Introspection: Back to the Well

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

Comments are always welcomed.

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Back to the Well

The woman took the hint and left.  In her confusion she left her water pot.  Back in the village she told the people, "Come see a man who knew all about the things I did, who knows me inside and out.  Do you think this could be the Messiah?"  And they went out to see for themselves.

John 4:28-30 (The Message)

I'll take you back always, and
Even when the pain is coming through

Even when the pain is coming through

I'll take you back

From "Take You Back" by Jeremy Camp

It was the hottest part of the day when the woman went out for water.  She would have gone out early in the morning, while it was still cool, as everyone else in town had the sense to do, but she wasn't exactly the most loved person in town.  She could no longer bear the mocking whispers, the cold stares, and the sideways glances, so she resigned herself to the brutal heat of the noonday sun.

As the woman neared the well, she was dismayed to see a man sitting beside it.  It was evident that he was tired.  She decided that she would do what she normally did when she happened to see someone at the well.  She would keep her head down, avoid eye-contact, draw her water as fast as she could, and then head back home.

"Would you give me a drink of water?" the man asked.

The woman looked at the man and noticed that he was a Jew.  What is he doing in Sychar? she wondered.  "How come you, a Jew, are asking me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?" she asked him.

"If you knew the generosity of God and who I am, you would be asking me for a drink, and I would give you fresh, living water," the man replied.

The encounter was starting to get weird.  The man asked the woman for water and then said that she should be the one asking him for water.  "Sir, you don't even have a bucket to draw with, and this well is deep.  So how are you going to get this 'living water'?" she asked, somewhat annoyed.

"Everyone who drinks this water will get thirsty again and again.  Anyone who drinks the water I give will never thirst - not ever.  The water I give will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life," the man replied.

The woman pondered the concept for a moment and imagined how nice it would be to never need water again.  No longer would she have to go to the well day after day.  No longer would she have to choose between the judgmental glances of the townspeople or the merciless heat of the midday sun.  Though the prospect seemed too good to be true, she could not let it pass her by.  "Sir, give me this water so I won't ever get thirsty, won't ever have to come back to this well again!" she said to the man.

"Go call your husband and then come back," the man said.

The woman felt a twinge in the pit of her stomach.  "I have no husband," she said.

"That's nicely put: 'I have no husband.'  You've had five husbands, and the man you're living with now isn't even your husband.  You spoke the truth there, sure enough," the man said.

The woman suddenly felt her heart leap into her throat as the rest of her body went numb.  How did he know? she wondered.¹

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I've found myself returning to certain Bible stories repeatedly over the years.  The story of a Samaritan woman's encounter with Jesus when she went out to get water is one of these stories.  The Lenten focus of my church this year has been prayer, and my church recently hosted a prayer service that was led by a very wise woman named Catherine who directs a local contemplative prayer ministry.²  Catherine led those in attendance in an Ignatian prayer exercise in which one imagines oneself in a Bible story.³  The story for the evening happened to be the story of the Woman at the Well.

As Catherine led us in the meditation on the story, I placed myself in the shoes of the woman who went to draw water.  I imagined walking to the well in the noontime heat, carrying a heavy water jar.  I imagined meeting Jesus at the well and finding myself in a conversation with Him.  I imagined Jesus' asking me a question related to a particular sore spot in my life.  I imagined offering a quick answer, only to hear Jesus bring up something I'm hesitant to discuss with people.

The Ignatian exercise was followed by a half hour of solitude and reflection.  I went outside, sat down on a bench at the church playground, and continued to reflect on the story.

We typically make a lot of assumptions about the Woman at the Well.  We assume that, because she had been married five times and was living with a man to whom she was not married, she must have been promiscuous or adulterous.  It is likely that there was much about her situation that she could not control.

The story tells us that the woman was married five times, but it does not tells us why she was married five times.  Maybe some of her husbands died, or maybe some of them abandoned her.  The Jewish Law, which the Samaritans also followed, made provisions for a man to divorce his wife if "she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her,"⁴ and some men had rather broad definitions of the phrase something objectionable.⁵  There were no such provisions for women, who were pretty much treated as property in those days.⁶  The woman's current living arrangements were by no means ideal, but they were preferable to life on the streets.

