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A reading from the book of Isaiah. Thus says the Lord: Maintain justice and do what is right, for soon my salvation will come and my deliverance be revealed. Happy is the mortal who does this, the one who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath, not profaning it, and refrains from doing any evil. Now do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say, The Lord will surely separate me from the people.

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And do not let the eunuchs say, I am just a dry tree. For thus says the Lord to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbath, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls a monument. and a name better than sons and daughters, I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. And for the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, all who keep the Sabbath and do not profane it, and hold fast my covenant, these I will bring to my holy mountain,

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and make them joyful in my house of prayer, their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar. For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel. I will gather others to them besides those already gathered.

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The word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. We were in Matthew last night, but this evening we're going to the Gospel of John, the fifth chapter, verses 1 through 9. I invite you to listen for God's living word.

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After this, there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now in Jerusalem, by the Sheep Gate, there is a pool, called in Hebrew Bethsatha, which has five porticos. In these lay many invalids, blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.

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When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had been there a long time, Jesus said to him, Do you want to be made well? The sick man answered Jesus, 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 up your mat, and walk.

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At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Do you want to be made well?

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At first it seems like a, well, kind of a silly question for Jesus to ask the man. John tells us the paralytic man had been lying there at the pool for 38 years. That implies that for 38 years, either he crawled or someone brought him from wherever he lived and placed him there. All done out of some hope that one day, perhaps he would be able to get into those waters and be healed.

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Rumor had it that every time those waters bubbled up, healing would happen for those in their midst. So the fact that this man had been going through that desperate act for 38 years signals to me that he wanted to be healed. Otherwise, why was he there? Surely Jesus knew that.

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Why did Jesus even bother to ask the man if he wanted to be made well? Wasn't it obvious? Maybe. But maybe not.

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Dr. Kenneth Bailey offers particular reflections on the way society was set up during the time period in which Jesus lived. According to Dr. Bailey, in traditional Middle Eastern society, beggars were a recognized part of the community.

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They were kind of social class unto themselves. Furthermore, they were understood to be offering services to the community. How? Every faithful person was expected to give to the poor.

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Giving alms was a way one expressed one's piety. But if the poor were not readily available to receive those gifts, no one would be able to live out that duty of their faith. In other words, the beggars almost had a kind of profession. Their job was to be available so that people of faith could be charitable toward them.

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Bailey goes on to claim, though, that one difficulty with the begging profession was that one needed a visible handicap because it guaranteed more success. You were more likely to receive gifts if people could clearly see not all was well with you. I serve a congregation in Black Mountain who have, we have about 50 retired clergy and missionaries and seminary professors. And a lot of us gather for Bible study each week.

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And when I once brought that up in a Bible study, two of my retired missionaries fully agreed with Bailey's assessment. They told us how some beggars in China, when they lived there, would purposely injure themselves in order to have more success with their begging. My guess is that it's hard for most of us to understand that mindset. But if that is all you know about how to survive in the world, then that is all you know about how to survive in the world.

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If that is the only way you can imagine feeding your children, then that is what you will do until if you learn another way that will also produce results. So given the real possibility that the paralytic's survival might have been dependent upon his inability to be healed, Jesus' question might not sound so strange after all. Do you want to be made well? Jesus asked.

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Perhaps this question is legitimate. If indeed the paralytic's survival is dependent upon things staying exactly the same, then his healing would force everything to be different. All of a sudden, he would have to learn a whole new way of living, a whole new way of being.

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All of a sudden, he would have different challenges and new responsibilities. His quality of life sounds miserable, but it was known. It was familiar. After 38 years of it, he knew exactly what was expected of him and how to do it.

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So indeed, if Jesus heals him, the whole system is changed. No one gives money to a healthy man. How would he learn to survive a different way? You wonder if all of that flashed through his mind when Jesus asked, Do you want to be made well?

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I'm going to get to meddling now. I learned that phrase in North Carolina. But frankly, I think this question is one we could ask in our time. We could ask it in the church for sure.

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I did that a little last night. But in particular, I'm thinking tonight about asking this question to our political leaders in Washington, D.C. I don't care if you're a Republican, a Democrat, Independent, or none of the above. I believe Jesus' question has resonance for our political era.

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Do we want to be made well? Or have we grown used to the way things are, even if we complain all the time that it's so awful? After all, healing might mean that our leaders could not just keep blaming the other side in a constant 24-7 news cycle. Healing might mean that our leaders could not just talk about how hard it is to get anything done in the beltway, throw up their hands in frustration, and walk away without repercussions from us, the voters.

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Healing might mean that we would really expect our government to truly live out being for all people, by all the people, and not just for and by those with huge amounts of money or power or influence. Healing might mean that no longer would we tolerate the reality that in 2013, the year after Newtown, our country had 26 other school shootings, many of which did not make the news. Healing might mean

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that our congregations would consider following in the footsteps of First Press Dallas and host the gun buyback program, instead of being too nervous that such a thing would be too controversial and make people angry. Told you I'd get to meddling. That's okay, I'll leave tomorrow. But being made well,

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Opening ourselves up for healing means that the system, the system we are all used to, even though we complain about it, that system would have to be changed. And we and our leaders would have to change with it. So maybe the answer to Jesus' question is as complicated for us to answer as it was for the paralytic. Do you want to be made well?

