That Living Water

Water is the theme today. It is one of the enduring images of our faith, from Genesis to the Book of Revelation. At St. Alban’s Church in Indianapolis, where I attended for more than 20 years there is a fabric mural that stretches about 28 feet that is dedicated to the theme of water. It had a rather inelegant beginning. St. Alban’s had had a fire that didn’t destroy the church but did enough damage that lots of things needed to be replaced. When we got around to the long bare walls in the nave of the church, Fr. David, sent off to Whipples, the very British liturgical vestment maker in England and they sent back possibly the most boring proposal imaginable, with a huge price tag attached. At the time, I was working with many local artists and I suggested that maybe the church would want to consider one of them. It was a fascinating process with all of the usual church project dynamics. Eventually, Jo Locker, a local woman artist was chosen on the quality of her work but we still didn’t know what we wanted. One day, in frustration, Fr. David said, “There has to be some theme to this, like, oh I don’t know, water in the Bible.” Jo took the comment and ran with it. She designed seven different panels that depicted references to water in the Bible from creation to salvation. Jo told me that working so intently on the theology of water was a profound experience for her. The result is an extraordinary work – I cringed the other day when I went to St. Alban’s website and it was referred to as a quilt.

How many of you remember the science film Hemo the Magnificent from your school days? It explains the working of the human body, and in particular, blood. When the animated Greek god type figure grows tired of the conversation and is ready to storm out saying “all this is plumbing ... you haven't learned my secrets at all" the Scientist answers him in a single word "Thalassa" -- salt water. Hemo the magnificent stays because he has found someone to appreciate his true nature – linked elementally to the waters of creation. I remember nothing else about the movie but that connection between the blood in our veins and the life giving water of this planet. Although in finding it on the web, I came across a quote from Hemo that gets to the heart of today’s gospel – “What better way to love thy neighbor, than to heal thy neighbor?"

Healing is what Jesus offers to the Samaritan woman at the well but you have to know how to get into the story. In full disclosure, I owe this bit of scholarship to Sarah Dylan Breuer and her lectionary blog. The first thing that’s important to know is how deep the enmity between Israel and Samaria was. When the Jews had returned from exile in Babylon, there was much discussion as to the cause of God’s anger that had allowed them to be enslaved. One common thought which is found in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, is that God was angry that some Jewish men had married gentile women. The prophets of the day called for them all to divorce their wives. Now, go figure, but some people told Nehemiah to go jump in a lake, particularly the Samaritans – he did not take kindly to that and he in turn put curses on them and other unpleasant things. What ever roots of the hostility between the Jews and the Samaritans, it was intense – not some friendly cross-town USC/UCLA rivalry – but more like the Ohio State/Michigan – gut level, blinding hatred. So when the Samaritan woman encountered Jesus at the well, that was what she was expecting from him because he was after all, a Jew.

The woman who came to the well had more than Judeo-Samaritan relations going on in her life. It says a lot that she came to the well at noon. We hear that and it’s no big deal but if you know anything about that kind of situation, you might know that usually women went to the community well early in the morning or late in the day when it was cooler. It was also a very social time – the well was the water cooler of the day. All was discussed. This woman chose to make her trip to the well when the other women weren’t around – just what you might expect for someone who was probably a topic of frequent local gossip. She was hoping to draw her water without drawing attention.

So this woman came to the well with her bucket and a whole lot of baggage. And there was this guy, a Jew sitting there and you can almost feel her tensing up – hoping to get her water without some sort of unpleasantness.

But instead Jesus treats her like a woman of his own family, he asks her for water. The version of the story that we have is very stylized and so we miss that Jesus would most likely have said in such a situation. “May I have some water please?” The amazement that she felt was no doubt multi layered…a Jew asking a Samaritan for help; a man speaking to a woman not of his family, a man talking to her and asking for only water. In that practical question he gave her so much. He relieved her of her shame and all that kept her isolated from her neighbors. He saw through her dishonest answer about herself – which revealed her shame and to him it did not matter. With each bit of the encounter she grew stronger; even the return of the disciples, not known for their compassionate insight, could take away what he had given her – respect, welcome and love. The transformation was so complete that she forgot her discomfort at being around her neighbors, in fact she went straight to them and shared the good news, no longer ashamed of who she was.

This is one of the stories that illustrates part of the Mission Statement of Faith Episcopal – that we strive to offer the hospitality of the Gospel. It really hurts my heart when I encounter people who have been wounded by the church – by any church. Those wounds can be wounds of invisibility, the kind that keep the church an exclusive kind of place filled with the right kind of people or the wounds can be more direct. The “you’re not welcome here” kind. “You’re not welcome here as you are.” Or they can be those of an institution more intent on holding authority and seeing sin every where they look than on prospect of love. The result of a wounding church is to cut people off from the message of joy and love. As Hemo the Magnificent said “What better way to love thy neighbor than to heal thy neighbor?” When church makes you feel bad about who you are, how you grew up, what you look like, or who you love it has forsaken it most fundamental reason for being. Church should look like Jacob’s well where people are transformed by loving welcome into a place committed to a healthy and hopeful way of being. Jesus didn’t distinguish between people; he didn’t tell the woman what she needed to change about herself – he set about dispensing the astonishing truth that God’s love is available immediately for every one. The Samaritan woman came to the well for water, she thought she was taking care of a daily chore and instead she encountered waters of creation, blessing, forgiveness, redemption, and salvation.

