Water Daily

3-10-23 - Telling Our Stories

You can listen to this reflection here.

This week’s story is a lesson in faith-sharing – or evangelism. A woman meets Jesus, and discovers that in him is the power of God. When he then tells her that he is, in fact, the Anointed of God, the Messiah long-awaited by Jew and Samaritan alike, she believes him. At least, she is sure enough that she drops her water jar and runs back to tell her neighbors in town about him – and then they come to check him out themselves.

She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him.

Meanwhile, Jesus’ disciples come back with lunch – but he doesn’t want any:
Jesus said to them, ”My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting.”

Is Jesus having a moment of discovery? Has he found, in this alien territory, a mission field he had discounted, assuming he was only to bring his gifts to the Jewish people? Perhaps this encounter has reminded him of his broader mission. Or maybe he knew all along, loitering by that well.

He and his disciples will soon find out just how ripe these fields are when they spend a few days in that town: And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

Our job as Christ followers is to tell the stories of our encounters with God – often across boundaries of culture, race, age or gender. We don’t have to persuade anyone about the Nicene Creed, just speak our God-stories. And if our stories are tepid, we may be too locked into thinking our “God-encounters” are things that happen in church. Church stories can be dull to those outside the congregation. But “God stories” are rarely dull – this woman’s story certainly wasn’t. And her excitement and passion helped ignite curiosity and anticipation in her neighbors.

What kind of news do you tend to share with excitement? Great things that have happened? Achievements? Stories of travel? Cultural events? Meals? Your children’s exploits? This weekend, try to notice when your energy rises in conversation – what are you talking about at those points? Can you think of a “holy moment” that generates that kind of energy in you, which you might share with someone? Pray about who needs to hear that story.

If telling people how great our church is was an effective means of spreading the Good News, our churches would be full. They’re not. Yet, the fields are still ripe with people hungry for spiritual connections that are authentic and personal. Let’s do what this woman did, and go tell our neighbors about our encounters with Jesus, with God, with the Holy Spirit.

We just need to introduce people to Jesus; he will do the rest. Then maybe we’ll get to hear those joyful words too – “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe. We have heard for ourselves, and now we know.”

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3-9-23 - True Worship

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

When Jesus names some uncomfortable truths about her life, the woman he has met at a well does not comment. She changes the subject, bringing up the source of division between Jews and Samaritans: “Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem."

I always saw this as an evasive pivot away from the topic of her personal life. But I wonder – is she actually trying to deepen the conversation? “Okay, Mister, if we’re going to talk truth, let’s talk about why your people and mine don’t get along. Let’s talk about our relationship. Why do you say we all have to worship in Jerusalem?”

Jesus gives her a full and perhaps surprising answer, not condescending:

“Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

This truth Jesus offers should be emblazoned on our church buildings and service bulletins. How and where we worship can both lead us into divine presence, and keep us far away. It is human nature to seek connection with the holy – and when we find it, to attempt to recreate the circumstances we believe led to that moment. Thus we get ritual, and we repeat it and soon deem it sacred, and then all kinds of actions and objects and spaces and even clothing accrue – and before we know it, we may put our focus on all the apparatus and lose sight of the divine connection we were seeking in the first place.

Worship, as Jesus defines it, is not something we do. It is how we open ourselves to encounter with the Living God. It is a spiritual activity, engaging our spirits – and, because our spirits are embodied, also our senses, minds and bodies. And worship is truth-seeking. We don’t need to be in church to worship – church can help sometimes, and get in the way others. What we need is an open heart and humility.

When do you feel yourself most fully alive in worship? Is it during a service? If so, what elements draw you in? Music? Prayer? Proclamation? Teaching? Movement? Sacrament?
It’s good to be aware of how you feel most connected to God.

Maybe you feel yourself most worshipful in silence or in solitude or in nature or doing something for someone else – it’s good to know that too, to honor that as worship.

