From the Daily Lectionary for Tuesday in the Second Week of Lent
John 4:43-54
When the two days were over, he went from that place to Galilee (for Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in the prophet’s own country). When he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, since they had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the festival; for they too had gone to the festival.
Then he came again to Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Then Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my little boy dies.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. So he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they said to him, “Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him.” The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” So he himself believed, along with his whole household. Now this was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.
John’s Gospel has been called by some “the Gospel of signs.” Throughout this enigmatic text Jesus gives signs that he is the “One sent by God.” Often these signs are referred to as miracles. I would say they are miracles of metaphor. At the close of this passage we are told that this healing is Jesus’s second sign, the first being the changing of water into wine. There will be others: the feeding of the five thousand; Jesus walking on water and calming the storm; the healing of the man born blind; the raising of Lazarus from the dead; and finally, Jesus’s own resurrection.
All of these signs point to the presence of God among us. God is present in the sharing of the world’s abundance; God is present in the process of nurture; God is present in the healing and restoration of our communities and our world; God accompanies those who are in peril or suffering; God is present in our epiphanies, when we come out of blindness to see the truth. God is present in every moment when life triumphs over death. All of these signs, it strikes me, occur in transformational moments, in the midst of process and change. Perhaps our predisposition to look for God as a changeless certainty doesn’t serve us. Perhaps we should look for God in the moments of change, of growth, of transformation, and process. Such an awareness would make the presence of God not so much a future hope, but a present reality.
These so-called “signs” in this Gospel are clues as to how to look for this presence. Look to the process of the Good, love’s work, good people…. Look to the means of things, not the ends… and most of all give yourselves, your exuberance, your passion, to this exquisite process of creation. God is the process, the ends are infinite possibility.
A Collect for the Presence of Christ (Adapted BCP p. 70)
Jesus, our Savior, stay with us; be our companion in the way; kindle our hearts, and awaken hope, that we may know you as you are revealed in Scripture and the breaking of bread. Grant this for the sake of your love. Amen.
