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 water. Show all posts
Showing posts with label water. Show all posts
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Baptism and the Birth of Story
a Sermon for Epiphany 6B
Text: Mark 1:40-45
I want to talk for a minute about water. Water is many things. We know that our bodies are composed mostly of water. We know that water is the one thing we can’t live without: without shelter, we can perhaps survive months, without food, we can potentially survive a couple of weeks, whereas for water, its days. It is our most essential element.
We are a little landlocked here in the middle of our state, but Michigan survives on water. Its abundance makes it difficult for us to see the value Israelites would have placed on it. Two of the most potent stories for Christians involve a scarcity of water. The first is the Israelites’ departure from Egypt and their ensuing decades in the desert. The second, is our gospel for the first Sunday in Lent in which Jesus goes into the desert to quarantine himself. Of course, we know this as the temptation story based on what Jesus found in the desert, but Jesus’s time in the wilderness was about deprivation, cleansing; he deprived himself of this most necessary resource. Being deprived of water would no doubt lead to a great appreciation of the substance.
It is also an essential element of our spiritual faith and religious tradition, most notably in baptism. We also know of it from its place in Jewish cleansing rituals and in Jesus’s washing of his disciples’ feet. This is our relationship to water.
In our gospel this morning, Jesus cures a man of his leprosy. At the 8:00 service, I spent time talking about the first part—about the relationship between Jesus and this man. Copies of that sermon are in the narthex. Here, I want to take time on the second part. The part in which Jesus gives the man instruction and the man seems to ignore it.
We don’t know much about this guy, right? Let’s look at what we do know.
This passage raises some real questions for us. What of the man’s ritual impurity? What of the man’s defiance of Jesus? And what of Jesus’s own ritual impurity? By curing the man of his condition, he has made himself ritually impure and he didn’t seek the ritual cleansing he commanded the man to receive. At that moment does Jesus believe he possesses the so-called ‘leprosy’ and is now in a permanent state of impurity? I don’t know.
I do know that many of us think that we are impure or that we do something, “wrong” that must be atoned. We come to church or seek out a clergyperson for a ritual cleansing. Some of us no doubt think that we have done something or embody something so “wrong” that we could never atone for that level of sin. We might see ourselves as permanently impure—that no amount of ritual cleansing could wash away that sin. For some, the belief is that we are sinful from birth—that our very flesh is sinful. Some extend this notion to baptism—as the great, permanent ritual cleansing.
But I don’t think this is Jesus’s intention, nor do I think Mark is suggesting anything like this. In last week’s gospel, just two verses before the start of this week’s, in verse 38, Jesus tells his disciples, ‘Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.’ Jesus’s intentions are proclamation. So what did this man do immediately after he is cured by Jesus? He runs into town and starts blabbing. But he isn’t shouting like some crazy person, right? It said that “he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word”. The same word is there: proclaim. And spreading the word is different from gossiping or ranting or whatever. It is more like a prayer chain or some other targeted attempt to get information to many people quickly. This man’s action was the fulfillment of what Jesus just said was what he “came out to do.”
[What is perhaps most intriguing about this gospel lesson for us is that we don’t really know how Jesus responded to this experience, just how we would respond. We would be annoyed because we couldn’t go anywhere without being mobbed; that someone else is doing the job that we were called to do; that people seem to be more interested in the miracles than they are in His proclamations. I’m sure that these would annoy us. I can’t help but think that Jesus was pleased.]
One of the things I take from this is that we are all storytellers. That we have received this wonderful good news that we are entrusted to pass on—not to possess or keep to ourselves—but to spread and share as God’s. That we are capable of such an act as storytelling. Telling our story, Jesus’s story, God’s story.
This is what we will be doing in a few minutes as we gather around this pool of water, inviting our newest member into the family. My wife and I will make vows, witnesses will make vows, and the entire community will make vows to raise this new member as a full and important member of the family. We are called to pray for her and support her. We are called to live, ourselves, as Christians. And we are called to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ”. In other words, we are vowing to be storytellers, because we already are storytellers.
In this baptism, within this sacred water, we are all committing to not only look after the spiritual health of this beautiful girl, but to pass on our stories to her; to continue the practices of the church with her. Through our vows and with this water, we are committing our love to her.
Text: Mark 1:40-45
I want to talk for a minute about water. Water is many things. We know that our bodies are composed mostly of water. We know that water is the one thing we can’t live without: without shelter, we can perhaps survive months, without food, we can potentially survive a couple of weeks, whereas for water, its days. It is our most essential element.
