Justin Appel

Dear Friends in Christ,

This Sunday is the Fourth Sunday in Lent. The readings assigned to the day include the story of the blind man in John 9:1-41, whom Jesus restores to sight. The man, Jesus tells the the disciples, was born blind so that ‘God’s work might be revealed in him’ — in other words, that the purpose of his impairment was to make him a witness (the Greek word for witness is martyria) to the Lord Jesus Christ.

The blind man’s experience of washing in water also points elementally to the power of baptismal water to cleanse and heal, and it contrasts in a way with Jesus’ own baptism in the Jordan River, which, according to the Church’s tradition caused the waters to be sanctified. Water heals us, but Jesus, in a way, healed the waters.

This Gospel lesson connects to other watery imagery in the Bible, such as that in Psalm 23, the Psalm for Sunday’s Eucharist, which paints a soothing, pastoral image in which water gives life:

‘He makes me lie down in green pastures,
He leads me beside the still waters’

On this Fourth Sunday in Lent, the choir also sings the first verses of Psalm 42, a passage we associate with various Sundays in Lent, and with the Easter Vigil:

‘Like as the hart desireth the water brooks,
So longeth my soul after Thee, O God.’

This Sunday, the choir will sing a beloved setting of these verses by Herbert Howells, an anthem that delicately illustrates the psalmist’s desire for God’s life-giving water, and that resonates with the other water-passages above. The music here depicts yearning, movement (of soul), discomfort, and also a palpable sense of rest. The unbelieving chorus cries out with vehemence, ‘Where is now thy God?’, while the soul, by contrast, is quietly ‘athirst for the living God’. Particularly memorable is the phrase, placid and achingly beautiful that acts as a refrain:

‘When shall I come before the presence of the living God?’

Listen to Like as the hart here.

Yours in Christ,
Justin