In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Today, on the fourth Sunday of Pascha, we celebrate the healing of the paralysed man. This man, who had been paralysed for 38 years, had been lying by this pool called “Bethesda” for an exceptionally long time. He had been hoping that he would be able to be first in the water when the angel stirred up the water so that he could be healed of his disease. However, someone always got there first. He was very much exasperated, but still he was full of hope. Still he kept trying.
When Jesus came to him and healed him, He said : “‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’”. When the Lord later found him in the Temple, He said to Him : “‘See, you have been made well. Sin no more’”. As I have said before, many of the things that are wrong with us come from sin. It is not always our own sin. Sometimes it is just because we are human beings, and all humanity is terribly sinful. That is why some terrible things occur to us, and sometimes that is why we get sick. However, there is a way out, and the way out is Jesus Christ. He is the Life-giver, and wherever Jesus is, there can only be life – no sickness, no sorrow, no sighing – only life. When Jesus told the paralysed man that he should not sin any more, He was telling us something that we must remember. That something is that sin paralyses us. As long as we participate in the works of darkness, as long as we do not unite ourselves to the Lord, as long as we insist on “doing our own thing”, we are paralysing ourselves, like that man who was lying for 38 years on the ground.
The Lord does not want us to be like that. He does not want us to be paralysed by our selfishness, by our greediness, by our anger, by our unwillingness to forgive. He wants us to put all this away. He wants us to live powerfully and healthily in the Kingdom. However, the only way we can have any sort of spiritual or physical health is to be united to Jesus Christ and determined to live in the Kingdom, to live in His life-giving love.
How do we do that ? The answer is very simple. We just do it. Of course, the question comes : “But how do we do it ?” By living as Jesus does. When we meet someone who is spiritually or physically ill, we bring the healing love of Jesus Christ to that person. If someone is ill, we go to that person if we can. Whether we can go to that person or cannot go to that person, we pray for that person to be healed physically or spiritually. We unite ourselves to Jesus Christ every Sunday when we come here. We unite ourselves to Him and share His love and His life with those around us. If someone is hungry, we feed them. If someone does not have enough clothes, we give them clothes. If someone is short of money, maybe we can lend them something, or even give them something if possible, depending on how God moves us to act. No-one can say how we are supposed to act precisely in any individual case, because human beings are all different. The circumstances in life are all different also. God calls you and me to behave towards each other in love.
The only way we can know for certain how to exercise this love is to be united with the Lord, who is the Source of love. He is the One who gives us the love in the first place, and He is the One who teaches us how to exercise it rightly in each case. For instance, if someone does not have any money, we should perhaps give them money. On the one hand, that would work for certain people and be “just the ticket”, but on the other hand it might be an occasion for sin because of the particular weaknesses of that person which we cannot know. I discovered that by listening to the Lord. That does not mean that just because we sometimes make mistakes in the exercising of our love we should never give of ourselves. We must give of ourselves. We must act. Unless we act, there is no love. Love must operate. It must do. It must express itself. I cannot just sit around saying : “I am a good Christian. I love”. That is no good. That does not do a thing, except say to everyone that I am a big talker. Maybe I have good intentions, but my mother said to me time after time that good intentions pave the road to hell. She was quite right. “I was going to do something” does not get us anywhere when we have to face the Lord. “I was going to be nice to so-and-so” ; “I was going to go and visit ” ; “I was going to take a pie over” ; “I was going to do this and I was going to do that”. That does not hold any water. It is a leaky bucket before the Lord. When we face the Lord it is just like when I was facing my mother. “I was going to” does not get us anywhere, but it got me a red bottom a few times, anyway. It will get us the same thing with the Lord. If I say : “I was going to do this or that”, then I can expect the Lord to say : “Why then did you not do it ?”
If we are not prepared to exercise our love, if we are so “chicken-hearted” that we cannot do a thing, then we have to be prepared for what the Lord is going to give us. The fact is that the Lord loves us. He strengthens us. He protects us from all harm. He corrects us. There is no reason at all not to be prepared to do something. The Lord is going to say to us : “Why did you not … ?” I might make an excuse that I am selfish or scared. However, perhaps I am more likely to be selfish, because, if I am selfish, that is a reason to be scared. If we cannot say that we did not do it for a good reason, then we can expect to get slapped around a bit, as it were. In fact, we can expect to get slapped around a bit right now by the Lord because the Lord disciplines the ones He loves. He loves us, and He wants us to wake up and He wants us to do what is right. He wants us to exercise this love with each other. The Lord says in another place : “If you do good things : visit the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, go and see those who are in jail, or do whatever else is necessary to meet people’s needs – if you do it to these people, you do it to Me, also” (see Matthew 25:34-36). However, if we do not look after the people who are in need, if we do not go and see Mrs n once in a while ; if we do not go and see how Mrs n or Mrs n is doing today ; if we do not check up on one of them, then we did not do it to the Lord, either. He is going to say : “Why ? Why did you not at least phone ?”
We have to exercise this love, because this love gives life. If Jesus Christ did not exercise His life-giving love, the paralysed man would never have stood up. If He did not exercise His love through Peter, the man who was paralysed would never have stood up, and Tabitha would never have been raised from the dead. We are reading the Book of Acts right now in Pascha because the Book of Acts shows us how the apostles lived out the love of Jesus Christ, and how the love of Jesus Christ built up and strengthened the community. If there is anything we believers here need to do now, it is to read the Book of Acts once a month for the next year, and try to put into practice what is said in that book about the deeds of the apostles.
Let us consider what happened to Peter when Peter was going into the Temple (see Acts 3:1-10). A man was begging for money. Peter said : “’Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you’”. He took the lame man by the hand and he was healed ; he got up and walked around. He was able to earn his own living after that instead of begging. That is what the Lord expects of you and me. He expects us to put our love into practice. We are united to Jesus Christ and we have all the tools that are necessary in this love. All we have to do is to do it. We just have to reach out a hand, and touch and do.
Why not make that our commitment today ? Let us read the Book of Acts once a month (which means about a chapter a day) for the next year, and try to act on the Acts ; to do what the apostles did, because how Jesus lives and works amongst us is no different from how He worked and lived amongst them. His love is the same. We try to let ourselves off the hook, saying : “The times are different”. However, they are not that different. People are people, like they were then. The only difference between people at the time of the Acts and people now, is how much money most people seem to have now, how many machines people have to do their work for them, and how fast they can travel around the world. It is how many gadgets we have that makes us different. Human beings remain the same and they have been behaving the same throughout all the thousands of years of history. Nevertheless, the promises of Jesus Christ are the same. His love is the same. We can be like the apostles, and He wants us to be like them, so let us read the Book of the Acts. Let us act on the Book of the Acts, so that our whole life says : Christ is risen. Let our lives always proclaim the Resurrection of Christ, and glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.