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The Way of the Empty Bucket

(Lent 3, 2023; Year A; John 4:5-14)

One of the catch phrases of our time is the “bucket list,” meaning ramming in activities before we die or become enfeebled. It’s a bit like our frenzied health efforts or fears. We seem to have lost track of the idea that we are mortal, and that we cannot possibly do everything possible in one lifetime. It’s there in the movie Moonstruck, as a somewhat cynical wife says that men have affairs to ward off the fear of death. 

Sometimes religion looks like that too. If we pray hard enough, if we are careful enough, or repentant enough, or pious enough, we will live forever. When people tell me they are not religious, it’s usually about having come to terms with their own mortality. If God cannot give us immortality, or invulnerability to suffering, then what good is God? When we take the idea of reward and punishment out of the equation, what is the point of faith? What use is God or faith?

In excerpts from the passage from John, we read:

Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well.

A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked, and you would have been given living water.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?” Jesus said to her, “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.”

John 4

This woman who comes to the well by herself is a person who has passed from fear to challenge. She is not afraid of this stranger. Perhaps she has given up on hypocritical social norms. She is not afraid to contest Jesus’ right to be there or his status as a man, a Jew. Jesus engages in this challenge with her. I imagine Jesus laughing at her audacity and her enjoying trying to put him in his place. He asks for a drink, but it will be at her service, from her bucket, by her grace and generosity. Together, they are sitting in a moment of wilderness, a moment that both satisfies tradition and breaks with it. Peace in community belongs to settlement. Injustice and disharmony break the sacred bonds of creation/God/humanity.

So you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and by fearing him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey.

Deuteronomy 8:6-8

What bucket does Jesus bring to this encounter? I think he carries his traditions and history, but he wears them lightly, not as prison, but as foundation. And the traditions and history he carries are about covenants of justice and trust, prophetic curiosity, creativity, a sacred story that has called men and women out of their comfort zones for millennia. The Divine calls people in and out of wilderness, in and out of settlement. The impetus for movement is justice.

Jesus constantly fills this bucket with new relationships, new ways of understanding generosity and mercy. If the woman had known that the encounter would call her also to review her heritage, her experience to date, she might have been less bold, less sure. How could she have seen that the water of the well would not be as deep as the springs of spirit and hope that Jesus reveals and that are part of his heritage? How could she have guessed that morning, that her life would be changed by a chance encounter — except that she was daring and maybe desperate.

The “water” in Jesus’ bucket is not the property of anyone or any tradition, but the free gift discovered by anyone who chooses to live in harmony: justly, mercifully, compassionately. In this discovery, we find that the water is more than a metaphor, but a profound sense of unity with all that lives. Perhaps eternal life is not the right phrase. Perhaps a better way to describe this peace would be homecoming; it is a reminder that our consciousness is more than this moment, but at the same time, intensely this moment. And at the moment of encounter, Jesus and the woman create a circle of life, of peace.

So what do we have in our buckets? What needs to be emptied so that we can be filled with the water of life? Are our buckets full of regret or anger or shame? Will we create a shelter of peace where we can recognize Jesus? Do we want to receive what Jesus is offering, not as a reward or a punishment, but as a way to perceive reality, a way to be water and light, life saving and protecting? And other than the peace for ourselves, perhaps then we, too, may carry a bucket of love to be shared to those hungry for hope and blessing.

Category:

Categorically Random, Lent, Relationship

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The Moon My Soul

A. E. Turner © 2023

I am standing in the snow
In the winter of my life
The snow dusts my eye lashes,
Slips under my snood,

reminding me

I belong
I belong
To the snow
To the love
To the life that looks like death

Like birth
Like cold
But fall
beneath
and find the warmth,
moon-child.

Find the Holy place
The altar of our beginning

Category:

Categorically Random, poetry

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The Way is Relationship

(Lent 1, 2023)

A church where I was the rector used to create a week-long dramatic presentation for Holy Week, beginning with Palm Sunday. The children and young people were all involved. We would workshop the week ahead of time, discussing the themes and the actions of the narrative. Talking about Jesus’ trial and execution, one young fellow said, “I just don’t get it. Why didn’t Jesus run away?” 

What a great question and I begin every Lent asking why about a lot of what arises. For example, we piously applaud Jesus’ resistance to the temptations. But if he could have solved hunger, oppression, why would that have been so bad?

I want to reflect on two other stories too. In the garden, the snake convinces Eve to eat and share the fruit. Her eyes were indeed opened, and she did learn that evil and good exist; she also learned about mortality and body shame. She did not learn wisdom or discernment. And why was that tree in the garden anyway?

