Boot Camp for the Soul, Part 4: Redefined

1 Samuel 16:1-13

John 9:1-41        

JD Vance came from Middletown, Ohio.  He grew up in a poor, dysfunctional family.  His single mother abused drugs and had a different boyfriend about every month.  His grandparents abused alcohol and fought – once his grandmother shot his grandfather.  Although there were definitely bright spots, they were a mess.  After graduating high school, JD enlisted in the marines because there was something in him that was reaching out for something better. 

He went into boot camp a soft, pudgy teenager.  The first day he went through the cafeteria line and took a piece of cake for dessert.  His drill instructor stepped in front of him, looked him up and down, and said, “You really need that cake, don’t you, fat-ass?”  He smacked the cake to the floor.  JD bent down, cleaned up the mess, and threw it out.  He never again took a piece of cake.  

He went into Marine boot camp and lost his identity.  He says, “From the day you arrive, no one calls you by your first name.  You’re not allowed to say ‘I’ because you’re taught to mistrust your own individuality.  Instead you refer to yourself as ‘this recruit.’”

When he finished boot camp he was 45 pounds lighter and held himself with pride and new confidence.  People didn’t recognize him anymore.  Boot camp had changed him, inside and out, and redefined him. 

JD wrote about it in his book, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis.  He is now a Yale-educated lawyer, something he didn’t even know was possible when he was a kid in Middletown.  He gives the Marine Corps much of the credit.

But boot camp comes in many different forms, and the Lenten experience of boot camp for the soul has the potential to redefine you as well. 

The stories we heard today are stories of being redefined in the eyes of the world by the power of God.  And how surprising this redefinition tends to be.  In the story David who is anointed by the prophet Samuel, no one sees this happening – even Samuel.  And in the story of the man who was blind from birth, and is given his sight by Jesus, no one sees this happening – not his parents or anyone else. 

The conversations that follow this dramatic healing are the bulk of this story.  The healing itself is quite undramatic – a little spit, a little mud, and there you go.  But that is where the trouble begins. 

People refuse to believe that he is the man he says he is.  Not surprising.  Just like JD after his boot camp transformation, this young man doesn’t appear the same as he did.  What’s more, the fact that he can now see seems to defy the laws of nature.  How is it even possible that he is the man he says he is?

But that is only the beginning of the trouble.  Once the Pharisees get wind of this, they are feverishly working to deny the truth of it.  It can’t have happened because Jesus is clearly a sinner (he heals on the Sabbath) and God doesn’t work through sinners.  It can’t have happened, so they refuse to see what has happened.  They eventually are at such a loss, they simply walk away.

Change can have these effects on people.  When they challenge our beliefs and expectations, we might simply refuse to see what our eyes are seeing.  This is blindness, Jesus says. 

And there is the irony in this story:  the only person who can see is the blind man.  Those who have had sight their whole lives are unable to see, or accept, who it is who stands before them in the person of Jesus.  But the one man who has never in his life seen anything before, looks at Jesus and accepts him for who he is.  Maybe it is because he has never seen anything before. He doesn’t have a lifetime of pre-conceptions about things that infect his ability to see.

Think about how much our preconceptions affect our perceptions.  Think about JD’s story: the pudgy, insecure boy from the dysfunctional, crazy family could not be the strong, confident young man who stood before them now.  Think about David’s story: the small, young boy who watched the sheep out in the pasture while others did more important things could not be the king of Israel. 

Think about a time in your life when you were changed – perhaps when you left home to go to school, or the military, or get married – and you had the chance for the first time to redefine yourself.  No longer would your family define who you are.

Spiritual exercise gives us room to live into God’s definition of who we are.  Even more, they enable us to redefine for ourselves who God is in our lives.  Have you ever imagined that God is the very air that you breathe?

In many languages spirit is the same thing as breath.  The Latin word spiritus means breath.  The Greek word pneuma and the Hebrew word ruah both are used to indicate the Holy Spirit as well as to mean breath or wind.  To think of our breath as the same thing as the Spirit – can it be that God is as close to us as our very next breath, and that being with God is as natural as breathing?

The oldest name we have for God is the sacred name Yahweh.  And it is believed by some that this name Yahweh is merely an approximation of the sound of breath.  The name of God is the breath of life.  God is not watching us from a distance, but God is as near to us as our breath.

Redefine God in this way.  And with each breath, redefine yourself as being filled with the moving and living Spirit of God. 

photo credit: By me (w:User:pfctdayelise) - Image taken by me using Casio QV-R41, CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=732287 

Boot Camp for the Soul, Part 3: Hydrate

Exodus 17:1-7– Water from the Rock

John 4:5-42 – Jesus and the Samaritan Woman       

A couple of years ago I read a memoir called Wild, by Cheryl Strayed.  It is her story of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, which runs up the west coast from Mexico to Canada.  I haven’t done much hiking myself, but from reading Cheryl’s book, I identified three major concerns for long-distance hikers.  The first is shoes.  A pair of good, well-fitting shoes is important.  Cheryl started her hike with a pair of boots that were just a tad too snug, and before long she felt crippled by them. 

