Do You Want to be Made Well? Reading: John 5:1-9 Easter VI
By the Rev. Karen Faye Siegfriedt: St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Morro Bay CA 5-25-25

Jesus said to the man: “Stand up, take your mat, and walk.” At once the man was made well and he took up his mat and began to walk. (John 5)

Do you want to be made well? I think that is a question all of us should answer truthfully. In fact, it is an important question that we should answer before going to the doctor. It is a question that every doctor should ask before treating a patient. It is a question we should contemplate before going into therapy. It is a question we should ponder whenever we experience hurt, anger, or resentment in our heart. It is a question we should resolve before confessing our sins each Sunday during the act of confession. Sometimes, people just want to feel better or just live longer, not really wanting to make the changes that are necessary for wellness.

So, I ask you the question once again. Do you want to be made well? Do you want to be whole? Do you want to be awakened to the fullness of life? Do you want to be connected to the Divine Presence that offers grace upon grace? If so, today’s gospel gives us some insights on how to proceed. Let’s take a closer look.

The story begins in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate. A man who had been ill for 38 years was lying by the pool. The text does not explicitly say what his illness is, but the story implies that he is physically disabled with atrophied limbs. The pool (with five porticoes described in this story) is one of the few biblical sites that has been authentically discovered and verified. This particular pool of water was fed by rainwater. But ancient writings report that a stream ran underneath the pool, occasionally bubbling up and disturbing the waters. The belief was that when the water in the pool was stirred up, healing would occur for those who were fortunate enough to get into the water in time.

Now there were many invalids who would sit by the pool day after day, desiring to be healed of their infirmities. The particular man in today’s story was not mobile enough to get into the pool at prime time. And so year after year, he would sit by the pool, hoping that one day he would get into the pool while the water was stirred up. It was into this context that Jesus asked him: “Do you want to be made well?”

At first glance, you might think that this is a strange question. After all, who wouldn’t want to be made well? Well actually, there are a lot of people who don’t want to be made well. While most people do not want to suffer, they don’t necessarily want to change or do the hard work that is required to move forward. You probably know some of these folks. They might be someone in your own family. Maybe after being ill for 38 years, the man’s hope for recovery diminished, or he was resigned to a life of dependency. Maybe the man in the story lost his desire to make the changes necessary for wellness. Maybe there was a chance that he didn’t want to be restored to fullness, thus having to take on the burden of making a living. Or maybe he just had such a limited vision of what was required to heal such that he missed out on other opportunities available. After all,
one’s attitude, beliefs, and level of participation all influence the process of healing.

Jesus asks the man: “Do you want to be made well?” The actual Greek word “to be made well” can also refer to wholeness, soundness of mind, and health. Do you want to be whole? Do you want to return to health? Do you want to be a sound human being? While the man never directly answers Jesus’ question, he does offer an excuse as to why he is still lying around the pool after 38 years of disability. He believes that the only way to be whole, the only way to be made well, is to get into the pool when the water is stirred up. What a pity!

You know, sometimes it is easy to get stuck, believing that there is only one way to move forward or only one way to be happy. Excuses and false beliefs about health and wholeness often hinder us from actually getting well, especially when it comes to chronic health issues.

Think about all the false beliefs out there that are hindering our health system in our country today. I am disheartened by all the anti-scientific bias and misinformation in the media. It is hard to ignore the headlines regarding the state of public health here in the United States. Measles cases are going up, vaccination rates are going down, whooping cough is making a comeback. 33% of adults and 20% of our children are obese while the rate of depression is over 20%. Loneliness and a lack of social ties is epidemic in both the elderly and our young people. Suicide is on the rise as well as colon cancer among young adults. Thousands of government experts who have been doing medical research have been fired. And amid these crises, our country is undergoing a moment of intense distrust in public health and scientific information. What are we to do? Are we doomed to repeat history? Today’s gospel and other passages of Scripture, offer us some insights on how to
move forward in our own journey toward health and wholeness.

Let me mention three of them.