A favourite hymn is God sees The Little Sparrow Fall, based on Matthew 10:29, usually understood to underscore God’s special love for humanity. What we skip over, is that God does not save the sparrow, or us; God cares and knows us intimately, but we must walk our own paths all the same. 

So back to my young man. From the beginning, humanity has been trying to figure out why we are here. We would like it to be for grand schemes, but what if we are here to learn how to be in relationship.And being in relationship entails a series of choices, of commitments, of embarking on one path over another. Maybe choice is the critical issue. 

Maybe the story of Jesus’ temptation is not really about him, so much as answer to why not run, why not be a king, why not start a revolution. The temptation is a story of how just supplying the solutions does not help us to become wise or compassionate or honest. Those solutions are temporary and contingent. The way of Christ is a call to a deep conversion of the human spirit that makes political solutions shallow. Maybe Eve’s choice was in fact the test of whether or not we had the potential, the courage to risk, in order to become the companions of the Holy One. 

The problem with choice is that it requires uncertainty. If we know the outcome, there is no risk, and that means it is not really a choice. Choice means trusting in the moment, following a path with no guarantees. St. Paul reminds his church that for followers of Jesus, it is hope that guides us, not certainty. 

And finally, the little sparrow. I believe God loves the creation with all the passion of divine creativity, but we will not be saved from error, from suffering, from shame and fear. We have been given a special medicine though. We are following one who was so in touch with the Maker that he faced torture and death, trusting that God would use him for good, that his life had value and purpose. You will remember the Gethsemane story when Jesus considers his choice, when escape would have swept away all his work, all the trusting relationships.

In deep connection with God, he saw the only path that could lead his followers into a new humanity. In his choice, Jesus said that power without honesty, integrity, compassion, can only bring death. The way of life and abundance is a round table where the first and last cannot be distinguished. The way of life is relationship, not separating others into groups and categories. The way of life is weeping over the sparrow, the victims of war, the homeless frozen in the midst of plenty. The way of life is understanding that we are just beginning to be human and God will be with us as we leave the past behind like the ashes, blown by away by Spirit. 

And so we sit on the edge of the desert again, with our broken hearts and dreams, with our successes and our failures, and we offer them up to the One who wants to hold us tenderly, but not fix us or stop us. On this journey, we have companions: the sacred stories of other saints and sinners struggling along; we have each other, what needs to be safe community where there is room for error, where we share both suffering and rejoicing, And as we step into the desert without any certainty at all, we feel the Spirit of creativity stirring. And we look behind us at the ashes of our past becoming fertilizer for our new selves and relationships. 

Category:

Categorically Random, Lent, Relationship, Temptation

Weeds and Wisdom

In reading Matthew 13, one parable of a sower, we hear about wisdom, judgement, but it is difficult to know what to make of it. Here are some of my thoughts. In the first place, we learn that the best intentions can have at their root, a less desirable companion, impossible to discern until the crop is revealed. I think we all have this experience of planning an event perhaps, but discovering a problem at the last minute: I forgot about gluten free wafers, I didn’t know you were allergic to cats, or lilies, or whatever; I recommended that person without knowing the stresses would be bad for them. And so on. In Romans, Paul speaks of this existential dilemma. To act, to speak necessitates risk and a willingness to wait for the maturity of a plan before chopping it.

The “devil” in Job and in the story of Jesus’ temptation is just this principle of uncertainty, of a need for the “right” rather than the evolving answer. The devil is a test of our willingness to be uncertain. Faith is not about knowing what is right, so much as a trust that we are meant to learn and grow, naturally shedding the “weeds” of our nature as we develop. Faith means trusting that what is good will not be lost, but we will not know until the denouement, the harvest. And at that time, we will see clearly, and all that has tried to get in the way of joy will be cast away, all that has potential to harm, will be destroyed.

flowers

Enter a caption

Summer garden at Kipling Avenue, Guelph.

I do not really think this parable is about the denouement, however. I think it is about how “disciples” trust that everything resides within the divine, as we hear in the Wisdom of Solomon. Disciples know that change and growth takes time and tending, patience and forbearance. We are invited to share in the process, with faith that the seed is good, the time of testing is limited, and what we feared could ruin everything, has no final substance.

This parable has relevance as we meet new people, and as they bring ideas that challenge us. We tend to be quick to defend the status quo, without considering that it may be flawed by what has grown up around it. Again, new things must be nurtured until they reach maturity. Then we will see that there are some ideas and actions that need to evaluated and discarded.