If you don’t feel you connect to God in worship of any kind, you might ask the Spirit to show you a way for you.

Worship, above all else, is encounter – a profoundly cross-cultural encounter across boundaries of difference more pronounced even than the ethnic, religious and gender barriers Jesus and this woman were bridging. Worship is an encounter between a mere human, unique and ordinary, and the God who made all things, holy and transcendent. Yet this God invites us to meet, to break bread, even to dance.

The hour is coming – and is now here – when God is in our midst, in spirit and in truth. God has shown up. Will we?

3-8-23 - Miss Communication

You can listen to this reflection here.

One of my favorite things about this week’s gospel story – and it is one of my favorites – is the subtle way the characters reveal themselves by what they say and don’t say. For instance, the narrator does not tell us that our heroine has had a complicated romantic life… there is a hint in her coming to draw water at noon, when the sun is hottest but she’s more likely to avoid the stares and murmurs of her community, but we only learn about her when Jesus shares this information he had no way of knowing.

Jesus and the woman exchange many words, but they seem to keep talking past each other. He asks her for water; she wonders why he’s willing to ask her. He says if she knew who was asking, she’d be asking him – and that the water he gives never runs out. Then she goes literal – and sarcastic: “Okay, so give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

Then Jesus changes the subject. Abruptly. "Go, call your husband, and come back." The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, 'I have no husband' for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” If this is meant to shut her up, it doesn’t work: The woman said to him, "Sir, I see that you are a prophet,” and swiftly changes the subject again.

We aren’t told how she felt when Jesus spoke her past to her. He had no earthly way of knowing this about her, unless she sported tattoos with different men’s names on them. But she doesn’t deny it – and even more significantly, she doesn’t break off the conversation. She changes the subject, sure, launching into a discussion of proper locations for worship… but she doesn’t leave. There must have been something about the way Jesus spoke and looked at her that invited her to be real, not hidden.

That is how the Holy Spirit works in us. In some ways, we are to God as wild animals are to humans – skittish, afraid to get too close. And God comes into our lives, sits down, invites us into conversation. We might try to obscure it or stay on a surface level of needs and thank yous, so that we can avoid really being known… but eventually we learn that we are in the presence of the One who already knows us, knows everything thing about us, the good, the bad, the ugly – and isn’t walking away.

Have you had that kind of conversation with God lately? Ever? What would you rather Jesus didn’t know about you? Can you bring it up first? Just lay it out there… see how he reacts, what he says?

Chances are, you will come away feeling more accepted and loved than blamed or shamed. We can see how this works on a human level in 12-step meetings – people are accepted as they tell the worst about themselves, and are loved into sobriety. If this can happen with people, imagine how thoroughly God can love us into wholeness as we make ourselves available.

We learn later that this moment with Jesus had an impact, for the woman runs back to her townspeople – the ones whose judgment she was presumably avoiding – and tells them, “Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did!” She has not been shamed. She has been liberated by discovering that the Lord of heaven and earth can know everything about her and still offer love and forgiveness. I hope you have discovered that freedom, more than once. As we receive it, so are we able to give it.

3-7-23- Always Replenished

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

A tired woman comes to a well at the peak of the day’s heat, repeating a chore that no doubt has shaped her days for some time. It is her job to fetch water for the household. It’s not so bad going, but carrying the heavy jars back to town is a burden she’d gladly give up.

A man is there, a Jew, a rabbi from the look of him. She doubts she need fear him, but wishes he were not there to disturb her solitude. Jews are so condescending to her people, as though they weren’t just another branch on the same tree. She nods at him and sets about lowering her jar. He speaks, “Give me a drink.”

She answers, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" His answer is puzzling, “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.”

She is in no mood for riddles. Does he not know the holiness of this well, its history? “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?”

He is more mysterious still: “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. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” What could this mean?