1. Action Required: First of all, we must actively participate in our own healing process. We can’t just depend on a magic pill, a prescribed medical treatment, or rely on the doctor to “fix us.” After healing the man at the pool, Jesus gives him three commands: “Stand up. Pick up your mat. Walk.” In other words, do something even if you don’t feel like it! Fortunately for the invalid man, he followed orders.

The word translated as stand up in this story has a lot of different meanings and interpretations. This same Greek word can also mean to awaken, to rise up, to collect one’s faculties. It has been used to describe rising from sleep or rising from the dead. It is a powerful word that can shake us from complacency, from habitual behaviors that are unhealthy, and from distorted ways of thinking that hurt us and others.

For instance, many people do not follow instructions from their doctors. Non-adherence to treatment plans occurs with almost 50% of all patients, especially those with chronic illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. 30% of prescriptions for medication go unfilled while 50% of people do not take their drugs as prescribed. Many folks refuse to do physical therapy once discharged. While we cannot cure all our ills nor can we live forever, there are five things we can do to improve our health: Right eating, adequate sleep, exercise, quiet meditation or prayer, and stress reduction. Do you want to be made well???

2. Thoughts Matter: We need to remember that our body, mind, and soul are interconnected. And if
there is a problem in one area, it is bound to affect the other. I once heard the human body described as a chariot! Our chariot is this body that transports us through life and carries our senses, our thoughts, our emotions, and our soul. Like any other vehicle, this chariot needs to be carefully maintained if it is to carry us through the many years of life. If not, the chariot will eventually break down. And one of the ways our chariots are breaking down has to do with mental health issues caused by useless thoughts, fearful thoughts, and hurtful emotions that deplete our joy and deprive us of abundant life. For our own spiritual healing, it is time for us to take charge of our mind rather than allowing our mind to take charge of us.
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The mind is a powerful force. Most people are oblivious to their habitual way of thinking which
unfortunately leads them to do things that go against their own principles and harms their health. This ought not to be so. The words you mutter to yourself and the thoughts that you dwell on have the power to encourage or discourage, to motivate or deflate, to generate joy or generate sadness. Little by little, the conversations that you hold in the privacy of your mind are determining your destiny. Each thought can move you toward or away from your God-given potential. So what are you putting in your mind? Are you spending too much time watching the angry news commentators who focus on everything that is wrong in the world? Or are you thinking about how you can use your time, talent, and treasure to be a healing presence in the world today?

Do you want to be made well? Then put on the mind of Christ, focusing on that which is “true,
honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent, and worthy of praise.” (Phil. 4:8) Our mind is to be used as a tool for problem solving, learning new things, engaging in activities, and delighting in God’s creation. So take care of that chariot of yours, and don’t forget to nurture your mind.

3. Community: Another avenue for healing and wholeness is being part of a community. We are not
called to be alone in this world, trying to struggle through the trials and tribulations of life by ourselves. The man in today’s gospel story had no one to help him into the water and so he laid around for 38 years. It wasn’t until Jesus came along to help, that his situation was turned around. I recently read a story about Oscar Saxelby-Lee, a five-year-old boy in England who was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of leukemia. While Oscar underwent intense chemotherapy treatment for four weeks, he needed to have a stem cell transplant to survive. A call went out to the Worcester community to try to find an exact donor match, a very difficult task. However, when the call went out, the community came together. More than 3,000 people showed up to be tested in order to become a potential donor. People queued around the block in the pouring rain, and nobody complained. This spirit of generosity and concern was absolutely incredible. Oscar did receive his
stem cell transplant and is now cancer free. The moral of the story? Reach out and touch someone. Every act of concern makes a difference! So thank you, people of St. Peter’s, a community of faith who cares for one another; folks who offer acts of grace to the sick and the homebound. Keep up the good work!

