Sept 18

Scripture: John 5: 1-9

¹ Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish feasts. ² Now in Jerusalem, by the Sheep Gate, there is a pool that in Hebrew is called Bethesda. It has five porticos, ³ and in these a large number of invalids used to lie, people who were blind, lame, and paralyzed, waiting for the movement of the water. [ ⁴ For occasionally an angel of the Lord would come down into the pool and stir up the water. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease he had.]. ⁵ A man who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. ⁶ When Jesus saw him lying there and was aware that he had been ill for a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to get well?” ⁷ The invalid answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up. While I am still on my way, someone else steps into the pool ahead of me.” ⁸ Jesus said to him, “Rise! Take up your mat and walk!” ⁹ Immediately, the man was cured, and he took up his mat and began to walk.

Meditation

From his article "Duns Scotus: The Subtle Theology of Love" by Séamus Mulholland OFM

At the heart of Scotus’ theology stands his doctrine of the Absolute Primacy of Christ, a teaching that revolutionises our understanding of the Incarnation and human destiny. Against the prevailing view that Christ came primarily to remedy sin (that the Word became flesh as a divine rescue mission), Scotus boldly argued that the Incarnation was God’s first intention from all eternity, independent of human sinfulness. Christ would have become human even if Adam had never fallen, because the union of divine and human nature in one person represents the supreme manifestation of God’s creative love.

This doctrine transforms how we understand humanity. We are not merely a sinful species that required redemption, grudgingly salvaged from the wreckage of the Fall. Rather, we are beings created from the beginning to be united with God in Christ, destined for glory as the image and likeness of the divine. Sin is real and tragic, but it is an interruption of God’s original plan, not the central fact of human existence. The Incarnation reveals humanity’s true dignity: we are made to be united with God, to participate in the divine life, to bear the image of the Creator radiantly forth.

In Christ, humanity is not simply forgiven but restored, brought back to the magnificence of its original design and carried forward to an even greater destiny. Every human being, therefore, regardless of their moral state, carries the dignity of one for whom the Son of God took flesh. Every person we encounter is not fundamentally ‘sinner’ but fundamentally the beloved of God, created for union with the divine. This vision calls us to see past the categories of success and failure, righteousness and guilt, which dominate worldly thinking, and to recognise in each person the glory God intended from eternity.

Musical Selection

Prayer