Lenten Perspective: Bigger, Better Band-aids

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Bigger, Better Band-aids

If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

1 John 1:9 (NRSV)

I start again

And whatever pain may come

Today this ends

I'm forgiving what I've done

From "What I've Done" by Linkin Park

One day, while Jesus and the Disciples were traveling north, they passed through a Samaritan town called Sychar.  Tired from the journey, Jesus sat down beside a well to rest, while the Disciples went to the market to buy food.  At around noon, a woman came to the well to draw water, and Jesus asked her for a drink.¹

The woman was a bit surprised that Jesus would speak to her, since Jews and Samaritans generally did not associate with each other.  She asked Him, "Why do you, a Jewish man, ask for something to drink from me, a Samaritan woman?"

Jesus replied, "If you recognized God's gift and who is saying to you, 'Give me some water to drink,' you would be asking him and he would give you living water."

Thinking that Jesus was talking about literal water, the woman asked Him, "Sir, you don't have a bucket and the well is deep.  Where would you get this living water?"

Jesus said, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks from the water that I will give will never be thirsty again.  The water that I give will become in those who drink it a spring of water that bubbles up into eternal life."

Hearing this, the woman was immediately interested.  Enthusiastically, she said, "Sir, give me this water, so that I will never be thirsty and will never need to come here to draw water!"

It is evident that, for some reason, the woman hated going to the well draw water, and it was not because she was lazy.  This woman lived in constant shame because, for reasons that remain unknown, she had been married five times and was currently living with a man to whom she was not married.  Because of her personal history, she was made a social outcast.²  She had strategically come to the well at noon that day in an attempt to avoid the other women in town, who would have drawn water in the morning.³  I'm sure that, despite her best efforts, she would occasionally run into someone she did not want to see.

The woman, because of her shame, would rather not face the townspeople, but the human need for water forced her to return to the well, day after day.  Naturally, she would have been interested in water that would quench her thirst forever.

Jesus, knowing more about the woman than she realized, said to her, "Go, get your husband, and come back here."

A solution that is implemented as a quick fix for a problem which it fails to solve in the long run is sometimes called a band-aid, in reference to a popular brand of adhesive bandages.⁴  Bandages serve an important function: they protect wounds so that they are able to heal properly.  Bandages become problematic when they are used to cover wounds that require treatment beyond the normal healing process.

The Woman at the Well had been doing her best to avoid her problems.  She thought that the elimination of her need for water would be a great solution, but, in reality, it would have been no more than a bigger, better band-aid.  Jesus, who wanted to offer the woman not a bandage but an actual cure, forced her to confront her problems.

As the conversation continued, the woman began to believe that Jesus was the Messiah, whom both the Jews and the Samaritans had been awaiting for many years.  She forgot all about her shame, and she told everyone in her town about Jesus.  This social outcast, of all people, became the very person who introduced her community to their Messiah, and, in the process, she was reconciled to the people she had been trying to avoid.

This season of introspection and repentance we call Lent is a good time to confront the things in our lives we have been trying not to see - the kinds of things we try to cover with proverbial band-aids.  On Ash Wednesday, one of the pastors at the church I attend encouraged us in the congregation to take a good look at ourselves, spiritually speaking.⁵  Since then, every Sunday, the congregation has been praying special prayers of confession.  Such prayers force us face what we typically don't want to see in ourselves.  Confession is not meant to cause us shame: it is meant to help us to confront the sources of our shame so that we may overcome it.

Jesus once said, when criticized about the kind of company He kept, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick."⁶  A physician will not do us any good at all unless we can bring ourselves to admit that we are not well.  Author and physician Han Suyin once said, "Truth, like surgery, may hurt, but it cures."  May we not be afraid to remove our bandages so that we may face our problems, work through them, and find healing.


Notes:

1. This perspective is based primarily on John 4.  Quotations are taken from the CEB unless noted otherwise.
2. Maybe the woman was promiscuous, or maybe she was abandoned by five faithless men.  We simply do not know the details.
3. Adam Hamilton.  The Way: Walking in the Footsteps of Jesus.  2012, Abingdon Press.  pp. 127-128
4. Mirriam-Webster: Band-Aid
5. Christine Matthews.  "Take a Good Look."  Travelers Rest United Methodist Church podcast, 03/02/2017.
6. Matthew 9:12 (NRSV)

The painting of Jesus and the Woman at the Well was painted by Carl Heinrich Bloch in the late 1800s.

Lenten Perspective: The Treasures We Seek

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

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The Treasures We Seek

Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven...

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Matthew 6:1, 21 (NRSV)

Ruin my life, the plans I have made

Ruin desires for my own selfish gain

Destroy the idols that have taken Your place

'Til it's You alone I live for

You alone I live for

From "Ruin Me" by Jeff Johnson

What I like about Jesus' teachings is that they not only instruct us in what we should do, but also force us to examine our motivations for doing what we do.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus urges us to make sure that we are not practicing our acts of piety in order to be seen by others.  He teaches us that, when we give charitably, we should give discretely, without announcing to anyone what we are doing.  He teaches us that we should not pray out loud in public places but should instead pray privately.¹  He teaches us that, when we are fasting, we should make ourselves presentable before we go out in public, lest our haggard appearance broadcast to the world how miserably hungry we are from fasting.²

Repeatedly, Jesus warns us not to be like the hypocrites who do what they do in order to be noticed and praised by others.  The Greek word hypokritēs, from which we get the word hypocrite, describes a stage actor,³ one whose craft is to effectively convince his audience that he is something he is not.  Hypocrites, Jesus says, will get exactly what they want, but the recognition of others is the only reward they will receive.  The sincerely pious and charitable, on the other hand, will be seen by God and rewarded by God.

