“Do you want to be made well?” – Sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter on John 5

Grace and peace to and mercy from God our Father and our Lord and Healer, Jesus Christ. Amen.

“Do you want to be made well?”

It’s the question Jesus asks a man who’s been sick for thirty-eight years, lying beside a pool in Jerusalem. The pool, known as Bethesda, was surrounded by colonnades and a multitude of others who were blind, lame, and paralyzed—each one waiting for the water to stir. According to tradition, an angel would sometimes come down and stir the water, and whoever stepped in first would be healed. That’s what people believed. Healing was a race. A miracle was a prize. Only one could win, and the rest would keep waiting. Day after day, year after year. It’s no wonder this man responds the way he does when Jesus asks him the question. He doesn’t say yes or no. He explains why he hasn’t been able to get into the water in time. He’s trapped inside a definition of healing that’s shaped by scarcity, superstition, and a deep sense of being left behind. He makes excuses, you might say.

And then Jesus breaks the pattern. He doesn’t wait for the water to stir. He doesn’t help the man down into the pool. He doesn’t even touch him. He just speaks. “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” And the man—whose legs had not worked for nearly four decades—gets up. No incantation. No angelic spectacle. No competition. Just Jesus, the Word made flesh, speaking wholeness into a broken life. It happens so simply, and yet it’s nothing short of astonishing.

Jesus doesn’t just offer a cure. He offers himself. He doesn’t engage the man on the world’s terms—healing as a rare commodity or a stroke of luck. Instead, Jesus gives the man something deeper. And when we watch carefully, we see that Jesus as healer does more than repair the body. He restores the person. Healing is more than an event—it’s a relationship.

We often talk about healing in modern terms—as something clinical, measurable. A diagnosis, a treatment plan, an outcome. Sometimes, that outcome is exactly what we hope for. Other times, it isn’t. But biblical healing isn’t just about a body functioning as it should. Healing, in the language of scripture, is wholeness. Peace. Shalom. And shalom is not simply the absence of illness—it’s the presence of harmony, of rightness, of being seen and known and made whole. It’s Eden. Paradise. Creation as God intends. You as God intends.

When Jesus heals, it’s never just about the symptom. It’s always about the our whole being—mind, body, and spirit. Think of how often in the gospels his healings come with a word of peace, or forgiveness, or restoration to community. Healing in Christ has layers. Yes, there are times when he restores sight to the blind or strength to the lame. But he also heals shame, mends isolation, forgives sin, speaks calm into chaos. The healing of the man at the pool is not just about getting up and walking—it’s about being seen, addressed, drawn back into relationship with God.

This is what the letter of James touches on, too, when it speaks of prayer and healing. James writes, “Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord.” There’s something earthy and beautiful here. The oil is tactile—it has weight, smell, sheen. Prayer is not just a silent wish or a mental exercise. It’s relational. Bodied. It’s a cry from one to another, lifted up to the one who holds all things together. And in this passage, prayer and healing are not divorced from community—they’re enfolded within it. The oil doesn’t cure. The words don’t manipulate. But together, they create a sacramental act—a space in which God’s peace may rest, and God’s wholeness may take root.

And it’s in that peace where the deepest healing happens. Because while the world tells us healing must look like normalcy—like walking again, like pain vanishing, like problems fixed—Jesus tells us healing looks like trust. It looks like receiving grace where you didn’t expect it. It looks like standing, even when you don’t understand how. Healing, in the light of Christ, may not mean the cancer is gone or the depression lifts instantly or the grief disappears. It may mean peace while you wait. Strength when you break. Wholeness that sits beside your wounds rather than erasing them.

Popular wisdom defines healing in terms of proof—numbers, results, success, charts and graphs. Jesus defines healing in terms of presence. His. Ongoing. Undeniable. Often quiet. Often surprising. Sometimes taking the form of a friend’s hand on your shoulder, a whispered prayer in the night, or the simple knowledge that you are not forgotten. You are not left behind at the edge of a pool no one will carry you into. Because Jesus already stepped in for you. And the water—so to speak—is no longer the source of the healing. He is.

There is an old kindness in this kind of healing. It’s a reminder that our worth isn’t in what we could do or accomplish, but in who we are—just as we were. That’s the kind of space Jesus creates for healing. He doesn’t shame the man for not getting to the pool. He doesn’t ask why it’s taken him so long. He just offers a new beginning, with a word.

So again, the question echoes: “Do you want to be made well?”

It’s not just a question about your body. It’s a question about your heart. Your relationships. Your identity. Your soul. Jesus asks it not to condemn, but to invite. Into healing. Into hope. Into wholeness.

And so we say yes. Not just because we want the pain to stop. But because we want to be whole—whatever that might look like, in the light of Christ. We want the kind of healing that brings peace even in the storm. We want the kind of prayer that holds us even when nothing else seems to work. We want to take up our mat—not as a symbol of what we lacked, but as a witness to what grace has done. To walk forward—not in perfect strength, but in perfect faith. Because we have been seen. And we have been made well.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.