Luke 24:1-12 (Matins)
Acts 9:32-42
John 5:1-15

Paralyzed

Christ is risen from the dead! And we are inspired to go back and re-read His words and teachings more closely. For our Teacher is God, and He has singled out these lessons for our welfare. The Church has accordingly set aside five Sundays to do just that. We often say that the Teacher taught through parables. Yet, there is not one parable among the five but rather His direct intervention in actual lives lived. And His corrections apply to our lives, too.

But let us name these five Sundays in Eastertide:

For I suppose that the two commandments universally practiced in our culture are

But in the process, we are likely to have lost our way in the thick fog of misguided charity, lest we offend someone, or, worse, be condemned or shunned.

This certainly is a foremost spiritual problem of our time. But from the Lord's point of view it was the problem of the age two thousand years ago and the proximate reason for His Incarnation. While He certainly cleared the way for us to enter the Kingdom of God (sotería), there, nonetheless, arose a general confusion after His Ascension — concerning His identity, concerning His nature, and concerning the purposes of His Incarnation. This free-for-all begins right away and, for example, dominates St. Paul's Second Letter to the Church at Corinth. It continues to the present day. For which among the Enemy's tactics could be more effective than chaos, which is his own hellish nature: pandemonium, or "all demons".

Jesus founded our Church. He appointed one set of Apostles (manifestly permitting one self-appointed Apostle to arise who was consecrated on the Damascus Road). And appointed the Holy Spirit, Who would remind us of all that He taught and which continues to guide the Church, all within the bounds of human fallibility and frailty.

On this Sunday we ask: Which Christianity do you follow? Which Jesus do you love and worship? For we must admit, we have been formed in manifold, conflicting theologies which have surrounded us — through radio, television, books, and conversations of men and women since we could see and hear. And these Christianities are as unalike as any myriad imaginings flooding from the teeming mind of man. Indeed, the American spirit, chronically formed in the new and improved, has been trained to seek novelty and to tickle the curiosity-seeker.

☦

Visit the Holy Land, and you will feel that you have visited ancient Rome. Visit the ancient cities of Ephesus, Smyrna, or any of the "Seven Churches" (though they might have Turkish names today), and you will experience the same feeling. And through these feelings, we begin to understand the immensity of the Roman Empire, culturally and intellectually. And this empire was built upon another — the ancient, imperial foundation laid by the Alexander the Great who had conquered the known world by the fourth century B.C. And this world of many peoples was acculturated to a Greek ideal of one language spoken by all, one education (called Paideia) to which upper-class families sent their sons, and one set of ideals concerning virtue, morals, and religion.

It is not clear that Jesus deigned to speak the Babylonian language (Aramaic). My guess is, He used a large handful of words and phrases just as many Jews today pepper their speech with large handfuls of Yiddish. Jesus, and all those around Him, probably spoke Greek. Did you know that the language in the street in Rome was Greek, not Latin. Latin was reserved for the Senate, proceedings before the Emperor, and in official imperial communications.

The great classicist Werner Jaeger pointed this out in 1961 (Werner Jaeger, Early Christian and Greek Paideia, Harvard University Press, 1961), that whenever Jesus quotes Scripture, He quotes the Septuagint (LXX) (which is why the Orthodox Church insists on the LXX for its Old Testament readings and monastic worship). The LXX, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, was ordered by a Greek-speaking pharaoh of Egypt, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the son of a Macedonian general, who served Alexander the Great, and his Macedonian wife.

The Levant comprised nearly the whole expanse of the Eastern Shore of the Mediterranean Sea, spreading out from Egypt marking its southeast boundary. And, south of the hill country, Judah was the gateway to Asia. The harbor built by the Romans at Caesarea Maritima was called the greatest harbor of the Eastern Sea. They erected buildings that could be seen many miles out at sea to emphasize this role. It was inevitable that this great crossroads, from Africa to Asia Minor, from Rome to the exotic East, should be chronically dominated by conquerors. And it was. From the Egyptians to the Neo-Assyrians to the Babylonians to the Persians to the Greeks and to the Romans, Judah was strategically located and destined to become a place of many diverse cultures. The crossroads of the world, we might say.

They heard the latest news from across the world. They saw the latest innovations. The Greeks stood out for their advances in surgery and medicine. The Romans, of course, surpassed all previous cultures in engineering, military science, and world governance. But among these latest advances was something that does not easily fall into a category of the latest and best, and that was belief in God. Which is the true god? And historically, these conqueroring nations assured that the people they subdued would worship their various gods. We know that the Persians insisted on worship of their god because a stele has survived specifying this as the first duty of a Persian king. He is no king at all if his subjects do not worship the Persian god. And the century following Jesus' death, the only gods worshipped in Jerusalem were Jupiter and the Roman pantheon.

