In this Year of Mercy, what would you ask of God as your own, just-for-you, Mercy given? Specifically, what would that just-for-you Mercy look like? If someone were to make a video of that dream-come-true Mercy given to you, what would the pictures show? Scientists who study change and achievement say that we cannot obtain what we cannot visualize. If there is no picture in our mind of ourselves receiving God’s mercy, we block ourselves from receiving it.
This is an interesting lens for looking at today’s readings from Ezekiel and John. Thinking of Mercy as God’s loving kindness extended to the poor, the alienated, the sick, and the sinful, we can consider our own lens for seeking Mercy and God’s lens for giving it.
Ezekiel was a prophet of the Babylonian captivity. His prophesy was aimed at maintaining hope and solidarity during the Jewish people’s time of exile. During the Babylonian captivity the Jewish people had no temple. Their vision of relationship with God depended on the temple, so they saw themselves as cut off from God. This was a deprivation we perhaps cannot completely understand. In their vision, God lived in the temple. People could communicate directly with God there. They could worship. They could fulfill the personal relationship commandments God had put on them. Without the temple, the people could talk about God, remember God, read the Torah and the prophets, sing the psalms, and yearn for God, but they had no picture to see God physically with them. Without the temple there was no vision of direct access to God.
Today Ezekiel gives the people a vision of a new temple. From its Eastern entrance water flowed. At first it was a trickle, then knee deep, then waist deep. Finally the water from the temple became a great river which watered a land of plentiful fruit trees and fields. Ezekiel’s temple vision gave him and the people he served a picture in their minds of what God’s personal, dream-come-true mercy would look like. That picture in their minds not only strengthened them in captivity, it served as a model for when the remnant returned to Jerusalem. It guided the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah as they helped people reclaim their land, their worship, and their faith.
In today’s Gospel the man at the pool of Bethesda had a vision of what just-for-him Mercy would look like. The pool of Bethesda had healing powers. The sick, blind, and lame lay there waiting for an angel to stir the waters. When the waters were stirred, the first one in the waters could be healed. This man had been sick for 38 years. He had never been able to access the Mercy in the water because he had no one to help him reach the water quickly. His vision of Mercy was to have someone help him reach the water first.
Our capacity of visioning can be a great help to us. It can also be a great hindrance. We can be limited by our vision. The man at the pool could not imagine being healed in a different way. The Gospel says: “When Jesus saw him lying there and 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 am on my way, someone else gets down there before me.’”
There was a different way. Jesus knew it. “Jesus said to him, ‘Rise, take up your mat, and walk.’” The man got up and walked. He didn’t even know who had done this. But he must have given the glory to God, because the Gospel goes on to say that Jesus found him later in the temple area.
That was when Jesus got in trouble because of the limits of the Jewish people’s vision of God’s Mercy. Jesus had healed the man on the Sabbath. That did not fit with their understanding of God or His Mercy. So the Jewish people “began to persecute Jesus because he did this on a Sabbath.”
Sometimes having a different vision creates the troubles and dramas of our lives.
Back to today’s beginning question: In this Year of Mercy, what would you ask of God as your own, just-for-you, Mercy given? What would that just-for-you Mercy look like?
Now add another question: Might God’s vision of Mercy for you be deeper, different from yours?
From early Christian days people saw Ezekiel’s vision in a different light. They saw the water flowing from the right side of the temple as the water of baptism flowing from beginnings in Jewish culture, but extending in a great river of mercy through Christ to the whole world.
Those who remembered and told the story of the man at the pool of Bethesda knew Jesus was the Son of God and that God had healed the man. They knew that those who persecuted Jesus for violating the people’s picture of God eventually killed him—but that he rose from the dead. They had a deeper, richer vision.
St. Teresa of Avila in The Way of Perfection gives a metaphor of water that is a helpful vision to me as I think about the question of what God’s vision of Mercy might be for me right now. Speaking of prayer (and relationship with God) she describes that in the beginning, the work falls on us. We must carry the water in buckets, sometimes from far away. After a while, God gives help through irrigation ditches and water wheels. Eventually, the water just flows. God does almost all the work.
Hmm. Maybe we must start with a vision of God’s personal Mercy to us (start out carrying thewater), but then He builds on our vision and gives us far more than we could imagine.
God used my writing last week’s reflection and reading readers’ responses afterwards as a way to deepen and enrich my vision of His Mercy to me. I have come to see that the forgiveness struggle that prompted the writing was me carrying the water, my vision of Mercy.
But since last Tuesday I have come to see that forgiveness struggle in a deeper, richer light. God is using it to show me internal truths that in time will heal me in ways far greater than I could have imagined. It is all too new to describe today, but it is clear that God is in the water and in the watering.
It reminds me of the words of an ancient Irish hymn which is the prayer today:
Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art:
Thou my best thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.
Today’s readings: Ezekiel 47:1-9, 12; from Psalm 26, John 5:1-16.