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He asks. And perhaps that complication is why the paralytic chose to not answer the question. Rather, he simply responds with the reasons he has not been healed. I have no one to put me in the water when it's stirred up, he says.

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And whenever I try to make my own way, someone else always gets there first, blocks me. The man has genuine, valid reasons for why he has stayed the same for 38 years. But still, as valid as those reasons are, he's not. answering Jesus' question.

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Do you want to be made well? He's not answering the question about whether or not he's ready for such a dramatic change. He's not even engaging the question about if he is ready for the responsibilities that come with healing, with changing the system, with refusing to be kept in his awful yet familiar place. So don't you wonder if perhaps the reason he did not answer the question?

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is because at that moment, as he stayed there on his all-too-familiar palate, he wasn't quite sure what he feared most, his illness or the cure. William Sloan Coffin, in a sermon on the healing of a different paralytic in Mark II, wondered the same thing. If it's hell to be guilty, Coffin preached, it's certainly scarier to be responsible. Response, able.

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Able to respond to God's visionary and creative love. No longer paralyzed, Coffin said. Our arms would be free to embrace the outcast and the enemy. No longer paralyzed.

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Our feet would be free to walk out of any job that is harmful to us and meaningless to others. If we are made well, we can no longer make excuses. As real and as valid as they may be, But instead, we have to walk forward to new life in Jesus Christ and get to work, maybe even to the messy work of reconciliation that we talked about earlier at the panel discussion.

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And that means a big change, this being made well stuff. So it might just be that it is easier to not be well in order to keep being able to make excuses, as real and as valid as they might be, as to why we cannot do more to participate in God's being with this world. One commentator I read said it this way, one way the powers and principalities keep us under their thumb is by keeping us busy, tired, and diverted.

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We become numb to the call of Jesus Christ to serve God and serve the hurting because we don't have the time. We come home after work and collapse in front of the TV until it's time to go to bed and repeat the whole process all over again. Weekends are when we want to get out of town or do something else, so we live life to the minimum.

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And we say we want to change when we actually want to remain the same, but we want to feel better about it. This is end quote. Do you want to be made well? Jesus asks.

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Are you ready to be response-able, to live more fully as disciples, to participate more actively in God making this world new? Maybe yes, hopefully yes-ish. You're probably a better Christian than I, but I might pause like the paralytic did before honestly answering the question.

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After all, it's a lot harder to be made well, to be made response-able, For to truly be made well, to truly take up our mat and walk, that means we will get involved in people's lives, or in community activism, or in the work of the church in ways that will make us nervous or uncomfortable. comfortable or distressed. Because becoming deeply and honestly involved in the lives of others, being truly present with each other, and getting to work in our larger world can end up breaking our hearts when it gets hard, and it will.

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Or when things don't turn out the way we hope, and they often won't. Or that kind of deep involvement. can end up making us realize we are called to live more generously with what we have, or more gently upon the earth. Or that kind of deep involvement in our world can end up causing us to remember and claim that through our baptism,

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We are not just linked with God, we're not just linked with each other, but we are totally linked and made real family with all God's children, including those who are still terrified and dying in Syria every day, as well as in South Sudan and now in Ukraine. And that realization could imply that it might not just be enough to thank God that we have a home, without them volunteering for the homeless shelter and being with those residents and then seeing what can be done in our own community so everybody might have a place to live. Or we might be missing something.

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If we pray to God our gratitude for our food and ask God to help us be mindful of those who don't have any, Without then helping the Capital Area Food Bank here in Austin and writing our own state representatives protect crucial funding they receive that's threatened these days by all the federal cutbacks, or being made well might just mean that when we see someone in our own church who we know has hurting or in grief, we can no longer simply smile at them while walking away, but rather we might need to sit down beside them on the pew show genuine, honest concern, let them into our hearts as we make our way into theirs. And all of that discipleship stuff takes some time.

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It takes some energy. It takes an openness to responding. So again, when Jesus asks us, do you want to be made well? Perhaps we might want to sit on our pallet and think about it for a while.

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For if we are made well, if we are made response-able, then that means we can no longer claim that we are too busy, or too tired, or too insignificant, or too incompetent to make a real difference in the world and in the lives of people who are hurting. All those good, valid reasons for why we can't be more involved in the Missio Dei and what God is doing in the world would be gone. And we would be left standing up, mat in hand, called to follow the way of the one, whose radical love and deep involvement, whose crucial choice to be with US-led directly not to some grand palace, but to his death.

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Do you want to be made well? Jesus asked the paralytic man, Or do you fear cure more than illness? Do you want to be made well? Do you?