A Reflection for Tuesday in the Fourth Week of Lent

Readings for Tuesday in the Fourth Week of Lent

Ezekiel 47:1-9, 12

Psalm 46:1-8

John 5:1-18

Luke 8:40-56

This reflection was shared with the Pastoral Care Team / Team of Healers of Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka CA on March 13, 2018. 

When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?”

In the original Greek, the word for “well” is ὑγιὴς which comes from the word ὑγιεινή, where we get the word “hygiene.” Today we associate hygiene with staying clean and washing our hands, but in Koine Greek, it meant “health” and “wholeness.” In ancient Greece, the goddess Hygieia was the personification of wholeness and health, often depicted with a snake and a jar of water, symbols that are also associated with Jesus in John’s Gospel.

Jesus asks, “Do you want the healing and wholeness that I can give you through my living water (4:10), as I function as the new serpent lifted up in the wilderness? (3:14)” This is an empowering question because he is saying, “You have the choice! And you have the power to participate in your own healing.”

In her Manual for Eucharistic Visitors, Beth Wickenberg Ely writes, “As part of your ministry of presence, listen to the wisdom of those you visit. Give care to them but do not take care of them. This can put them into a needy role and rob them of full participation with Christ in their own healing” (27).

Jesus invites the ill man to participate fully in his own healing and the ill man responds to Jesus’s question by essentially blaming others, but can we really blame him for doing so? He’s been sick for 38 years, nothing has healed him and apparently no one has helped him. He has lost his agency and, in many ways, his own personhood. Jesus starts to give this back to him when he asks him to make a decision for himself. The man does not answer the question affirmatively so Jesus gives him another opportunity to do something for himself: “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”

This time the man does not hesitate, blame others or skirt the issue. Instead he chooses health and wholeness and is immediately made well. The text reads: “At once the man was made well (ἐγένετο ὑγιὴς), and he took up his mat and began to walk” (5:9).

Jesus gives the ill man the agency to choose hygieia, to move out of a blame-bound paralysis into new wholeness. By making this choice, the man chooses to participate and collaborate with his Creator who continues the process of creation within him, a process that will eventually lead to his ultimate health, which cannot be threatened even by death.

However, when the ill man is accused of working on the Sabbath, he falls back into his old habits of blaming: The Jews said to the man, “It is the Sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.” But he answered them, “The man who made me well said to me, “‘Take up your mat and walk.'” (5:10-11) Essentially, the man says, “Don’t blame me! Blame the guy who healed me. He told me to do it.”

So when Jesus sees him again in the temple, he says, “You have chosen wholeness (again ὑγιὴς), which means you have chosen to move out of your blame-bound paralysis into a new life that will lead to your ultimate death-defying health. Stop blaming others and start taking responsibility for your choices so that your creation can continue. If you keep blaming others you will be giving other people power over you and you will fall prey to their privilege and prejudice. And you may end up worse than before. This is your life and the Creator wants to collaborate with you in your ongoing creation. He wants your full participation in your healing.” (5:14)

The healed man still doesn’t seem to get it and so goes away to tell the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well and forced him to work on the Sabbath. Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus (5:15).

And how does Jesus respond to all of this? He says, “My Father is still working, and I also am working” (5:17).

Even though the people he loves remain stuck in their blame-bound paralysis, he is still working on them and still inviting them to collaborate with their Creator in their (and our) ongoing creation.

There were discussions among the Hellenistic Jews about whether or not God continued to work on the Sabbath. The grass still grew and the sun still shined so, they thought, God must still be working.

The great Jewish mystic Philo of Alexandria explained that on the Sabbath, God simultaneously rested and continued to work. He said, “It is the property of fire to burn, and of snow to chill, so also it is the property of God to be creating. And he is to all other beings the author of their working.” (Allegorical Interpretation, 1.5)

The Johannine Jesus is saying the same thing: “My Father is still working, and I also am working” (5:17)

My favorite theologian James Alison elaborates on this verse when he says, “God is creative effervescence, constantly and lovingly creating, so that the institution of the Sabbath, while it may be important for us humans to rest, is a symbol of creation yet to be completed and still needing its fullness. So Jesus also works, that is to say, brings creation to its proper fullness, making people whole (Ὑγιεία) on the Sabbath” Raising Abel, 72 – 73.

Just as Jesus asked the ill man “Do you want to be whole?” so he also asks us, “Do you want to be whole? Do you want to move out of your blame-bound and death-bound existence into abundant life and wholeness? Do you want to move into a life of creative collaboration with the Fount of all Health and Creativity? Do you want to become a healer yourself and lead others into this fullness? Whatever choice you make, I’m going to keep working and keep inviting you into this health and wholeness, and I urge you to choose hygieia.”