Cisterns & Fountains

Cisterns were common in the Middle East during the biblical era.  In such an arid environment it makes sense to capture as much water as you can when you can.  They ranged in size from a handheld jug to a large, dugout pit.  Unlike a well, which has its own water source and is self-sustaining, a cistern collected runoff, such as rain on a roof, and stored it for later use. 

The prophet Jeremiah used the image of a cistern to describe the bankruptcy of false religion by recording the word of God as saying…

…my people have committed two evils:

   they have forsaken me,

   the fountain of living water,

   and dug out cisterns for themselves,

   cracked cisterns

   that can hold no water.

Much of what we need in life has to come from beyond us.  Love, hope, joy, purpose, strength, meaning, peace all come to us by being in relationship with others and by being in relationship with God.  There are times when we have these things in abundance, as if we are connected to a fountain of living water, and there are dry times when our reserves are strained. 

It is difficult for us to imagine why God’s people turned to Baal worship.  For some, I suspect it had something to do with superstition.  For others, it was a way to fit in with the culture.  In a reading from a few weeks ago we saw how it became politically expedient at least to pay lip service to Baal once the king, Ahab, married the pagan Jezebel. 

Whatever the motivation, Jeremiah said that false religion was like a cistern in that it cannot provide on its own the things we find in the living water that is God.  Even more, he said the cistern of false religion is cracked.  It can’t even contain what we are looking for until we need it.

In our day and time, false religion primarily does not look like one faith tradition being superior and all others being evil.  Rather, the false religions of our culture look like uncontrolled consumerism, the cult of youth and appearance, an absolute investment in status and position, and an unwavering adherence to a particular political power.  Preachers today, who like Jeremiah back in the day, name these as being broken cisterns at best receive polite nods before being roundly ignored and at worst get run off for being uninspiring or controversial. 

Still, Jeremiah makes an important observation and raises a critical question.  His observation is this: life is challenging, it is demanding, and at times is beyond difficult.  Given this, Jeremiah poses his critical question: What do you do and where do you turn to replenish what has been depleted in your life?

For Jeremiah, to turn to false religion was to forsake God and resulted in God’s handing over a wayward people to a foreign military power.  My assessment of today’s false religions – consumerism, appearance, status, and power – is that they address a deep human need by delivering something only at the surface level.  Our longing for love, meaning, hope, peace, strength receive only a superficial benefit from these pursuits and thus we have to turn to them more and more, over and over again, all the while gaining a diminished return for our efforts.  God does not forsake us, we simply shut ourselves off from God’s living water; the water that replenishes us and refreshes us at the very depths of our longing.

What do you do and where do you turn to replenish the deep places in your life?

I continue to enjoy daily reading of various poets.  Of late I have been taking in R.S. Thomas, a Welshman and Anglican priest who passed away in 2,000, and Mary Oliver, who at present is America’s best selling poet.  Listen to her work When Death Comes and let it take you on its many twists and turns until Oliver reaches her final declaration:

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;

when death comes

like the measle-pox;

when death comes

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,

tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

On so many levels I hope that my journey mirrors the journey Oliver hopes for herself: to be a bride married to amazement, a groom taking the world in my arms, not to finish my time wondering if I had done anything worthwhile, not to give in with a sigh or a shiver or an ax to grind.  Like Oliver, I don’t want to end this world simply having visited it.  But I find myself wondering what does it take to nurture and sustain a life that will find the end Oliver describes.   My answer, as you may suspect, is less concrete and more poetic, less theological and more mystical.  What does it take to nurture and sustain such a life?  It takes something that fills you at the deepest level.  It takes a connection to the Fountain of Living Water. 

Here is what I like about today’s Gospel reading.  On its surface, Jesus’ parable of inviting to a banquet only those who cannot repay you – the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind – feels like a stinging critique of every guest list of every function I have ever attended.  But I see in this a deeper meaning and a generous invitation extended to each and every one of us. 

