There is a story in the Christian scriptures — John 5 – about Jesus healing a paralyzed man.
“Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many ill, blind, lame, and paralyzed people. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” The ill man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.”
Years ago, archeologists located the pool, excavated it, and found that it had four sides and was more than 300 feet long. The bubbling waters were thought to have healing powers, and sick people — the blind, the lame, the paralyzed — came to the pool, believing that whenever the waters were stirred up, the first person to enter the pool would be cured of whatever sickness they had.
The text doesn’t say how long he had been there, waiting to get into the healing, churning water, but it does say that he had been there “a long time” (John 5:6). Nobody helped him get in the water. Nobody gave him a hand.
It turns out the man did not have to get into the water to be well!
Jesus asked him if he wanted to be well. Jesus told him to pick up his bed and walk. He did not need to wait to get in the pool. He did not need the troubled waters. He did not need to wait for a sick system, one in which there was competition to get in the water. He needed an intervention. I’m going to call that a system intervention — clarifying question that required a truthful answer, and a prescription. In other words: What do you really want? Go do it!
We can’t get well in a sick system. How are you gonna get well in a system in which your disability — your inability to see, to walk, to hear, to stand, to be understood, your compromised immune system, your chronic asthma, your thyroid condition, your … You are seen by the system as sicknesses to be healed, to be cured, from which you must be saved to be perceived as “able.” Sadly, the church has too often taught us disability is caused by sin: It’s your fault or your mama’s fault, a condition to be fixed by Jesus and if Jesus does not fix it, and I mean right now, you are just not righteous or good enough to belong to the system. That system is sick and will not make you well.
If the system still thinks God designed whiteness as superior; that being gay, lesbian, bi, trans, queer, or questioning is a mental disorder or a condition from which you can be cured and should be cured, that system is sick and will not make you well.
Our system is not well. With an average of 20.1 maternal deaths/100k live births, the U.S. is the most dangerous developed country in which to give birth. For Black women, the most frequent victims of our crisis-level maternal mortality rates, the odds are even worse.
According to the most recent data, the maternal death rate for Black women is more than double that of white women: 44.0 deaths per 100,000 live births compared to 17.9. It was also more than three times the rate for Hispanic women at 12.6.
Being pregnant is risky — having a baby is difficult and dangerous work for all pregnant folk, but especially for Black folk. Check out the work Black Mamas Matter is doing. It should not be a death sentence in a nation with this much wealth. Health care should be, could be universal. Deciding to terminate a pregnancy is health care, and should be universal, it should be legal, it must be legal. The concerns of a particular sect of Christianity in a pluralistic nation should not cause pregnant people to be denied those rights.
My question is: Do we want to be well?
Our nation is not well. There are many contributing factors. Our nation is built on land on which, despite Laura Ingalls Wilder’s observation, there were people living here, people erased, massacred, removed, dispossessed, land stolen, tilled by stolen bodies. White supremacist ideologies, capitalism that believes poor children are acceptable collateral damage for the wealthy to become wealthier, White Christian nationalists believing they are the chosen ones … we have a world-view problem.
That stuff is in the water. Troubling the water is not going to make us well. We need to empty the stagnant polluted pools; we need to run the fresh rivers of vivid imagination, of wild equality; we need a tumult of fierce love, a cascade of justice; we need a new river — a new river running through a new city; a fierce, clear river disinfecting our dis-eased and poor imaginations about who is human and who deserves love and life.
Do we want to be well?
I’m going to write about medicine for the new year. Rather than resolutions, I’m going to write about practices that I believe will heal us.
The first?
Truth. Speaking truthfully. Looking straight on at our culture, our society, our family systems, and being honest about what we see. Don’t squint and pretend. Don’t cover your eyes or look away. Let’s be honest, because the truth will set us free.