QUEST, Part 2: THE ENCOUNTER

John 4: 7-40

Many years ago, my mother-in-law was active in the American Baptist Church Global Mission Board. This gave her opportunities to travel. At one point she was offered a chance to go to Burma, which we now know as Myanmar. She was so excited about it, and I couldn’t help wondering why. What on earth was in Burma that she cared about?

Well, actually, I should have known at the time. The reason she wanted to go there, or anywhere, was because there would be new encounters. Conversations to be had, people to meet, places to see, things to learn. This is the kind of person Claire is. Every stranger is a potential friend. How you approach the encounter makes all the difference.

Burma was a very unlikely place for Claire to travel, but a journey to an unlikely place can hold surprising gifts. This is the case in Jesus’ journey to Samaria.

Samaria was an unlikely place for him to be. The Jews and the Samaritans did not get along well. You know the parable of the Good Samaritan? Those who heard Jesus tell the parable did not, in any way, consider the Samaritans to be “good.” The notion of regarding a Samaritan as a neighbor was not a popular notion.

In verse 4 of this chapter, John writes, “He had to go through Samaria.” It was in between Judea, where he had been, and Galilee, where he was going. Actually, it was common for Jews to take long detours to avoid going through Samaria, but Jesus did not. He had to go through Samaria, John says, and I suppose he did. Because there was a conversation awaiting him there.

Whether or not he knew he would encounter a woman at the well, I think Jesus went to Samaria with the intention of having a conversation.

His disciples went off in search of provisions, leaving Jesus to wait by a well, a place they, no doubt, considered safe. It was unlikely that anyone would be at the well then. High noon in the desert. Most women would go in the early morning and the evening, when the heat of the sun was not beating down on them. You would be unusually brave or foolish to venture out at midday.

But, against the odds, this woman came to the well at noon to draw water.

Many have suggested that this particular woman is there at noon because of who she is. She is a five-time divorcee, apparently. This would mean that she has been discarded by five husbands. Five different men have married her and then, for their own reasons, announced, “I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you.” It was not possible for a woman to divorce a man, but it was that simple for a man to divorce a woman.

One would think that she carried this as a burden of shame. One might assume that she managed her days so that she could avoid the other women of the village because she knew they talked about her, looked down upon her, and probably distrusted her.

But she doesn’t act like a disgraced woman. She doesn’t shuffle around, bent over, head low in shame. She behaves as a woman who is at home in her skin.

Maybe it is Jesus who has this effect on her. She doesn’t appear to be afraid of him. She recognizes him as a Jew. And she knows all the prohibitions that warn her against interacting with this man. Even so, she asks him a question: “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”

And this one question contains so many:

How is it that you, a man, are speaking to me, a strange woman?

How is it that you, a Jew, are speaking to me, a Samaritan?

How is it that you, a religiously observant son of Israel, are speaking to me, one who is considered by your people to be unclean?

What are you doing here in Samaria? What are you doing at my well?

Just asking. Maybe it’s rude, but she’s just wondering.

Jesus isn’t bothered by her blunt question. It is almost like he was waiting for it.

So he says: Let’s talk about the water that I could give to you. The living water.

And they’re off.

She is a worthy conversation partner for Jesus. She doesn’t back down. She responds to every strange thing he says – at first not understanding him, but staying with him nonetheless. Perhaps one of the best things that can be said about her is this: She is not afraid of what she doesn’t understand, but is willing and able to continue the conversation through the ambiguity.

The Samaritan woman did not come to the well looking for Jesus. She had no idea he would be there. But finding him there she was fully present with him. In the bright midday light, they speak and listen to each other in truth. She has questions: Why do you ask me for water? How would you possibly get this water you are referring to? How can I get this living water that will forever satisfy my thirst? Wait –

Why do you mention my husband? What is that to you?

How do you know me, Jesus? How do you know me?

Jesus has never met this woman before, but he does know her. And he doesn’t shame her or look down on her.

One thing you notice in this story is that both Jesus and this woman have the traveler’s mindset; they are open to seeing things in a way they haven’t before; they are open to learning something new. They are having a real, authentic, and meaningful conversation.

When you have a conversation, there are two sides to it. That is what a conversation is, after all. Each one shares with the other. And you never know, when you enter into a conversation, whether Jesus might be a part of it too.

The prophet Muhammed said, “Don’t tell me how educated you are. Tell me how much you have traveled.” I would modify this to say, “tell me how much you have lived in the world with a traveler’s mindset.”