As far as Scripture records it, Jesus only hosted three meals: the first two were mass feedings and the final one we now refer to as the Last Supper.  Think about that night in the Upper Room.  At one level it would be accurate to say that Jesus invited his friends and associates, along with the one who was to betray him.  But at a deeper level, he invited people who were spiritually blind and poor and lame.

By giving to each one of them his Body and his Blood he was in fact giving to each something they could never repay, even though all but one would be martyred for their faithfulness, devotion, and commitment to him.  The point of the meal was never to highlight the unworthiness of those disciples.  It was always to demonstrate what Jesus offered to sustain at the deepest level.  It was not about who deserved it and who didn’t.  It was about our Lord’s generosity and self-giving which knows no limitation, no bounds, and no exceptions.

We come to that same meal this morning through our table liturgy around the altar.  I suspect that we each bring to this moment something unique and distinctive to our present need and past experience.  This much I do hope… that you don’t come to this moment consumed with a deep sense of your own unworthiness.  Jesus has already said he invites to his banquet those who cannot repay him.  That is you and it is me.  So we are to come to this moment laying aside all that we are and should not be and all that we are not that we should be, and simply rejoice in being a valued, invited, loved guest. 

This meal feeds us at the deepest level.  It opens us up to life and love and amazement and wonder.  It helps us to be participants in life, not merely visitors.  It is a sign of the many ways God is for us the Fountain of Living Water.

Baseball & Abiding Peace

I will never forget the Ohio summer of 1991.  I had been married for two years, we were living in our first house, and Ellen was on the way.  It was the calm before the storm of children, a job search, and a kind of perpetual transition that marked my life for the next fifteen years.

For me, the thing that embodied the gentle serenity of that time was playing catch in the evenings.  Chris and Jake, two high school freshmen in the church where I served as an assistant, were best friends.  Every night possible, I would join them and Chris’s dad, Courtney, at the baseball field across the street from my home.  From after dinner well into the gathering dusk we would field grounders and shag fly balls.

If you have never played baseball it is hard to understand the joy of settling in under a lazy fly ball and catching it.  While that ball is arching its way through the sky there is nothing else in the world that really seems to matter much.  It feels as if time itself is standing still.  It is just you and the ball and nothing could be more perfect.

There are few thrills in life like breaking quickly on the crack of the bat to chase down a scorching liner headed for the gap.  Step after step, running with all the might and speed your body can generate, you and the ball coming closer together until at the last possible moment you stretch, leap, and feel it hit your glove.  You roll over on the ground, look in your glove, and there it is.  At moments like that you can almost believe in destiny.  You and the ball have been preordained from the beginning of time to come together at that glorious moment in that particular place.

Then there was the fellowship of us guys.  Chris and Jake constantly laughing and poking fun at one another; Courtney teaching, shouting encouragement, and praising our good plays;  Jon, a boyhood friend of mine joining us at my invitation.  That summer we introduced him to Suzanne, a young woman in the parish.  Some nights she would join us too.  Baseballs were not the only thing flying around that field.  Love was in the air.

As the summer wore on, I began to notice how the sunlight was surrendering to the nighttime a little earlier with each day that passed.  I remember looking at my watch as we walked off the field and realizing we had been cheated out of fifteen minutes of twilight which just the week before I had taken for granted.  I began to carry a gnawing feeling that these evenings were special and that they would not last forever.

When school started in September the days of shagging fly balls came to an end never to return again.  The next summer Chris and Jake had jobs and I had Ellen to look after and enjoy.  The summer after that Jon and Suzanne were married, I was interviewing all over the country, and my wife’s mother was ill.  Four months after we moved to Iowa, Courtney was diagnosed with a brain tumor.  Two months later he was gone.  I don’t think his son Chris has picked up a bat since then.

In our first reading this morning we heard from the Book of Ecclesiastes, a title that literally means “The Preacher”.  Here is a fellow that looks at his life and tries to discern its meaning.  He applies himself first to intellectual endeavors, then to the pursuit of pleasure, and finally to various forms of labor—everything from working late to gardening.  He comes to the conclusion that it is all vanity—hebel in Hebrew which means “vapor” or “breath”.  What is the point of anything, he wonders, when we cannot hold on to it.  At once we seem to possess it and then it slips through our hands like a mist and is gone.  And so we wake, we work, we eat, we sleep, but to what end?

