He receives our Repentance through the Sacrament of Confession, He feeds us with the Medicine of Immortality in the Eucharist. He emboldens us by the Holy Spirit.
And so, we’re led to ask ourselves: Ask yourself, “What priority do I give my communion with God?” Am I striving to bring Christ into all aspects of my daily life so that I may struggle and do the hard ‘spade’ work of making the garden of my soul a fertile place for growth in Christ, that I may be further deified and continue to grow in the fullness of life He came to give me?
If we desire such fullness and healing, we have to want to grow, we have to want to deepen our communion with God, to avail ourselves of the tools of the Church: love is not love if forced on anyone; the same with healing. Thus, the Lord asks the paralytic, “Do you want to be made well?” We must ask ourselves the same question. If the answer is yes, then we avail ourselves of and prioritize our life in Christ in the Church. If the answer is no or sometimes no, we repent of this attitude and seek Christ’s help to change, metanoia. Either way, we turn to Christ.
There are certainly enough excuses around to keep us from growth and healing; there are certainly always excuses we can give for our sins—all our extenuating circumstances. But if we rely on excuses, we’re putting a stop to our own participation in the Kingdom of God that we’re so mercifully granted here and now: The “I’m too busy, I’ve got too many other important responsibilities, I’m afraid, I’m too prideful, lack of faith: God can help others, but He can’t help me.” Such excuses are just cover-ups. No one is ‘stuck’ in sin. God has made us free.
Significantly, when Christ asks the paralytic if he wants to be made well, he responds, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool.” Then, Christ directs his attention away from the pool (the excuse) to reveal that He Himself is that ‘man,’ the God-man who alone heals and saves.
Through Christ, physical sickness, disease and death can be transfigured. “O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?” (I Cor. 15:55) Our spiritual sickness can find lasting healing in Christ, step by step as we cooperate with His work in our lives by the Holy Spirit. Through the tools of the Church, we find the means to conquer sin, to bear that cross of struggle and self-denial, which is the means of deification through our repentance and prayers.
Church is meant to be more than just a once-a-week ‘duty’: We’re meant to bring the Church, that is, the life in Christ, into all aspects of our daily life. There is for the faithful Orthodox Christian no separation between our communion with God and our participation in the Church. For us, there’s no such thing as ‘having Jesus’ without the Church; Christ is manifested to us through His Church, through the tools of salvation He grants us through His Body in His great love and mercy, through the disciplines the Church imparts. Making use of them brings us ever closer to Him and interjects the eternal life, joy and hope of the Kingdom into our daily lives.
I challenge you to bring Christ God into your sin-struggle, into the areas you need Christ God to heal and strengthen you. Avail yourselves of what Christ imparts to us through His Holy Church: deifying worship, fellowship, service, repentance, the Sacraments. In this way, our souls, like the body of the paralytic will be lifted up and strengthened, and as he took up his bed, so we will be able to take up our cross and press on toward the Kingdom of Heaven. As we grow in Christ-likeness and are glorified with Christ, we’ll continue to grow in our love for each other; we’ll find new ways to love and serve, to interject the Kingdom of God into the world around us that is in such great need: “Greater works than these he will do in my Name.”
“As You raised up the Paralytic of old, so raise up my soul, paralyzed by sins and thoughtless acts;
so that being saved I may sing to You: “Glory to Your power, O compassionate Christ!”—Kontakion
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
Sunday, 29 April 2018
Sunday of the Paralytic
Epistle: Acts 9:32-42
Gospel: John 5:1-15