The second is weight.  The weight you carry on your back can become a sort of obsession.  Cheryl started out with too much weight.  When she began her journey, she filled her backpack with the things she would have packed in her suitcase if she were taking a vacation.  But as time went on she learned to adjust her priorities and everything in the pack had to pass the test of necessity.  Deodorant, for example, just wasn’t necessary.

Finally, water.  On the Pacific Crest Trail, in particular, it’s important to know where the water is.  You need to know how much you will have to carry to get you to the next water source.  You don’t want to carry too much, because water is heavy.  But on the other hand, one of the worst things that can happen to you is to run out of water.

Maps and guidebooks tell hikers where they will find water, a stream or a water tank, and give them some idea of the reliability of each source.  Calculate how many miles you will go before filling up, and estimating how much water you will need for that distance, hikers determine how much to carry with them. 

Cheryl was well into her journey, and quite comfortable with this routine, when she arrived at a water tank with just drops left in her supply.  She discovered that someone had shot holes in the tank.  It was bone dry.  Immediately, she was flooded with panic.  She knew she would die without water.  As she continued walking all she could think about was water, water, water.

For people who normally only have to turn the tap to get an endless flow of clean water, it takes something like that to remind us what a precious resource water is.  

The Israelites were like Cheryl out in the wilderness without any water.  They panicked.  They knew they would die without water.  They looked to Moses for relief, for he was the one whom they had followed out to this godforsaken place.  They saw he had no water either, and they cried out in anger.  They resented this new freedom with their whole being, because at this moment it looked like nothing but the freedom to die of thirst.

Both texts we read today are stories where water is a central character.  And both these stories want us to notice that this water, while a basic, tangible, essential substance, is also standing in for something bigger, something more abstract. 

Jesus speaks to the Samaritan woman about “living water,” and as soon as she hears of it she knows that she desperately wants it. 

But Jesus does a kind of strange thing then.  He says, Go and get your husband.  And suddenly the conversation turns to an examination of the awkward and uncomfortable and problematic things in her life.  You might say it has turned to an examination of her sinfulness, or the brokenness of her life.  Some have suggested that this is why this woman is at the well at high noon, when no other women will be there.  She may be an outcast among women, for her “checkered” past.  That is possible, but we should not forget that when she returns to the city and tells the people about Jesus, she seems to have a high degree of credibility among them, so she can’t be too much of an outcast.  I guess we might conclude that she is, like all of us, complicated.  Her life, like our lives, holds difficulties, sorrows and joys, disappointments and mistakes.

When Jesus abruptly turns the subject to her failed marriages and unconventional living arrangements, it is as though he is erecting a barrier.  She is on the verge of seizing this living water, but instead of offering it to her he brings up her husbands.  It would not have surprised me to see her pick up her water jar and walk away at that point.  I can imagine her saying, that’s not your business and ending the conversation right there. But she does not.

The Samaritan woman stays with him, right into this difficult passage, because this is where she needs to go with Jesus.  He has revealed to her that he knows her in and out, and she does not run away from him.  This is where she must go with him.  And this is where we must go too. 

The water of life is available to us all, if we go to the source.  And when we go to the source we will find that we are known in and out just as this woman was.  Opening ourselves completely we will be filled with this life-giving water.

This is what I specifically want to say to you today.  This lent, we have talked about exercises we can use on our journeys that will help to form us spiritually.  Lectio divina, or sacred reading, is one.  Last week we considered the practice of letting go of what creates barriers to life in Christ.  But something we haven’t considered yet is the need to be honest about our sins, our brokenness.  Because these things become the barriers that separate us from Christ.

There is a lovely exercise that gives us a gentle opportunity to do that.  It is called the Examen.  This is a practice that comes from Saint Ignatius and has been handed down through the Jesuits.  It is simply a daily examination of yourself in the presence of God.

1.    Give yourself a moment to center yourself in God’s presence.  You want to see through God’s eyes, not merely your own.

2.    Review the day with gratitude. Go over the events of the day, looking for the blessings in it.

3.    While you are doing this, pay attention to how you are feeling.  Angry, sad, joyful?

4.    Face your shortcomings as they have appeared in the events of the day.

5.    Finally, look toward tomorrow.  How will the things you have noticed and prayed about affect the way you will live tomorrow?  You don’t need to go any farther than that.  One day at a time.