A spring of water in us, gushing. Here is an image of abundance, of movement, of life. If you’ve ever been mesmerized by the rushing water in a brook or river, or stared at a waterfall or waves crashing, receding, returning, crashing again, you know how powerful a representation this is of not running out. And Jesus locates this gushing spring not outside of us but inside, where we always have access. This spring is God’s life, renewing us.

What have you been “going to the well” for your whole life, that you most wish to never run out of? If your answer is something material – food, money – it’s good to name it. If it’s emotional – love, affirmation, attention – it’s important to be aware of what motivates you. God guarantees no provision in those areas. But spiritual commodities, like peace, healing, forgiveness, love – those all come with God’s living water in us, and they are always being replenished.

Today in prayer you might image that river of God-life flowing through you, dislodging all the debris of sin and hurt, and bearing it away, renewing and refreshing everything in its path. You might reflect on areas in which you feel empty or dry, and invite the river to flow to those places. If you feel a need of healing, invite the river to flow into that area. If you’re burdened by anxiety about the world or other people, invite the river to flow through those places, a visual prayer.

As we become more practiced at accessing the living water inside us, the spiritual gifts it brings may just make us more content about those material and emotional areas we worry about. After all, this living water is the river of God, which Jesus likens to the Holy Spirit. Our mouths may thirst, our stomachs may hunger – yet with this spring in us, our spirits need never go dry.

3-6-23 - A Man, a Woman, and a Well

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

It's high noon, on a dry and dusty day. The man is alone, tired and thirsty. A woman approaches, a woman with a past - and quite a present. They are strangers who perhaps should not speak to each other - but they do. And both are changed.

So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.)

As we explore this week's gospel encounter with Jesus, let’s start with the who/when/ where's: We have Jesus, alone. We have a Samaritan woman, her ethnicity stated to convey her status as a not-quite-Jew. Samaritans descended from the original northern kingdom of Israel which, for a time was united with Judea in the south. But when the leaders in Jerusalem decreed that all worship was to take place in the temple there and no longer at the many other sacred sites of Israel, a division began which eventually separated Jews from Samaritans. The familial enmity persisted and deepened into a profound suspicion in which Samaritans were considered heretics and lesser-than.

And what about the time of day? Those with a cultural memory of Westerns might anticipate a clash when we hear “noon” – and certainly we will see some verbal gunplay in this encounter. But what might “noon” mean for the writer of John’s Gospel? The time when the sun is highest, the most light possible is in the day? A symbol of completeness, the mid-point of the sun’s journey across the sky?

Our location is a well, in a place steeped in the history of Israel, a place the patriarch Jacob gave to his best-beloved son, Joseph. Jacob, remember, was Abraham's grandson, whom God blessed after a night of wrestling. In that struggle, Jacob was given a new name: Israel, which became the name for the nation descended from Jacob's twelve sons.

The well might ring other echoes for John’s listeners: in the story of the patriarchs of Israel, at least three matches are made at wells: Abraham’s servant, sent to find a wife for Isaac, meets Rebekah at a well; Jacob meets and falls in love with Rachel at a well; Moses meets his wife at a well. So, should we expect a love story? Jesus often encounters women in the gospels, sometimes with intimacy – emotional, and even physical in the case of the woman who anoints his feet. This won’t be an encounter of romantic love, but a profound connection will take place.

Today, in your imagination, you might approach that well like the woman in the story. Imagine the setting. See Jesus there. How might you feel about Jesus being in a place where you expected to be alone? What needs do you bring to this solitary place? What kind of conversation might you have? Let it unfold, and follow where it goes. Write down any conversation that transpires.

Place, time, personae – the setting is ripe for something to happen. Something always happens when we meet Jesus.

3-3-23 - God So Loved

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

If you ever had to memorize bible verses in Sunday School, chances are you can recite this one, John 3:16, favored by sports fans and poster-makers:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

This verse can evoke mixed emotions. It is a marvelous expression of God’s love for the world, a love so extravagant God willingly gave up his only son to save it. And it makes an extravagant promise – eternal life for those who believe in God’s only son. How we respond to this promise has everything to do with how much we feel the world is in need of saving, and how we feel about the “perishing” part.