Whatever the reason for the woman's situation, it was a source of shame that alienated the woman from everyone else in town.

I suppose the story of the Woman at the Well resonates with me because I too carry around a lot of shame.  I am not the person I want everyone to think I am.  I want everyone to think I'm intelligent, insightful, and spiritual, but, on the inside, I feel like a malignant, tangled mess of inadequacy, frustration, resentment, selfishness, and rage.

Typically we assume that, when Jesus asked the woman about her husband, He was confronting her about her sinfulness.  I think that maybe Jesus brought up the source of the her shame because He wanted her to know that He already knew what she wanted to hide from Him and that He still accepted her.

The woman quickly changed the subject, and the conversation continued.  She began to believe that the man with whom she was speaking was the long-awaited Messiah.  She left her water jar at the well, went back to the town, and told the townspeople - the very same people she had done her damnedest to try to avoid - about the person she had just met.  Because of the woman, many of the townspeople met Jesus for themselves and began to believe in Him as well.⁷

Jesus accepted the woman as she was.  He did not fix her situation for her, but he gave her a reason to overcome her shame, and she was reconciled to her community.

I shared my observations with the other people who attended the prayer service, but the lesson was solidified for me after I went home for the evening.  I had some problems with my phone, and, as I am wont to do in such situations, I lost my temper.  I experience an inordinate number of technical problems for someone who works with computers professionally, and it seems like something inevitably goes wrong with everything I own.  I oscillate between believing that God loves me and thinking that God must have it out for me.  I went to bed, feeling utterly disgusted with myself.  If God hated me, God had a good reason.  I remembered what I learned during the service, and the lesson became even more clear to me.

God knows everything we have ever done, good or bad;

God knows everything we hate about ourselves, rightfully or wrongfully;

God knows everything we don't want anyone else to know about us;

and absolutely none of it makes God love us any less.

Sometimes God's grace can seem too good to be true.  It can seem radical and even heretical to think that God accepts us when we find ourselves so utterly unacceptable.  It is when we feel most unlovable that we need to remember God's love the most.  May you, dear reader, know that God loves you, even when you struggle to love yourself.

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness.  It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life.  It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were estranged.  It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us.  It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage.  Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: "You are accepted.  You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know.  Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later.  Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much.  Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything.  Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!"

~ Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations

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For additional thoughts on the story of the Woman at the Well, see the following posts:

• "Bigger, Better Band-aids" (2017 Lenten Perspective)
• "A Simple Act of Inclusion" (2016 Introspection)
• "For All Who Are Thirsty" (2014 Sermon)

Notes:

1. This narrative is based on John 4:5-18.  Dialogue was taken from The Message.
2. http://www.theanchorage.org/
3. https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-prayer/the-spiritual-exercises/what-are-the-spiritual-exercises
4. Deuteronomy 24:1-2 (NRSV)
5. Rob Bell.  "Jesus and Divorce."  Mars Hill Bible Church podcast, 07/11/2010.
6. Tripp Fuller and Nathanael Welch.  "Politics, Musical Theater, and the Woman at the Well."  Homebrewed Christianity's Theology Nerd podcast, 04/06/17.
7. John 4:19-42

The photograph of the well was taken by Michael Zaschka and has been released to the public domain.  The photographer is in no way affiliated with this blog.

Lenten Perspective: Won't Somebody Please Listen to the Children?!

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

Comments are always welcomed.

If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

Won't Somebody Please Listen to the Children?!

Let no one despise your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.

1 Timothy 4:12 (NRSV)

Who's to blame for the lives that tragedies claim?

No matter what you say

It don't take away the pain

That I feel inside, I'm tired of all the lies

Don't nobody know why

It's the blind leading the blind

From "Youth of the Nation" by P.O.D.

On February 14, a former student walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida with a semi-automatic assault rifle.  He killed seventeen people - fourteen students and three staff members - and wounded seventeen more.  In the days that followed, some of the students who survived the shooting began organizing public demonstrations, demanding that lawmakers take action to prevent future massacres.¹  Last week, on the one-month anniversary of the shooting, students all around the United States walked out of their schools at 10:00am for seventeen minutes, in memory of the seventeen people who were killed.²

These students are angry.  They live in age when mass shootings are an all-too-common occurrence, and they have grown up knowing that shootings in schools are a very real possibility.  This most recent school shooting has only served to confirm their fears that the grownups in charge are not doing their jobs.  They've had enough, so they're talking action.

