Word to the Wise
Tuesday, March 24, 2009 - Tuesday in the Fourth Week of Lent
[Ezekiel 47:1-9, 12 and John 5:1-10]I saw water flowing out from beneath the threshold of the temple toward the east......
As a former pastor, I could not help but think that Ezekiel's image would strike terror into my heart if I saw it come to pass at my church! "Oh no! A pipe has burst!" Ezekiel is speaking about the restoration of the temple and the life that it could bring. The water imagery was brought forward into Christian theology of baptism and is placed alongside today's gospel in a kind of suggestive way. Jesus bypasses the pool of water to heal the sick man who never seemed for 38 years to get to the pool somehow! But Jesus' language is important. He tells the man to "rise" and (what gets him in big trouble) tells him to pick up the mat on a sabbath and go home! In Ezekiel, we have the water of God's Spirit and in John, we have Jesus himself replacing the moving water with his own word. Perhaps we might sit for a few minutes and think about water and life. Water satisfies so many different kinds of "thirsts." It does so in a physical way, for sure, but there is also the symbolic/spiritual way, as in Baptism. We might remember the water in the story of Jesus with the Samaritan Woman (John 4). Write down some of the images and review them once in awhile. It might make you think the next time you touch the water in the holy water font or pour yourself a glass on a hot day! AMEN