As I end this sermon, there is one more thing I want to say about health and wholeness. The human body is not meant to live forever. There is a time to be born and a time to die; a time to let go. What is most important is not how many years we exist, but rather how we make use of the time and opportunities we have while still alive. “Life is short and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us. So be swift to love, make haste to be kind, and go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” (A Blessing)

When I first visited St Peters, I was the kind of visitor who sits in the back row and tried to get out before being invited to coffee hour. Jill and I were warmly welcomed by several of you. But there were bumper stickers on some of the cars in the parking lot which made us cautious. This didn’t seem like a church that would be safe place for a gay couple. That was over 25 years ago. A lot has changed since then both here at St. Peters, in the Episcopal Church and in society as a whole.

I am bringing this up because the reading we heard from Acts this morning was an important scripture in helping the Episcopal Church make the change from ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ to full inclusion.

We heard Peter defending his decision to baptize Gentiles. In order that we understand the story, I need to remind you of three things – first that strict Jews had and have strict dietary rules so for example they never eat pork or shrimp; second that the purity laws prevented them from having much to do with Gentiles, and third, that the Jesus movement was initially just within Judaism. Jesus and his disciples were Jews.

So Peter had a dream in which he was presented with many different animals for food but they were all unclean. In his dream a voice told him to eat them, but he replied that he could not. He had never eaten anything unclean. But then the voice told him, `What God has made clean, you must not call profane.' This happened three times before he woke up. Just as he was thinking about the dream, Peter was called to the door for some men who had come from Caesarea. They had been sent by a God-fearing Roman centurion named Cornelius. Cornelius himself had a vision in which he was told to send for Simon Peter.

This presented something of a dilemma because Cornelius was a Gentile so Peter would not normally have gone to his home but the Holy Spirit told him not to hesitate so he and some other believers went to Joppa to meet Cornelius. As Peter preached the gospel to Cornelius and his friends, they began to praise God, speaking in tongues, and Peter said, “Surely no one can stand in the way of their being baptized with water. They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.” So they were baptized, and he stayed there with them for several days.

In the sequel that we heard this morning, Peter has to explain to the church leaders in Jerusalem what he thought he was doing. He told them the whole story and said, “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?" 

This is the argument that The Episcopal Church made about fully including LGBTQ people. “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave straight people, who were we to hinder God?” It had become obvious to many, though not to all, that God was blessing the lives and ministry of LGBTQ Episcopalians and that it was time to get out of God’s way. Just as the first Christian leaders thought that Gentiles were unclean, so for centuries Christians thought that gays were unclean.

This last week I have been upset that our government, having denied entry to thousands of people trying to get away from well-documented gang violence, persecution and fear for their lives in their home countries, decided to let in white South Africans. They are the main landowners in South Africa and are privileged in nearly every way. To call them victims of genocide is inaccurate. In my anger and upset, I thought that should I ever meet one of those immigrants I wouldn’t want anything to do with them.

And then I realized that I was making the same mistake. I was calling these people unacceptable, unclean, though they are just as beloved of God as I am.

It is a trap that it is only too easy to fall into in our country right now. We are living in a time when might is right and the wealthy have power and privilege and those who don’t are labeled as gang members and criminals. We are living in a time when it is considered just to take healthcare away from millions of poor people in order to provide more income for the top 1%. In that atmosphere it is easy for us to start thinking of a group of people who are different from us as somehow unclean.
And that was just as true In Jesus time.

Which is why Jesus’ commandment to love one another was so revolutionary, and still is today. In order for the few to remain in power they have to keep the rest of the people at odds with each other, and so they sow hatred and fear.

But the Jesus movement is radically different. The Jesus movement is based on love.

Let us ponder that for a moment.

In 1st Century Palestine the family was everything. You were known as a member of your family and if you were well thought of you brought it honor, if you messed up you brought dishonor. Honor was like money in the bank. Jesus’ disciples had left their families and were to love one another regardless of family or tribe.

That is something much bigger than loving your immediate family or your closest friends. It is much bigger than caring for the people you meet at church and enjoying potlucks together.
It is a radically new way.

Have you ever wondered why the early church were so concerned about widows and orphans? It was because these people were often without immediate family so they had little support and often were hungry and ignored by the local families. But the Jesus movement welcomed them and fed them.

