Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Lent

Lectionary: 245

There is a stream whose runlets gladden the city of God,
the holy dwelling of the Most High.
God is in its midst; it shall not be disturbed;
God will help it at the break of dawn.

I was fortunate to major in English literature as an undergrad at Saint Louis University. It was a brief, wild experiment in the late 1960’s when seminarians were permitted to take a minor, rather than a major, in philosophy. With that literary experience I am more comfortable than my literal-minded colleagues with symbols. A drop of water evokes streams, runlets, rivers, oceans, rain; you name it!

Saint John’s story of the Pool of Bethesda immediately recalls Ezekiel’s mysterious channel from the temple to the Dead Sea and directs our attention to the water which gushed from the Messiah’s body as it hung suspended in death upon the cross. It sweeps us like a flood into the mystery of Baptism and God’s superabundant grace.

In today’s story we discover the Living Water walking amid the supplicants by the Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem. He is eager to bless and heal anyone who betrays a willingness to be healed. Water takes the shape of its container, be it a bowl on your table, a pool on the ground, or the IV bag hanging by a hospital bed. The Lord is equally compliant as he approaches the sick.

“Do you want to be well?” he asks. As Saint John will make clear, the Lord can heal even the distracted and unwilling. Unlike the incident in Saint Mark’s gospel, his authority is not constrained by disinterest or lack of faith.

But John tells us this incident not to celebrate the Lord’s mercy to an ingrate, but as a lead-in to the ensuing controversy,” May the Lord heal on the Sabbath?” Faithful Jews, regardless of their gifts, should not work on the Sabbath. 

The Son of God, however, does. As he explains in the simplest possible language: "My Father is at work until now, so I am at work.”

And then Saint John assures us, they get it: 

"For this reason the Jews tried all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the sabbath but he also called God his own father, making himself equal to God."

Laetare Sunday is behind us. We're closing on Passiontide and Holy Week and the Triduum. We shall see the Love of the Father and the Son, and God's passionate love for us. If we see as in a glass darkly, it is nonetheless brilliant and overpowering to the eyes of faith. We must discover God's humility and courage in loving so intensely. 
Our God has abandoned the security of heaven to sink into the chaos of our world. A world which has, for as long as we can remember, always been riven by war and strife, by chaos and disaster. If we thought the environmental catastrophes of locust infestation and mysterious plagues were left behind in "biblical times," we're about to see far worse environmental catastrophes unleashed upon us. 
The Christian's assurance in this terrified new world will be neither our economy nor our military nor our laws written on paper, but the Lord who walks with us. We will know by faith, and not by sight, the superabundant Spirit of God who floods our hearts with gladness.