There is a certain integrity to the Preacher’s words.  We do not control our moments or our lives.  All that we see and all that we enjoy will someday belong to another or just plain cease to be.  No sugarcoating can make it not so.  I must admit that at an intellectual level I find the Preacher’s thoughts to be sound, honest, and compelling.

But I cannot buy into them at an emotional level.  When I think back to those summer nights on the ball field, I know that they will never be again, and yet I never sulk about it.  I remember those days fondly and I ask myself why?  How is it possible to look back at what once was and will never be again and to be at peace?

The Preacher in the first lesson and the wealthy man in Jesus’ parable share at least one thing in common.  Both of their lives can be characterized as being a monologue.  The narratives about each employ only the first person singular throughout:

I saw...

I said...

I considered...

My field...

My crops...

My soul...

No other voices are sought, no other voices heard, no other voices considered.  Each thinks only to himself, speaks only to himself, and, in the case of the wealthy man, celebrates only with himself.  The language of these two passages suggests that each man views himself as being self-sufficient, autonomous, an entity unto himself, and alone. 

     

The wealthy man had functioned well within his monologue.  Unlike the Preacher of Ecclesiastes he had not come to the same conclusions about the vanity of wealth.  In fact, it was the ample abundance of goods that made his soul feel alive.  But that all changed in the twinkling of an eye.  He had lived so long listening only to himself that he had completely excluded the possibility of being addressed by any other voice.  With one little word, “Fool,” spoken by the Great Voice from beyond, his self-made world came toppling down.   

For each of us there must come a moment when we realize there is more to the world than just ourselves.  Most often it does not bring total destruction and ruin.  More often it brings life and renewal and an ordering to our priorities.  But for anyone who has built a life upon the premise that this existence is no more than a monologue in the first person, the voice of God will always be troubling.

What a great moment it is for each one of us when we discover for the first time, or perhaps come anew to an old truth, that life is in fact more than a monologue.  What a revelation it is when we begin to enter for the first time into dialogue with another and that dialogue gives way to conversation, and the conversion then evolves into intimate sharing.   This opportunity is there for each one of us if we are willing to consider the possibility that our neighbor is a human being, that our parents, brothers and sisters are more than cosmic accidents to our existence, that our spouse has become one flesh with us, and that our children are the offspring of that sacred union.

Not only is deep, intimate fellowship possible on a human level, it can be a divine reality as well.  Our monologues can give way first to dialogue with God, then to conversation, and if the mystics and saints of our faith are correct, even intimate sharing is possible.

How can we look back at what once was and will never be again and be at peace?  When your life is a monologue it is very difficult indeed.  But the moment you realize that yours is not the only voice in this world, and especially when you realize that there is a Voice from beyond this world, fear yields to abiding peace.  In Jesus Christ we have God’s pledge of love to this lost and hurting world.  We are promised that there is more to life than what we are able to see and know.  We are assured that we are a part of a reality that will transcend death through the triumph of Christ.

I don’t believe something as corny as we’ll all play catch again in the great by-and-by, but I do believe that our divisions will cease and our pain will end and that all of the fragments of our life will come together.  I believe that all our yesterdays are not lost.  They will somehow be present to us in eternity.  And I believe that joys we have known but have no more, the fellowship we have found with others who are no longer with us, and our deepest, most intimate sharing (which through its very nature is here one moment and then gone from us), are through the grace of God foretastes of a world yet to come—a Kingdom which will have no end.

The wonderful lesson we heard this morning from Colossians says this:  “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.”  Someone once said the difference between a belief and a conviction is this: a belief is something that you hold, a conviction is something that holds you.  I am convinced of these things I say this morning because they hold me, not because I hold them.  They have come into my heart to rule not because I found them through monologue, but because through dialogue, through conversation, and through intimate sharing they have taken hold of me.   