The church has had varying degrees of faithfulness in this. We have not defended women, or children; we have been complicit in the colonization and enslavement of other nations. We have been unwilling to release our hold of rigid definitions of gender, and have imposed our blindness on generations. We persecuted or ignored the prophets in our midst. We separated ourselves from Jesus’ own people.

And yet I feel and witness the possibility of change, of a willingness to let go of the “weeds” that grew with the good news of Jesus, a Jew of incredible insight. Jesus the Jew, with his rich heritage of oppression and liberation, of personal poverty and the wealth of community, that person has the power to define a more faithful way of engaging in the struggle to lift up the vulnerable, while refusing to be trapped by the roots of prejudice and ignorance. After this time of disease, we may discover that the healthy roots of our faith may look very different, our objectives may have clarified, that prayer and action may be indistinguishable from each other. Jesus did not tell us to weed the garden, but to grow it with our tears of both joy and suffering, with the compost of history and repentance, and with the sunshine that relaxes our souls and caresses us with a vision of the holiness in life, that great gift that inspires us.

Footnotes:
In fact, the editors of the Biblical Archaeology Society have painstakingly curated a brand new Special Collection, Satan, to help you delve into the topic. It includes all of the scholarly points noted above, and all of these articles are from Bible Review:

Category:

Categorically Random, Faith, satan

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An Embodied Prayer

I hope you enjoy this prayer, originally meant for walking, but really demanding only that you find a way to get “into” your body! (You can download it here: anembodiedprayer)

anembodiedprayer

Category:

Categorically Random

Morning and Evening Prayer

Posted here, you will find links to my Morning and Evening, Inclusive Language, Prayer.

Inclusive Language Morning Prayer is found here…

Inclusive Language Evening Prayer is found here…

Category:

Categorically Random, worship

The Paschal Triduum: Fresh Words

Maundy Thursday in the year of the pandemic
In our sacred story, we move from the crowds of Palm Sunday to the intimacy of family MaundyThursdayand friends at table, a table that for many of us this year, will have empty places. The miracle of the internet reminds us that the communion of the saints is not dependent on geography, on proximity, or even on which side of death we are inhabiting. We do not even have to be acquainted with each other or know the names of our ancestors, to know that we are one: connected by a tensile, unbreakable cord of love and faith. 

We remember the actions Jesus left for usnot only as a memorial, but also as a practice. One story we tell is of the woman who anointed Jesus, who understood the nobility and power of sacrifice that is chosen but not sought, that is offered… but with sorrow and doubt. The woman “sees” Jesus and the inevitability of his choices in a way that is too frightening for many. The enormous cost of love in action still troubles us and we would like to think that we can fix things without being willing to sacrifice ourselves. It is not the frivolity of her act that alarms the others, but the way it makes them look mean and cheap. For us this year, we reflect on our brothers and sisters doing essential work that both endangers and isolates them and their families. We want to share in that work, each in our own ways, even if the most we can do is to isolate ourselves in prayer for each other and the world. We know that we are not alone, ever; nor will the holy one ever release the bonds of love.

Another story that we read tells of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, an action done to their great discomfort and embarrassment. It continues to provoke discomfort in modern re-enactments, partly because it is culturally disconnected and partly because we still have to learn about mutual service. Henri Nouwen writes about how loving action necessarily leads to repentance. Nobody likes to receive a gift unless they have a means of reciprocating. Nobody wants to be healed by someone who has no idea of what it feels like to be wounded. We cannot earn grace; we can only receive it. We can, however, share the experience of being healed, the experience of being surprised by love, the discovery of our worth, when we thought we had wandered too far. Before we perform service in the world, service untainted by our own ego’s agendas, we have to say, “Wash me of my delusions; wash away my fear of being known for who I am.” In this so terrifying a year, we beg for God to wash our world, but I hope not just of a virus, but also of greed, of economic injustice, of the assumptions that form barriers between us. 

The third story is the supper of community in which Jesus binds his family and friends to him and to his mission. He tells them that just like bread, many grains have to be gathered together to make a changing, flexible, nutritious community — food for the world. Like wine, grapes are crushed together, their skins broken so that juice can be released. Jesus says that these humble foods are like his life: differences held together, lives broken open and changed. The word Eucharist means thanksgiving. And thanksgiving it is, for others to share the journey, for stories of bread that keep us going from generation to generation, for sacrifice so that all may have hope and all may taste being loved just as they are. Every time we remember Jesus in this way we give thanks that he is present with us, absorbing our pain into his suffering, and blessing our joy with his vision for us. And as this has been done for us, so we must do it for others, by recommitting to the work of peace and justice for everyone: the ones we like, the ones we have feared, the ones we have despised. At the table of the world, in the garden of our round earth, may we be blinded by the tears of grace that make all people one family, one tribe of life.