My mother-in-law, Claire did not get to travel to Burma, because the political situation became too volatile and dangerous; the trip was cancelled. She was deeply disappointed. But she did have other adventures. She traveled to Russia during the Cold War. She traveled to Nicaragua during the revolution. And she had extraordinary, life-changing encounters. But it is also possible to have extraordinary encounters without leaving home, because there are people all around us who have come from all over the world and have lived through extraordinary things.

An encounter with someone different is an invitation to deepen our compassion, to make meaning, to broaden our perspective and our spirit. And it is an opportunity to give the gift of God’s love.

May you open your heart to the encounter, and may you encounter Jesus.

Photo by Vincent Eisfeld on Unsplash

QUEST, Part 1: Leaving Home

 

Exodus 13: 17-21        

Ann Tyler wrote a book called The Accidental Tourist. It is a story about a man who has made a successful career of writing travel books for people who hate travel. His audience is primarily businessmen, for whom travel is a necessary evil in their lives. The books presume that the reader hates leaving the comforts of home just as much as the author does. So he fills the pages with tips on where to find Kentucky Fried Chicken in Stockholm, Taco Bell in Mexico City, and other absurdities. He writes travel guides that let travelers pretend they never left home.

The character, Macon Leary, is quirky and endearing, sort of typical for Ann Tyler’s stories. To say that he is set in his routines is an understatement. He is a man of systems, which he has devised to guard against anything unfamiliar happening to him. He has been living in the same Baltimore neighborhood his entire life; merely venturing into other areas of the city are unnerving to him.

It’s funny that he has found his niche in travel writing. But, of course, it makes for a good story.

One of the most popular real-life travel writers in America is Rick Steves. His Paris guidebook never left my hand during my visit to that city. He guided me through the most famous museums, showing me how to avoid the long lines, and into the most charming, off the beaten path, streets. My trip would have been so much different without his guidance.

You may know him from his TV travel shows on PBS as well. He has a wonderful midwestern accent, folksy style, and a quirky sense of humor that comes across so well.

What you might not know about him is that he is a devout Lutheran. He has spoken often about his faith and how it informs his experience of the world as well as how his experiences in the world inform his faith. For Rick Steves, traveling is an act of spirituality.

That may sound strange. We are accustomed to thinking of travel as having many benefits. It can be restful, getting us away from the daily grind. It can be educational, allowing us to learn about different cultures and lands. It can be profitable, as it was for the businessmen Macon Leary was writing for. Travel can be just fun – as it is for the millions of people who travel every year to Disney World, Broadway shows, Las Vegas casinos, or the Ocean City beach. But is travel something spiritual?

The business of moving from one place to another actually takes up a lot of space in the scriptures. Much of the biblical story takes place on the road. Or in the water. Or, as in the scripture today, in the wilderness. And all these travels we read of in the Bible – were they just necessary evils, like they were for Macon? Or is the journey a part of God’s plan?

The more time you spend with the story of the Exodus, the more you realize that the journey itself was as important as the destination. Maybe even more important.

The people of Israel did not imagine they would be journeying anywhere, anytime. They were stuck in Egypt. They were enslaved by Egyptian rulers and forced into hard labor, building monuments to glorify Pharaoh. The Exodus story tells us they had fallen into this situation sometime after Joseph died, when the rulers of Egypt forgot all that Joseph and the Lord had done for them. And they were consumed by fear of the Israelites, so they did what fearful people often do: they brutalized them.

This went on for hundreds of years, until God lifted up for them a leader – Moses. Moses led them out of Egypt and through the wilderness, toward the land that God promised to them.

The journey was long. Forty years they spent in the wilderness, leaving us to scratch our heads, wondering why. Did the lose their way? Were they having trouble deciding which way to go? What was the reason it took so long?

And the answer I come to again and again is this: it wasn’t about the destination. It was all about the journey. The time spent away from home was time for them to grow spiritually.

It was time for them to learn about the ways of God and draw closer to God. It was time for them to learn how to live in obedience to God; to learn how to worship.

It was a time for them to learn something about who they were, as a people. You see, they didn’t really know who they were. They had only ever been slaves in Egypt. They needed to learn to know themselves as free people in the world.

The Exodus story is one that speaks to many peoples and many times. It certainly spoke strongly to the Black slaves in America before the Civil War. In fact, it was such a powerful story, the white slaveowners made every effort to hide it from them. Special slave Bibles were printed that omitted the Exodus story and various other parts of the Bible that might inspire Black slaves to imagine themselves as free human beings.

That is how powerful the story was.

The Exodus is just as powerful today, and it speaks broadly to all of us. Because there are so many ways to be enslaved – very often enslaved to our own devices.

