a Sermon for Lent 3A
Text: John 4:5-42
Jesus walks
Through the eyes of others, we see our Lord walking
on water, through deserts, in our minds.
We focus on photographs left to time
by those that saw something in Him, something different,
maybe even dangerous. But compelling.
In this picture, a woman stands before Him,
and he sits, relaxed and confident and
when they speak, you can see the magic flowing
between their lips, more intimate than a kiss,
more close than their bodies clutched together.
What we see is love. A dangerous love.
This talk is different. It is a linguistic dance between Jesus and this Samaritan woman. It begins with her self-consciousness; she knows that her people are outcasts and aren’t the right kind of Jews. That they are lesser. But Jesus doesn’t treat her that way. He treats her differently: not like a princess: elevated: but as an equal and participant. That they are the same. And in the end, she is changed. Remember last week’s reading about Nicodemus? Jesus asks if he is willing to undergo a life-long transformation: of being re-created. No. This woman gets the same question and she says yes.
Living Waters
When Jesus says that this living water
gushes up to eternal life, we scratch our heads,
confused: is He talking about heaven?
We focus on the physicality of the water
and permanence of time; but just as John invites us
to see Jesus as offering constant transformation
he offers this woman eternal life—a life
a now
a being
a way
a vibrant life that radiates love
that exemplifies Jesus like a mirror
reflecting life and love onto everything.
The conversation that Jesus and the woman have starts out talking about water, H2O and turns metaphorical, poetic. We often forget that John isn’t writing a biography, but a poetic form that we might today call creative nonfiction. Jesus sees in this well the opportunity to reveal a message about love and about being re-created.
Jacob’s Well
Jacob came across a well with sheep around it.
And a man was there, waiting for more to arrive,
when Rachel comes with her sheep. He refuses
to move the stone from the well, for not all
of the sheep have come. Jacob shoves the rock
so that these sheep may drink now.
This well becomes the people’s well.
Jesus uses Jacob’s well to speak about the power of the Living Water and Eternal Life—this vibrant life of being re-created. That Jesus, like Jacob shoves the rock away. Jesus brings that vibrant spirit to us immediately—we don’t have to wait for everybody to get there. And when this woman hears this, she runs into town to tell everybody.
The Disciples
They don’t get it.
They never do.
Following their master
like puppies, devoted,
always hungry, and
marking their territory.
Jesus gives them this living picture,
our photograph of a woman
transformed into vibrant life
and he tells them
`One sows and another reaps.'
Because she is off to sow and
the bountiful harvest will need reapers.
The woman is filled with the Spirit, and yet the disciples still aren’t sure of their jobs—their place in the story. Jesus has to put the tools in their hands and say “Look! The people will be here soon! Get ready to help them find the vibrant life of being re-created.”
Being Re-Created
I know I’m wrong from time to time.
I know I don’t live the life I should
or follow Jesus’s teachings closely enough
and I certainly don’t pray enough,
so why am I afraid of being re-created?
Why do I fear the vibrant life Jesus promises all of us?
Is it because he promises it to us all?
It certainly isn’t because I think that highly of myself
and this life. But I am. Being re-created means
things have to change and I have to change.
The Pious Young Man was asked to change
and he ran away. Is that what I’m doing?
This is a gospel of transformation. The woman goes from being a nobody and becomes a catalyst for the Kingdom. She isn’t convinced by Jesus’s arguments, nor is she magically given confidence because Jesus is a wizard or a shaman. She is filled with the Spirit because she realizes that she needs it. She realizes that her previous life was not a vibrant life and she was transformed. And was moved to bring others to the well to drink the Living Water offered not just by Jesus, but by his disciples. As Jesus says, we don’t have to drink from His well again—but we must be ready to act, to reap what others sow. May we be so ready and so moved.
Showing posts with label discipleship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label discipleship. Show all posts
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Sunday, January 25, 2009
The inevitable response
a Sermon for Epiphany 3B
Text: Mark 1:14-20
I’m wondering if you find this gospel from the first chapter of Mark as shocking as I do. The Scripture has an innocent man arrested and a strange rabbi comes along collecting disciples like vacation spoons: “Here we’ve got Oklahoma and Texas…Oh, don’t forget that we’ve got to stop again in Nevada and California!” And the disciples go along with it. They’re like “what else are we going to do?” and so they leave everything behind and follow this stranger. Let’s acknowledge how shocking this really is.
