30th March
Isaiah 49.8-15; Psalm 144; John 5.17-30
‘My food is to do the will of the one who sent me, and to complete his work.’ [John 4.34] Many of the signs are followed up in John’s Gospel with explanatory discourses which amplify and deepen the meaning of the sign. In this teaching Jesus asserts that his Father ‘will show him even greater things than these’, greater, that is, than the healing of a man paralyzed for 38 years. On another occasion he declared that ‘the works I do in my Father’s name are my witness.’ [10.25b]
More remarkably, speaking to his disciples just before his betrayal and arrest, Jesus asserted that ‘whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself; he will perform even greater works.’ [14.12] By observing and being spiritually built up by the signs Jesus performs we will become in truth his disciples and continue the work of our heavenly Father until it is completed. [cf Philippians 1.6]