The character Macon, in Ann Tyler’s book, appears that way to me. He has drawn his life so close, so small, because everything else seems frightening. He becomes a slave to his rigid systems and he knows no way out. When certain things happen that disrupt his systems, Macon finds himself in a kind of wilderness.

What Macon needs is a guide to get him through the wilderness. He finds one. But I won’t spoil the story – you might want to read it.

We all need guides when we set out to explore unfamiliar territory. The Israelites needed Moses to guide them toward taking that first step out of Egypt, leaving what had been for them the only home they had ever known. That first step might be the hardest one of all. Not to say that they didn’t want to turn back many times during the journey. They couldn’t have done it without Moses, and Moses couldn’t have done it without God guiding him.

And where would any of us be if they had not made the journey?

Travel is a spiritual act because it allows us to grow.

When the Israelites left home and ventured into the wilderness, when Macon Leary ventured out of his comfort zone, when we get in a plane or our cars and go out to explore new places, we have the opportunity to learn something new about the world and learn something new about ourselves. Encountering a new place is a gift that allows us to broaden our perspective, and as Rick Steves says, the most beautiful souvenir is a broader perspective.

All kinds of strange and wonderful things happen to us when we venture out into the world. We see that God created people and places that are so different from the people we know and the places we live.

When we go out into the world we learn that we can do more than we ever thought we could. We find, perhaps to our surprise, that there are good and generous and helpful people everywhere. We carry home with us some of our best stories, and we never tire of telling others about the time in Mexico City when we followed a woman onto a subway train, not knowing if something terrible or wonderful would happen. That’s one of my stories. I will tell it to you sometime, if I haven’t already.

When we travel we see the world God created. And in the process, we see God.

During the next few weeks we will spend some time thinking about the things that happen when we travel – the encounters we have, the ways these encounters give us opportunity to reflect on our lives, our beliefs and assumptions, and then be transformed.

After a year and a half of being mostly homebound, some of us are raring to go, while others are still hesitant. And yet others are simply unable to go anywhere. Travel is not available to all of us. But what we might call the traveler’s mindset is something that is available to all of us. Regardless of whether we go anywhere, we all can look at the world with wonder and curiosity, and a willingness to learn and grow.

The people of Israel could not take possession of the promised land unless they sojourned in the wilderness. That is the reality. So it is that we cannot take full possession of our identity as God’s beloved children, until we spend some time sojourning. Whether we hit the road or stay at home, the journey begins with the first step. A willingness to move out of our safe space, our comfort zone, and look at the world with new eyes. To surrender our judgment and preformed opinions. Or, as Rick Steves says, to let the road be our church.

Photo by Mantas Hesthaven on Unsplash

REST

 

Exodus 20:8–11

Let’s take a moment to try something. Think about the last 24 hours of your life. And make a list of three people who were a part of it – in big or small ways. They might even be strangers, whose names you don’t know. Then list three things that you engaged with – things you made, washed, ate, threw away, something you did something with.

Now list three choices that you said yes or no to. Can you see how in each of these things, people, actions you listed you were entering into God’s creative field? How does it feel to think of yourself and your daily life in this way?

The creative process that we have been talking about these past six weeks is really just the natural flow of our lives. When you analyze it, you could break it down into six stages. But we do better to imagine them as waves in a cycle, a cycle that continually plays out – the cycle of God’s creativity.

We began with the dream. Every creation begins with a dream – before the work begins we have to dream up what we want to create. The dream of some possibility that doesn’t already exist. Our ability to dream is essential for us to be able to envision God’s kingdom and then begin the work of bringing it to fruition.

Next is the hovering. God hovered over the waters at the very beginning, and each day God brought some more order to the universe. We too must practice hovering, which I think closely aligns with the incubation stage of creativity. The process of creating is a combination of making something happen and letting something happen, so sometimes we step out of the way and let it happen.

And then, at the right time, we step forward and take a risk, we try something new, not knowing how it will turn out. But if we don’t try it we will never find out.

Then we step back again. We listen. We watch. We pay attention to what happens with the new thing we put into the world. We pay attention to what might be the next step, the next right thing to do.

And then we re-integrate. Everything new must find its place in the world. The old must make way for the new. Every time something changes everything changes. This world is in a constant state of creation.

Constant! And it could be thoroughly exhausting – if we did not include rest.

Rest was an essential part of God’s creation of the world. On the seventh day God rested from all the work that God had done. God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, according to the story of creation in Genesis. And so from this we derive the laws regarding the sabbath day.

We have this text from Exodus, which clearly states that the seventh day, the sabbath day, is for rest, not work. And the law then proceeds to delineate everything that cannot be done on the sabbath day, everything that counts as work.

