The Power of Resurrection and Faith

In this inspiring sermon, Daniel McInnes explores the profound themes of resurrection and faith, drawing from biblical stories and personal experiences. He reflects on the healing power of Christ and the vital role of prayer, especially from mothers and grandmothers, in our lives. McInnes shares moving anecdotes that highlight the impact of faith and the importance of living a life full of good works.

Transcript

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Today we've got the Sunday of the Paralytic, the fourth Sunday of Pascha. So we're continuing the paschal theme. And we always remember during this period of time we're celebrating the resurrection of Christ. And so the Sunday of the Paralytic is somehow telling us more about the resurrection of Christ and the power of that resurrection.

What we heard about today, and we heard it in the Synaxarion explained very clearly, is that there is a man who is sitting at the sheep's pool in Jerusalem, and there are many ill, many sick people there. So he's not the only one. There's many of them. But when the angel of the Lord comes down and stirs the water of the pool, the first person who gets in is healed of whatever illness that they have. But this man has been sitting there for 38 years, and he's paralyzed. And so he can move, but he can't move very fast. And so always, always someone gets in there before him.

So 38 years is a really long time. I was thinking about it just before. So 38 years, I'm 51. That would mean, you know, I've been paralyzed since I was like 13 years old, you know, which was all of my everything of my life more or less, you know. So it's a long time. It's a long time to sit there waiting. But when Christ sees him, he knows that he's been there for such a long time. And he says, "Do you want to be healed?" And he doesn't say yes, but he says, "I have no one to help me into the pool." He doesn't really know. He doesn't know who Christ is. He doesn't know what he can do, but he's about to see what Christ can do. Because Christ doesn't take him and put him in the pool. He says, "Stand up and walk." That's the power of God.

He doesn't need to use the pool. Although the pool was used, he says the word and it's done. So that man was raised up, raised up to life. Because as one of the hymns in Vespers said yesterday, he was like a corpse. He was as good as dead. He's been raised up to life. From that moment forward, he goes to the temple. When was the last time he'd been to the temple? He goes to the temple. He can begin to live the life of a Jewish person in that period who does all the things that other people do and live the life of a devout Jewish person. So it's new life.

We also heard in the epistle reading two other stories. We had Peter going down, I think it was to Lydda, and yeah, going down to Lydda, and he's going down to see the saints in Lydda. And what he finds down there is a man called Aeneas who's been bedridden, paralyzed for eight years. Same thing, he says to him, "Aeneas, rise up, you're healed." So he rises from his bed, and from that moment forward, Aeneas, who is a member of the community down there, becomes a fuller member of the community. He can now participate in all of the activities of the community in a way that he could not before.

Even more dramatic than that is what happens in Joppa. Because when he's in Lydda, some people come and say to him, "Pick quickly, come to Joppa because a lady called Tabitha has died. We need you to come straight away." So he goes, and when he's there, he finds that, of course, she has died. And this woman is full of good works. She's a pillar of the community. She does all kinds of wonderful things for the widows and other people. So people are really already mourning her loss. I mean, they're mourning her loss because she died. But she was very important in that community. When Peter comes, he says to her, "Tabitha, arise." And she arises again. Life restored to life, restored to fullness in the community.

When Christ comes, he restores. He brings back to life. We think of that sometimes because we're human beings and we have these bodies. We think of it purely in material terms. But Christ brings back to life in all the aspects of our life, everything. Our ability to participate in the life of our community, our ability to worship God, our ability to be with our families, to even to work and be in the community. Just all of those things. Christ is the power, gives us the power, and is the power for us to fully participate in life and to have true life in this world.

We shouldn't ever forget that at the heart of everything in our life is Christ giving us the fullness of life. That's what he wants for us. That's what God wants for us—the fullness of life. Not just some very weak idea of, yeah, you live a Christian life and then you go to heaven. No, right now, right now, Christ wants to give us the fullness of life that we can be a part of his life in this world and we can bring life to this world.