As usual, Mark hasn’t really fleshed out this story, which makes the disciples’ response all the more bizarre. We read this gospel in the teachers’ meeting and Kevin said: “I bet Zebedee wasn’t too happy that he lost a couple of workers—couldn’t they at least stay and finish their job?” We don’t know.
Jesus is pulling families apart, demanding immediate returns, and Mark doesn’t let us in on what is really going on. He doesn’t tell us how the disciples come to say yes. Has Jesus’s reputation preceded Him? Does he give them a more compelling argument than ‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people,’ such as travel, riches (in heaven), and groupies? Can you imagine a modern response to this:
We don’t know because Mark doesn’t say.
We do know, however, that Jesus is in the business of making offers that we can’t refuse, right? Jesus invites each of us to come along and follow Him—expecting us to drop everything and go—damn the consequences. For some of us, Jesus pulls us away from our families—away from husbands and wives, away from children and families, and away from parents and mentors. Jesus calls us, He gets us, but He doesn’t always get those sitting next to us—not yet anyway. And we have to deal with that choice—that choice of dropping the line, hopping out of the boat, and leaving loved ones, perhaps for ever.
And Jesus intones that this is immediate—we must act quickly. We do it now. He makes a simple request: “Follow me” and we are to make a decision. Not a “oh, I might like soup for lunch—or a sandwhich…no, soup” type of decision. We’re talking about a clean break, decisively setting off in a new direction. Getting our butts out of the boat and following Him into the unknown.
It would be one thing if Jesus sat us down and told us where we were going, right? He pulls out the map and says that we’re going to take a left at the second light, go down Saginaw a few miles, and so on. But he doesn’t. He says “Follow me.” He might throw in “don’t be afraid” for good measure. And that’s it.
John Shea, in a commentary on the lectionary, suggests that there are three elements in this gospel that seem to be coded into our DNA: call, leave, follow. Jesus calls the disciples, and their natural response is to leave. They then naturally follow. Each element of this structure is a decision, a response to external stimuli. This doesn’t imply that the disciples didn’t have a choice or that Jesus gave the disciples an opportunity that they should refuse. No, for Mark, the point is not what brought the disciples to hear the call, leave their families, and follow Jesus, but those actions in and of themselves. Those actions, call, leave, follow, are the actions of discipleship. They are the foundation of discipleship. Call, leave, follow.
This is where Jesus is clear. Remember, the destination is not the worry, it’s the following, right? Jesus gives clarity to the relationship, to what it means to be a disciple. What it means to follow a rabbi—this rabbi/teacher. Call, leave, follow.
This clarity is achieved by removing the very things that might distract us. We don’t know when John the Baptizer is arrested, but Mark gets him out of the way here so that the story’s central focus is on Jesus and His disciples. That way, we can fix our vision on the call; on that central relationship; on that moment in which the biggest decisions are made: call, leave, follow.
On Tuesday, in the midst of a most historic inauguration, the ascent of the first African-American president, a day in which millions gathered in public squares to witness an astounding, earth-moving moment, we heard our nation’s leader call us. He said: “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.” He is asking us to respond to the needs around us: to move decisively. President Barack Obama is no messiah, but that fact makes his words no less prophetic. That he is an American president makes his words no less appropriate for our congregation, our denomination, and our church.
And when he says: “What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply,” he isn’t just talking in the abstract—about D.C. or Congress or K Street—his words apply to all of us: to our culture, our society, our church—every place in which politics are perpetually present. The ground has indeed already shifted. We are truly in a defining moment. A church moment and an American moment.
We know the stuff in our DNA, the stuff that makes us anxious about the shifted ground and presidential transitions; challenges from the pulpit and from the podium; ministry concerns and economic ones. But we have something else in our DNA: that response to call: leave, follow. We have Jesus’s teaching, the Spirit’s inspiration, and God’s love. And we have the opportunity. An opportunity that is, itself, historic. An opportunity that can forever define who we are and who we are called to be. An opportunity to allow God to guide us where we need to be, not where we want to be or where we are most comfortable. We have an opportunity to live like a people called.
Today and tomorrow. This month and next year. We are called. Let’s leave and follow.
Text: Mark 1:14-20
I’m wondering if you find this gospel from the first chapter of Mark as shocking as I do. The Scripture has an innocent man arrested and a strange rabbi comes along collecting disciples like vacation spoons: “Here we’ve got Oklahoma and Texas…Oh, don’t forget that we’ve got to stop again in Nevada and California!” And the disciples go along with it. They’re like “what else are we going to do?” and so they leave everything behind and follow this stranger. Let’s acknowledge how shocking this really is.
