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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.

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Categorically Random, Lent, Relationship

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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. 

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Categorically Random, Lent, Relationship, Temptation