third monday of lent

Monday, February 25

Opening Prayer

Psalm 6 NIV

O LORD, do not rebuke me in your anger
or discipline me in your wrath.

Be merciful to me, LORD, for I am faint;
O LORD, heal me, for my bones are in agony.

My soul is in anguish.
How long, O LORD, how long?

Turn, O LORD, and deliver me;
save me because of your unfailing love.

No one remembers you when he is dead.
Who praises you from the grave?

I am worn out from groaning;
all night long I flood my bed with weeping
and drench my couch with tears.

My eyes grow weak with sorrow;
they fail because of all my foes.

Away from me, all you who do evil,
for the LORD has heard my weeping.

The LORD has heard my cry for mercy;
the LORD accepts my prayer.

All my enemies will be ashamed and dismayed;
they will turn back in sudden disgrace.

John 5:1-18 CEV

Later, Jesus went to Jerusalem for another Jewish festival. In the city near the sheep gate was a pool with five porches, and its name in Hebrew was Bethzatha. Many sick, blind, lame, and crippled people were lying close to the pool. Beside the pool was a man who had been sick for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw the man and realized that he had been crippled for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to be healed?”

The man answered, “Lord, I don’t have anyone to put me in the pool when the water is stirred up. I try to get in, but someone else always gets there first.”

Jesus told him, “Pick up your mat and walk!” Right then the man was healed. He picked up his mat and started walking around. The day on which this happened was a Sabbath.

When the Jewish leaders saw the man carrying his mat, they said to him, “This is the Sabbath! No one is allowed to carry a mat on the Sabbath.”

But he replied, “The man who healed me told me to pick up my mat and walk.”

They asked him, “Who is this man that told you to pick up your mat and walk?” But he did not know who Jesus was, and Jesus had left because of the crowd.

Later, Jesus met the man in the temple and told him, “You are now well. But don’t sin anymore or something worse might happen to you.” The man left and told the leaders that Jesus was the one who had healed him. They started making a lot of trouble for Jesus because he did things like this on the Sabbath.

But Jesus said, “My Father has never stopped working, and that is why I keep on working.” Now the leaders wanted to kill Jesus for two reasons. First, he had broken the law of the Sabbath. But even worse, he had said that God was his Father, which made him equal with God.

Reading

How long, Thou faithful God, shall I

Here in Thy ways forgotten lie?

When shall the means of healing be

The channels of Thy grace to me?

Sinners on every side step in,

And wash away their pain and sin;

But I, an helpless sin-sick soul,

Still lie expiring at the pool.

In vain I take the broken bread,

I cannot on Thy mercy feed

In vain I drink the hallow’d wine,

I cannot taste the love Divine.

Angel and Son of God, come down,

Thy sacramental banquet crown,

Thy power into the means infuse,

And give them now their sacred use.

Thou seest me lying at the pool,

I would, Thou know’st I would be whole;

O let the troubled waters move

And minister Thy healing love.

Break to me now the hallow’d bread,

And bid me on Thy body feed;

Give me the wine, Almighty God,

And let me drink Thy precious blood.

Surely if Thou the symbols bless,

The covenant blood shall seal my peace;

Thy flesh even now shall be my food,

And all my soul be fill’d with God.

                —Charles and John Wesley, Hymns on the Lord’s Supper #58