Jesus goes on to encourage us to collect treasures that are eternal as opposed to earthly treasures that can end up rusted, busted, and boosted, for, wherever one's treasure is, one's heart will also be found.⁴  Typically, we might be tempted to think that Jesus is shifting gears at this point, changing the subject from our motivations to our relationship with our material possessions, but I think that this teaching about treasures might also apply to our motivations as well.  As Captain Jack Sparrow said on the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, "Not all treasure is silver and gold, mate."⁵

Perhaps we would do well to consider what kind of treasure we are seeking in doing the things we do.

If the treasures we seek in our acts of piety and our acts of charity are the recognition, approval, and praise of others, our focus will be on these things, and we'll run the risk of missing out on any other treasures to be found.  If we take the pursuit of such treasures off the table, acting privately or discretely as Jesus instructs us to do, we just might find that there are greater treasures to discover.  When we fast and pray, seeking only an Audience of One, we will be rewarded with a closer walk with God.  When we give, without seeking praise, we will be rewarded with a greater love for other people.

The applause of others is no less fleeting than any other earthly treasure, but a greater love for God and other people cannot be taken away from us.

According to the Church calendar, we are currently in the season of Lent, a time of the year set aside for self-examination and self-denial.  It is a good time for us to examine our motivations for doing what we do to see if they are indeed sincere.  It is also a good time to deny ourselves the pursuit of recognition, approval, and praise so that we may discover greater treasures.


Notes:

1. Matthew 6:1-6
2. Matthew 6:16-18
3. Blue Letter Bible: hypokritēs
4. Matthew 6:19-21
5. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0325980/quotes

The treasure map is from an edition of Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Lenten Perspective: Stillness and Silence

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

Stillness and Silence

He said, "Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by."  Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.

1 Kings 19:11-12 (NRSV)

Can anybody hear me?

The silence is deafening

Why do You feel so far away?

When I know You're here with me

But I just need the faith to see

Nothing can separate me from Your love

From "Can Anybody Hear Me?" by Meredith Andrews

It was a dark time in the Northern Kingdom.  Ahab, the king, was the worst in a string corrupt rulers, and his consort Jezebel sought to eliminate all of the prophets of Israel's God and replace them with prophets of her false gods.¹  When the prophet Elijah entered the scene, he announced a drought which effectively demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the fertility gods the king and queen had been promoting.²

After spending nearly three years in hiding during the drought, Elijah returns and challenges Jezebel's false prophets to a showdown that ultimately results in their execution.³  When Jezebel hears what has happened, she swears by her gods to make sure that Elijah ends up just like one of them.  Elijah receives word that the queen wants him dead, and, fearing for his life, he flees into the wilderness.  Exhausted, he collapses under a tree and begs God to let him die.  In response, an angel brings him food so that he will have strength for the journey ahead of him.

Elijah spends forty days and forty nights in the wilderness, making his way toward Mt. Horeb, an important site in his people's history that is sometimes called the Mountain of God.  When he reaches his destination, he takes shelter in a cave, where God asks him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"  It is one of those existential questions we all need to be asked once in a while.

Elijah spills his guts to God, saying, "I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword.  I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away."  Elijah feels that he is all alone in the world, and, as a wanted man, he is ready to give up.  Such is the life of a prophet.  Nowadays, people like to think of themselves as prophetic but often have no idea what the word really means.  Prophets speak hard truths that the privileged and the powerful do not want to hear, and they suffer dearly as a result.

Elijah learns that God will soon pass by the mountain.  First, there is a windstorm with gusts powerful enough to break rocks.  Next, there is an earthquake.  After that, there is a wildfire.  Finally, after the ravages of the elements, there is sheer silence.  Interestingly, God, we are told, is not in the wind, in the earthquake, or in the fire.  It is in the stillness and the silence that God speaks, asking once again, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"⁴

For some reason, I have a certain fondness for this particular Bible story.  There are times in my life when I wish that, like Elijah, I could run away, far from everything I find painful, scary, or threatening, and end up in a sacred place where I experience God in a profound way.

I think this story has something to teach us about the way we relate to God.  Often, when we want to hear from God, we look for wind, fire, and earthquakes, figuratively speaking.  We want explosions and special effects.  We want God to bring the noise, but what we need to remember is that God is at work in the silence.  God is not always at work in the spectacle, and the absence of any attention-grabbing "signs and wonders" does not mean that God is inactive or absent.

Late last year, I helped with a spiritual formation retreat.  As the retreat drew near, though I knew I would be busy the whole weekend, I began to hope that God would give me an epiphany of some sort, as others have received on such weekends.  I wanted something that would give me some clarity for my journey.  I received no such revelation.  That said, I should not interpret the lack of an epiphany as a sign that God has nothing to say to me or a sign that God is not already at work in my life in some way.

Elijah feels that he is the last man standing among those faithful to God.  He feels alone and overwhelmed, but God does not leave him in that state.  God gives Elijah some help, instructing him to appoint a man named Elisha as his disciple and ultimately his successor.  God also reassures him that he is not alone, for there are still seven thousand people in Israel who have not forsaken God.

The story of Elijah's encounter with God in the silence is a reminder to us that when God seems silent, God is not absent or inactive.  Maybe this story also offers us a challenge, especially in this season of repentance and introspection we call Lent.  Perhaps we need to stop waiting for God to hit us over the head with whatever revelation we seek and to instead take refuge in stillness and silence, away from the noise that is so pervasive in our lives, so that we may actually listen for God.


Notes:

1. 1 Kings 16:29-33, 1 Kings 18:4
2. 1 Kings 17:1
3. 1 Kings 18
4. The majority of this perspective is based on 1 Kings 19:1-18.  Quotations are taken from the NRSV.

The painting featured in this perspective was painted by Dieric Bouts in the 1460s.