If you had one chance to express to someone the truth as you understand it, what would you say? This Sunday, I look at what Jesus said in a one-on-one encounter with a woman who wanted love more than anything else, but found none. He gave her a path to healing. What was it? The gospel of John is an amazing book. Every dialogue in it is chock full of conclusions and observations that echo down the corridors of time. The physical and the spiritual intersect and interpret each other again and again. Jesus is being given water at a well in a valley surrounded by hills clothed in wheat. “The water I give is a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” “‘Rabbi, eat something.’ ‘I have food to eat that you know nothing about.’” “Look around you, the fields are ripe for the harvest.” It is the case that the physical and the spiritual intersect and interpret each other. I am not surprised that the moment in which who Jesus is and what he stands for becomes perfectly clear is in an encounter with the ex-girlfriend of a lot of men. That is what the Samaritan woman is. We can imagine her as a woman of great beauty with an uncanny ability to make men fall in love with her. A man-magnet is approached by a woman-magnet. What will happen next? One after another, she had had five significant men in her life. She even married four of them. But the relationships finished almost as soon as they began. And why should they have lasted? They had no purpose beyond the relationship itself. A romance no matter how satisfying will fall apart if it is not founded on a sense of purpose that goes beyond mutual attraction. Why would Jesus approach a person of great beauty whose life is far from exemplary? The reason is simple. Beautiful people who go from one relationship to another are lost and needy, and Jesus came to save the lost and needy. Beautiful people who can sleep with whomever they want seem to have everything. In reality, they have nothing. They fall into the category of those Jesus refers to as “the poor in spirit.” Not the preacher, not the deacon, but it’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer. Beautiful people whose life is nonetheless ugly know this. They are ready to seek out the one who is goodness, truth, and beauty at the same time. They know what it is like to have one without the other. Jesus meets this beautiful person in the open. A bright sun shines on both of them. Jesus is about to become the one who matters most to her. He will be the one who brings her healing, healing of mind, body, and spirit, all at the same time. Beauty and loneliness often go together. I learned this early on. While a college student in Canada, I needed to make money to pay rent. I was a stripper. Don’t get the wrong idea! I stripped the paint off of wood in old Victorian homes that were being gentrified. A co-owner of the one of the homes I worked in was in the fashion industry. A parade of fashion models made their way through the house. Without makeup and without fancy clothes, they were dolls just the same. But they were not on the job and their faces were often streaked with tears. They were lonely, unhappy people. While a seminary student in Italy, I sometimes took the bus. An Italian bus is a people watcher’s paradise. If you are not afraid of strangers, a potential conversation is never far away. A group of nuns of the order of Mother Theresa board the bus. Their blue-striped white gowns fill the air with wholesomeness and purpose. There is no place to sit in the bus. We are all standing. Not far from me, a nun is standing. I catch sight of her eyes. They are beautiful, she is about 25 years old, my age at the time. I address her in Italian. She has a British accent, so I switch to English. I was speaking to a radiant young woman who clearly had no need and no desire for a man in her life. I was a top fashion model, she explained. But my life was completely empty. All of my relationships turned ugly. Now I have built my life around God and neighbor and I am deeply happy in a way I never imagined was even possible. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God, Blessed are those who mourn, whose faces are streaked with tears, who know they are lost and needy. They shall be comforted. They are the ones whom God will purpose anew. Jesus wants to give us more than we are ready to receive. We settle for so little. In this passage, he tells us clearly: “You will worship the Father neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem, but in spirit and in truth. The Father seeks such as these to worship him.” But do we want to worship him in spirit and truth? That is a question we need to ask. Perhaps we would rather not worship him at all, but worship something else, something far less, something more on our level. If so, we will have the reward we have chosen. The field really is ripe for harvest. There really are people everywhere who know how much they need healing, who know they need a Savior, who know that what the world needs is a wounded Healer. Professor Philip Jenkins, an expert on the history of Christianity, has written a book about the fact that churches are half-full in Europe and North America but are overflowing in places like Africa. A wealthy Episcopal lady from Washington DC asked him a question, Ive read your book. Its absolutely wonderful, but youve told us about this new kind of Christianity exploding around the world, all these hundreds of millions of new Christians, theyre so passionate. Theyre so devoted. Its like the New Testament. Tell me, Professor Jenkins, as Americans, as Christians what can we do to stop this? Here’s the deal. We can do nothing to stop this. The field is ripe for the harvest. There is a Savior of the world. He is ready to heal us, too, body, soul, and spirit.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 12:56:31 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015