Finally, we remember the story of the garden in which the disciples, sleepy from food and wine, miss the point and miss the moment. Jesus alone in the garden struggles as every human must with the need for survival balanced against witness to the power of love. Jesus lived with uncertainty, with doubt about his own capacity for courage, with disappointment in his friends and followers. So must we accept these emotions, these reactions, this living reality. As we move to the future this year, our holy places will be empty, waiting to be filled with new life, new vision. What else can a person really offer accept our own lives, our questions, our fear, our sorrow, our hopes and dreams?

GoodFriday

Good Friday
The story of Good Friday is the story of two competing drives in human nature. These drives are expressed by the need to dominate and the need to liberate. The trial and crucifixion of Jesus differs only in the power of Jesus’ love to leave a mark on human history that no domestication by institutions can ever fully erase. The cry from the cross continues to reverberate throughout the corridors of power, no matter how much insulation is employed to drown it out. And that cry is mirrored in every faith group, every humanist group, every atheist group.

On Palm Sunday we remembered how the forces of domination began to swarm around Jesus, trying to drown out the cries of the poor, even the cries of the very stones in the earth: “Save us, save us.” We have heard this week how Jesus’ friends could not hold the course, how impatient they became, how easily they turned to the brokers of power, or were intimidated by them.

Today, we remember the answer. The answer is found in the refusal to retaliate and the refusal to submit. It is the hard and long road. Resolution does not come quickly or efficiently. It costs. It requires sacrifice, holy work. It requires everything we have because it is not only about acting in compassion but also about not acting with violence of any sort. That includes the violence and hate and rage we have seen on the internet, in grocery stores, in borders that refuse entry, in better care for the affluent than the poor. We must learn compassion if we would save our world as it could be, and let the world as it has been wither away. The more we each have, the more will be expected and the greater sacrifice that we should want to offer. The revolution that we need is of the human heart. We need to re-learn compassion as a life skill that is as important as survival. We need to learn resistance to complicity with the lies of domination.

Liberation from fear allows us a freedom to experience how precious we are to the Holy One who did not count Jesus’ death on the cross as a failure. Rather Jesus’ death led his disciples up to this present day to have a vision of the peaceful kingdom, a dream of realized life, the truth that we are all part of the transformational life of matter and spirit. Liberation from fear teaches us how to embrace the deep laughter of the one who is making all things new and leading us more fully into awareness of the light within and around us.

Holy Saturday
In the dark, a candle is lit and a voice rises in the night calling us from death to life. Jesus says that our God is the god of the living so — leave death for the dead. We affirm that death is a means of passage, but life is the nature of existence.

eastercandle

Death is the absence of transformation, a mausoleum of the imagination. It is through our imaginations that scientific discoveries are achieved, facts become mutable, a life of spirit is possible. Our response to our paschal celebrations is to throw off the intellectual shackles that tell us we are separate, finite, limited. We are invited to understand our minds as fuelled by endless possibility for change, growth, renewable life. We yield the security of naive faith, for the mature faith that recognizes the Holy Spirit in science, in study, in the transformation of old metaphors for the explosive light of new insight.

We give thanks for the body of Jesus that reminds us that we, with all the created order, are precious and unique expressions of the divine. In our relationships, we remember that Jesus taught us that the linking of vulnerability leads to resilience and power not over, but with.

With our souls, we engage in the awareness that we know so much less than the wealth of our experience can name. The life of the spirit is always beckoning us on, to new knowledge, to a deeper sense of connection.

One day, we will heal the planet. One day we will heal ourselves.

One day we will be at peace.

One day we will know the joy of abiding within the goodness and love of the divine.

One day we will cast away the torn shroud of uncertainty for the baptismal gown of hope.

One day, we will all be anointed by and for love in the household and tribe of love.

Category:

Categorically Random, Holy Week

Palm Sunday in the year of pandemic

Hosanna! Save us! Oh, save us! 

The folks of the lower town — the people not welcome or not well enough, not affluent01dandelion enough, even without enough status — called to Jesus, greeting him with their rags, with the weedy palms along the road, hailing him as their hope for a better life. They missed the point… and we still do! Jesus came to show us that salvation was present from the beginning. Within the garden of earth grows everything we need for sustenance and for healing. Within community, there can be strength and love and safety. We have what we need. In every religion and philosophy, there are even instruction manuals.

