The Gospel for Tuesday of the fourth week of Lent is taken from John, fifth chapter, first through the 16th verse. There was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem, at the sheep Gate, a pool called in Hebrew, Bethesda, with five porticoes. In these lay a large number of ill, blind, lame and crippled. One man was there who had been ill for 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying there, he knew that he had been ill for a long time.

He said to him, do you want to be well? The sick man answered him, sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up. While I’m on my way, someone else gets down there before me. Jesus said to him, rise, take up your mat and walk. Immediately the man became well, took up his mat and walked. Now, that day was a Sabbath.

So the Jews said to the man who was cured, it is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to carry your mat. He answered them, the man who made me well told me, take up your mat and walk. They asked him, who is the man who told you, take it up and walk? The man who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away since there was a crowd there. After this, Jesus found him in the temple area and said to him, look, you are well. Do not sin anymore.

So, so that nothing worse may happen to you. The man went and told the Jews that Jesus was the one who had made him well. Therefore, the Jews began to persecute Jesus because he did this on a Sabbath. It’s fascinating to look at the different ways in which Jesus used his power to heal. Sometimes people begged him to do it. Sometimes someone touched him and he didn’t even know that he was then healing them.

And there’s this story where this man just was simply asked, would you like to be better? Would you like to be healed? The man didn’t ask him for that. So what I’m hearing in this is that there’s this way in which this love that God has for you and me is so connected to the healing power that he had and is not something that has to be earned or worked for as much as it’s simply something it has to be believed in. Do you want God to heal you of things? Do you want to change?

Do you want to let go of patterns of behavior that have been part of you, but you know somehow they’re not healthy for you? That’s all we need to have, giving him permission to do his work. Closing prayer Father, during the season of Lent. Give us that wisdom that we need to have in terms of reflection on things that we might be caught up in, that we need to be released from. Help us always to put more trust in your work in us than in our work trying to fix ourselves to be pleasing to you. And we ask this in Jesus name, amen.