So the love that Jesus commands is a love that extends beyond family and old friends; it is a love that seeks to serve all God’s beloved. It is a love that seeks justice and belonging for everyone, even those who are not Episcopalians, even those who are not Americans, yes even white South Africans!

I struggle with the time involved in being radically loving in this way. I could spend every minute of every day and then some, loving individuals, loving the planet, loving those who are denied justice and peace. That would not be loving myself or my spouse. So I have come to think that the love Jesus commands is an attitude, a being not a doing.

When we ask to be used as clear channels for God’s love then we can trust that God will help us to see the places where we are unloving, the places where we need to make extra effort, and the times that we can rest and love ourselves. And that balance is different for each of us.

But I am sure that just as Peter was asked to go outside his comfort zone, to reach out to people considered unclean that God is asking the people of St Peter’s to open our hearts, to assume an attitude of radical love and be ready to reach across social boundaries to love those whom God already loves and sees as clean.
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 the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall

Last week I talked about Jesus Christ and how Jesus and the Christ are totally entwined so you cannot separate them.

This morning, building on the reading from Revelation, I want to focus on Jesus as Lamb. Unlike Jesus Christ, Jesus the Lamb of God is a metaphor. It is a way of thinking about Jesus that draws us deeper into the mysteries of our faith. Most of our conversation about God is based on metaphor and parables - which are a form of metaphor – Although God is right here with us, none of us can know the totality of God. And so we use metaphors to get us wondering, to lead us deeper into the knowledge of God.

We use the metaphor of Jesus as Lamb a lot in our worship. Later this morning, after I break the bread, we will sing together “Jesus, Lamb of God have mercy on us.”  I wonder what that means to you? So I am going to ask you once again to find someone else to talk with, even if that means getting up and changing your seat, and for a few minutes share your ideas about Jesus the Lamb.
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We have several ideas between us. That is good because a spiritual symbol operates on many levels and has many meanings. I have mentioned before that as a teenager I was a strong evangelical believer and I thought we could know the ‘plain truth’ of God. But life and the Holy Spirit have changed me, and now I realize that there is always more than meets the eye and that every time I think I have grasped the meaning of a great spiritual symbol, I am only scraping the surface.

So let’s talk about lambs. I identified at least five levels to the symbol of the Lamb. Let’s dive in together.

Firstly, lambs are delightful little animals who dance around and make us think that Spiring has truly arrived. As such they are symbols of new life and of the resurrection.

We also slaughter them for food, and in the sacrificial system of the Hebrew people they were sacrificed as an offering to God. There were several reasons that someone might make a sacrifice – it might be as a freewill offering, to support prayer or praise, part of the regular rhythm of temple worship, or as an offering for sin or request for atonement.

There is a range of understandings about Jesus’ death on the cross. The idea of Jesus as the lamb of sacrifice, as the offering for human sin, is a strong one which has been reinforced in church teaching over the centuries. By dying ‘for our sins’ Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice so we don’t need to go on slaughtering animals; we are reconciled to God once and for all by Jesus’ sacrifice.

Our fraction anthem, “Jesus, Lamb of God have mercy on us, Jesus bearer of our sins, have mercy on us,” reminds us of this aspect of the Lamb – the sacrifice who reconciles us with God despite human sinfulness.

So there we have two layers of meaning already – Jesus the lamb of resurrection and new life, and Jesus as the sacrifice for the sin of the world – the sacrifice which makes all other sacrifices unnecessary.

Let’s add a third. Passover. On the last night in Egypt before they left, the Hebrew people were told to kill a year-old lamb or a goat and put its blood on the doorposts and lintels of their houses. When the Angel of Death came saw the blood of the Lamb and know to pass-over the houses of the Hebrews. So the blood of the Passover lamb protected them from death.

In John’s gospel, Jesus dies on Passover, clearly making a connection between Jesus and the Passover Lamb. The apostle Paul also made this connection explicit when he refered to, “Christ our Passover Lamb [who] has been sacrificed” (1 Cor. 5:7)

So that’s three layers: resurrection, a sin sacrifice and the Passover lamb.

