Life Outside the System: Sermon for Easter 6C –– 25 May 2025

“Do you want to be made well? … Stand up, take your mat and walk.”^[1]

My father won a Bronze Star for bravery under fire in World War II. His citation for “meritorious achievement [at a battle] in the vicinity of Ensheim, Germany, somewhat casually mentions that he “was wounded by enemy artillery fire.”

The wound which the citation glides over so nonchalantly was actually multiple shrapnel wounds that pretty much tore up his right leg and required two years of surgeries, physical therapy, and learning to walk again. He was left with a significant limp and constant pain for the rest of his life, pain which he self-medicated. His drug of choice was alcohol. Some of my earliest memories include fetching for him a Miller Hi-Life beer from the fridge or the bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon in the living room drinks cabinet.

Late on the night of March 30, 1958, while driving under the influence of that alcohol, he lost control of his car on a desert highway halfway between Las Vegas, Nevada, and Kingman, Arizona, rolled his Thunderbird convertible three times, and broke his neck. My father, though he did not die in service and was, indeed, a civilian at the time of his death, was a casualty of World War II just as surely as if he had died on that battlefield in Germany. I am certain that if, at any time during those thirteen years between his wounding at Ensheim and his death in the Arizona desert, someone had said to him “Do you want to be made well?” his answer would have been, “Yes! Hell, yes!”

My father was not unique. Many men and women who serve in our military come back from our wars and conflicts wounded in body and in spirit, and continue to suffer physical, mental, and spiritual pain as a result. Many of them, like my father, turn to alcohol or drugs, and eventually many die from those substances. In a recent year, 4586 veterans died of drug overdoses;^[2] that’s more than 13 veteran deaths per day directly attributable to substance abuse. How many more die from indirect causation, like my father, is simply unknown. In addition, last year, on average, 18 veterans committed suicide every day,^[3] most of them using firearms.^[4] If any one of those veterans who die every day of wounds, physical or emotional, sustained during their military service was asked “Do you want to be made well?” how do you suppose they would answer?

On Memorial Day tomorrow, let us remember not only those who died in conflict, not only those who passed away while serving in uniform, but also those whose deaths after their return to civilian life were directly or indirectly caused by their military service. And on this Sixth Sunday of Easter, let us consider the intersection of today’s gospel story and this sad fact of our national life.

So let’s start with the place, a therapeutic pool near the Sheep Gate of Jerusalem, a place called Bethzatha or, sometimes, Bethesda. “The etymology of Bethzatha is uncertain.”^[5] The most respected bible dictionaries suggest that it means “house of mercy, or [house of] the flowing water,”^[6] or “place of outpouring.”^[7] The Reformer John Calvin went with the latter,^[8] and the notes in the Geneva Study Bible, following Calvin, say that “the name means the house of pouring out, because a great abundance of water was poured out into that place.”^[9]

Perhaps the confusion of names is intentional. This was a place where, in the words of our national hymn, “love and grace divine” were meant to flow out from God’s “bounteous goodness”^[10] for all people, and yet it doesn’t seem to have worked that way. As John explains in a verse not included in our reading, the healing only seemed to take place when an angel disturbed the water and then you had to be the first one in.^[11] There may have been an over-flowing curative grace here, but there was a system which limited it, a system which imposed an appearance of scarcity on a reality of abundance.

Our veterans face a similar situation with respect to mental healthcare. An article published not too long ago in the International Journal of Mental Health Systems was entitled Lack of access to mental health services contributing to the high suicide rates among veterans; the author argued that anti-suicide and crisis intervention resources are not available to veterans “due to the shortage of critical mental health personnel.”^[12]

Why is that? Why does the VA not have sufficient therapists? We don’t lack for mental health professionals in this country. According the American Psychological Association, “in 2018, there were approximately 102,000 active doctoral-level licensed psychologists in the United States — about 31.3 licensed psychologists per 100,000 people.”^[13] That’s more mental health physicians per capita than any country in the European Union, where Germany has the highest rate at 27 doctors of psychology per 100,000 people.^[14]

There is no shortage of mental health personnel. There is, however, a system that makes it appear that there are. The Inspector General of the Department of Veterans Affairs reported last year that 137 of the VA’s 139 health centers were understaffed, that in those facilities there were 66,000 health care vacancies. Rather than fill those positions, the current administration is cutting an additional 83,000 positions out of the VA health system, including about 800 crisis hotline operators who field more than 60,000 suicide crisis calls per month.^[15]

There is no shortage of therapists; there is an abundance. But there is a system that imposes on that abundance a false appearance of scarcity. “Do you wish to be made well in this place of overflowing curative mercy? –– Well, you have to wait for the waters to bubble and then be the fastest cripple to get into the pool. That guy wins; everybody else loses. You’ll have to wait till the next angel passes by, and we don’t know when that will be.”