It can seem to verge on extreme. I thought so when I was in college and shared a dorm suite with a Jewish student. She asked me to leave the bathroom light on from Friday evening through Saturday evening because she was not permitted to turn a light switch. This was considered operating machinery, work, which is forbidden. If I forgot and turned the switch off, she explained to me, she would have to use the bathroom in the dark. To be helpful, she would leave a little note on the switch each week, in case I forgot.

It seemed a little bit silly to me. Although I have come to understand since then that the sabbath restrictions are a way of articulating a rhythm, the rhythm of God’s creation which includes rest. I have grown to appreciate the rhythms of daily life under the law for Jews who live lives of observance.

Still, I think it might feel suffocating at times. Because I think that Jesus felt that. Mark’s gospel tells a story of a time Jesus and his disciples were walking through fields of grain, and as they walked they plucked off some heads of grain. It was the sabbath day. The Pharisees watching them charged them with breaking the law. Plucking grain was forbidden because it was work. But Jesus turns to them and reinterprets the law. He says, “The sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the sabbath.” In other words, God does not intend for us to be slaves to the sabbath.

Jesus did all kinds of unlawful things on the sabbath day, like healing people of their afflictions. As he did with so many aspects of the law, Jesus challenged the traditional understanding of it.

Not to say that Jesus was opposed to rest, however. For he also said, “Come to me all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:28-29).

Eugene Peterson, in his translation of the scriptures called The Message, says it this way: Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.

Jesus moves our understanding of sabbath away from a rigid form we force ourselves into, toward a delicate, gentle, rhythm of finding grace.

Perhaps I am treading into a minefield when I say this, but I wonder if we let church become a form we force ourselves into, rather than allowing it to be a gentle rhythm of God’s grace.

I say this out of love for the church and concern for the church’s life. Because too many people have walked away from the church because it felt like this to them – rigid, joyless, something that just didn’t fit. Something lacking that gentle rhythm of grace.

If we allow the church to become just work, we have lost our place in the rhythm of God’s creativity. To the extent that we shut out dreaming, we lose our rhythm. To the extent we shut out play, to the extent we shut out rest, we lose our rhythm – the unforced rhythm of God’s grace.

We give it up for the sake of the artificial rhythms of religion.

We need the holy, creative, playful, loving Spirit now more than ever.

Photo by Agence Olloweb on Unsplash

Photo by Agence Olloweb on Unsplash

RE-INTEGRATE

1 Corinthians 12:12-19

Some years ago my sister gave me a gift of a beautiful hand-made clay pot. It has gingko leaves decorating the surface of it. I loved it immediately. But I didn’t know, immediately, what to do with it. So I set it on the kitchen counter. I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, so I looked at it many times every day. I moved it around as needed while I worked. I wrote my sister a note to thank her for the gift. In the note I told her I was waiting for it to show me how it wants to be used.

And eventually it did. It makes a wonderful napkin holder. To this day it remains in the kitchen (having lived in several kitchens by now), on a shelf, holding the napkins. It is beautiful. I get to look at it every day. And it has a purpose.

What more could you ask for?

The book that I have been reading, called Drawn In, says that everything is created with a purpose. Nothing is created simply for itself. Now this doesn’t mean that everything must be utilitarian, that nothing can be valued just for its beauty. Because, of course, beauty is in itself a purpose. We admire beauty, and find joy from being in its midst. But even beauty wants to be useful, engaged with – that is how beauty becomes a part of our lives. 

When we talk about these things – how a creation is used, how it is valued, it is a question of economy. That might seem like an odd word to use, but economy is essentially about how we manage our stuff. And there are many ways of doing that.

I read something interesting about Native American economy. Before the Europeans came to America, the Native American tribes practiced a kind of gift economy. They gifted pipes to one another. The pipes served as a symbol of how they had interacted with one another, of the generosity they had experienced from one another. For example, the Lakota tribe would give a pipe to the Cherokee tribe. Later when the Apaches met the Cherokees the pipe would be passed to them, and they would give one of their pipes to the Cherokees.

When the Europeans arrived and began to establish friendships with the Native American tribes, the tribes gave them pipes too. But the Europeans were not familiar with this form of gift economy. They would accept the pipe and put it in a trophy case, because it was so cool. They would see the pipe as an acquisition. Much to the dismay of the Natives, their pipes were taken out of circulation. The tribesmen learned in this way that the European men did not see the world and all that is in it the same way they did. 

This idea of gifting and sharing freely the stuff of creation has somehow managed to come up in multiple ways for me recently. Last week several of us got together to have a conversation about the first of our Summer Reads – The Girl Who Smiled Beads. It is a true story about a girl, Clementine, who escaped the Rwandan genocide when she was six years old. She and her older sister then made their way through one refugee camp after another for about six years. Eventually they came to the United States.

