Day 9 – (March 15, 2019)

Read

John 5:2-9
2 Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. 3 In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed…. 5 One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 6 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?” 7 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.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” 9 At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.

Reflect

To see waiting rooms full of sick people can be heart-wrenching. We long for someone to care for them and to do so quickly. The opening scene in John 5 tells the sorry story of many invalids – blind, lame and paralyzed gathered around a pool in Jerusalem.

Archaeological research suggests that it is a complex of pools with five porticos known as Bethzatha, located today near St. Anne’s Church in the Arab quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem. The pool was thought to have miraculous powers.

On the day Jesus was there, John tells us there was a man who had been lame or paralyzed for thirty-eight years. Seeing the man and knowing his plight, Jesus asked a simple question: “Do you want to be made well?” But the man’s response was ambivalent: “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up…” If he was healed he would lose the support and companionship he enjoyed and on which he had come to depend. He’d have to make a new start in life…he’d have to get a job!

Without discussing whether the pool had healing powers or not, Jesus took the initiative and, at a word, cured him. The bed that had carried the man, could now be carried by the man.

The man’s indefinite response reflects the way we sometimes respond to Jesus. He asks us, ‘Do you really want to be changed?’ Often we don’t want him to intrude on our lifestyle. Before his conversion, Augustine who became the Bishop of Hippo in North Africa said: “Lord, grant me chastity and continence, but not yet”. The reality is, if we genuinely turn to Jesus Christ and accept the new life he has initiated and now offers us, we experience a life that we never want to lose.

Prayer

Grant us, Lord, we pray, the spirit to think and do always such things as are right, so that we who cannot do anything that is good without you, may in your strength be able to live according to your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP, Trinity 9 – adapted)

Daily Reading Plan

Read John 5:1-18

Day 8 – (March 14, 2019)

Read

John 4:46-54

46 Then he came again to Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. 47 When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. 48 Then Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” 49 The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my little boy dies.” 50 Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. 51 As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. 52 So he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they said to him, “Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him.” 53 The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.’ So he himself believed, along with his whole household. 54 Now this was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.

Reflect

Jesus regularly challenged people with the unexpected. It happened when the father of a boy who was dangerously ill came to him for help. The father lived in Capernaum and was an officer in Herod the Tetrarch’s service. He had heard of Jesus’ previous miracle of turning water into wine in Cana, twenty miles away in the hills. Learning that Jesus was again in Cana, he went in person to see him. What Jesus said to him was startling: “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.”

The official was not put off: “Sir, come down before my little boy dies.” Jesus responded with more unexpected words, “Go; your son will live.” What a test of the father’s faith! Apart from this, Jesus gave the man no assurance. Yet the father believed his word. Going home he learned that his son was completely healed at the hour Jesus had spoken – 1:00PM. Jesus had the extraordinary power to heal a sick boy at a distance. The repetition of “Your son will live” in verses 50 & 53 emphasizes this. Consequently, the whole family believed. For them Jesus was more than a miracle worker.

Here was a second sign pointing to Jesus’ unique power, a power we only associate with God. John has been telling us that Jesus is God in the flesh, glory personified. As such he welcomes anyone whose faith in him is real, small though it may be.

Prayer

Almighty God, you wonderfully created us in your own image and have now more wonderfully rescued and restored us. Grant us, we pray, that as your Son our Lord Jesus Christ was made in our likeness, so may we share his divine nature; we ask this through Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (1978 AAPB, Second Sunday after Christmas – adapted)

Daily Reading Plan

Read John 4:27-54

Day 6 – (March 12, 2019)

Read

John 4:5-15

5 So Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. 7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

Reflect

 We all have regrets – words we have uttered that we would love to take back; opportunities we missed or ones we should never have embraced; relationships we let go and ones that were wrong to have begun. There are so many things in life for which redemption seems impossible. Arthur Miller, the playwright, put it this way, ‘Maybe all one can do, is hope to end up with the right regrets.’

A woman Jesus encountered at a well in Samaria would have agreed. Like most of us, this woman longed for happiness, but it had eluded her. Thinking that love and marriage would give her life meaning and happiness, she had married five times. But each time she found that she had made the same mistake. Her life was a mess: she felt insecure, lonely, and dissatisfied.

Jesus had taken a detour and was traveling back north to Galilee through Samaria. There he showed he was not bothered by social custom or social taboos, for he, a Jewish man started a conversation with a Samaritan woman in public. He spoke then, as he speaks to you and me today, with equal concern and equal respect. Asking for some water, he shifted gears to introduce another level in the conversation – about living water. It gave him the opportunity to touch on the regrets in the woman’s life.

Through this conversation we begin to see that Jesus offers us water of such vitality that it satisfies our deep inner spiritual thirst. He was saying that he is the answer to the regrets and emptiness that gnaw our souls. Most of us aren’t willing to admit such a reality–and the woman that day was no exception. We pretend everything is all right, but if the truth is told, we all live a lot closer to despair than we like to think. So we activate all kinds of defense mechanisms against anything that threatens to expose our inward spiritual poverty. Deep down we all have a real spiritual longing. But, if we are going to find Jesus’ answer to our regrets, we have to be willing to acknowledge our need.

Prayer

Almighty God, grant that we, who justly deserve to be punished for our sinful deeds, may in your mercy and kindness be pardoned and restored; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. (1662 BCP, Lent 4)

Daily Reading Plan

Read John 4:1-15

Day 5 – (March 11, 2019)

Read

John 3:16-21
16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 17 “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. 20 For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 21 But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

Reflect

The words of John 3:16 go to the heart of God’s good news for the world. They tell us that God so loved the world that he gave… The love of God is the fundamental truth upon which Christianity is built. If God is not love, there would be no good news. We see here that God’s love is active: God so loved that he gave. He didn’t send his Son to condemn the world, but to rescue it. It needed rescuing because we have chosen to ignore God, something that God in his justice could not overlook. But God’s love has found a way to restore us and give us the opportunity of eternal life. And notice, this proactive love of God was for the benefit of the world.

It was an extraordinary and costly action – not just for the Son, but also for God the Father. The climax and consummation of God’s love is the cross of Christ. Often we think of God the Father as the stern and forbidding judge of a sinful world, while God the Son is our rescuer. John is telling us that God, in his amazing love for us, initiated our rescue and was just as much involved in the cost of our redemption as God the Son. God gave himself absolutely. In 1 John 4:10 we read: In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

These statements are ‘heavenly things’. We only know them by revelation and we only appropriate them by faith. And as we saw in yesterday’s reading, to have the faith we need God’s help. We need to ask him to awaken us to the reality of his love.

Prayer

Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing that you have made, and you forgive the sins of all who are penitent: create and make in us new and contrite hearts, so that we, truly lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain from you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (1662 BCP, Ash Wednesday)

Daily Reading Plan

Read John 3:16-36

SUNDAY – (March 10, 2019)

The Song of Zechariah at the Naming of John the Baptist

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel: for he has come to his people and set them free. He has raised up for us a mighty Savior: born of the house of his servant David. Through his holy prophets he promised of old: that he would save us from our enemies, from the hands of all who hate us.

He promised to show mercy to our fathers: and to remember his holy covenant. This was the oath he swore to our father Abraham: to set us free from the hands of our enemies, free to worship him without fear: holy and righteous in his sight all the days of our life.

And you my child shall be called the prophet of the Most High: for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way, to give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of all their sins.

In the tender compassion of our God: the dawn from on high shall break upon us; To shine upon all those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death: and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

Glory to God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit; as in the beginning so now: and forever. Amen. (An Australian Prayer Book (AAPB): 1978)