The lesson is wrapped around the image of baptism.  In ancient times, every candidate for baptism was led to a body of water, stripped naked, and nearly drowned in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  They literally came as close as possible to dying to self so that they might rise up to new life in Christ.  As the candidates were brought out of the water, they were immediately clothed in a white linen robe (a forerunner of our christening gowns) so that even their attire would remind them they were beginning a new life.

“Put to death,” the lesson says, “whatever in you is earthly.”  That is a baptismal image to be sure.  It says in effect leave behind in the baptismal waters your impurity, evil desire, greed, anger, and the like.  Leave behind those things emblematic of the monologue of life.  “Clothe yourselves” with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and so forth.  Open your life to those things which are beyond you.  Do that and you will find that the vanities of life—those wisps which you want to keep so badly but can’t—give way to a peace that pervades all things.

In my heart I go back to those summer nights on that baseball field more often than you might imagine.  Courtney hits the ball, it is coming toward me.  It hangs in the fading light of day like the first star of the night.  I never feel cheated when I leave the field which exists now both nowhere and everywhere at the same time.  Now time is not running out, it is only beginning.  Once again, I am opened up anew to the Great Voice from beyond.  My Lord tells me that I am in His hands and come what may, all things will be made right in the end. 

Listen for the Voice.  Allow the peace of Christ to rule in your heart. 

Prayer as Communion with Almighty Love

I was one of forty people who signed up for an introduction to Sociology class my freshman year in college. The first week the professor passed around a sheet of paper that listed twenty social issues – things like nuclear proliferation, legalizing marijuana, and prayer is school. Each student signed up to research and then argue a particular issue either pro or con. Over the course of the semester we made our presentations going up against the person who had signed up for the opposite position.

I remember vividly the day an intelligent, well-spoken young lady stood up to make the case for legal rights for battered women. She articulated her ideas thoughtfully and persuasively and backed them up with a myriad of statistics and citations. She sat down when finished and to the front of the room walked the stereotypical big, dumb jock. He stood before us and said, “I am here to argue against legal rights for battered women. The reason I took this position is that I sit in the back row in a seat next to the window. By the time the sign-up sheet got to me this was the only slot still open. I have thought and thought about it, but have not been able to come up with a single reason not to provide legal protection for battered women.” With that he sat down and, in my mind at least, earned an A on the assignment.

There is nothing acceptable, nothing redeemable, and certainly nothing funny about the abuse of women, and yet today’s reading from the Old Testament builds an entire theology around it. The bible employs many metaphors to describe the relationship between God and God’s people. A metaphor is a way of comparing a better known thing next to a lesser known thing in attempt to help people gain insight into what is lesser known. Some of the bible’s metaphors describing God as a parent and God’s people as children, God as a king and God’s people as subjects, and God as being a potter and God’s people as being clay.

In this morning’s reading Hosea builds on another common biblical metaphor – God as a husband and God’s people as being the bride. The prophet says that God’s covenantal love for God’s people is like a husband’s marital love for his wife. So far so good. But in his comparison Hosea says God’s people have strayed from God; committing the sin of idolatry by worshipping other gods. This, Hosea says, is analogous to a wife who commits sexual infidelity. God will punish Israel, Hosea states, just as a husband would punish his wife for being unfaithful. And it that culture in that day a husband’s punishment of an unfaithful wife had a definite physical component.

God the wife beater. Pardon the pun, but how does that strike you? If it does not sit well then you can understand why recent scholarship has turned a critical eye to Hosea’s theology. These scholars reject the notion that God tolerates sinful human behavior until God can no longer tolerate it and then blows up.

Hosea knew that the northern kingdom of Israel was about to be attacked by an infinitely superior Assyrian army. The handwriting was on the wall. The outcome was not in doubt. There was going to be massive devastation, horrific loss of life, and terrible suffering for those who survived. Hosea made the leap to declare the imminent defeat as a sign of God’s judgment. It was for him God the husband trying to smack some sense in a wayward wife.

