There he was a man who could not walk surrounded by other people with various impairments, lying by the pool of Bethesda for thirty-eight years.

Thirty-eight years.

That is a really long time.

Every day, he watched others enter the water, water that was believed to have healing power when stirred by an angel.

But he had no one to help him.

He was alone.

He was abandoned.

And then Jesus walked into this scene of long-suffering and asks a question that almost sounds offensive: “Do you want to be made well?”

Of course he does!

Who doesn’t want to be cured of a life-long physical impairment?

I would imagine that the man was bristling inside himself at this question.

But we who follow Jesus know that Jesus is always on the side of the suffering and marginalized, so we will take a minute to consider the question a little more deeply.

Jesus isn’t asking, “Do you want to be cured?”

He is asking, “Do you want to be made whole.

Do you want to be healed?”

And there is an important difference between these questions.

To be cured is to be relieved of a physical impairment or illness.

It is to have your body restored to the physical ideal of the culture in which we live.

It is about the individual.

Healing is communal.

Healing is about wholeness.

It is about belonging, a basic human need.

Healing can happen without a cure and cure can happen without healing.

Healing is about dignity, about being seen, about being restored into community.

Healing is about restoring someone who has been socially isolated to the communal connections that make life possible and worth living.

There is also a difference between impairment and difference, and disability.

Impairment is a physiological and/or medical phenomenon.

Not being able to hear, or having a brain that is wired a little differently (as in the case of autism or ADHD), or having legs that are unable to walk are a few examples of impairments.

These things are not typical of most human bodies, but they are not unknown and are simply a part of being embodied creatures.

They are natural differences that occur in humans, some of which are present from birth and some of which result from injury, accident, or illness.

There is no impairment or physical, cognitive, mental or other difference that is by its very nature abnormal.

It is the culture of a time and place that decides what is normal and what is not.

And when a society defines some difference between human beings as abnormal, it then creates a world in which those with these culturally determined abnormalities become disabled, as the society creates a world in which those labeled as abnormal no longer have equal access to all the entitlements that people the society considers normal take for granted.

Entitlements such as education, transportation, employment, buildings and landscapes that can be navigated, and political power, are just a few of the many I could name.

Some impairments can be individually cured, some cannot.

But healing can be available for all when a society takes the steps needed to ensure that all members of that society have equal access to the benefits of that society.

Disability is a community-imposed limitation and healing is a community-based liberation.

When a society decides to embrace healing, those who were disabled, or isolated socially and pushed to the margins, are returned to the center, to the community where everyone belongs.

The man by the pool wasn’t just suffering from his impairment; he was suffering from a society that kept him from participating in the same ways that non-physically impaired people were able to participate (holding a job for example) and this society abandoned him.

“I have no one to put me into the pool where the water is stirred up.”

He was cut off from all the connections that make life livable and worth living.

If he could by himself find a way to restore his body to his culture’s idea of the perfect body, then he could be restored to his community.

But if not, then oh well too bad, he would simply be forgotten.

Keep up or get out of the way.

And he would live his life suffering on the margins until he died suffering and alone.

But Jesus does not live by the ways of the world.

Jesus lives the ways of God.

He sees the man not his impairment.

He sees him.

Jesus doesn’t ask for proof of worthiness.

He doesn’t ask if the man knows who he is and has faith.

Jesus doesn’t say, “Let’s wait for the angel.”

Jesus cuts through all the systems that keep the man disconnected and make him disabled.

He ignores the religious rules about healing on the Sabbath unless it is a life-or-death emergency.

He defies the social logic that says the man should wait his turn.

Jesus moves straight to healing and restoration.

He seeks to return the man to relationship, agency, and community.

Now, most commentators say that Jesus did heal the man, but I’m not so sure.

I think he cured the man of his impairment, but I am not so sure the man was healed.

He picks up his mat and walks, but if we read the rest of chapter 5, we see little other evidence of change in this man or his way of being in the world.

The religious leaders see him carrying his mat and they call him out for violating the Sabbath by carrying his mat.

The man immediately blames Jesus, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’”

The religious leaders ask him for the identity of the healer and the man says, “I do not know.”

The man wasn’t even curious about who it was that restored his legs.

He never even said thank you.

Later on, Jesus finds the cured man in the Temple and Jesus approaches him saying, “See, you have been made well!

Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.”

Jesus is not saying that the man’s impairment was caused by sin.

Indeed, in chapter 9 in John, Jesus very clearly and emphatically rejects the idea that sin and impairment and illness are directly linked.

In the Gospel of John, sin equals unbelief.

The man was understandably passive as a societally disabled man, but Jesus has cured him and there is no evidence that he has passivity has changed.

He has made no effort to discover who Jesus is and to follow him.

Jesus finds him and tells him that there are things worse than physical paralysis, like not being in right relationship with God and human beings.

Jesus is giving him an opportunity to embrace healing.

And what does the man do?

He throws Jesus under the bus and tells the religious authorities the identity of the one who cured him.

Sometimes even those on the margins become so identified with the society that has marginalized them that they can’t be healed, even when they are cured.

When they become “normal” they join the rest of the “normal” in their society in marginalizing and disabling those who are deemed “abnormal.”

And just like that man, we too are faced with a choice.

Will we align ourselves with the structures of our world that label some as normal and some as abnormal?

Will we remain unknowing of the many ways that we disable those with impairments and differences?

Or will we, like Jesus, see all people as the children of God that they are, whether their bodies, minds and ways of being align with what is idealized as “normal” or not?

And will we work toward a world aligned with God’s dream for the world in which no one is disabled, but all have equal access to the entitlements which those who more closely align with what our world calls “normal” take for granted?

And what would that kind of world look like?

Well, it would be a world in which everyone can access places of work, shops, schools, religious buildings and the like.

It would be a world in which no child is punished or sent out of the classroom because their brains work a little differently than most of their classmates.

It is a world in which no child is excluded from the community of playing sports because they experience their gender differently than the majority do.

It is a world in which everyone is given the chance to contribute to the best of their energy and ability to their community and the world.

It is a world in which we worry less about the fiscal cost of creating such a world and more about the human cost of not doing these things and not creating such a world.

It is a world in which difference and diversity are celebrated as gifts of Gods, not something to be stamped out and hidden.

It is a world in which we view everyone through the eyes of God.

Healing is not becoming like everyone else.

Healing is knowing that you are already whole in God’s sight, even if the world hasn’t caught up.

We need to ask ourselves, “who is still lying at the edge of the pool?

Who is still being told, ‘you are not good enough, you are not normal enough.”

And let us ask what systems we need to overturn.

What pools must be dismantled.

Because God is already walking among us, saying to every excluded one: “You are not alone.

Take up your mat.

Come with me.”

And God is calling us to do the same. Amen.