Now let’s turn to today’s reading from Revelation. John’s having a vision of the court of heaven. A few pages before our reading today, one of the elders told him that the Lion of Judah had conquered, but when he looks the Lion is actually a Lamb (Rev 5. 5-6.) A Lamb who has been killed but is now being worshiped by the heavenly host. And not just the heavenly host but “every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth, in the sea and all that is in them.” (Rev 5:13)

In todays’ reading the multitudes are still worshiping God and the Lamb. But now John asks why some of them have long white robes. And he is told “"These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

‘Washed in the blood of the Lamb’ is the refrain of many an old hymn. The blood of the Lamb has reconciled these people with God. Blood is the life force in our veins so the blood of the Lamb is not a symbol of his death only but also of his life. When we share the cup of wine together we are sharing in Jesus’ blood – his life force, his death and resurrection.

Perhaps this is already contained in our understanding of the Lamb as resurrection, a sacrifice that removes sin, and whose blood causes death to Passover but I am going to add this as fourth and fifth levels of meaning – the Lamb reconciles us to God and we get to share in his life force, his death and his resurrection.

Yet the image of the Lamb is a shapeshifter – a few chapters ago it was a Lion, then a Lamb and now at the end of today’s reading the image turns on its head again and becomes a shepherd. We read, “for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,
and he will guide them to springs of the water of life.”

So this my friends is the Lamb who is also the Christ who is also Jesus. As the Lion he conquered the powers of darkness, as the Lamb he willingly sacrificed himself for us and in so doing reconciled us with God and as the Shepherd he brings us the water of life.

Isn’t that amazing? It’s like, Wow!

The Lamb of God is no gentle little creature but the powerful and deeply loving life force which pulses in our veins, fills our cells with life and reconciles us with God.

It is not surprising that the heavenly host gather around God and the Lamb in worship and praise. And we get to do that too. We were made to take part in the heavenly chorus of praise and thanksgiving, along with the “great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands,” and along with, “every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth, in the sea and all that is in them.”

People of God, I am convinced that it is this song of praise to God and to the Lamb which is the energy of the Cosmos, and that as we align ourselves with that song, as we participate in that song, day in and day out so we are transformed, and the world is changed. So let us not forget to praise God, and specifically as we gather together in the eucharist this morning let us give thanks to the Lamb and include ourselves in the multitude without number singing the song of praise that echoes through the ages.
the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall

During Eastertide this year, we have readings from the book of Revelation. This is a magical mystery tour of the heavenly court as visioned by John when he was on the Greek island of Patmos. I am not going to spend time talking about the book of Revelation because I know that Lenny is going there in her study this week and will do a much more thorough job than I can do in this short homily. But the theme of our readings today is revelation.

We heard about Saul’s amazing experience on the road to Damascus when the living Christ was revealed in blazing light. We heard about Jesus’ appearance at breakfast on the shore. And we heard a little of John’s vision who saw and “heard the voice of many angels surrounding the throne and the living creatures and the elders; they numbered myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, singing with full voice.” And in the psalm we read that “Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning.”

All amazing and wonderful revelations of the presence of the Christ.

So let us consider the difference and the sameness of Jesus and the Christ. Often we say Jesus Christ just as might say John Smith, as though Christ is Jesus’ surname. It isn’t. The Christ is the anointed One, the Son of God who is one of the three persons of the Trinity and existed before time. Jesus was human like us, bound to time and place. Yet the understanding passed down by our spiritual ancestors is that Jesus was not only human, Jesus was also God. Jesus the son of
Mary is also Christ, the Son of God.

In the first few centuries after Jesus, the church gave a lot of attention to the question of how Jesus could be both God and human. It caused a lot of friction and part of the resolution is contained in the 4th Century Nicene Creed which most Episcopal churches say every Sunday as a reminder and as a way of honoring our ancestors. In that Creed, we remind ourselves that Jesus Christ is one with God, was born of a human woman, Mary, and after his death and resurrection is seated with God.

