But sickness and, ultimately, death are the enemies Christ God became incarnate to destroy on the cross. Christ rescues us from an otherwise eternal pattern of senseless sickness and death. Instead, we’re invited to receive “new birth” by water and the spirit, to receive the adoption of sonship in Christ. We live toward dying, but dying in Christ, brings us to eternal living because with Christ, those who have put on Christ, likewise become fellow victors over sin and death.
So in this light, in this truth, we can see the two examples of healing in today’s Scripture readings as interjections of the Kingdom of God in our sad, mundane, otherwise sin-sick and dying humanity. Here, the Gospel loudly proclaims: “true healing comes from Christ, from the Creator of all life;” she shouts out to us: Call on Christ who alone brings true healing!
It’s St. Peter’s communion (koinonia) with Christ God that enables him by the Holy Spirit to be the means through which God conveys healing to the paralytic and then to the woman of God, Tabitha. He says to the paralytic, “Aeneas, Jesus the Christ heals you.” There’s no doubt who the healing is coming from, but the great thing is that the God of the universe chooses a mere man—and one who had just recovered from denying Him thrice—to communicate His life, His healing to other men and women.
In the Gospel, it is, of course, Christ Himself in person 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.
This is in 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 New Testament, Christ’s healings are preceded by forgiveness of sins, but a step of faith, of repentance. This is so natural, so fitting: Only God can forgive sins, only God can give and restore a life. Our ultimate problem is not 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 is 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, it is missing the mark, darkening the likeness of Christ in us, the glory to which you and I are called. Our sin and disobedience, our rejection of God’s communion, His life, as individuals and as human beings, means that we turn away from that life, that glory, and we 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 infirmaty, his disappointment at not being healed for 38 years! Imagine! But in the end, where did his faith leave him? It left him healed—not only in body, but in soul as well; for the paralytic is given a personal encounter with the living God.
God doesn’t leave us alone to fend for self. God offers Himself, His life, new life through repentance, which is the cure for our sin-sickness. 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 it: 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.
And so, we’re led to ask ourselves: “What place do I put 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 finding healing in Christ, that I may be further deified, that I may continue to heal and grow in my participation in the Life of the Holy Trinity?
There are enough excuses around to keep us from growth and healing, but if we rely on excuses, we’re putting a stop to our own participation in the Kingdom of God that we are so mercifully granted here and now: The I’m too busy, I’ve got too many other responsibilities, I’m afraid, I’m too prideful: “God can help others, but He can’t help me” are just a few of the many. The truth, the reality, is, we don’t have to stay stuck in the same dead-end patterns or excuses.
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) In the same way, our spiritual sickness can find lasting healing in Christ. Through the tools of the Church, we find the means to struggle with our passions by bringing Christ into the midst of that struggle—and that struggle, that cross, can become the means of deification through our repentance and prayers.
Too often we may take the Church with a capital “C” for granted by treating her casually. We may fail to see that this Body of which Christ is the head, is here to teach us, grow us, minister His presence to us all and to the world. If we lament the secularism and hedonism, the violence and profanity in our culture, but are not living out the truth in our own lives or making our communion with Christ the priority, how can we expect things to change around us? Where’s the witness to the truth and love of the Kingdom?
Church is meant to be more than just a once-a-week experience for us. We’re meant to incorporate the Church, that is, the life in Christ, into all aspects of our life. There is for the faithful Orthodox Christian no distinction or separation between our relationship and communion with God and our participation in the Church. For us as Orthodox, there’s no such thing as ‘having Jesus’ without the Church; Jesus is manifested to us through the Church, through the tools of salvation He imparts to us through His Body in His great love for us, which brings us ever closer to Him and interjects the life, joy and hope of the Kingdom into our midst.
I encourage you: bring Christ God into the midst of your sin-struggle. Avail yourselves of what Christ imparts to us through His Holy Church: deifying worship, fellowship, service, the Sacraments. In this way, our souls, like the body of the paralytic will be lifted up, will be 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, life with God. And as we grow in Christ likeness and are glorified with Christ, we will continue to grow in our love for our fellow man; we will find new ways to love and to serve and to interject the Kingdom of God into the world around us: “Greater works than these he will do in my Name” that God may be glorified in us and through us.
“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 for the Feast
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Sunday of the Paralytic
