Fourth Sunday of Pascha: The Sunday of the Paralytic

Homily: Fr. Thomas Frazer

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Christ is Risen! 

Brothers and sisters in Christ, for thirty-eight years a man lay beside the waters of the pool called Bethesda. Thirty-eight years of waiting. Thirty-eight years of watching others step before him into the healing waters, always too slow, always overlooked, always left behind on his mat while the waters stirred and stilled again. The Holy Evangelist does not tell us his name. He is simply the paralytic — the one who could not move, the one who had no man to help him.

And yet the Lord Jesus Christ, walking through that portico filled with a multitude of blind, lame, and withered souls, saw him. “When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole?” (John 5:6).

Brethren, let us pause here and receive the weight of these words. The Lord knew that he had been there a long time. This is not incidental detail. The Holy Evangelist records it so that we might understand the nature of divine knowledge and divine compassion. Our Lord does not pass by. He sees. He knows the number of our years, the depth of our sufferings, the long-accumulated sorrows of each soul. He knew this man had waited thirty-eight years, and it was precisely this knowledge that moved Him to draw near.

But notice also the question: Wilt thou be made whole? What a strange thing to ask a suffering man! Of course he wishes to be healed — does he not? Yet our Lord does not ask idle questions. He asks because healing requires the will of the one who is healed. God, Who created us without our consent, will not save us without our consent. He seeks our cooperation, our longing, our turning of the heart toward Him. The paralytic’s answer is telling: he speaks not of desire but of despair. “Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me” (John 5:7). He does not say yes, Lord, I wish to be healed. He explains, in effect, why healing has been impossible. He does not dare to hope too directly.

How many of us are like this man? We have been paralyzed — perhaps not in body, but in soul. Paralyzed by sin that has become habit, by passions that have long bound us, by despondency that whispers there is no cure, no helper, no one who will carry us to the waters. We explain to God why healing is impossible rather than simply crying out for it. We are experts in our own hopelessness.

The Lord does not rebuke the paralytic for his lack of bold faith. He does not demand a more fervent declaration. He simply speaks, and the word of God is itself the healing: “Rise, take up thy bed, and walk” (John 5:8). And immediately — the Evangelist uses that word that appears so often in the Gospels, immediately — the man was made whole and took up his bed and walked.

Brethren, this is the power of Pascha, which we still celebrate in this holy Paschal season. The Lord descended into Hades not to debate with death, not to petition it, but to shatter it by His very presence. He spoke, and death loosened its grip. He commanded, and the graves gave up their dead. The same Word that said Let there be light at the creation now says to the paralyzed soul: Rise and walk. And creation obeys its Creator.

But the miracle does not end at the pool of Bethesda. Afterwards, the Lord found this man in the Temple — having sought him out again — and said to him: “Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee” (John 5:14). Here the Church gives us the other half of the mystery. Bodily healing is a gift, but it is a sign pointing toward a greater healing. The Lord’s warning — sin no more — reveals that the root of all our paralysis, whether of body or soul, is sin. Not always this particular sin causing this particular suffering, as the disciples once wrongly supposed (John 9:2), but the general condition of sin in which we all dwell, the brokenness that entered through Adam and touches every part of our nature.

The healed man is sent back into life not simply to enjoy his restored legs, but to walk uprightly before God, to sin no more. His healing is a commission as much as a gift. 

And so it is with us. Holy Baptism has plunged us into those true healing waters, the waters that do not merely trouble momentarily but are sanctified by the Holy Spirit forever. The grace of the Holy Mysteries restores what sin has destroyed, but we are then sent back into life with the same charge: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee. A worse thing — because to know the mercy of God and return to sin is a far graver matter than to have sinned in ignorance.

The Holy Fathers of the Church saw in this passage a most profound image. Saint John Chrysostom notes that the paralytic, though he did not know Who had healed him — he did not even know the Lord’s name at first — yet he bore no complaint, no bitterness, despite thirty-eight years of abandonment. He had not hardened his heart. And when he at last stood before the Lord in the Temple, he did not conceal Him from the authorities out of self-interest, but declared it openly: It is Jesus Which hath made me whole (John 5:15). In his weakness he became a confessor. In his poverty he found his healer. In his abandonment, the One Who abandons no one came to him.

Brethren, in these Paschal days, let each of us hear the Lord’s word directed to us personally. Let us not catalogue for God the reasons why our healing seems impossible, why our sins are too entrenched, why our spiritual life has made no progress for too many years. Let us simply hear: Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. The Risen Christ stands among us in this holy temple, as He stood at Bethesda, seeking not the strong but the broken, not the righteous but the sick who know they are sick, not those who have managed to reach the waters on their own, but those who have no man to help them.

He is that man. He is our help. He descended into the most paralyzed and forsaken place in all of creation — death itself — and He rose. And because He rose, we too shall rise: from the paralysis of sin, from the mat of despondency, from every Bethesda where we have lain too long, too forgotten, too slow.

Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.

Christ is Risen! Воистину Воскресе Христос!