But do we really want to be saved? Or rather, are we willing to pay for our salvation with how we live and with a value system that is egalitarian and inclusive? I am not sure. The holy books offer conflicting ideas about all of this, but if we look to the models we see in holy people, we will recognize generosity, forgiveness, learning, change, kindness.  

This Palm Sunday sees the powers and principalities of our world, paralyzed by a virus, but still working on nuclear proliferation, on grasping at supremacy, or destroying eco systems. Power cannot acknowledge salvation.

03pussywillowWho came to Jesus’ parade? The ones who recognized that Rome would not save and would ultimately fail. Jesus offered a different hope that did not rely on the politics of the moment, a trust in what could happen when people came together as one, that miracles would be the norm, and blessings would abound.

I recognize the spirit of Jesus in much of the outpouring of compassion and communal cooperation in this health crisis. I wonder what will change because of it. I suspect lots of people just want to get back to their lives BTP(before the plague) but I hope that something has changed in our values and in our communal goals. I hope that we have learned something useful for future generations.  

Some people have suggested putting signs of spring in our daytime windows and candles at night to remind us of better days ahead, of a break in the loneliness around us that we can usually ignore. At the end of this week, we will remember that Jesus died alone, a hope seemingly defeated. If we want to take resurrection seriously, we have to begin with a dream that either resists death and oppression, or we will give in to the version of reality that facilitates oppression and denies healing and community. May weeds become cherished, May weedy people become family, may Jesus’ ancient path become our 02dandelionembrace of his vision for our broken world.

Prayers

Loving Maker,
you reveal the stars from which we are formed.
You greet us in the greening of the earth, in the creatures that leap in joy.
You who are within and around, help us to delight in our lives.
Provoke us to acts of compassion and generosity.
May we all fall to our knees in adoration of all your works,
and especially in the life of Jesus,
who showed us that fear cannot control us,
and even death must give way to the life that is you.
In all things we praise your holiness and love.
Amen.

Gracious God,
you cradle us in life and encourage us to grow into hope and new life.
In this time of violence and disease,
we also see the green shoots of generosity and sacrifice.
Help us to value these human gifts that provide food and healing,
hope and faith, to a desperate people in a desperate time.
May we who have more appreciate the struggle of those who have less,
and may we be stirred to compassion today.
May our hearts be transformed for tomorrow.
Amen.

 Holy One,
you lavish us with possibilities and creativity.
May we not hide from injustice and harm,
but stand on the side of the crucified.
May we follow him at the expense of our peace of mind,
and our personal security.
May those who have, act with generosity.
May those who have less, accept help as we also learn
the lessons of transformation of and within community.
May the name of Jesus bless all those who are the sacrifice,
the Holy offering of their lives for others.
May we revere the holiness within all life for that life is You.
Amen.

Category:

Categorically Random, Holy Week

Lent 5: To Be Your Christ

This Sunday, I have added an update of an ancient liturgy that is not priestly, but communal. In these challenging times, together yet apart, we may want to look to the simplicity and hope in our origins and in the good news as understood by Jesus, the faithful Jewish prophet, martyred by the imperialistic regime of Rome.

Collect
Beloved and Holy God,
the bones of this age — disease and famine, war and deceit — fill our hearts with fear and despair. Help us to turn these bones into the compost of new beginnings. May we step out of the valley of death into your assurance of eternal life. Let us believe that we will leave the depths to see the morning of a fresh, new world. In the name of the Jesus who died with us so that we might believe in your Life.
Amen.

Prayer over the Gifts
Maker of all,
our feet feel the soft blue clay of spring, our eyes greet the green shoots budding on the trees, our hands yearn to sprinkle seeds. And yet we are mired in a time of contagion and paralysis. Help us to remember that we are the Body of Christ, connected by water and blood, in your womb of life. As we offer our souls and bodies, let us hold each other in hope and in love.
Amen.

Prayer after Communion
Generous God,
you have made creation so that we must share in the struggle and could share in the blessings of life. May this time of pausing help us all to give thanks for the glory and complexity of this world. May we find new ways to be your church, to be a just and healing presence in your church, to be your Christ in hope, sacrifice, and resurrection.
Amen.

Category:

Categorically Random

Apart and Together in Virtual Prayer

The following resource is downloadable and free for use as you join in prayer with friends or family, whether in person or virtually.

Apart and Together in Virtual Prayer

Category:

Categorically Random, Prayer