My Father is Still Working

After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 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?’ 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.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Stand up, take your mat and walk.’ At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. Now that day was a sabbath. 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.’ But he answered them, ‘The man who made me well said to me, “Take up your mat and walk.” ’ They asked him, ‘Who is the man who said to you, “Take it up and walk”?’ Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there. Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, ‘See, you have been made well! Do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you.’ The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. Therefore, the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the sabbath. But Jesus answered them, ‘My Father is still working, and I also am working.’ For this reason, the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God. John 5:1-18

The horrors of this weekend in Minneapolis and the denial from our leadership of this violence and cruelty can bring on despair. This seemingly loss of humanity and human dignity does make us all want to give up and try not to care. We can stop believing in the goodness of our fellow humans and become jaded, just committing to take care of ourselves alone. Good people have watched as good people are dying and it breaks our hearts. Jesus came upon a man who had been sick for thirty-eight years, lying by the pool of Beth-zatha, a man who had never had help to get in the healing pool. Noone had helped him and maybe he had just been left there for dead. Yet he did not give up or despair and said yes to Jesus the minute healing was offered. He told the religious leaders, that "my Father is still working, and I also am working." Good news for us on the edge of despair, on the edge of giving up. God's love is still working in the deep darkness of human greed and cruelty, still working to heal and redeem the cold hearts and the deep wounds.

Loving Creator, you turn the world to healing

you turn our world from violence to justice

and you give us your deep hope in dark times.

The pain and sorrows are too much for us

violence is accepted and heroes defamed

yet You are still working today and forever.

Help us to rise us with all the love given

and sing the world into a new just sphere

may your work and our work be always love. Amen.