Lutheran pastor Fritz Wendt writes about today’s gospel story:

Even though the paralytic and the other invalids at Bethesda had been taught that “the system is the solution,” on their small scale, the system (the Bethesda Pool) was a solution only for some, at the expense of all the others. By telling the paralytic to get up, pick up his mat and walk, Jesus taught him to bypass the system and to challenge it. [Walter] Brueggemann writes, “The goal of the managers and benefactors is to stabilize the system so that it is not noticed that it is a system, but there is only reality.” Jesus taught the paralytic that indeed there is life outside the system.^[16]

St. John of Patmos saw the reality outside the system:

[The angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God.… On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.^[17]

John’s vision emphasizes the reality of abundance and prosperity in God’s kingdom but, as with as with care for our veterans’ health and welfare, our vision is obscured by systems that impose a pretense of scarcity and limitation.

For example, people go hungry in this country despite a surplus of food. “In 2023, the U.S. let a huge 31% of the 237 million tons in our food supply go unsold or uneaten.” A very small portion of this surplus is donated to those in need, but it is estimated that 63 million tons of good food “goes straight to landfill, incineration, or down the drain, or is simply left in the fields to rot.” That’s almost 120 billion meals that never get eaten.^[18] There is no food shortage; there is plenty of food wasted by a system that hides that abundance behind a facade of scarcity. But, as Jesus taught the paralytic, there is life outside the system.

Similarly, the childcare crisis in this country is fueled by a scarcity system of government policies which have considered childcare as a private good to be bought and sold on a market, even though countless studies have shown that “childcare does not and cannot effectively function as a market.”^[19] In fact, former Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen called it “a textbook example of a broken market,” saying that childcare must not be treated as a commodity but as “an element whose contribution to economic growth is as essential as infrastructure or energy.”^[20] Pilot programs in Michigan, Massachusetts, and Washington, DC, as well as experience in Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand, demonstrate how a supply-side abundance approach to childcare can dramatically increase its availability and quality while lowering its cost.^[21] Once again, a reality of abundance obscured by a system of scarcity. But, as Jesus taught the paralytic, there is life outside the system.

Or take old age pensions, what we euphemistically call Social Security. We are constantly told the system is running out of money, but anyone over 65 can tell you the answer to that is simple. Remove the wage cap on assessments so that high-end wage earners pay their fair share! There is abundance restricted by a system of imposed scarcity. But, as Jesus taught the paralytic, there is life outside the system.

I could go on with examples from women’s health care, prescription drug costs (especially drugs for treatment of chronic illnesses), scientific research, public land and park management, and many others. As we seek to relate the gospel to our own world, the Bethesda story reminds us that existing social and economic systems, including and sometimes especially those meant to assist the poor, the needy, the elderly, and the sick, often work against them, keeping them from getting what they need as the system at Bethesda kept the crippled man from getting to the healing waters.

“Do you want to be made well?” That’s a question we must ask of ourselves as a nation, especially now as false narratives of scarcity seek to impose artificial restraints on the abundance of God’s creation. “Being made well in this sense will take more than a commandment from Jesus. It will take introspection, generosity, grace, a willingness to imagine something different from the way things are now, a willingness to be changed in ways we cannot imagine and perhaps do not want.”^[22]

In a recent essay in The Atlantic magazine, reporter Derek Thompson, criticizing both of our major political parties for practicing a politics of scarcity, called instead for a politics of abundance:

Abundance, [he wrote], is about redefining freedom for our own time. It is about the freedom to build in an age of blocking; the freedom to move and live where you want in an age of a stuck working class; the freedom from curable diseases that come from scientific breakthroughs. [America is currently being defined] by demolition and deprivation. America can instead choose abundance.^[23]

Abundance is the church’s message! It is Jesus’ message in today’s gospel lesson: there is life outside systems of imposed scarcity!