How do we do that? We saw Peter. He came and he prayed. He prayed for people. He interceded for people. We see that. We see Tabitha. She herself, of course, couldn't raise herself to life. But she lived such a great life. She was living a life full of good works such that when she died, people said, "No, this isn't right. Go and get Peter. We need to have her raised from the dead." We need to be interceding for people, and we need to also live lives like that where people would say, "We need that person around still because, you know, they're living a life which is a light to the whole community." We need to live like that. When we live like that, the life of Christ becomes greater and greater in us, and we begin to shine.

We are supposed to be beacons in this world. People are supposed to be drawn to the church through us. Now, we are not perfect at all. I'm not perfect. None of us are perfect. But it doesn't matter. Christ is not looking for perfection in that sense in all of us. He's looking for the continued development of our lives in such a direction that when people look at it, they say, "What is it about that person?" And you say, "Come and see." And they come and they find that's our life in this world. That's what we're supposed to do.

Today's also Mother's Day. So let's talk a little bit about Mother's Day and try and link it to this because, you know, I just want to do that. So Mother's Day is a great day. We get to remember all the wonderful things that our mothers have done for us, and we get to think about, and in the context of church, we get, especially as Christians, we get to think about what our godly and God-fearing mothers have, what a big part they've been in our lives. And I have a couple of stories. So let's see how it goes.

One story is about me. When I was born, which is the World Children's Hospital, I had a heart defect and I had underdeveloped lungs. I had holes in my lungs. So I was given three hours to live. I was blue, given three hours to live. So, you know, it's a bit hard to tell this one. It's the only, I haven't said it in public ever. So what happened was, of course, my mother and my father, they're praying, right? My grandmother, who I think was in parks and had no idea, started to pray. She kind of just knew something was happening. She started to pray. Three hours later, there was no defects. I was completely healed. 51 years later, I'm happy about that, you know.

So we do not know. We don't know what the prayers of our grandmothers and our mothers have done for us. We just don't know. We have no idea. This is obvious, right? I was dying or, you know, going to die, and then I'm alive. That's obvious. It's not always obvious. But they're so important. And our mothers and our grandmothers and the women in our lives, they pray for us all the time. And they do it. We don't even know, but they still do it. It's like the Theotokos at the cross and all the women, they're there. All the men have run away except for St. John, but all the men have run away. The women are still there. And I'm pretty sure that whenever, for any of us, you know, whenever someone has said, you know, see you later, don't care about you anymore, it'll still be the women who are there praying for us.

So that's one story. That's about, again, I was, I didn't even know at the time. I was, you know, a newborn, but I was given the opportunity to live a life, to participate in this life. Next story is not the same. This is about when my other grandmother, when she passed away. And so she's on her, she's in the hospital, and family's around. And she was a very godly woman. She was very faithful, but she had dementia at the end of her life. And it may explain partly what happened next.

So what happened in the hospital was everyone's around, and they're chatting with my grandmother. She's dying, but she could speak, and they're talking with her. And the heart monitor thing just went flatlined. So her heart stopped, but of course, she didn't realize that her heart had stopped. Well, she kept on talking anyway. She just kept on talking. She just kept talking. She kept talking and kept talking. Finally, the family had to say, "I think you'd better go now." And so she passed away.

Now, the point of this is, what am I trying to say here? Our life is material life. But for those of us who have been living godly lives, the life of Christ in us is life. It's life. It can give life even to bodies which have died, as we saw with Tabitha, but we saw, I saw, we saw with my own grandmother. And that was, at that moment, that was a witness to the power of the resurrection of Christ to every person in that room, that you can be dead but alive. How's that? Now she's gone on to the true life, if you like. This life is a life which is the preparation for true life. But we need to prepare. We need to prepare. And those godly women in our lives, they help, they've helped us in so many ways to prepare. So God bless them. Amen.

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