As usual, Mark hasn’t really fleshed out this story, which makes the disciples’ response all the more bizarre. We read this gospel in the teachers’ meeting and Kevin said: “I bet Zebedee wasn’t too happy that he lost a couple of workers—couldn’t they at least stay and finish their job?” We don’t know.
Jesus is pulling families apart, demanding immediate returns, and Mark doesn’t let us in on what is really going on. He doesn’t tell us how the disciples come to say yes. Has Jesus’s reputation preceded Him? Does he give them a more compelling argument than ‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people,’ such as travel, riches (in heaven), and groupies? Can you imagine a modern response to this:
As Jesus passed along the Lansing Mall, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew delivering pizzas—for they were pizza deliverypersons. And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you deliver people.’ And immediately they left their pizzas and followed him.Jesus’s argument has to be more compelling than what’s here, right? Perhaps they know that Jesus is a rabbi, which would give him a special station—and that his offer to these common people is like winning the lottery.
We don’t know because Mark doesn’t say.
We do know, however, that Jesus is in the business of making offers that we can’t refuse, right? Jesus invites each of us to come along and follow Him—expecting us to drop everything and go—damn the consequences. For some of us, Jesus pulls us away from our families—away from husbands and wives, away from children and families, and away from parents and mentors. Jesus calls us, He gets us, but He doesn’t always get those sitting next to us—not yet anyway. And we have to deal with that choice—that choice of dropping the line, hopping out of the boat, and leaving loved ones, perhaps for ever.
And Jesus intones that this is immediate—we must act quickly. We do it now. He makes a simple request: “Follow me” and we are to make a decision. Not a “oh, I might like soup for lunch—or a sandwhich…no, soup” type of decision. We’re talking about a clean break, decisively setting off in a new direction. Getting our butts out of the boat and following Him into the unknown.
It would be one thing if Jesus sat us down and told us where we were going, right? He pulls out the map and says that we’re going to take a left at the second light, go down Saginaw a few miles, and so on. But he doesn’t. He says “Follow me.” He might throw in “don’t be afraid” for good measure. And that’s it.
John Shea, in a commentary on the lectionary, suggests that there are three elements in this gospel that seem to be coded into our DNA: call, leave, follow. Jesus calls the disciples, and their natural response is to leave. They then naturally follow. Each element of this structure is a decision, a response to external stimuli. This doesn’t imply that the disciples didn’t have a choice or that Jesus gave the disciples an opportunity that they should refuse. No, for Mark, the point is not what brought the disciples to hear the call, leave their families, and follow Jesus, but those actions in and of themselves. Those actions, call, leave, follow, are the actions of discipleship. They are the foundation of discipleship. Call, leave, follow.
This is where Jesus is clear. Remember, the destination is not the worry, it’s the following, right? Jesus gives clarity to the relationship, to what it means to be a disciple. What it means to follow a rabbi—this rabbi/teacher. Call, leave, follow.
This clarity is achieved by removing the very things that might distract us. We don’t know when John the Baptizer is arrested, but Mark gets him out of the way here so that the story’s central focus is on Jesus and His disciples. That way, we can fix our vision on the call; on that central relationship; on that moment in which the biggest decisions are made: call, leave, follow.
On Tuesday, in the midst of a most historic inauguration, the ascent of the first African-American president, a day in which millions gathered in public squares to witness an astounding, earth-moving moment, we heard our nation’s leader call us. He said: “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.” He is asking us to respond to the needs around us: to move decisively. President Barack Obama is no messiah, but that fact makes his words no less prophetic. That he is an American president makes his words no less appropriate for our congregation, our denomination, and our church.
And when he says: “What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply,” he isn’t just talking in the abstract—about D.C. or Congress or K Street—his words apply to all of us: to our culture, our society, our church—every place in which politics are perpetually present. The ground has indeed already shifted. We are truly in a defining moment. A church moment and an American moment.
We know the stuff in our DNA, the stuff that makes us anxious about the shifted ground and presidential transitions; challenges from the pulpit and from the podium; ministry concerns and economic ones. But we have something else in our DNA: that response to call: leave, follow. We have Jesus’s teaching, the Spirit’s inspiration, and God’s love. And we have the opportunity. An opportunity that is, itself, historic. An opportunity that can forever define who we are and who we are called to be. An opportunity to allow God to guide us where we need to be, not where we want to be or where we are most comfortable. We have an opportunity to live like a people called.
Today and tomorrow. This month and next year. We are called. Let’s leave and follow.
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