In John 5, Jesus ask a man, who has been blind for 38 years, if he wants to be made well.
This is not a question merely about having vision restored, but a question about the desire to have a completely different life- engaged and participating in community in a way that has been denied or unavailable for years.
“Do you want to be made well?”
Do you want a country that is different, a truly just place for all people, a residence that means what it says about equality instead of mere lip service?
Do you want to live in a space where people value the health of other people, care about weathering, where serve and protect means exactly that?
Do you want dwell in a land where human rights are indigenous rights, where idol of late-stage capitalism has been toppled, where the Pharaoh knows and tells the truth about Joseph, and about how some people came to have handfuls of straw?
“Do you want to be made well?”
Are we willing, all of us, to tell the truth?
To accept that healing will mean speaking up, speaking out, and valuing truth above our work, our houses, and our convenience?
Are we ready to form a community to fund and support those who take hits for laying it on the line, to stand and say we are with them?
Are we ready to acknowledge that there are those among us who are telling the truth in places we cannot all go and a slow unfolding in a resistant place is still a fight that exhausts and brings grief?
“Do you want to be made well?”
It is one thing, Lord, to say yes, I do
And quite another to stand, roll up the mat of complacency, and walk out into the world,
Ready to be different.
“Do you want to be made well?”
Yes, Lord, yes.
Make it so.
And give me the courage, the will, and strength to embrace it.
Lord, I beg you,
Do something with those who say no,
That all may know, and recognize, how they have defied your help and your will.
The Reverend Julia Seymour serves Big Timber Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Big Timber, MT. She blogs at lutheranjulia.blogspot.com and readsallthethings.com. She contributed to There’s A Woman in the Pulpit and is President of the board of RevGalBlogPals, Inc.
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Amen and thank you.
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