Rethinking penance

A couple of weeks ago when Peter and I went over to Laguna Beach to visit Baby Zoe at the hospital we were not merely welcoming the newest member of Red Sox nation. We were face to sweet little face with one of the most potent human experiences – the newness of birth. As I looked at her, all snuggy in her tightly wrapped blanket I wondered what it was like for her. Talk about a disorienting change. She went from warm comfortable dark to cold rude light. The tightly wrapped blanket was an intentional recreation of the familiar cramped quarters from which she had just emerged. The sudden freedom would have been overwhelming. Everything had changed for little Zoe. Her senses were being assailed by bright, loud, freedom, air in and out of her lungs, all sorts of new and possibly scary things. She has suddenly found herself in a world that had changed and she will now have to change because of it. Is it any wonder that birth is such a powerful metaphor in our faith?

Jesus was offering people a world that was also radically changed, if they would only choose it. It was a world in which the old ways of doing things were suddenly unimportant. Jesus said that one did not need to take part in the Temple sacrifices in order to be right with God. No amount of ritual slaughter would bring anyone closer to God. The world to which Jesus invited people did not depend on whether one could afford the Temple prices or whether one was clean by someone else’s standards. Jesus offers the kind of freedom that is so disorienting to a newborn. The walls that have previously confined you, that defined your world, are gone. Jesus introduces a world in which the breath of the Spirit whispers “you are God’s beloved.”

Now here’s the rub. When you get that Spirit – that inspiration from above that pushes you out of the womb of your old way of being, it is not enough to say “Thank you!” although that’s an important first response. The expectation is that you will begin to rearrange your life in response to the new world in which you find yourself. Imagine if a baby refused to learn to stretch its arms and legs and instead resolutely curled up in a ball because that’s what she was used to before being born. That would be strange. So would it be for any one who claims to be reborn by the inspiration of God’s whispering Spirit and yet continues to reject their own lovability or that of anyone else.

Spiritual rebirth does not make you instantly perfect. It merely gives you a new world in which to live. It’s a world in which you might long for the old comfortable restrictions and assumptions but with a little practice you can begin to stretch your arms and legs and discover wonder and blessing all around you.

What does life after spiritual rebirth look like – while it must be different for everyone, I’d like to think that there are some basic features. First your awareness will have been expanded. And then, like any newborn, there must be some kind of discernment – trying to figure out who you have suddenly become. The deeper awareness of God’s love gives way to a new awareness of yourself. “Who was I and who am I now?” “Who are all of those other people?” “How did I live with them before and how do I want live with them now?” I’d like to think that after such an experience there’s a lot more love in every direction. Love for God, love for yourself and greater love for others. Love for others will expose the sins of your past. When John Newton had his born from above moment he realized that his being a slave trader was not what God wanted. The world became new to him, the people he had previously considered a commodity suddenly became real. He didn’t just write the hymn Amazing Grace, it is the story of his acceptance, confession, absolution and most publicly – his work to end the slave trade in England.

My Lenten conversation partner, Barbara Brown Taylor writes in her book Speaking of Sin about penance, something we don’t think about much any more. And it’s not just instructions from a priest to say ten Hail Marys and five Our Fathers. Penance is not punishment for what we have done or the way we used to live but penance should be thought of as repair. It is the active work of putting things right. John Newton understood the concept of penance. If children vandalize someone’s garden, the appropriate penance would be to help replant and then weed the garden for a period of time. The garden and hopefully much more would be repaired. As responsible adults, that’s generally not the kind of sin that we have to address. Ours are more subtle and take a lot of work to repair. Barbara Taylor wrote about one of the people who took part in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in South Africa. The confession and forgiveness happened but the victim of racial violence and economic apartheid still lives in poverty and despair as do all of his neighbors. The work of the commission to repair what was wrong in South Africa is obviously not done. It’s not enough for the country to say I’m sorry and accept forgiveness. The next step must happen and it will take a long time.

This week a disturbing story of a mass of mostly plastic trash that was found floating in the Pacific. It is the size of Texas. It represents environmental sin on a large scale that in some way we have all contributed to it. I have no idea how this can be fixed but after reading it I realized that I cannot in good conscience continue to say “sure!” when the kid who bags my groceries asks me if plastic is OK. That was my awareness moment. As I prayed about this, there is no other way to say “I’m sorry” to Mother Nature, I know that God accepts my contrition and has not ceased loving me. But it can’t stop there. There is still penance to do. The first step is to figure out how to say no to plastic bags. So Peter and I went through the closets and got out all of our canvas tote bags and put them in the cars so we will have them for our shopping. We need to get some more and it will be inconvenient. Alone, I will not solve the problem but at least I will not be adding to it. That is one step to repairing my relationship with the planet. That whole relationship requires penitential living – taking shorter showers, changing our landscaping to use less water, finding ways to drive less and make sure that the next car we buy is at least another hybrid.

In every one of the big sins, there are forms of personal penance and the need for communal penance – that’s the really hard stuff because not everyone agrees on what that might look like or if it’s even necessary. But we have to start somewhere. Next month the Habitat for Humanity Board of Directors will gather for their board retreat and I’ve been asked to create some sort of presentation on advocacy. What I plan to do is to give each of the board members, most of whom are very well off, the assignment to create a budget using the income of the people that qualify for the houses that we build. We’ll have some way to hit them with unexpected expenses so they have to make the kind of choices that are commonplace to a whole lot of people, prescriptions or groceries? I know that it will open their eyes. They will spend a few minutes as newborns in a tough world. I don’t know how it will change them, they are already generous people. What I hope is that they will become a bit more passionate about sharing the experience with other who can change things in a bigger way.

Being a newborn is to have unlimited possibilities but it’s a lot of work. In the Book of Revelation God says, “See I am making all things new.” That’s us, all the time we’re being born from above and finding new ways to stretch our arms and legs and learning how to live in the new world.