When I was growing up it was understood in the family that we never visited anyone without being invited. It was simply not done. And when you did visit someone, even if they asked you to stay for a period of time, two days was the limit. After that, you were wearing out your welcome! I remember one time my parents traveled from California to Nancy, France, to visit my brother and sister-in-law. They were invited to stay a week at least. But no, two days was the limit, wouldn’t want to wear out your welcome you know!
This might be seen as an antidote for the modern tendency of some to be “in your face.” From tell-all talk shows to the internet Facebook: We can smother people with over the top attention or an endless need to tell our story. I’m not sure if we can find a happy medium here but something tells me that in this gospel passage, we have a pretty strong example of Jesus being “in your face.” Jesus’ encounter with the paralytic was not a result of the paralytic’s request. Jesus simply came up to him, unannounced and asked: “Do you want to be healed?” The paralytic might have been quite content to stay right where he was, after all, he had gotten used to the situation. No one helped him into the healing water at the opportune moment, but he got his immediate needs met and he had done so for 38 years. Once healed, he would have to make his way in the world in a very unfamiliar state: As one totally responsible for his own welfare. He made his choice and did not stay in his paralyzed state, he answered yes! … Well, … after telling his story!
So the encounter between the paralytic and Jesus, unexpected and unannounced, is a reminder to those of us who may shy away from unprepared engagements with others, there is a time for this. It requires discernment and we may not be as good at it as Jesus was, but it needs to be done. It is not just about missing an opportunity to do good, it is about discerning real need and being willing to do whatever we can to meet it.
While preparing these remarks, I returned to a favorite book on the Gospel of John by Jean Vanier in which he recounts a poignant story of a young man in India in 1975 who lived in despair having been abandoned by his parents to a psychiatric hospital. Though quite deformed, he made his way to the new l’Arche community in Chennai, dragging himself on his two very deformed legs. He began to make progress, but as others received visits from their parents he received none. Jealousy, then a return to despair, and attempts at suicide, led to an increased effort by l’Arche to find his mother. They did find her and she came to visit her son. The young man found new hope and she said she would return the next month, only she never came back. Then the young man fell into an even deeper despair. The risk of killing himself grew too high and he had to be returned to the psychiatric hospital.
So we have two examples of despair. The paralytic in our Gospel reading whose story is one of endless disappointments at not being able to get into the pool in time to be healed. Then the young man in India whose physical deformities repels his own mother to such an extent that she cannot accept him and his broken body. In the gospel lesson the paralytic’s despair is turned to joy by the act of Jesus to heal him. While the boy in India gets a glimpse of hope that is then dashed. And who is the paralytic in this story? The paralytic is the mother, who cannot bring herself to help even her own son. She cannot break through the cultural stigmas of her upbringing, even for the sake of her son.
The paralysis that grips the mother is the paralysis that can grip any one of us when we are unable to bring ourselves to go beyond our phobias, fears, prejudices, lethargy, indifference, etc., to offer succor to those in need. The gospel story is showing us not only the power that Jesus has to heal, but the model that Jesus gives to us to do likewise. We are the paralytics and when our paralysis is healed, then we can pick up our pallets, the realities of our lives, carry them rather than be imprisoned by them, and then turn our focus outward where we can act to help others.
As we heard in the letter of St Peter, we are called to be holy as God is holy. We are called to do as Jesus did for the paralytic at the pool of Bethsaida. This paschal season constantly beckons us to rise up from our own paralysis and take up our pallet, our cross, our responsibilities as Christians, as humans, to help those in need.
Ah, but you say, what about those Gospel teachings that say: ask and you shall receive, seek and you will find knock and it will be opened up to you.  But here, the paralytic did not ask for anything, Jesus came to him, un-requested and healed. This says God’s grace is freely given, it is available to us at all times. So, we too can follow Jesus’ word when he says: “go and do likewise!”