For most of the Christian era, it has been generally accepted that people were lost in sin, for which the legitimate penalty was death without chance of pardon; and that God had designed a remedy to meet the demands of that penalty in such a way that we could be spared it – by having his own son, the only perfect sacrifice, take on that death sentence for us. Theologians calls this “substitutionary atonement,” Jesus taking our place. Such a reading of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection is supported by this passage. Jesus says, straight out, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

I cannot debate here the thorny question of whether humankind needed saving, or if God really ordained death as the punishment for sin. I will assert that a God who desires not to condemn but to save is a God worthy of our worship and trust. Condemnation lies at the heart of human sinfulness; our tendency to judge and condemn other people and ourselves is one of the most corrosive attributes human beings share. And so one of the most powerful verses in the New Testament for me is Paul’s declaration, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1)

To be reminded that Jesus himself said God is not interested in condemning anyone is a crucial corrective to centuries of judgmental, condemnatory, narrowly legalistic, rule-based teaching by the church. Condemnation is a reflection of our sinful nature; gracious love is a reflection of God’s nature, and ours as creatures made and redeemed in the image of our extravagant God.

Is there any pattern or behavior in your life for which you continually condemn yourself? Are there other people, individuals or categories, whom you routinely find yourself condemning? Perhaps today we might bring those people and patterns into the light in prayer, asking God to show us how God’s love might lift from us the burden of condemnation – whether we’re the condemned or the condemner. What strategies might you devise to become more aware of the action of condemnation in your life? Where might you invite the winds of the Holy Spirit to blow you into greater freedom and acceptance, of yourself and others?

“For God so loved the world…” Might we ask to be so filled with that gracious love that we find ourselves loving the world in God’s name? When all is love, we need not speak of perishing and saving, only of Life everlasting.

3-2-23 - Up-Lifted

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

As Jesus talks with Nicodemus, he stresses the importance of the spiritual view. Then, almost as an aside, he says something else puzzling: “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

Jesus is alluding to a story recorded in Numbers 21:4-9, about a time when God sent a plague of serpents to punish the Israelites for bellyaching on their journey to freedom:

They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way; they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!” Then the Lord sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take the snakes away from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. The Lord said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.

Putting aside our alarm at the idea of God having a murderous hissy fit in response to incessant whining, let’s focus on the remedy God proposes: To bring about healing by inviting the afflicted to contemplate a symbol of their disease. This story is one source of the universal symbol of medicine, serpents entwined on a staff. And we see here a principle often found in medicine – that healing can come from the very source of disease, as with vaccines and homeopathic remedies.

By linking this image to his own impending suffering on the cross, Jesus (or John?) suggests that the remedy for sin can be attained by reflecting upon the very image of sin, a punished, crucified man. As Paul wrote, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (II Corinthians 5:21)

A central theme of John’s Gospel is that Jesus’ glory was supremely revealed on the Cross – there was the Sign of Signs that God was doing a new thing. The Cross is central to all four Gospels, but only John sees it as a place of glorification. So let’s go with him for today. Our sacred story tells us that Jesus took upon himself the sin of the whole world as he died, crucified and forsaken. Can we see in that scene of torture any redemption and release for ourselves? Healing from the sin-sickness that can pervade our souls?

Is there an area of sin in your life you would like to see die with Jesus on the cross? As you pray today, can you imagine that aspect of your life, whether an event or a proclivity, actually being eliminated, so you can be free of it? Our promise is that God has already forgiven us – the Cross covered the future as well as the past.

In John 12:32 Jesus is quoted, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” We don’t have to contemplate a bruised and bloodied Jesus in order to be forgiven. We can draw near to the throne of grace because of what Jesus took on for us – and because now that cross is empty. We can honor him best by accepting his gift and walking in the forgiveness and wholeness he won for us.