From the Gospel of John:
Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids – blind, lame, and paralysed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 5:2-9 (NRSV) – January 9, 2013.)
This is an old and familiar story, this tale of Christ healing the paralyzed man a the pool at Bethesda. We all know it well. The story continues with a confrontation between the man who has been and the Jewish religious authorities. This healing took place on the Sabbath. The confrontation is over whether it is proper for the man to carry his mat (i.e., perform work) on the Sabbath. The man’s defense is that the person who healed him told him to do so, although he doesn’t know (at the time) who the healer was. Later he learns it was Jesus and identifies him to the priests and scribes.
So John’s point has to do with the Sabbath, the Law, and Jesus’ authority as Lord of the Sabbath. But I have always been fascinated by another very minor aspect of the story, and that is Jesus question to the man before the healing is performed: “Do you want to be made well?”
Our initial reaction to the question is probably to think, “Well, of course he does!” It seems a patently ridiculous question. But that betrays our own biases and our own context.
A paralyzed man who has “been ill for thirty-eight years” has probably been supporting himself by begging. If he were to be healed, that would end. He would have to find another way of making a living and, for a forty-year-old with no skills, that is going to be difficult. If he’s been lying there all those years, surely he could have gotten into the water and been healed, so if he wanted to be healed someone (like Jesus) could legitimately assume that he would have been. Since he hasn’t, perhaps he’s satisfied with his condition. So Jesus’ question is not ridiculous; it’s a legitimate, economic question Jesus is asking of this fellow.
And it’s more than that. What Jesus is really asking this man is, “Are you ready for everything to change?” I am often in conversation with people who wish (or, if they are religious sorts, pray) for some aspect of their lives to be different. It may the healing of an illness, chronic or acute, for themselves or another, but it may also be for a new job, a change in their marital situation, an improvement in their financial condition. In counseling such folks, I think about Jesus’ question of the man at Bethesda: “Do you wish to be healed? Are you ready for everything to change?” Because we can’t just have change in one aspect or detail of our lives. Our lives are integrated; what happens in one area of life affects all others. Life cannot be compartmentalized. If our job changes, everything changes. If our marriage changes, everything changes. If our health changes, everything changes.
Do you wish to be healed? Do you wish for something in your life to be improved? Are you ready for everything to change?
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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.
I am fascinated by this picture of God arming for battle, putting on his breastplate, his helmet, and his mantle, donning the “garments of vengeance.” It is, of course, injustice and evil against which God is arming. St. Paul picked up on the picture painted here by Isaiah when he admonished the Christians in Ephesus:
Last week the senior seminarians of the Episcopal Church, those who will graduate in the spring and shortly thereafter be ordained to the transitional diaconate, sat for the General Ordination Examination. This mutli-day test is something like a Bar exam for the clergy of our denomination. Each day, after the testing was concluded, one or more bloggers were posting and commenting up on the questions. 
As I read the lesson from Exodus today, there is a bush in my dining room. It’s a four-foot tall evergreen and it’s sort of burning. There are little electrical lights all ablaze all over it. It’s our Christmas tree. (We have a short Christmas tree set on a table because we have three cats. We tried for a couple of years to have a normal size seven-foot tree with these guys, but it was impossible. So, small tree on table.)
How many places do we go where the Lord is and we do not know it? This story of Jacob reminds me of a song we sang in the Cursillo community where I meant my wife. It’s very pretty, very contemplative, and usually sung as an accompaniment to Holy Communion:
Every so often something in Holy Scripture speaks to me of something other than the “purely” spiritual or “only” religious . . . and this little piece of the Letter to the Hebrews is one of those bits: “what is seen was made from things that are not visible.” Right! 
New Year’s Eve and our epistle lesson in the Daily Office lectionary focuses on the old passing away and everything becoming new. It’s purely serendipitous, but what an opportunity to affirm our faith in God’s on-going and constant re-creation of the world.
“No matter how big and bad you are . . . when a two-year-old hands you a toy telephone, you answer it.” That piece of wisdom showed up on my Facebook newsfeed recently and I will return to it in a moment, but first I want to share some more Christmas poetry with you.