Reactions to the student-led demonstrations have been mixed.  Some people have applauded the young activists for their passion, their drive, and their courage.  Others have been more dismissive, suggesting that these students have become puppets for a particular political agenda.  Some have even gone so far as to concoct conspiracy theories about the students leading the protests.  One writer astutely commented that adults only think that young people are wise when they happen to agree with them.³

In the Bible, we read about a boy named Samuel who grew up in a temple in Shiloh, serving the elderly high priest Eli.  One night, while Samuel was trying to sleep, he heard somebody call his name.  He got up and ran to Eli, supposing Eli had called him.  Eli said that he hadn't called him and told him to go back to bed.  Samuel went back to bed and heard someone call his name again, so he got up and ran back to Eli.  Again, Eli had not called him.  When Samuel ran back to Eli a third time, the old priest realized that God might be calling out to Samuel, so he told the boy to lie back down and, if he heard someone call him again, to say, "Speak, for your servant is listening."⁴

Samuel did as Eli instructed, and when he heard someone call his name again, he said what Eli told him to say.  God revealed to Samuel that judgment would soon befall Eli and his family.⁵  Eli's two sons were also priests, and they were utterly corrupt.  When people brought sacrifices to the temple, they took portions of the offerings for themselves, and they sexually exploited women who served at the temple.  Eli once gave his sons a stern talking-to, but he did nothing else to stop them from abusing their positions of authority.⁶

In the morning, Samuel reported to Eli what God told him.  The boy grew up to become a great leader in Israel.⁷

In this story, we see God's calling a child to be a leader at a time when the old guy in charge failed to do his job.

Whether or not you agree with the young activists' views on the issues at hand, you would do well to take these young people seriously.  Scripture shows us that it is not outside the realm of possibility that God would call young people to be prophets.  God once called a boy named Jeremiah to speak on God's behalf, at a time when his nation of Judah was in a very bad way.  Jeremiah objected, saying, "I don't know how to speak because I'm only a child."  God replied, "Don't say, 'I'm only a child.'  Where I send you, you must go; what I tell you, you must say."^{8 9}

When Jesus began His public ministry, He traveled from town to town proclaiming, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."¹⁰  Later on, Jesus told His disciples that the Kingdom of God belongs to the childlike.¹¹  I once heard my friend Aaron, a philosopher, suggest that philosophers take seriously what everybody else takes for granted.  As I see it, children do naturally what philosophers have to relearn.  Children are not set in their ways, and they have not grown accustomed to the world as it is.  They do not accept unquestioningly the way the world works, and they can even envision a world that works differently.

Jesus once said to a respected religious leader, "I assure you, unless someone is born anew, it's not possible to see God's kingdom."¹²  If one must be born anew in order to see the Kingdom of God, I wonder if part of being born anew means learning to see everything with fresh eyes.

We are nearing the end of Lent, a season on the Church calendar set aside for soul-searching and repentance.  As I've noted many times in the past, repentance is a change of heart and mind that results in a change of conduct.  If God is indeed doing something new in the world, as Jesus suggested when He announced the coming of the Kingdom of God, then we must not be set in our ways.  We must have the humility and open-mindedness of children.

I am not trying to tell you what to think about the problem of gun violence.  I am warning you not to be so arrogant to think that people younger than you couldn't possibly have anything to teach you or that they couldn't possibly have a message of their own to share with the world.  Their youth might actually give them advantages you don't have, and they might have a message that you really need to hear.  May you be willing to listen to the prophets in your midst, no matter how young or old they happen to be.


Notes:

1. Wikipedia: "Stoneman Douglas High School shooting"
2. Camila Domonoske.  "Across The Country, Students Walk Out To Protest Gun Violence."  the two-way, 03/14/2018.
3. https://twitter.com/DavidAFrench/status/965678855636836359
4. 1 Samuel 3:1-9 (NRSV)
5. 1 Samuel 3:10-14
6. 1 Samuel 2:12-17, 22-25
7. 1 Samuel 3:15-21
8. Jeremiah 1:6-7 (CEB)
9. I must give credit to The Wired Word for the recent article that juxtaposed the story of the student-led protests with the biblical stories of young prophets.  I must also give credit to the TRAIL class at Travelers Rest United Methodist Church, with whom I discussed this article.
10. Mark 1:14-15 (NRSV)
11. Mark 10:13-16
12. John 3:3 (CEB)

Samuel Relating to Eli the Judgements of God upon Eli's House was painted by John Singleton Copley in 1780.