Following the return from Babylon in the sixth-century B.C. (as we have considered many times) Judah-ites were indoctrinated by revision of their Scriptures and the banning the name of God. Instead, ambiguous terms like elohim and adonai, meaning "Lord," were introduced. ("Lord" is what the Persians called their god.) Certainly, the god question was the most conflicted subject of all.

That we should read of "star-led wizards" in dazzling array journeying to dusty Bethlehem makes the point of these extremes. How outlandish! A caravan of so-called "kings" arrayed in royal spendor and transporting treasures to a hovel in dusty Bethlehem, a cave where no-account shepherds lives.

Picture yourself in this melting pot of conflicting truth claims. Perhaps you would not know what to believe. There were thousands of people, perhaps tens of thousands, in this same confused state. Actually, the first-century population of the Levant was in the millions. And among these is a paralyzed man. Yes, we could say he was a paraplegic, but for the purposes of the Gospel's meaning, we understand him to be spiritually paralyzed, caught between many beliefs. The spiritual dimension of his paralysis is made plain. He has sought spiritual deliverance from for the past thirty-eight years, nearly the same amount of time the people Israel waited for their deliverance from spiritual paralysis. And like them, his mind has been has been very much on the world (cf. the fleshpots of Egypt), which explains Jesus' admonition:

Sin?! This man has been paralyzed .... and through no fault of this own. Still, Jesus says, "Sin no more lest a worse thing befall you." For Jesus finds him along with "a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting" (Jn 5:3). They languish in this spiritual wasteland, the Jerusalem Asklepion, a temple to the Greek god of healing, Asklepios (as we have considered in past years). These temples, marked by their pools and five porches or porticoes (Jn 5:2), were scattered throughout the Roman Empire.

We should ignore the brief passage concerning the angel who stirred the waters. This was added by a manuscript copyist at least a hundred years later, and as late as four hundred years after Jesus visited this Asklepion. Moreover, this gloss does not clarify but rather muddies the issues this pericope has raised. You know the content: an angel periodically disturbing the water sets off a stampede, each man for himself, for only one will be healed. What kind of spirituality is this? If this is a kind of "spirituality," it is a me-first spirituality, like blood sacrifice, which Jesus mocked through His parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus would take no delight in this might-makes-right free-for-all. The strongest and fastest is healed. Everybody else is just going to have to lose. Jesus' foremost desire was to reveal a Kingdom of God whose invitation list includes everyone born into the world.

But let us return to this multitude of incurable people. They are casting their minds everywhere and on everything as desperate people do. We know very well, but perhaps you had not heard: Haiti is principally a Roman Catholic country. The quip is "80% Roman Catholic but 100% Voudou." You see, when you are desperate you hedge your bets. And Haitians, to be sure, are desperate, like our friends and neighbors who seek a remedy for incurable cancer at health food stores. Such people are apt to believe anything, calling to mind a quotation attributed to G. K. Chesteron:

Is this not our situation today with people "trying out" many Christianities? So many go from church to church listening for a message that "speaks to them" as if our faith could ever be founded on simply "feeling good." For it does not "feel good" to tear ourselves away from a me-focused, comfort-seeking life in order to live the life God has in mind for us. Indeed, the first word of Jesus' ministry and His absolute requirement: Metanoeite!, which means "Make a complete turn-about!"

Now, why should God wish us to deny ourselves, as He says repeatedly in the Gospel? Why would He wish us to be last? Why would He wish us to tear ourselves away from a me-first, comfort-seeking life? Because This is not it.

When I was a chaplain in the oncology ward of Holy Family Hospital, this was a theme to which I returned again and again: This is not it. If fact, God has prepared a formation for us which leads to our despising this life: its corruption, its unfairness, its brutality, its evil. We become disgusted with this life. We come to revile it. He wants us to let go of this life and set our eyes elsewhere. We must take our situation seriously. For many are called (Mt 22:14), but few find the way into eternal life with God (Mt 7:13-14).

Paralysis? Spiritual paralysis is perhaps the most common ailment of the American soul. So many gaze upon the horizon of the New, waiting for the exciting "next thing." Meantime, our calling God is speaking into our own hearts, today and this minute. But will we hear Him?

Perhaps we do not recognize Him standing right beside us as He stood beside the paralytic at the Asklepion. He might say, "Sin no more." Remarkable! Yet, it would not be remarkable for us to recoil at this Stranger's words, to swell in our pridefulness, and to tell Him to mind His own business! For we are embattled, paralyzed, and perhaps have been so for thirty-eight years. As we look around at the many desperate and hopeless paralytics all around us, we do not see Him, standing right there, even on the steps of the "temple of our unbelief," which is the most imposing monument in twenty-first-century America. Its members of countless.

This is spiritual paralysis. Yet, we are so close to God Who waits. We are so near to opening our hearts to Him Who loves us. We are so close to saying, "Yes, Lord, I will sin no more." But we will not.

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