Prayer

“I don’t pray because it makes sense to pray. I pray because my life doesn’t make sense without prayer.” — Noah ben Shea

Being Thirsty Over the Wrong Things

What makes you thirsty? What makes me thirsty? Thirst is a a life saving sense. We know that if we do not get enough water each day we will become dehydrated -- shrivel up and loose our life.

Now it is true that we can drink some liquids that contain water but will not quench our thirst. You can drink coffee or tea and it will refresh you, but will you still not be thirsty if you have not had some water free from coffee? Further, we can drink some waters/liquids that are to replace water but will not keep us healthy -- just think Coke or Pepsi.

There are goals we can set for our lives that seem to offer a quenching of a thirst for being a significant person. We might believe that being number one is the most important rung on a ladder. But, all safety notices tells us that being on the top is very precarious and tenuous. In other words it is less than permanent place for the fullness of life. On the top we can easily lose our balance for there is nothing to hang on to.

This does not me we must not to use fully the gifts that God had given us to benefit the whole of society, but we need to keep a perspective of the danger of walking over another to achieve a personal goal, or disregarding the consequences to out families and the environment.

One-on-One with Jesus -- Lenten Texts

Three weeks ago the Lectionary began a series of one-on-one encounter with Jesus and a person caught in a life struggle. The first encounter is with Nicodemus, (John 3:1-21) the teacher who comes during the night. The next meeting is Jesus and the Samaritan woman meeting at Jacob's well in the middle of the day. (John 4:1-42) The third one-on-one is with the man born blind. (John 9:1-41) Finally, the climatic encounter is when Jesus encounter Lazarus, four days in his grace. (John 11:1-44)

The encounter that has stayed with me through these Lenten texts in the one of Jesus' struggle with the Samaritan woman. The first dilemma I faced in thinking of this story was the need to give her a name. People of the margins deserve names even if we must fabricate the name from thin air. I referred to her as Samantha the Samaritan. This seems a bit contrived but "in for a penny, in for a pound."

Names mean something in the Bible. Nicodemus' encounter allowed a name. Lazarus' get his name recorded, but what of the two marginalized characters, the Samaritan women and the man born blind? To personalize them I bring a name forward, Samantha for the Samaritan and Barney for the man born blind. Silly? It seems to make a sense I cannot articulate very clearly.

The one-on-one encounter between Jesus and Samantha (the Samaritan), after some bantering back and forth, there is the central verse, The water that I give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life. (4:14) This passage is followed up later with,

Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, "Give me a drink," you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." The woman said to him, "Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle?" Jesus said to her, "Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw."This is a promise that is a truth about who Jesus, the Word made flesh, is. The "Word made flesh" that challenges Samantha at Jacob's well will provide living water that is life itself.

In reading this passage, my mind wanders to Genesis 2 where we read that God caused a spring to bubble up (a stream would rise up from the earth (Gen 2:4)) in the midst of a desert (God had not caused it to rain upon the earth (Gen 2:5)). It is from this stream – living water – that all life comes. First there is the mud, the combination of the earth and the water. Then there is the "breath"/"spirit" that brings the adamah to full life as a human being. The living water, possibly an artesian well, is the "stuff" God uses in this part of the creation epic to mold life.

Samantha wanted the "living water" that was fresh. She may have been longing for this living water with its "gushing up" because she had had to many years of drinking the polluted waters that caused her life to be a living death.

This is the point I have thought about since giving this sermon two weeks ago. First, I have thought (and confessed) about the polluted waters I have drunk from when I was thirsty over the wrong things. Second, I have tried to reflect on why polluted waters can be so tasty and even appear to be refreshing, while at the same time, leading one (me) into the valley of deepest darkness.

MORE LATER