Introspection: Lessons in Intentionality

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

Comments are always welcomed.

If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

Lessons in Intentionality

Let's not get tired of doing good, because in time we'll have a harvest if we don't give up.

Galatians 6:9 (CEB)

This is your life: Are you who you want to be?

This is your life: Are you who you want to be?

This is your life: Is it everything you dreamed that it would be

When the world was younger and you had everything to lose?

From "This Is Your Life" by Switchfoot

Late last year, writer and professor of psychology Richard Beck remarked that "the critical missing ingredient for so many Christians and churches trying to live into the way of Jesus" is intentionality.¹  He suggests that if we want to be spiritually fruitful - becoming "more loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle and self-controlled" - we must be intentional about it,² engaging in practices meant to help us to cultivate the Fruits of the Spirit.³  I think that Beck has hit the nail on the head, for, in my own life, I've learned more and more about the importance of living with intentionality.

I have learned the hard way how hazardous it is to live without intentionality.  When I was in college, I failed to do the hard work of figuring out what I really wanted to do with my life, and, soon after I graduated, I ended up working at a job I utterly hated.  Looking back, I count that job as a blessing, since it gave me the wake-up call I desperately needed.  If we simply float through life with no sense of direction, we will most likely end up where we do not want to go, not unlike a jellyfish that washed up on the beach.  In the words of Yogi Berra, "If you don't know where you're going, you might not get there."

On the other hand, I've found that, when I put forth the effort to grow, God met me where I was and blessed my efforts.  A few years ago, I began taking time every morning to read Scripture.  Last year, this time of Bible study became a time for prayer as well.  I've known for most of my life how important it is to pray and read Scripture, but I did not do such things regularly until I was intentional about it.  I had to set aside time in the morning, setting my alarm clock to go off earlier and struggling harder against the gravitational force drawing my head to my pillow.  I had to follow a reading plan to keep me on track with my Bible study, and I had to follow a liturgy to keep me on track with my prayers.

I've found that there are at least two important components in intentionally doing the work to grow spiritually: consistence and persistence.

If we want to grow spiritually, we must be consistent, following the same practices each day so that they became a regular part of our lives.  If we want to become physically stronger, we must consistently work our muscles.  Likewise, if we want to cultivate a particular spiritual virtue, we must consistently practice that virtue.  This year, I have decided to make it a priority to cultivate the virtue of gratitude.  To accomplish this goal, I've made it a practice to record things for which I can be grateful, at the end of each day.  The exercise itself gives me the opportunity to practice gratitude, and, by practicing gratitude consistently, I hope to become more inclined to be grateful.

If we want to grow spiritually, we must also be persistent, climbing back onto the proverbial horse every time we fall off.  If you fail in your spiritual practices one day, just start again the next.  There are still mornings when I end up rushing through my prayers, but all I can do is to try harder the next morning.  If we keep getting back on the horse every time we fall, we will find ourselves falling off less and less.

We can know what it means to be a spiritually fruitful person, but such knowledge means very little to us if we do not put it into practice.  If we want to grow more into the people God created us to be, we must be intentional about it.  However it is you want to grow, dear reader, may you put forth the effort to grow, and may God make your efforts fruitful.

Notes:

1. Richard Beck.  "The Most Important Word in Christianity: Part 1, We Are Drifting."  Experimental Theology, 11/06/2017.
2. Richard Beck.  "The Most Important Word in Christianity: Part 2, The Missing Ingredient."  Experimental Theology, 11/07/2017.
3. Richard Beck.  "The Most Important Word in Christianity: Part 4, Fruitful Intentionality."  Experimental Theology, 11/09/2017.

The photograph of the oranges and orange blossoms was taken by Ellen Levy Finch and is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.  The photographer is in no way affiliated with this blog.