Patrick Comerford
This week began with the Fourth Sunday in Lent (Lent IV) and Mothering Sunday, and we have arrived at the beginning of a new monh. Today (1 April), the Church Calendar in the Church of England in Common Worship remembers Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872), priest, teacher of the faith.
Later this evening, I have been invited to speak in Saint Editha’s Church, Tamworth, at an event at 7 pm in the Comberford Chapel organised by Dr David Biggs and the Tamworth and District Civic Society to mark the 300th anniversary of a Comberford family memorial in 1725.
Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, reading today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
John 5: 1-3, 5-16 (NRSVA):
1 After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
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 paralysed.
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.
Now that day was a sabbath. 10 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.’ 11 But he answered them, ‘The man who made me well said to me, “Take up your mat and walk.”’ 12 They asked him, ‘Who is the man who said to you, “Take it up and walk”?’ 13 Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there. 14 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.’ 15 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. 16 Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the sabbath.
Jerusalem … the site of the Pool of BethesdaToday’s Reflection:
In today’s Gospel reading at the Eucharist (John 5: 1-3, 5-16), Jesus goes to Jerusalem for a feast. At the Pool of Betheseda, he heals a paralysed man. Jesus tells him to ‘Pick up your mat and walk!’ This takes place on the sabbath. Many people see the man carrying his mat and tell him this is against the law. He tells them the man who healed him told him to do so, and they ask who that was. He tries to point to Jesus, but Jesus has slipped away into the crowd. Jesus comes to him later and tells him: ‘Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.’ The man then tells people it was Jesus who healed him.
This story is very similar to a story in the synoptic Gospels (see Mark 2, Matthew 9 and Luke 5), but the paralysed man comes to Jesus at his home in Capernaum, and Jesus at first says the sins of the man are forgiven and only when people question his ability to forgive sins does Christ say that he could have said to the man pick up your mat and walk.
People begin to persecute Jesus because he is working on the sabbath. But there is more stirring under the waters.
Once again, we are introduced to a story in Saint John’s Gospel with a water setting. They include the Baptism of Christ by John in the River Jordan, the Wedding at Cana, where water is turned into wine, and the conversation with the Samaritan women at the well, where Jesus talks of himself as the living water that bring eternal life.
Like the waters of the Jordan, there is also a comparison with the waters of creation. Although verse 3, with the introduction of the angel who hovers over the water, is now questioned by scholars, nevertheless it points to the way this story was linked by the early church with the story of creation and the story of Christ’s baptism.
What do you think is the symbolism of the five porticos? Whether archaeologists have found these porticos is another question. But there is the cross-reference to the story of the Samaritan woman, for example. Once again, by choosing his setting, the writer of the Fourth Gospel is building up our expectations. There is a promise here not only of healing and wholeness but also of eternal life.
Bethesda is the name of a series of pools in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem, on the path of the Beth Zeta Valley. In Greek Biblical manuscripts its name is often mistaken for the name of the town of Bethsaida. Its name may be derived from the Aramaic beth hesda, meaning either ‘house of mercy’ or ‘house of grace.’
Since the 4th century CE it has also been called the Sheep Pool, but this is now thought to be a translation error. It is associated with healing. The Fourth Gospel describes the pool’s location using the Greek word προβατικῇ (probatike), which literally means ‘pertaining to sheep.’ In the early 4th century, Eusebius interpreted this as the sheep-pool, and later Church Fathers repeated this suggestion, so that it also appears in some translations. However, it is now thought that the term προβατικῇ (probatike) refers to Bethesda being located near to the Sheep-gate, a gate in the former city wall, near the Lion Gate in the present city wall.
The history of the pool dates back to the 8th century BCE, when a dam was built across the short Beth Zeta valley. Around 200 BCE, when Simon II was the High Priest, the channel was enclosed, and a second pool was added on the south side of the dam. Although there is a popular legend that claims that this pool was used for washing sheep, this is very unlikely due to the pool’s use as a water supply, and its depth of 13 metres.
