Sunday 5th May – Easter 6C

JOHN 5:1-9
Alone
but in a crowd;
in a healing place
but yearning for healing;
waiting for the still waters
to stir and heal.

Amid the hopeful crowd
a healer comes,
his question seems absurd:
Do you want to be made well?
I have no one to put me into the pool.

He wants to be healed
but without help…?
The healer’s challenge:
stand up
put away your prop
and walk.
Simply stated,
don’t dream it, do it!
He is healed
and his cycle of hopelessness broken.

This happens on the Sabbath,
a remembrance
of the day on which God rested,
a day in which creation is sustained,
a day when an official, menacing hostility
begins to circle the healer
and his claimed relationship with God.
(Adapted from a sermon from some years ago, which may have drawn on material from other, long-forgotten, sources.)
         © Jeff Shrowder, 2013.
  More for Easter 6C…