And even though it does not sound like a very sound theological perspective, there are still plenty of people around who embrace it in one form or another. They are the “America-got-what-was coming-to-it” crowd that emerged after 9/11 and Katrina and every other major disaster.Is there another way – is there a better way – to understand who God is and how God is present in the midst of a catastrophe?

During my devotional time this past week I happened upon a reading from Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage in North Africa in the 3rd century. It is a letter he wrote to his flock during an outbreak of the plague in his city:

"There are certain people who are disturbed because this disease has attacked equally pagans and Christians. They talk as if being a Christian somehow guaranteed the enjoyment of happiness in this world and immunity from contact with illness… It disturbs some of our number that death seems to have no favorites. And yet what is there in this world that is not common to all? As long as we are subject to the same laws of generation we have a common flesh. As long as we are in this world we share an identical physicality with the rest of humankind, even if our spiritual identity singles us out. Until this corrupt form is clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal frame receives immortality, and the Spirit leads us to God the Father, we share with the rest of humanity the burden of the flesh."

"When the soil is exhausted and the harvest poor, famine makes no distinction of persons. When an army invades and a city is taken, everyone suffers a common desolation. When the skies are cloudless and the rains fail, all alike suffer from the drought. When the ship goes around on treacherous rocks, the shipwreck affects all who sail without exception. Diseases of the eye, attacks of fever, weakness in limbs, are all as common to Christians as to anyone else because this is the lot of all who bear human flesh in this world."

Notice how Cyprian does not try to blame the person who suffers for the suffering they experience. He goes on:

"The righteous have always displayed the capacity for endurance… Such things [as I have described] should not undermine or break the faith of Christians but reveal their courage in the struggle…"

"To summarize: the difference between us and those who do not know God is that when misfortune occurs, others complain and murmur, but we are not distracted by adversity from the true path of virtue and faith; indeed, in the midst of suffering we are made strong."

Well this is a different theology, isn’t it. When misfortune strikes all it is not a sign of God’s wrath or judgment, rather it is merely a facet of living in this world; a world often marked by hardship, struggle, and unexpected turmoil. None of this is from God, it simply is. Christians distinguish themselves not by getting a free pass through this life, but by having a source of strength that will help them to endure with faith and virtue.

In this morning’s Gospel reading we find the disciples approaching Jesus with a request: Teach us how to pray. It is perhaps the single best thing this group ever did during our Lord’s earthly ministry. They were attracted to Jesus and they were attracted to the way he was attracted to God through prayer. It is easy to understand their interest, but imagine if they had not asked. Image how much poorer we would be if we did not have The Lord’s Prayer.

Many times I have taken communion to a hospital bedside where a person was near death and to nursing home where a person suffered from deep dementia. Gone was the ability to respond, “and also with you.” Gone were the words of the Creed and the Confession. But when it came time to say The Lord’s Prayer, I have never known a person not to be able to join in.

Whatever it takes to endure in this life, whatever it takes to maintain faith and virtue in the midst of challenge, prayer is certainly right up there at the top of the list. I am not taking about the panic-prayer of desperation, but the kind of daily prayer that establishes a deep, strong, authentic relationship with God.

Percy Ainsworth, a spiritual writer who died a little over a hundred years ago, wrote that “the end of prayer is not to win concessions from Almighty God, but to have communion with Almighty Love.” If we view prayer as an attempt to get God to do something we want done – make a co-worker treat us nicer, take away grandma’s arthritis, keep all the traffic lights green because we are running late – than we misunderstand the nature of prayer itself. More often than not these kinds of prayers do not work; especially if we define “work” as getting the outcome we ask for and get it in a timely manner.

Surely Cyprian would have understood prayer very differently. I think he would agree with Ainsworth that goal of prayer is communion with God, not gaining concessions from God. This kind of prayer may not change the world around us, but it definitely will change us and how we live and move and have our being in it. There is an old saying that the goes the hammer has a way of shaping the hand that holds it. Likewise prayer has a way of shaping the person who prays. We are to be people of prayer not in order to get what we want but in order to be shaped into God’s people; people who have the capacity to live in this world touched by every grace and challenge of this world and able to engage it all from a position of holiness and strength.