Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Lent
I find myself sometimes being slow to realize when God is offering grace in my life, slow to pick up on clues pointing me in one direction or another and to recognize God’s voice speaking to me through the events of my life. The readings for today suggest that I need to pay more attention to the ways that grace is offered to me on a daily basis.
In the first reading, the prophet Ezekiel describes a wonderful image of a stream of water flowing forth from the temple. The image here is of the restoration of barren, arid ground to new life—a wonderful garden filled with living creatures, birds, fish, and fruit bearing trees. According to editors of the New American Bible, the stream looks ahead to the restoration of things to an Edenic state—to a world that is not marred by sin. Ezekiel then is not just pointing to the restoration of David’s kingdom but also to the possibility of a fundamental renewal of a right relationship between God and human beings.
The link between this first reading and the gospel reading is clear: both speak of the possibility of new life through a renewed relationship with God and both texts use the image of water to suggest this renewal. In the gospel today we read the story of a sick man who is waiting next to the pool of Bethesda. When Jesus asks him ‘Do you want to be well?’ the man’s answer is that he has no one to put him into the pool when it is stirred up. (The people waiting next to the pool believe that you can only be healed if you enter the water when it is stirred up.) The man misunderstands Jesus’ question. Jesus is asking the man whether he wants to be healed but the man understands him to be an accusation—doesn’t he want to be healed? Once he understands what Jesus is asking him, the man responds to Jesus in a positive way, and we are told that the man is healed. His response is to be contrasted with the Pharisees’ response to hearing of the man’s healing. Instead of rejoicing that the man has been healed, they use his good fortune as an opportunity to get at Jesus—accusing him of violating the Sabbath. Thus, their response is negative and counterproductive.
In both cases of miraculous healing, the healing that takes place is not only physical but also spiritual. It is not just the healing of their bodies that the man experiences, but he has also received spiritual healing. This story shows us that when Jesus approaches us there are two possible responses. We can either receive his healing gratefully and willingly or we can put up roadblocks to it, as do the Pharisees. In the light of these readings, we can ask ourselves whether we put up roadblocks that block the work of God’s grace in our lives? Do we allow God to heal us when he acts? Do we respond to opportunities that arise to accept God’s help and to grow in our faith? Do we seek the living water that Jesus himself can give us, that the man in the gospel reading for today and the Samaritan woman (in John 4) find and that is prophesied by Ezekiel?
—Joel Schickel