In the 1st century BCE, natural caves to the east of the two pools were turned into small baths, as part of an ασκληπιεῖον (asklepieion) or healing temple. However, the Mishnah implies that at least one of these new pools was sacred to Fortuna, the goddess of fortune, rather than Asclepius (Ἀσκληπιός), the god of healing. According to the Fourth Gospel, this pool was a swimming bath (κολυμβήθρα, kolumbethra) with five porticos – although this was translated as porches in older translations – close to the probatike or Sheep-Gate. Archaeologically, the reference to five porticos is not yet fully understood, as the only applicable structure found in the pools themselves has three porticos rather than five. The closest alternative match is to the five colonnades of the asklepieion itself.
Saint John’s Gospel describes the porticos as a place in which large numbers of infirm people were waiting, which corresponds with the site’s use in the 1st century as an asklepieion.
Some scholars suggest the narrative is actually part of a deliberate polemic against the cult of Asclepius, an antagonism possibly brought on partly by the fact that Asclepius was worshipped as Saviour (Σωτήρ, Soter) because of his healing attributes.
The narrative uses the Greek phrase ὑγιὴς γενέσθαι; (hygies genesthai? Do you want to be made well?), which is not used anywhere in the three Synoptic Gospels.
It is not clear what feast provides the setting for this event. Some think it is the Feast of Pentecost, which comes 50 days after the Passover. Others suggest the Feast of the Spring Harvest. By the time of Christ, Pentecost had become the feast of renewing the Sinai Covenant, since Moses arrived at Sinai 50 days after the Passover in Egypt. Later in this chapter, the references to Jesus the judge (verses 22 and 30) and to Moses’ witness to Jesus (verses 46-47) appear to echo the themes of the Sinai law and covenant associated with the feast of Pentecost.
After the word ‘paralysed’ in verse 3, later manuscripts add, wholly or in part, an explanatory statement: ‘waiting for the stirring of the water; 4 for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool, and stirred up the water; whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was made well from whatever disease that person had.’
These words have become part of popular tradition, but are missing from the best manuscripts, and modern scholarship thinks these extra details are unlikely to have been part of the original text, and many modern translations do not include the troubling of the water or the angel tradition.
But some ancient manuscripts say these people were waiting for the troubling of the water. A few manuscripts also move the setting away from Roman rituals into something more appropriate to Judaism, by adding that an angel would occasionally stir the waters, which would then cure the first person to enter.
Verse 9 introduces the fact this healing took place on a sabbath. The problem for the authorities is not that the man was healed, or that he was healed on the Sabbath, but that he breached a prohibition on lifting and carrying a mat on the Sabbath, which amounts to work. They ask him who has healed him, who has told him to break the Sabbath law. But the man does not know.
Although God rested after six days of creation, it does not mean that God ceased to care for creation or to take an interest in its affairs. God continues to work on the Sabbath, giving life, rewarding good and punishing evil.
How would you make the connections between the waters of creation, Christ as the living water, and the waters of baptism?
What do you mean when you pray for healing for yourself or others?
How do you respond when those prayers appear not to have been answered?
The Angel at the Pool of Bethesda (Robert Bateman)Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 1 April 2025):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Inspiration of the Holy Spirit.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday with Reflections by the Revd Rock Higgins, Rector of Saint James the Less Episcopal Church, Ashland, Virginia, and the Triangle of Hope Youth Pilgrimage Lead for the Diocese of Virginia.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 1 April 2025) invites us to pray:
Let us pray for the work of the Triangle of Hope and all their corresponding dioceses.
The Collect:
Merciful Lord,
absolve your people from their offences,
that through your bountiful goodness
we may all be delivered from the chains of those sins
which by our frailty we have committed;
grant this, heavenly Father,
for Jesus Christ’s sake, our blessed Lord and Saviour,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post Communion Prayer:
Lord God,
whose blessed Son our Saviour
gave his back to the smiters
and did not hide his face from shame:
give us grace to endure the sufferings of this present time
with sure confidence in the glory that shall be revealed;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Merciful Lord,
you know our struggle to serve you:
when sin spoils our lives
and overshadows our hearts,
come to our aid
and turn us back to you again;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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