Year A: Exodus 17: 1-7, John 4: 5-42
Again good morning, as we continue our way now at the Third Sunday of
Lent. It’s often noted that the English
word “Lent” comes from the same early English root as our words “long” or “lengthen,”
and refer specifically to the season of the lengthening of the day,
spring. In these weeks before Holy Week
and Easter a time of reflection, penitence, preparation—but also in the midst
of that, to see and experience transformation and renewal, as the blanket of
snow and ice and cold as we have lived through the long winter now gives way to
the first signs of bright and warm new life beginning to emerge. Maybe it doesn’t quite feel like it this chilly
morning, but it is on its way!
A meaningful and poetic analogy of image for the encounter we have in
the great cycle of the church year with the pattern of our response to the gift
of God, his grace and love in Christ Jesus, recognizing our sin and in
repentance and in the commitment to an amendment of life to know and experience
the spiritual renewal in his promise. The
awareness of sin, we might say, as the first and perhaps the most certain sign
of the gift of God’s grace and power. Even that awareness comes only by his generous action.
That moment in the story of
the Prodigal Son when the Wastrel has spent his inheritance and is plunged into
the depths of ruin. And in Luke 15: 17 as Jesus is
telling the story, “and when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my
father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare . . . . I will arise and go to my father, and I will
say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you . . . .” Again, “when he came to himself.” The literal meaning of "repent," the imperative
“metanoite:” “get a different consciousness.”
Get your head on straight. Wake
up and turn around. What can be and
probably should be an incredibly painful moment. But also again, pure gift. The first moment of God’s gracious hand
reaching into our lives. As he acts first,
while we are still deep in our sleep, deep in our denial. Quoting again the words of John 3:16 as we
heard them in the readings appointed last Sunday, “For God so loved the world,
that he gave his only Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish,
but have everlasting life.”
Now, in the study of new languages we always need to be alert for what
my 7th grade French teacher called “des faux amis.” False friends. Words that look to be so similar to, even
exactly like, words of our own language that we mistakenly assume a common
definition. It can get you into
trouble. So here this morning from the first words of
our Old Testament reading simply to say that the Hebrew word translated here as
the “wilderness of Sin” has nothing to do with the spiritual condition of the
Israelites and the rebellion against God that we heard about in Genesis last
Sunday.
It’s pure and simple a
geographical marker of a region of the Sinai peninsula. We know “Mount Sinai.” From that same word. And if
we were reading the Bible in a German translation this morning we wouldn’t
pause. But you can’t help noticing.
Because we are reading in English,
and this is of course what the story is about.
The sin that goes all the way down in us. Through and through.
The great multitude liberated from slavery in Egypt by God’s mighty
arm, passing through the Red Sea with the waters parted like great walls of
either side. Coming to the Holy Mountain
of smoke and flame to receive the great commands of God and the foundation of
Torah, the Law, that will define and constitute their identity and
purpose. But then day after day, in the
desert heat, under the open sky, hunger and thirst, the weakest struggling to
keep up. Weeks turn into months, months
into years. Conflicts arise within,
there are battles with Bedouin tribes, conflicts with those through whose lands
they are passing. Even the essentials of
life at risk. “At least in Egypt we had
food to eat, water to drink.” Who is
this Moses, anyway? Can we trust him? We’ve followed, we’ve heard him speak of how
God called him, of how God spoke to him on the mountain. The God of Moses. We trusted for a while, but now we need to
see some results. He says “have faith,
the Lord will provide.” But that’s not
enough, not any more. Give us something
to drink!
And at the Lord’s command, in the midst of all this grumbling and
rebellion, in the heart of the “wilderness of sin,” Moses strikes the rock, and
pure water flows.
Or as St. Paul puts it in Romans 5, the theological framework for the
waking up of the Prodigal Son, “God proves his love for us in that while we
were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
While we were still wandering in that wilderness, before we even knew how
lost we were.
What the faithless people of Israel deserved, after all that God had
done for them, was nothing. “Go ahead,
then, all right, go on back to Egypt.
See how you like it.” But what
they got was more than they deserved. In
the wilderness of Sin, the water of life, a renewal of hope, an expression of
love.
And so the Samaritan Woman at Jacob’s Well. So lost in the “Wilderness of sin” of her
life that she won’t even dare to show her face at the well in the early
morning, when the women of the village would normally go to supply their homes
and families.
She comes in the noonday heat, when the neighbors are having their
siesta and no one will see. And she
dances around in this repartee with Jesus.
Hiding her brokenness she thinks, avoids the subject of her true
condition.
And yet Jesus stays with her, and in a word reveals and shares with her
such an abundance of grace and affection, his very self, that she is at once
convicted and absolved, exposed and freed.
Dying to an old life, and rising in a miraculous transformation to be
not simply renewed herself but to be the catalyst for others. Those who wouldn’t speak to her, those to
whom she wouldn’t dare to show her face—they are now suddenly lifted up with
her to a new life. This amazing
converted village of Samaritans. Inviting
Jesus to come and stay with them, receiving him as guest and knowing and
proclaiming him as their Savior.
The Israelites don’t manage their successful crossing of the wilderness
of Sin because of their Boy Scout Camping skills, and they certainly don’t get
to the Promised Land because they have shown themselves worthy. The Samaritan Woman and her village
neighbors don’t receive the blessings of new life in Jesus because they
worshipped in the right words and ceremonies or because of their moral purity.
It all comes to them as a gift, free.
More than they deserve. An
abundance beyond measure, when they really deserved nothing at all.
If we could know this to be our story in Lent. What that long reading of Psalm 51 on Ash
Wednesday is all about. “I have sinned O
Lord, I have sinned, and I know my wickedness only too well.” The long look into the mirror in the morning.
The awareness of where we are, in the "wilderness of sin," we might say, as the most certain sign there is
of the gift of God’s grace and power. Why
Lent is such a blessing. I had no idea
how hungry I was, until he fed me. I had
no idea how thirsty I was, until from the Rock there flowed a spring of water
gushing up to eternal life.
Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, an offering
and a sacrifice to God.
No comments:
Post a Comment