So we can think of the Christ as the resurrected and ascended Jesus. And we can think of Jesus as a human manifestation of the Christ. Today’s readings are like a crossover point - they are narratives of the post resurrection Jesus who is also the Christ who gave the disciples breakfast, and of the Christ who is also Jesus who appeared to Saul and who is worshipped night and day by the myriads of angels and creatures and elders and saints.

It may seem a bit like splitting hairs, but I have found it enormously helpful in my own spiritual life to understand something of the Christ part of the Jesus Christ package, and so I want to share that with you. Also, in our baptismal covenant we promise to “seek and serve Christ in all persons” and in our eucharistic prayer today we will pray “in the fullness of time, put all things into subjection under your Christ.” So it’s helpful, I think to understand more about the Christ.

As a teenager I attended an evangelical Bible class and was often urged to love Jesus and reminded what a friend we have in Jesus. But I had difficulty with the idea of an invisible man. I found it a bit unnerving to think that there was this man, however wonderful, who was always hanging around just wanting to be friends. I experienced a kind of stranger-danger with him.

The Christ however is not gendered. The Christ is a cosmic being who is involved in calling everything and everyone to our fullest expression. At the end of time, whatever that may mean, at the end of time the Christ, the Son of God, the creative Word of God, will be the unifying principle, the One who makes all things whole. The One who the Creator God, as we say in our eucharistic prayer, puts all things into subjection under. This is the vision of Christus Rex – Christ the Sovereign – who in Jesus rose victorious o’er the grave.

You notice that Jesus just slipped back in.

For us as Trinitarian Christians, we cannot separate the Christ from Jesus or Jesus from the Christ. They are one and the same, only different.

It would make no sense for us in our baptismal vows to promise to seek and serve Jesus in all persons because Jesus lived in 1 st century Palestine and we live in 21 st century California. The Christ however is not limited by time or bounded by space and the Christ is evident all around us. Based on Jesus’ words in Matthew 25 “When I was hungry you gave me something to eat, [when] I was thirsty you gave me something to drink, [when] I was a stranger you invited me in” we understand that as we love our neighbor we are loving Jesus Christ and so our promise is to seek and serve Christ in all persons.

So for me, the Christ is present in all creation, the Christ is the manifestation of limitless spiritual possibility. The Christ is the one who gathers us together and who makes us into the Christlike beings we are called to be.

But I know that for many of you, ‘Jesus’ is far more approachable than this cosmic being, ‘Christ’. The good news is we don’t have to choose. If you find it easier to love and serve Jesus that’s fine because Jesus really is the Christ.

What was so astonishing to Saul who became Paul was that in that blinding light he experienced Jesus and knew he was the Christ. He had an experience of Jesus Christ which changed his life and his identity forever.

Just as Simon Peter and the other disciples would never forget the day that Jesus told them to put their nets on the right side of the boat and they came up full of fish. Not only was Jesus on the land but Jesus was in their workplace, the post-resurrection Jesus lived where they lived.

Just as Jesus the Christ does today. Jesus the Christ lives where we live. Not as some ghostly, invisible man, but as a potent life force, as one who turns our weeping into joy, as one who is constantly moving us forward to be united with God.

And we also live where Christ lives. In some way which is mysterious but true, we are invited to join with the myriad angels and elders worshipping God. Even as we deal with all the messiness of being human, we are invited into the heavenly realms to worship around the throne. And we remember this in our eucharistic prayer when on your behalf I say, “Therefore we praise you, joining our voices with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven, who forever sing this hymn to proclaim the glory of your name…” and we sing Holy, Holy, Holy together.

In that moment we step out of everyday reality and into the heavenly court which John saw in his vision.

Just as Jesus the Christ is fully human and fully God, who lived a life as a human even while being a cosmic being dancing in the Trinity, so we live fully human lives inspired by the Spirit of God and we also get to worship in the heavenly realms praising God every day with the psalmist who says, “my heart sings to you without ceasing; O Lord my God, I will give you thanks for ever.”

the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall