Sacred Love

Late at night

In the clamoring silence

My unquiet mind searches

For the keystone

For that small piece of wisdom

that will help me understand

what cannot be understood

to search among the fallen ruins

of ideas and beliefs

the rubble of what I once thought

so clear

there are many things I do not understand

the sacred

dancing in my soul

giving me joy yet driving me into discontent

and endless search

love

deep and powerful

yet untamed

pouncing

ripping at my certainty

making me more, and less

why is it that answers do not come?

Or come only to become, once again questions?

But there is this sacred love

which I cannot understand

but which always

always

is there

brilliant and alive

like a lonely flower

among the stones

Going to the well

The encounter of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob in John 4 is the longest recorded discourse of Jesus with a person that we have The story starts with Jesus approaching a Samaritan woman at a well.

Who Jesus approaches is important

It is the last person we would expect him to pick and offer his generosity to, his love, his spirit

A Samaritan

A Samaritan woman

A Samaritan women who has had multiple divorces (or relationships) and is living with a man, not her husband.

A woman who is going to the well at noon, when no one else is around - most of the women went in the morning – and the men gather in the evening  --  A woman who went to the well when there was no one there.. a symbol of her isolation, her rejection.

But Jesus engages that woman.  Jesus offers HER the totality of his resources, the spring of living water, the Spirit

This reminds us that Jesus was always "unraveling the world view" of those he encountered. Transcending what the culture taught as natural boundaries between male & female; "chosen people" and "rejected people".  Modeling the fact that God's transforming grace is available to all. 

Let’s face it!  Jesus broke the rules. He essentially said that the rules were less important than love.  Less important than compassion.  He went outside the box, and in doing so he illustrates that love is the most important thing 

The second important element in this story is the discourse itself, and in particular there is the odd discourse about the woman’s husband  Study the history of this text, read the commentaries, listen to the interpretations and you will learn that most commentators think this woman’s life was marked by promiscuity. The evidence? Five spouses and now living unmarried with a sixth man. We don’t know the full story… What we can assume is this woman has been through relationship hell.  She has looked for love, perhaps in all the wrong places.  And now here she is, five men later, with yet another man.  I can’t help think of all those women who go from abusive relationship to abusive relationship.  And here she is  Isolated.  Probably ashamed…and hiding.  Getting water in the heat of the day.  When she will have to face no one.

The hiding makes sense.  Who, with so many skeletons in his or her closet wants to be exposed?  Who wants the worst things about them brought to the surface?  And in that, she probably mirrors our own lives. We too are people with a past, people with a history. We are all Samaritan women.   People who have things we would prefer to hide.

Jesus finds her in the heat of the day, and he doesn’t let her hide. With this woman Jesus forced self-perception.  With one question he brought out the hidden, the real person.  So it is with us.  When we spend time with Jesus he brings self-perception upon us, the self-perception we’ve lacked for years just because we’ve preferred to be without it, as he puts any number of questions to us:

            “Go call your alienated child.”

            “Produce your income tax return.”

            “Show me the lonely person needing comfort for whom you gave up leisure time.”

            “What do you do when no one is looking”?

Unfailingly Jesus directs our attention to that area of our lives that is dry and brittle.  That place we would just as soon no one see.  That area is that is the desert part of our lives. 

NOW - People like her, people like us, people with a past, often live in fear of being found out.  We are so afraid if people know us, really know us, they will reject us, judge us, find us wanting.

And this is a sad place to be.  Because we really want to be loved for who we really are.  We all thirst to be seen and to be known at a deep intimate level, seen with all our warts, and flaws, and still be loved. 

When Jesus asked that woman that question about her husband he was inviting her to let herself be known.  And that was risky.  Being known she risked rejection. 

But that is not what happens. Jesus in this dialog does an amazing thing.  He strips off the façade.  He penetrates the walls around this woman.  He exposes her, for who she really is…Jesus goes into the depths. He brings forth the real her…AND He accepts her anyway

Indeed he not only accepts her, but he offers her a great gift.  The gift of Living Water

The lack of which, was of course, the heart of her problem anyway.  She was dry.  She sought relief for that dryness in many wrong places.

This is the way it is for most of us.  We are dry.  And in our dryness  we all go down to some well. For some, like the Samaritan woman, it is the relationship well. For others it is the well of perfectionism. Others will draw from the well of power and control. Too many will drink from the wells of addiction. Many live at the well of busyness and denial.  Others go to the well of rigid religiosity. 

We could each name the wells from which we drink. Day after day, month after month, year after year we go to the same well to drink. We arrive hoping our thirst will be quenched. We leave as thirsty as when we arrived only to return the next day. For too long we have drunk from the well that never satisfies, the well that can never satisfy.

But Jesus offers the gift of another well.. It is the well of the Spirit. It is the well that washes us clean of our past. This is the well from which new life and new possibilities spring forth. It is the well that frees us from the patterns and habits that keep us living as thirsty people.

 “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.” This is the living water of new life, new possibilities, and freedom from the past. This living water is Jesus’ own life. It became in the Samaritan woman “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” She discovered within herself the interior well and left her water jar behind. She had now become the well in which Christ’s life flows.

This is the final point

The Spring of living water

As people with flaws

As people not at ease with ourselves, we live in a state of dis-ease

Afraid we will be found out

Afraid we will be judged

Afraid that there will not be enough

Enough intelligence, power, resources, love

To make it through life

Not only afraid that if we are open we will be found out

But afraid that if we are open, and more, give

We will run dry

Be taken advantage of

Be left without enough

Empty.

But with the spring of living water there is always enough of God in our lives

Always enough love

Always enough Spirit

The Amazon River is the largest river in the world. The mouth is 90 miles across. There is enough water to exceed the combined flow of the Yangtze, Mississippi and Nile Rivers. So much water comes from the Amazon that they can detect its currents 200 miles out in the Atlantic Ocean. One irony of ancient navigation is that sailors in ancient times sometimes died for lack of water... they would get caught in windless waters of the South Atlantic they were drift, helpless, their stores of water depleted

Sometimes other ships from South America who knew the area would come alongside and call out, "What is your problem?" And they would exclaim, "Can you spare us some water? Our sailors are dying of thirst!" And from the other ship would come the cry, "Just lower your buckets. You are in the mouth of the mighty Amazon River."  The is fresh water right below you

This story says that God’s Spirit is always there.  Always there inside us.  The power is there.  The love is there.  And not just in limited quantities, but there, in a limitless manner.  It is like a spring of water, welling up.  Always fresh.  Always powerful.  Always renewed.  We just have to lower the bucket.

All we have to do is go to this well.  Go  to the Spirit

Sometimes we forget it is there

Sometimes we lose sight of the spirit and its power

And so there we are, dying of thirst, and the solution is right there, available

But we have a River of Life, welling up in us

And if we drink it we will thirst no more

Gifts Given, Gifts Received. Life in the Shadow of Death

This past week a dear friend of mine went into a crisis.  He has congestive heart failure, and by all accounts, including his doctors, was days from death.  He had a choice.  Sit in his hospital room,doing what he was doing medically, or go to a cardiac center and have more intensive treatments administered.  Tough call when you feel tired, and hurting, and life just isn't very meaningful or enjoyable.  But eventually the call was made, and so I found him in the Cardiac ICU.

Now you have to understand my friend is a very very wise soul.  He is a recovering alcoholic, sober for over 25 years.  He has been through more challenges than most of us face.  And he has come out of it all loving and with some very deep knowledge about how things work.  He still has his challenges, but he is a person whose wisdom I value.

We had a long talk about death, and dying, and medical interventions.  And at the end of our conversation two phrases stuck in my head.  The first was this: "Are we prolonging life of prolonging death?"  This is a profound question for all people with terminal illness.  At what point do we stop prolonging life and start prolonging death?  At what point are we keeping the machine functioning, without any benefit to the heart, soul, and mind within that fleshy mechanism?  I am not sure I have an answer for that question. Indeed I suggest that the answer is deeply personal. For each person that moment, that turning point is likely to be different.  As a pretty persistent, some might say stubborn person, that point might be further down the road for me than for others. Some might hang on to this life much longer.  The differences in our answer will depend on a lot of things. How we see life?  The connections we have here.  Our own sense of what makes us valuable.  And our sense of what lies beyond this thing we call death.  Is it truly and ending, or merely a transition?  For me as a person who believes death is a transition, acceptance of that reality is not such a scary thing.  Saying goodbye, letting go to the things I love in this world? That is the hard part.  But my friend and I both agreed that prolonging death, going to far in medical interventions doesn't make sense, for anyone.  But we also agreed that being too proactive and hastening death is probably not a better choice.

Why?  This is where the second phrase comes in.  "Giving and receiving gifts."  When my parents died, both of illnesses that were progressive and took years, I noticed something very interesting.  With both my father, who died of cancer, and my mother, who died of a neurological syndrome, there were clear losses as the disease progressed.  Dad could no longer do his beloved hikes up Hart Mountain, and mom could no longer bake.  Could no longer put together her "gift" boxes at Christmas for her friends, and make cookies for her grandchildren.  And yet!  And yet both, in those times of loss and pain, received some wonderful gifts.  They learned, as people rallied around them, how many people loved them, and how deeply.  They received, these two busy people, the gift of "down time."  They slowed down (not that they had a choice) and they spent a different kind of time with other people.  Slower.  Longer.  More talk.  More sharing and openness.  They discovered again many small joys.  They traveled together.  There were many gifts received.  

And their were gifts given.  The people they became through their illness was a gift to their children, their grandchildren, the people in their community.  They held bible studies and discussion groups.  They listened to people who really needed someone to talk to... and because of where they were at, they heard.  My father became far more expressive, and started to learn how to talk about love, and nurture.  My mother never did talk, but her presence continued to enrich lives.  Even in terminal illness there are gifts to be given, and gifts to be received.  And so life continues to be a precious thing.  Not something to be held on to so tightly that we prolong death.  But something to be savored until it is time for the next stage in our journey

Thank you my dear friend Scott for the gifts you are still giving.  For the gift you gave to me in such a strange wilderness as a cardiac ICU.  May you continue to see the gifts that you receive.

God's YES

You know, John's gospel story of Jesus' first ever miracle, the miracle of the wine at the Wedding at Cana, seems a little odd.  What did Jesus first do to reveal his glory to the world? Perform a wonderful healing? - No. Preach a stunning sermon? No. He went round the back of the bar at a wedding and boosted the stocks of best wine - by very generous proportions.

Here we see Jesus doing the unorthodox, perhaps supporting what most would see as excess.

I mean think about it, if the wedding guests had drunk all the wine, did they really need any more?  Yet Jesus created somewhere between 120 and 180 GALLONS of premium wine.  Wow!

What did Jesus first do to reveal his glory to the world? Perform a wonderful healing? - No. Preach a stunning sermon? No. He went round the back of the bar at a wedding and boosted the stocks of best wine - by very generous proportions.

You might wonder why Jesus would be at a wedding in the first place. It's only what you'd expect - that God who took such delight in creating the world and all its people, would delight to be with people on a day of celebration; that God whose whole being is wrapped up totally in love, would want to share the wonder of a young couple's love by joining in their wedding party.

Of course we know from our own experience that weddings aren't all joy. If we were able to see the wedding party through Jesus' eyes then we would know that perhaps there was some local drama here.  The families wanting to put on a great event to impress the village.  The father of the bride, that father buying drinks for everyone at the bar, over reaching and getting himself into massive debt, and still coming up short.

But what about that wine.  Jesus quietly snuck behind the bar and somehow transformed ordinary water into finest quality wine.  Not second rate wine… who at this stage of the party would have noticed?  But first rate wine.  What was that all about?  Oh, and not just good wine…. LOTS of good wine.  120 Gallons?  Really!?

Jesus didn't spend any time carefully calculating precisely how much wine was needed to keep the party going to a certain time. No: he got all the empty containers they could find and filled them right up to the brim. I can imagine him saying, “That should do it”, with a smile.

This was more than enough. This wasn't just generous. This was a scandalously generous gesture. Which is precisely what Jesus intended it to be. Because after all, isn't the whole thing about God coming to earth scandalously generous? 

And that is precisely the point. God’s loving generosity.  And we see that even more clearly if we look at story number two, which is essentially a foil to story number one.  This story is that of the cleansing of the temple.

The time of this story coincides with the  Jewish Passover celebration.  The entire Passover celebration took a week. Attendance for adult Israelite males was supposedly compulsory.  Every male Jew, if at all possible, from the age of twelve and up, was expected to attend the Passover at Jerusalem.  It is very difficult to imagine the scene that our Lord’s eyes fall upon as He enters Jerusalem and approaches the temple. Talk about a lot of people!  Think the Super Bowl.   Think National Championship game, World Series.  It was a madhouse, with people from all over the world in attendance.  Now all these people Jews and Gentiles alike would have to pay the half-shekel temple tax in the coinage of the temple to be there.  Foreign monies were unacceptable and had to be exchanged for the proper coins. Thus the money changers.  And yes, there was a fee, just like those ATMS.

And these worshippers also had to offer up their sacrifices, and for many of these travelers, the only solution was to buy a sacrificial animal there in Jerusalem.  In days gone by, they would have been able to purchase these animals and exchange their money in a place outside the temple courts, from vendors over on the slopes of the Mount of Olives, but at this point in history they had to buy in the temple courts, doubtless in the Court of the Gentiles (the outermost court).

And to be blunt, there were major abuses.  There was exploitation. The vendors took advantage of the pilgrims, and in the process made a lot of money.  A lot.  . And in view of these conditions the Holy Temple, intended as a house of prayer for all people, had become according to Jesus in Mark, a den of robbers.  In the words of John, a marketplace

So what do we have in our second story?  Jesus, rejecting the norm, the status quo, the orthodox, the accepted, the set religious practices of the time.  Rejecting a faith system gone sadly astray.  A faith system that limited access to God.  Which manipulated, even took advantage of those seeking God.

Why these stories?  According to John the Wedding at Cana was the first of seven signs performed by Jesus to reveal the heart of his way.  What is Jesus pointing to with the story of the wedding, made more powerful by the following story, of the cleansing of the temple?  What is at the core, at the heart of the Jesus way?

Certainly not the old, the dead, the concrete.  He is making it clear that when we make ritual, and systems and orthodoxy more important than God’s love, God’s spirit, that we are in trouble.  When we make those things central, the most important things, we die, spiritually, and we miss so much

But the core of the Gospel… as seen in Sign One, in that Wedding at Cana, and those jugs of wine, is centered on God’s generosity

On a free flowing spirit.

It is about love

It is about gratefulness

And yes…. Exuberant joy

I love the ecstatic exuberance of ee Cummings

I thank you God for this most amazing day; for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes!!!!

The wedding of Cana is about God’s yes!

And yes which why we can grasp

Even embrace

In our church

In our worship

In our lives

YES!

That is it
It is about loving, deeply and truly

Even if you break some of the rules

It is about being for others

It is about passion for God not passion for the book of Order

It is about

Feeling the presence of God

The flow of the Spirit

Of smiling

And doing a little dance

And saying

I thank you God

For this day

For that person

For your love

I thank you for the glint in that young boy’s eye

I Thank you God for forgiveness and second chances

I thank you God

For everything that is natural, is infinite, is yes!

The Gospel is all about God’s YES

And our “Yes” in return….

Agents of God

The opening chapter of John is all about dichotomies.  About great cosmic, spiritual, opposites.

The big two, Chaos VS Order and Darkness VS Light

And the basic message of the chapter?  That something, someone, the “Word of God” moves people, no, more than that, moves all of creation from one side of the dichotomy, from one end of the spectrum, to the other.  This word, this power, this person, creates order out of chaos, and brings light in the darkness.

The word of God!  What are we talking about?  One way to think about it is to understand that the word is the creative, the ordering, the life giving power of God.  Think about Genesis 1.  That is the real reference point for this passage.  What is the key phrase in Genesis 1?  It is pretty obvious.  “And God said”.  God spoke… The word of God is the power which brought the world into being.  The word of God created humankind in God’s image.

We can also think of a word as a vehicle of expression. Words are used to convey thoughts and ideas.  In listening skills workshops we talk about the interpersonal  gap, and about how one person, in order to bridge the cap, the chasm really, between one person and another, must “encode” what is inside them, that which they want to communicate, into some sort of code…. Either words, or body language… interesting how here John talks about the word became flesh….