We are a little landlocked here in the middle of our state, but Michigan survives on water. Its abundance makes it difficult for us to see the value Israelites would have placed on it. Two of the most potent stories for Christians involve a scarcity of water. The first is the Israelites’ departure from Egypt and their ensuing decades in the desert. The second, is our gospel for the first Sunday in Lent in which Jesus goes into the desert to quarantine himself. Of course, we know this as the temptation story based on what Jesus found in the desert, but Jesus’s time in the wilderness was about deprivation, cleansing; he deprived himself of this most necessary resource. Being deprived of water would no doubt lead to a great appreciation of the substance.
It is also an essential element of our spiritual faith and religious tradition, most notably in baptism. We also know of it from its place in Jewish cleansing rituals and in Jesus’s washing of his disciples’ feet. This is our relationship to water.
In our gospel this morning, Jesus cures a man of his leprosy. At the 8:00 service, I spent time talking about the first part—about the relationship between Jesus and this man. Copies of that sermon are in the narthex. Here, I want to take time on the second part. The part in which Jesus gives the man instruction and the man seems to ignore it.
We don’t know much about this guy, right? Let’s look at what we do know.
- The text refers to him as a “leper”. We know that we shouldn’t call a person a leper any more than we would call someone a cancer or an AIDSer. He is a man, not a disease.
- We know that he has a skin condition. The disease we know in modern times as leprosy was unknown to them—leprosy in Scripture instead speaks of any skin condition—a rash, chickenpox, for instince—so it is entirely likely that this man’s condition may not have been permanent.
- He is ritually impure based on his condition. His status as a man with a skin condition put him as an outsider for the time in which he has the condition.
- As long as this man has a skin condition and does not seek ritual cleansing, he will be considered ritually impure. This means that any contact with him would cause another person to become ritually impure.
- A cleansing ritual would have included the man’s bathing in water.
This passage raises some real questions for us. What of the man’s ritual impurity? What of the man’s defiance of Jesus? And what of Jesus’s own ritual impurity? By curing the man of his condition, he has made himself ritually impure and he didn’t seek the ritual cleansing he commanded the man to receive. At that moment does Jesus believe he possesses the so-called ‘leprosy’ and is now in a permanent state of impurity? I don’t know.
I do know that many of us think that we are impure or that we do something, “wrong” that must be atoned. We come to church or seek out a clergyperson for a ritual cleansing. Some of us no doubt think that we have done something or embody something so “wrong” that we could never atone for that level of sin. We might see ourselves as permanently impure—that no amount of ritual cleansing could wash away that sin. For some, the belief is that we are sinful from birth—that our very flesh is sinful. Some extend this notion to baptism—as the great, permanent ritual cleansing.
But I don’t think this is Jesus’s intention, nor do I think Mark is suggesting anything like this. In last week’s gospel, just two verses before the start of this week’s, in verse 38, Jesus tells his disciples, ‘Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.’ Jesus’s intentions are proclamation. So what did this man do immediately after he is cured by Jesus? He runs into town and starts blabbing. But he isn’t shouting like some crazy person, right? It said that “he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word”. The same word is there: proclaim. And spreading the word is different from gossiping or ranting or whatever. It is more like a prayer chain or some other targeted attempt to get information to many people quickly. This man’s action was the fulfillment of what Jesus just said was what he “came out to do.”
[What is perhaps most intriguing about this gospel lesson for us is that we don’t really know how Jesus responded to this experience, just how we would respond. We would be annoyed because we couldn’t go anywhere without being mobbed; that someone else is doing the job that we were called to do; that people seem to be more interested in the miracles than they are in His proclamations. I’m sure that these would annoy us. I can’t help but think that Jesus was pleased.]
One of the things I take from this is that we are all storytellers. That we have received this wonderful good news that we are entrusted to pass on—not to possess or keep to ourselves—but to spread and share as God’s. That we are capable of such an act as storytelling. Telling our story, Jesus’s story, God’s story.
This is what we will be doing in a few minutes as we gather around this pool of water, inviting our newest member into the family. My wife and I will make vows, witnesses will make vows, and the entire community will make vows to raise this new member as a full and important member of the family. We are called to pray for her and support her. We are called to live, ourselves, as Christians. And we are called to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ”. In other words, we are vowing to be storytellers, because we already are storytellers.
In this baptism, within this sacred water, we are all committing to not only look after the spiritual health of this beautiful girl, but to pass on our stories to her; to continue the practices of the church with her. Through our vows and with this water, we are committing our love to her.
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