Helping God Help us

Sermon for Easter 6 – Sunday 25 May 2025 – All Saints, Kesgrave

Text: When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, ‘Do you want to get well?’  (John 5v6)

God give you peace my sisters and brothers.

The Drowning Man

A fellow was stuck on his rooftop in a flood.  He was praying to God for help.

A Police Officer came by in a rowing boat and the fellow shouted to the man on the roof, ‘Jump in, I can save you.’  The stranded fellow shouted back, ‘No, it’s OK, I’m praying to God and he is going to save me.  I have faith.’  The Police Officer rowed away looking for others to help.

Then the RNLI came along in a lifeboat.  The RNLI volunteer shouted, ‘climb aboard, we can save you.’  To this the stranded man said, ‘No thanks, I’m praying to God and he is going to save me.  I have faith.’  So the RNLI went and saved other people on nearby houses.

Then the Coastguard helicopter came by and the pilot shouted down, ‘Grab this rope and I will winch you to safety.’  To this the stranded man again replied, ‘No thanks, I’m praying to God and he is going to save me.  I have faith.’  Reluctantly the helicopter flew away.

Soon the water rose above the rooftop and the man drowned.  He went to Heaven where he demanded to speak to God about what had happened exclaiming, ‘I had faith in you but you didn’t save me, you let me drown.  I don’t understand why!’

To this God replied, ‘l sent you the Police, the RNLI, and the Coastguard, what more did you expect?’

I wonder if the man on the roof of his house in the flood was a relative of the lame man who waited at the Pool of Bethesda for 38 years before being healed by Jesus.

When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, ‘Do you want to get well?’  

It’s almost as if Jesus is saying to the lame man, ‘Isn’t God sending a healing angel enough for you?  Surely sometime in these last 38 years you could have shuffled a bit closer to the pool, or perhaps found a friend or two to help you get in the pool?’

Perhaps being healed is not so much a case of God helps those who help themselves but more God needs just a little help to help us help ourselves.  After all if we don’t buy a lottery ticket we stand little chance of winning Euromillions – as they say, ‘you have to be in it to win it!’

Jesus wants to heal us, after all his name means ‘God is our Salvation’ the one who brings salve for our soul and weal for our woe.  The question God asks of us is the same as the one Jesus asked of the lame man who spent too long waiting at the pool of Bethesda;

‘Do you want to get well?’

After all not all healing is physical healing.  Healing from sin is the greatest sign of the divinity of Jesus and physical healing, especially in John’s gospel, points towards a deeper wholeness.  God offers healing of all sorts to all sorts of people but the question remains;

‘Do you want to get well?’

Do we want to be healed or would we rather hold onto our sin and sickness?   Surely the answer to that is a ‘no brainer’?  Of course we want to be healed from every ailment be it physical, emotional or spiritual, that makes us less than the person whom God intends us to be.  But experience has taught me that too many people (and I have been amongst their number) would rather be wounded than whole if to be whole meant there must be a letting go of habits and sins that have crippled their lives and the lives of those around us.

We can’t be healed if we are still enamoured with our old ways of living.

This should seem to be an easy choice to make.  Wounds that we continually reopen will never heal.  A broken limb needs a plaster cast before we can run again.  So too with the life of faith.  No matter what the provocation, no matter what the situation, if we want to hold on to the fruits of the Spirit we must let go of works of darkness.

As the Bible says, ‘Let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armour of light. (Romans 13v12) 

We can’t be healed if we are waiting for someone else to do it for us.

This is our own journey and we are called to make a decision to follow if we really want to be made well.  We cannot piggy-back our way into paradise on the shoulders of someone else’s faith.  Nor can we demand that others change their ways first before we act – as if someone else sinning against us gives us a free pass to bite back.  Our faith does not permit conditional repentance.  We will never be made well if we insist that someone else must repent and ask forgiveness of us first. 

Whenever we hold on to a grudge, whenever we let anger seethe within us, whenever we choose to be unforgiving, we are the ones who move further away from the healing light of Christ not those who we want to condemn.

As the Bible says, ‘If you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. (Matthew 6v 15)

We can’t be healed if we are waiting for the right moment.

The last line of today’s reading (which points to why John includes this healing in the gospel) reads ‘The day on which this took place was a Sabbath.’  Those who are angry with Jesus are looking to condemn, not because Jesus does good, but because Jesus will not do good according to their Rules and Regulations.  When we put God on a timetable, as did St Augustine when he famously prayed ‘Lord make me chaste, but not yet,’ we run not only the risk of missing a moment of divine grace but we, as did the religious leaders of Jesus’ day, put ourselves in the place of God.

As the Bible says, ‘Now is the time of God’s favour, now is the day of salvation.’ (2 Corinthians 6v2)

In the two weeks ahead, and in our two Bible Study groups, we will be looking at The Lord’s Prayer while at the same time joining with Christians across the globe for the ten days of prayer called ‘Thy Kingdom Come’.  Each day from Ascension to Pentecost we will be asked to pray for five people known to us to come to know the love of God closer.  We are entering a holy and sacred time as we seek the gift of the Holy Spirit that we may be filled with the power and courage to transform lives.  

But this is not only for the lives of the five people whose names we will write down in our prayer dairy.  The ten days of prayer ahead are also a good time to pray for ourselves. 

When you open your prayer journal and pray about the five names you will write down in them please join me and add a sixth name…  your own.  Then together we will travel on the journey towards healing and wholeness and in so doing become people of hope for a sad and lonely world.

This blog ‘Helping God Heal Us’ is copyright © Andrew Dotchin 2024.  It may be reproduced free of charge on condition that the source is acknowledged.

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Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. ² Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. ³ Here a great number of disabled people used to lie – the blind, the lame, the paralysed.  ⁵ One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. ⁶ When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, ‘Do you want to get well?’

⁷ ‘Sir,’ the invalid replied, ‘I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred.  While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.’

⁸ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.’ ⁹ At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

The day on which this took place was a Sabbath,  (John 5v1-9)