Tuesday 16 March

Today is Tuesday the 16 March, in the fourth week of Lent.  

Molly Pardon, with Bifrost Arts, sings Psalm 126.  

Today’s reading is from the Gospel of John.

John 5:1-3,5-16

After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralysed. 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 sick 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. Now that day was a sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, ‘It is the sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.’ But he answered them, ‘The man who made me well said to me, “Take up your mat and walk.” ’ They asked him, ‘Who is the man who said to you, “Take it up and walk”?’ Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there. Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, ‘See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.’ The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the sabbath.  

A lovely way of praying is to try to experience a piece of scripture through the senses. We meet God in the freeing spirit of our own imagination. In this reading from John’s gospel, we begin at a pool reputed for its healing power. 

Perhaps you could begin by feeling the heat of the sun and catching the glint of light on the water?     

Or maybe you are taken by the many invalids lying against the columns of the porticoes, watchful for the troubling of the waters, waiting to be washed, praying to be healed. Perhaps there is a whispering of prayers going up to the Lord, perhaps there are impatient tears and cries of pain….what can you hear?  

From this pool of human need, Jesus notices one man. Why does this man catch his attention? His aloneness, imaged in desperation or resigned acceptance? Watch the reaction as Jesus heals him with a word.  

Watch others praise the Lord for the healing or beg for their own…  

But then, it is the Sabbath. Why does this matter? What would explain the reaction of the authorities who overlook the miracle for the sake of obedience to the law?  

Do you recognise yourself in the characters, in the situation.  

In a time of prayerful reflection, share your thoughts with the Lord.

You have given all to me. To you, Lord, I return it. Everything is yours; do with it what you will. Give me only your love and your grace,
that is enough for me.