“Do you want to be made well?” I’m sure I know how my father would have answered; I’m pretty sure I know how those other veterans would have answered. How would you answer? How should our country answer? As Kyle Childress of the Ekklesia Project wrote several years ago, “To be whole means to get off of the couch and get involved. It means to work our tails off….”^[24] It means standing up, taking up our mats, and walking. Walking into the streets in celebrations of love and justice, and in protest of restrictive and oppressive government actions. Walking into the offices of your senators and congressmen and local political leaders, and demanding better policies. Walking into the offices of the Wounded Warrior Project or the Disabled American Veterans and volunteering. Walking into soup kitchens and homeless shelters and childcare centers and women’s health clinics and doing the “behind the scenes work that is tedious and overlooked.”^[25] Walking into the voting booth and casting our ballots for change.

“Do you want to be made well?” Do you want your country to be made well? “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” Amen.

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This homily was offered by the Rev. Dr. C. Eric Funston on the Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 25, 2025 to the people of Trinity Episccopal Cathedral, Cleveland, Ohio, where Fr. Funston was guest presider and preacher.

The illustration is Carl Heinrich Bloch, Christ Healing the Sick at Bethesda (1883), Brigham Young University Museum of Art, Provo, UT.

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Notes:
Click on footnote numbers to link back to associated text. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from Scripture are from the New Revised Version Updated Edition.

^[1] John 5:6,8

^[2] Mark R. Begley, et al., Veteran drug overdose mortality, 2010–2019, Drug and Alcohol Dependence, Volume 233, 1 April 2022, accessed 6 May 2025

^[3] 2024 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report, Report of Findings, Office of Suicide Prevention, Veterans Administration, December 2024, page 6

^[4] “With an average of 18 veterans dying by suicide in the United States each day, 13 of them by firearm, we cannot address veteran suicide without talking about guns.” Those Who Serve: Addressing Firearm Suicide Among Military Veterans, Every Town for Gun Safety, February 24, 2025, accessed 6 May 2025

^[5] Florentine Becthtel, Bethsaida, New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia (Robert Appleton Co., New York: 1907), online, accessed 4 May 2025

^[6] Bethesda, Smith’s Bible Dictionary at The Blue Letter Bible, accessed 7 May 2025

^[7] Bethesda in Frederick William Danker, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (BDAG) (University of Chicago Press, Chicago: 2021), page 153

^[8] John Calvin, John 5, Commentary on John, Volume 1, at Christian Classic Ethereal Library, accessed 7 May 2025

^[9] John 5, Geneva Study Bible at The Blue Letter Bible, accessed 7 May 2025

^[10] National Hymn (“God of our fathers”), Hymn 718, The Hymnal 1982 (Church Publishing, New York: 1985)

^[11] See John 5:4 (KJV), “For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.” This verse is not included in the NRSV.

^[12] Ronald D. Hester, Lack of access to mental health services contributing to the high suicide rates among veterans, International Journal of Mental Health Systems, Volume 11, August 18, 2017, accessed May 6, 2025

^[13] Luona Lin, et al., Datapoint: Which states have the most licensed psychologists?, Monitor on Psychology, Vol. 51, No. 1, January 1, 2020, accessed 8 May 2025

^[14] Number of psychiatrists: how do countries compare?, Eurostat, May 6, 2020, accessed 8 May 2025

^[15] See Jamie Rowen, 5 reasons federal cuts are hitting veterans especially hard, PBS, March 16, 2025, accessed May 7, 2025

^[16] Fritz Wendt, Addressing Poverty when the System Fails—John 5:1–9, Political Theology Network, May 20, 2019, quoting Walter Brueggemann, The Prophet as a Destabilizing Presence, The Pastor as Prophet (The Pilgrim Press, New York: 1985), page 51, accessed 3 May 2025

^[17] Revelation 22:1-2

^[18] Food Waste Data—Causes & Impacts, ReFED, February 2025, accessed 8 May 2025

^[19] Elliot Haspel, We Can’t Deregulate Our Way Out of Childcare Market Failures, Roosevelt Institute, February 25, 2025, accessed 8 May 2025

^[20] Remarks by Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen on Shortages in the Child Care System, U.S Department of the Treasury, September 15, 2021, accessed 8 May 2025

^[21] See Haspel, op. cit.

^[22] Penelope Bridges, The Sunday Sermon: Do you want to be made well?, St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral, San Diego, CA, May 25, 2022, accessed 5 May 2025

^[23] Derek Thompson, The Political Fight of the Century, The Atlantic, March 18, 2025, accessed 2 May 2025

^[24] Kyle Childress, Courage to Be Whole, Ekklesia Project, May 5, 2010, quoted by Frank Mansell III, Do You Want to Be Made Well?, John Knox Presbyterian Church, Indianapolis, IN, May 1, 2016, accessed 9 May 2025

^[25] Ibid.