So through Words, through the “flesh” we put what is in here out there, we make what we are thinking and feeling, we make who we are accessible.  We enable the other to know us, to understand. So Christ, as the Word, reveals God to us

Now, this is what is important.  When God becomes real, in any form, as the Creator, In the person of Jesus, as the empowering Spirit – when God comes to us.. puts himself out there… connects with us,  something happens.  As John puts it, “Grace is piled on Grace” and we receive “God’s fullness”,  and little order, a little wholeness, and a little light

But there is a trick to all this.  We have to hear the Word. We have to  be aware of this presence.  John suggests that this can be a problem.  “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.”  We have to learn to see.  We have to learn to hear.  And the reality is, that if we aren't looking for God, we can miss him even though he is right in front of us.  So we must “attend” to God.

But if we do look, and do see?  Have you ever had one of those moments when you learned about a new word?  Or hear a new song.  Learn a new fact?  Suddenly its everywhere!!!  You see that truth, hear that song, everywhere.  That new word appears everywhere.  It has been circulating all along, it's just you never knew to notice it before.  So it is with God.  Once we get hear that word, see that light… once we make that connection with God’s reality, we find God everywhere. 

And frankly we need God’s word in this world.  We need to have a sense of God, and God’s presence, reality.  God’s work.  Think there is a little darkness out there?  What does it look like today  - Greed? Throwing the poor under the bus?  Drugs?  Materialism?  War, violence poverty?  Actually all we have to do is remember that today is September 11 to get a sense of darkness.

What is chaos?  That lack of knowing who we are?  How we are to Live?  Who we are to be?

The presence of God help us see darkness, and fight it  The presence of God helps us make sense of our lives, it creates order out of the chaos – and we become, as individual Christians –a presence, the way God has a voice, and is “enfleshed” today.  John puts it in a number of ways…”we become the children of God”….”from his fullness we have all received grace from grace.”  People full of grace.”  “Children of God.” 

We become people who make God real, for ourselves and for others

The sparkling Christian essayist Phyllis Theroux began one of her articles as follows:  Many years ago I took a Civil Service entrance exam that contained certain questions designed to sort out the people who had “Messiah complexes” or thought that J. Edgar Hoover was giving them varicose veins.  Those questions were easy to spot although the only one that still sticks in my mind is “Do you think you are a special agent of God?”  I paused, thought about all the government benefits which hug upon my answer.  I wrote “No”  I would like to think that under the same circumstances, Mr. Hoover might have lied too

We are special agents of God.  We are called, and empowered… to see the chaos, and fight against it

To see the darkness and fight against it, to see God, be God’s voice

We cannot stick our heads in the sand.  WE cannot ignore the injustice, the wrongs all around us.  We cannot ignore the darkness, or even go along with it.  We cannot allow chaos to continue to rule.

We must open our eyes to the needs.  The hurt, the pain, the poverty, the lostness.  For as Desmond Tutu once said… if you are neutral in cases of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor

We have no choice but to ask ourselves about how we are going to be in this world, which so wants to move to darkness and chaos.  We must choose how we are we going to participate in the work of God, that work of bringing light in the darkness, order in the midst of chaos.

Community gardens.  Wellness programs, Cooks night out! Listening, caring, taking food to the ill.  These are all ways in which we fight the chaos and darkness

Chaos and darkness are out there, and gaining power.

The world is full of chaos thinking,  darkness thinking.

We have to be the antidote to that

We have to see God, receive God, be empowered by God

And then - Be love -- Be Grace  -  Be the creative restoring redeeming word of God

But it all starts with “attention”  With that focus on God that allows us to “see”.

There is a story about Russian who heard a preacher say "pray without ceasing" He puzzled about how to do this, and so, after his wife's death he left home and set out as a pilgrim, seeking a teacher who could help him.  Finally he found a monk who taught him the Jesus Prayer, which simply goes “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”,  and he spent the rest of his life practicing it ceaselessly

As he talks about his experience he ends with these words.  If someone offended me, I needed only to remember the sweetness of the Jesus Prayer and hurt and anger vanished.  I was very much at peace, and often even dreamed that I was uttering this prayer, I thanked God!  For now I understood clearly the meaning of the apostle's words that I heard, pray without ceasing.

Remember God... look for God....See the Light... Hear the Word... and life will be transformed.  I’d like to end with some words from the old Presbyterian Hymnal that to me become a wish, a prayer of response to today’s passage….

God be in my head, and in my understanding,  God be in my eyes and in my looking

God be in my mouth, and in my speaking, God be in my heart and in my thinking

AMEN