The Sunday of the Paralytic, 2026
Oops
There is an old joke about a man whose house sits near a river. A great storm is coming, and officials warn everyone to evacuate. But the man says, “I don’t need to leave. God will save me.”
The rains come. The waters rise. Soon he is stranded on his roof.
A neighbor rows by in a boat: “Get in — I’ll take you to safety!”
“No thank you,” the man says. “God will save me.”
Later, a helicopter appears overhead. A ladder is lowered.
“Grab on!”
Again he refuses: “I’m fine. God will save me.”
The waters keep rising. The man drowns.
When he stands before God, he asks, “Why didn’t You save me?”
And God replies, “I sent you a weather report, a boat, and a helicopter. What more did you want?”
Whether the joke lands or not, it points to something real: sometimes we misunderstand what God is doing. Sometimes we wait for God in one form, while He is already standing before us in another.
Ugh
Today we hear of a man who had been paralyzed for thirty-eight years. He lay beside the pool at Bethesda, waiting for the waters to be stirred, believing that the first person in would be healed.
For thirty-eight years he waited.
And every year that passed probably deepened the same story in his mind: If only I could get into that water. If only circumstances changed. If only someone carried me there first. Then I could live again.
How often do we live the same way?
We tell ourselves: If only this problem were solved. If only my health improved. If only my marriage changed. If only my past were different. If only I had another chance.
We pin our hope on some pool we cannot reach.
The tragedy is not only paralysis of the body. It is paralysis of the soul — when we become stuck in old patterns, old wounds, old excuses, old ways of seeing life.
And sometimes religion itself can become part of that paralysis: waiting for magic, waiting for rescue, waiting for God to act somewhere else, someday later.
Aha
But then Jesus comes.
He does not stir the pool.
He does not explain the mechanism of healing.
He does not help the man crawl into the water.
He goes straight to the man himself.
“Do you want to be made well?”
Then He says: “Rise, take up your pallet, and walk.”
In that moment, the man discovers that the true source of healing was never the pool. It was Christ.
This healing is not incidental. It is a preview of everything Christ came to do.
And this is why the Church gives us this Gospel in the season of Pascha.
Many people imagine salvation as escape — souls leaving a broken earth for some faraway heaven. But the Scriptures give us a far greater vision. St. Paul tells us that creation itself is groaning, straining forward, waiting for its own redemption (Romans 8:19–23). St. John sees not souls evacuating the world, but a new heaven and a new earth — God coming down to dwell with his people in a creation made whole (Revelation 21:1–5). And most decisively, Paul tells us that Christ’s bodily resurrection is the firstfruits of this renewal — the first sign that the new creation has already broken into history (1 Corinthians 15:20–23).
Pascha does not mean the abandonment of the world. It means the healing of the world.
Not the disposal of the body, but the glorification of the body.
Not starting over with something else, but making all things new.
The resurrection of Christ means that God is not waiting at a distance for the world to fix itself. In Jesus, God has entered the brokenness of creation and begun the work of renewal from within.
The paralytic’s healing is a small Pascha after Pascha — a sign of what Christ has come to do for all creation.
He speaks, and what was stuck begins to move.
He commands, and what was deadened comes alive.
He enters a hopeless place, and new creation begins there.
Whee
This is how Christ still works.
He comes to people who have waited a long time.
He comes to those who feel forgotten.
He comes to those who have made peace with their misery.
He comes to those who no longer expect anything to change.
And He still says: “Rise.”
Rise from bitterness.
Rise from despair.
Rise from the passions that have ruled you for years.
Rise from the story that says nothing can ever be different.
Rise, because resurrection power is already at work in the world.
The paralytic did not heal himself. Grace came first. But once grace came, he had to stand, to lift his bed, to walk forward into a new life. He had to leave the poolside behind.
So it is with us.
Yeah
Then Jesus finds him again and says: “See, you are well. Sin no more, that nothing worse may befall you.”
Do not return to the old life now that healing has begun.
Brothers and sisters, many of us labored during Lent. We prayed more. We confessed. We fasted. We became more watchful. Then Pascha came — and rightly so. We feasted. We rejoiced. The fast was broken and the celebration was real.
But Pascha is not permission to drift back into spiritual paralysis.
The feast is not the end. It is the beginning.
Christ has raised us up. Now we must walk.
So ask yourself:
What in me did Christ begin to heal during Lent?
What old bed am I still clinging to — the one I no longer need to lie upon, the one I need to set down and leave behind?
What one step is Christ asking me to take this week?
Because the risen Lord still passes through the porches of this world. He still seeks the wounded. He still speaks life into hopeless places.
And when He speaks, everything can begin again.
Christ is risen!