Clementine shares a saying that she first learned from her mother, which was repeated by her older sister: Nothing is yours; everything is yours. This is the notion that everything in this world is created by God, created for the use of all God’s people. Everything is yours. But nothing is yours. It is a gift from God and is meant for sharing.

Nothing is yours; everything is yours. This, of course, runs up hard against some sayings we have in our country: like, to the victor goes the spoils. Or, he who dies with the most toys wins.

The morning after our book discussion, I was listening to a podcast that was titled, Why Do We Work So Much? A few decades ago, economists believed that by the time we reached the 21st century, Americans would only need to work about 15 hours a week to meet our needs, that we would be full to overflowing with free time. But what they didn’t anticipate is that our “needs” would continually outrun our ever-increasing abundance. We have more than we have ever had before. But we “need” more than we ever have before.

On this podcast I listened to an anthropologist describe his experience living amongst a tribe in southern Africa, one of the last remaining hunter-gatherer societies. He explains some of the systems this tribe has worked out to prevent any member from acquiring too much more than others – too much stuff, too much success, too much admiration. They understand that the survival of their society depends on being able to maintain a basic equality.

And so if one man has a good combination of skill and luck and manages to hunt down a giraffe, when he brings it home to the tribe, this is what he gets: he is mocked; he is criticized. And he puts up with it. You see, he knows that he has done a great thing, and he knows that the others are aware of it. But he also knows that he doesn’t survive solely by his own skills. He is a part of a society in which they are all dependent on one another for survival. He is willing to tolerate the ribbing for the sake of the whole body.

To know that the whole body is vital – this is key.

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. These are the words Paul writes to the Corinthian church, words they evidently needed to hear for the sake of their own survival. 

The church in Corinth was suffering from an inequality problem. Some of the members of the new church brought some old values in with them and these old values were threatening to destroy the church that had been created. Some of the people were wealthy. And others were poor. Some lived lives of leisure and others were slaves. They brought this hierarchical way of being and seeing into the church.

For example, it seems that there was a great inequality when it came to food. The church would gather for a meal. And the upper-class members, those who didn’t work, came early to the feast. They helped themselves to all they wanted. But the members who were slaves couldn’t get there early. They were late to arrive, and when they got there they might find that the food was already gone. Outrageous. What kind of a system was this, where the ones with the most would have first pick of the bounty? And the ones who had the least would be the last? 

What kind of system was this? It may have been the norm in the Roman Empire. And it may be the norm in the United States of America. But it is not the norm in the kingdom of God. For we know what Jesus said – that the last shall be first and the first shall go to the back of the line. In God’s realm, there is enough for everyone. Everything is yours; nothing is yours.

Paul is concerned about getting this Corinthian church back on track with the gospel, and he begins to teach them with this useful metaphor: that the church is a body – the body of Christ – and every member of the body has value. Every member has a purpose. No member of the body can go it alone. 

The members of the southern African tribe have a way of recognizing this truth and putting it to work. When the hunter comes home with the giraffe, and after he is duly mocked, it comes time to distribute the meat. But who gets to do that? Is it the privilege of the hunter to give out the meat? In fact, no. The tribe has determined that whoever made the arrow that killed the giraffe is the owner of the meat. Whoever made the arrow has the privilege and responsibility of giving out the meat. And there is a very important reason why.

It takes a great deal of physical fitness to be a successful hunter. But arrow-making is different, someone who is old can make an arrow. Someone who is lame or sickly or slow can make an arrow. In fact, they might make the best arrows.

This is what it is to live in community. The first shall be last and the last shall be first, Jesus said. The members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members that we think are less honorable we clothe with greater honor, Paul said.

Everything God created has a purpose, has a place. Do we really think we know better? Can we not accept the value God places on everything and everyone God creates?

When we fulfill our role as co-creators with God, we will have to face the questions about what purpose the new thing has, where does the new thing go? How does it fit into the existing creation? And to do this we must be able to see things in a new way – whether it is a new pot or a new relationship or a new recognition of value where we did not recognize value before. We must be able to let go of the things of the past that block the way now, while holding onto the things from the past that will carry us into the future. Always sorting. Always discerning, always adapting.

We cannot insist that the old way is the right way and the new way is wrong. Neither can we insist that the new way is always right and what is old is wrong. Neither of these is true. What is true is this: God has made us for one another. We are co-creators in this work of community. We are the body of Christ stumbling around on this path toward making God’s dream a reality. 

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