The theme continues: people hear Jesus in earthly ways, but He's got something so much more to offer.
(A day late and a dollar short, as the saying goes. Maybe it was inevitable to miss a day and play some catch up. So here's the first attempt at that.)
As I read through John 3, 4, and 5, I see a pattern emerging: Jesus teaches, but people hear him with only earthly ears. Nicodemus thought Jesus was talking about a second human birth, the Samaritan woman at the well thing He's talking about earthly water, and the man at the pool of Bethesda thinks it's the magical earthly water that will heal him. (There's also the pattern of water - water of birth, life, and healing - that we ought not miss either.)
But in all these cases, Jesus is ultimately talking about something far greater than earthly gain. He offers participation in a life that will have no more suffering at all. Healing, satisfaction, and life will be eternal.
And in addition to the encounters that Jesus has with people who misunderstand him at first, the religious leaders are also misunderstanding. Rather than celebrating this man who was miraculously healed, the leaders focus only on the thing they perceive to be an earthly issue: this seems to have broken the law of rest on the Sabbath day.
I continually point people forward to the hope that we have in Jesus because this world is so broken. Just look around and it's impossible to miss. And we don't even have to look around; we can just look at our own lives.
At the same time, there are many good things in this life, and we ought not miss those. But what is promised by God through Jesus is so, so much better than anything we can imagine. The earthly miracles that Jesus did (again, John highlights them as signs pointing to something—Someone—more than the sign itself) were glimpses of this eternal restoration to the original creation of God that was without any brokenness.
Lent is a time to be honest about the brokenness—the sin—in our own lives and in the world around us, so that we can also be honest about the solution to that sin: faith in Jesus that hears Him and takes Him at His all-powerful word.
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