March 19, 2017
John 4:5-42
Exodus 7:1-7
After having, in a way, fled from the Bishop in the United Methodist Church, it’s kind of ironic that I now serve on the committee in the Fairfield East Association that functions as the bishop. Among other things, we oversee matters of ordination and candidacy for authorization within the association. I’ll tell you, we had the most beautiful meeting a few weeks ago.
The committee has been meeting with a candidate now for years who has clearly displayed a commitment to the church, and to academia, to bridging the two, to a life of prayer, and pastoral care, and teaching, and preaching. She’s a gentle soul, but we found her also to be a stubborn one. On her path to ordination we consistently asked her to do a chaplaincy program called CPE, which we felt would challenge, equip, and credential her, and she consistently neglected to do it. We had prepared to sit down with her and confront the issue head-on when we received a letter saying she no longer wished to be ordained. But then, in an accompanying letter she told us about all the beautiful ministries she was a part of at her church, and about all the work on which she was collaborating with her pastor. So, the question on our minds was, “But, your doing ordainable work, and you are passionate about it, why do you no longer wish to be ordained?”
She arrived at the meeting and updated the committee on both her plans and her current endeavors. Her pastor sat there with her, affirming her descriptions and the positive embrace that she had been receiving within her church. And then she said, “and in the spirit of complete honesty, I simply do not want to do CPE.” She reminded us of CPE’s reputation of building you up by tearing you down. Your visits with the sick are subject to peer review and criticism. Your self-analysis is subject to the psychoanalysis of a supervising minister. And, she had already had some negative experiences where she was convinced she had said the wrong thing to some people who were in poor health and in need of care.
What happened throughout the course of our conversation was that the candidate and the committee seemed to experience the same sense of discernment: that she was discovering not so much a call away from ordination, but rather, a fear of CPE. She was afraid of making a mistake and being criticized for it.
So, then I told her how when I was in CPE I once told a dying and depressed man that, “it wasn’t so bad.” It was probably the worst thing I could possibly say at the moment. And yet, it turned into something beautiful.
I was making my rounds in the rehab unit of a dementia hospital. I had tried with this guy before and had gotten nowhere. But, since everyone else seemed to be otherwise occupied or sleeping, I thought I would try again with this guy.
He sat on his bed staring at the TV, whose volume was up a little too high in my opinion. When I asked if I might pull up a chair he grunted and “okay,” without diverting his eyes from the screen. I asked him some questions – anything I could think to ask – to which he repeatedly gave me one words answers. When I pushed him some more he said, “How do you think I’m doing? I’m old; I’m stuck in bed; and I’m dying.”
And that’s when I said it. I said it because I was uncomfortable with his situation, and I was uncomfortable with him, and I had no idea what I was supposed to do about any of it anyway. So I said, “It’s not that bad.” And finally, he turned from the TV and gave me a look of complete disgust. He shook his head and he turned back.
I sat there feeling completely exposed as an utter idiot. And after maybe half a minute of silence I said, “I am so sorry. That was just such a stupid thing to say.”
For the second time he turned from the TV. This time his expression changed; he was much softer, and he said, “That’s okay. It can’t be easy talking to a guy like me.” And then he said something that made us both laugh, and then he started telling me a bit about his life and his family. And then, something else happened. Not only was our conversation transformed, but the other two patients in the room started chiming in as well. One was visiting with a family member behind a curtain, which they suddenly rolled back. The other had been talking sadly and quietly with an adult daughter. Before I knew it, we were all part of the same discussion. The pressure in the room was gone and in its place was an oddly joyful fellowship of strangers who, despite the losses that surely lay before them, were looking at one another in the eye and laughing about their lives.
From a moment of complete incompetence came something completely surprising and completely beautiful.
So anyway, back to our meeting with the candidate a few weeks ago who was so afraid of CPE: I told her that there were worse things than saying the wrong thing.
Preaching professor Thomas Troeger suggests that today’s gospel passage about the Samaritan woman at the well fits comfortably in a larger collection of passages all of which are written so that the faithful would more actively question their own assumptions. The woman says to Jesus, “Why would you, a Jewish man, ask for something to drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” There were all sorts of boundaries implicit here and rooted in assumptions about race, and religion, and gender. And yet, all of these assumptions are forced to crumble under the weight of God’s grace that is revealed to her (and ultimately to her people) in Christ.
It seems that we are in week 2 of an accidental two-part sermon series on finding the elusive, ever-present God, of feeling faith when faith is hard to find. Today the wandering Israelites of our Exodus passage ask the question for us all: “Is God with us or not?” Sure, God got them out of Egypt. But, now what? They’ve been wandering for how long now? God provided before, but now they have different needs and no way of knowing what is to come of them. So they murmer and they grumble and they complain against Moses. What’s God going to do? Where is God?
Without offering a roadmap that I simply don’t have, I’ve been trying – this week and last – to share some suggestions for finding some answers. Troeger would have us question our assumptions in the light of a much greater grace as an important way to God. And, I think there’s wisdom to that suggestion. That candidate that we interviewed assumed that a fear of CPE was the same as a call away from ordination. As a CPE student myself I assumed that the faithful thing to do was to have an answer when it turned out that God could do a whole lot more with an honest vulnerability.
Thinking about the way we tend to read this “woman at the well” story, Author Anna Carter Florence, writes, “We [pastors, preachers, Christians in general] are conditioned to imagine ourselves in Jesus’ role – the ones who break the rules to speak with outsiders. What if we imagine it the other way around? What rules is Jesus breaking to talk with us? What social conventions is he disregarding? What lines is he stepping across, in order to speak about what truly matters, and what may save our life?”[1] Some time with these questions, some time answering them honestly and with vulnerability, might really open some doors so that we might hear what God actually has to say, as opposed to what we think God would or should say.
Carter also reminds us that though we hear Jesus saying that he is the “Living Water,” we also see that he’s the one who is thirsty. He’s the one who asks her for help. She writes, “There is something beautifully simple in the staging of these scene as well as its premise: Jesus is thirsty at the well, and we are the ones with the bucket… Can a little thing like a cup of cool water, offered in love, be the beginning of a salvation journey? Yes; and we will never know until we meet the stranger, and tend to the human need first.”[2]
In other words, if we set our gaze too high we may very easily miss the God of flesh and blood before us. And, if we think some act of love too small to be infused with God, we may miss the very journey we are seeking.
[1] FOTW, Year A, Volume 2, page 95.
[2] Ibid, page. 95.