“When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been ill for thirty-eight years, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?'” (John 5:6).

Reynolds Price writes, in his essay on John in Incarnation: Contemporary Writers on the New Testament, that “many readers see the sign chiefly as a demonstration that Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath. They are partly right, but surely at the expense of sufficient notice that, in this his first face-to-face cure, Jesus heals instantly and without request …. This man can and does, when and where he wills, for his own inscrutable reasons. His power exists for himself, as evidence” (47).

There is an element of sheer fact about Jesus and his power in the Gospel of John. The spiritual challenge comes after the healing, in this episode and in the healing of the blind man in chapter 9.

“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'” (John 5:14).

You can now stand on your own two feet. What are you going to do about it?

“Consider well the mercies of the Lord.” We are delivered from the conditions that we use as excuses — “there’s no one to help me into the pool, and besides, everyone cuts in line” — and set free to stand before God. We are the evidence of God’s power working in the world when we live into that freedom.

Price goes on to say that the story John tells can be “pressed further down, to a sentence — the force that conceived and bore all things, came here among us, proved his identity in visible acts, was killed by men no worse than we, rose from death and walked again with his early believers, vowing eternal life beside him to those who also come to believe that he is God and loves us as much as his story shows” (64).

Consider well the mercies of the Lord, indeed. What will you do with this freedom? How will your life become evidence that God “loves us as much as his story shows”?

In the beginning, O Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands;

They shall perish, but you will endure;
they shall all wear out like a garment; *
as clothing you will change them,
and they shall be changed. (Ps. 102:25-26)

From the vastness of interstellar space to “this fragile earth, our island home” (BCP 370) we look into the heavens and at the earth around us and see both change and stability at work.

Everything changes. Stars are being born and dying all the time, the universe is expanding, the sea and the land push against each other, fold and erode. Plants, animals, microbes, and people are all being born and dying all the time. The entire creation is in a state of change.

And yet everything stays the same. The universe is full of stars, and has been since the beginning. The sea and the land teem with life. Plants and animals participate in a cycle of life that is steady and lasting.

We name the reason for that endurance “God.” We name the creator of what is, “God.” We name what will be after what is now, “God.”

At your command all things came to be: galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home.
By your will they were created and have their being. (BCP 370)

The word of God continued to spread; the number of the disciples increased greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith. (Acts 6:7)

In the sixth and seventh chapters of Acts, it becomes even more clear that the “service” that Stephen and the first deacons performed in the community was as much to do with preaching as with physical works of mercy. The Greek-speaking followers of the Way were being neglected in the table fellowship, which included opening the Scriptures to understand how Jesus fit into God’s plan of salvation.

Stephen is hauled before the council on trumped-up charges because of his preaching, not because he distributed food to widows. In the reading appointed for today, Stephen is just getting started rehearsing the history of God’s saving presence with Israel; he’s laying the groundwork for the big finish to his sermon, naming Jesus as the promised Messiah, which won’t come until Monday. And you thought the sermons in your parish were too long!

Stephen is a preacher warming up to his subject, building up his argument, bringing us along with him until we are ready to hear a new word, until we are ready in fact to meet the Word himself.

There’s a reason deacons promise at ordination “to study the Holy Scriptures, to seek nourishment from them, and to model your life upon them” (BCP 543). The nourishment we receive from our daily prayer and study of the Scriptures we offer back to “those among whom we live, and work, and worship” so that all will be fed by Jesus, the true Bread of Life.

So stick with Stephen for the next few days — the grace and power that shine through him and his preaching are meant to show you the glory of Jesus, “the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56).