Encounter
Sermon
GOD'S TWO HANDS
Sermons for Advent, Christmas and Epiphany
To meet the Living God is the ultimate of all human experience. After this encounter all life is different. It is then that we are born into our full existence. This encounter brings with it a call to some kind of service. We are not truly alive until we discover our mission in life. What was I really born for? Where do my talents really meet the needs of humanity in my moment of time? Jeremiah was probably sixteen to eighteen years of age when it happened to him. It happened about six hundred years before Christ, in a period of historic turmoil for his people, the Children of Israel.
An encounter with God always comes as a surprise. I just don't believe this can happen to me - but God wants it to happen to everyone. If we are open to it, it will come. Here it comes to a young man, Jeremiah. An exchange takes place. This is beyond reasoning thought; this is a "happening." It is not thinking about the Truth; it is a direct meeting with Truth. It is a direct, face-to-face realization of Truth. It is meeting God, person-to-person. All of us are wandering between two worlds. At times these two worlds collide; both worlds become one, and we are living simultaneously in both.
For young Jeremiah it was a shocking, irrefutable experience: "Then the word of the Lord came unto me saying, 'Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.' " (Jeremiah 1:4-5) Imagine - all of that spoken all at once, unmistakably, in the mind of a young man!
Jeremiah knew instinctively that God had spoken, and his defensive response was immediate: "Then said I, 'Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child.' " (Jeremiah 1:6) We are all children in the sight of God. In fact, we are never fully mature until we get to heaven. This whole of life is a learning, growing process. That's why we are here. Not to grow is to die, to die eternally.
God had an answer for Jeremiah's excuse: "But the Lord said unto me, 'Say not, "I am a child;" for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak.' " (Jeremiah 1:7) Put yourself in young Jeremiah's place: "You will go wherever I send you; you will speak whatever I command you." That's life for the committed person. There is no argument. God has spoken: I obey. When we come to this experience, life still has its ups and downs, but we move with amazing confidence and assurance, fearlessly. God is speaking; I am obeying. Nothing can hurt me. Not really. God will see me through. God will sustain us in anything that he calls us to.
The word of God to Jeremiah continues: "Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord." (Jeremiah 1:8) They say that Jeremiah had a rough life and suffered a terrible death. Whenever God calls us to confront the forces of evil in our time head-on, we are in for trouble; but God is with us, and we know it. In this experience there is a grand sense of freedom and independence. We see beyond "the powers that be" to the Power that really is. Jeremiah survived gloriously and eternally. And so will we, when we obey our call.
God did not stop there. He prepared Jeremiah for the immediate task: "Then the Lord put forth his hand, and touched my mouth. And the Lord said unto me, 'Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth.' " Imagine speaking for God! Sharing his truth with fellow human beings, all under his care and guarantee. Jesus said to the disciples, "Don't worry about what you should say; my Holy Spirit will tell you what to say." Surely the Holy Spirit spoke through Paul's writings. Surely He spoke through Luther and Wesley. All of us, lesser persons, when trying so hard to make truth clear, when desperately trying to help someone with a difficult problem, have felt guided, have spoken with a wisdom and insight far beyond our own. We, ourselves, were strengthened and blessed, and we knew in our hearts that we were the agents of God's truth and love.
When I was made so painfully aware of our nation's moral and spiritual breakdown, of violence and crime and dishonesty and untruthfulness everywhere, I cried out in my soul: "only the authority of God can reorder our human selfishness; only the recognized Love of God can save us and restore our sanity!" God is in charge! Yet we deny him. He will touch our mouths and speak his saving word through a million mouths today, if we let him. Only God can save us; and yet even God is helpless until we obey him. "O, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thee, but ye would not, ye would not." The agony of God is: God on the Cross of our sin and our disobedience.
God has more to say to Jeremiah: "See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant." (Jeremiah 1:10) God cannot save us and help us until we obey. But God is not helpless. He is the Living God; the creator and ruler of the universe. Here we have the powers of evil and the power of God in conflict: two worlds in collision. God holds the ultimate power: we can accept it, or reject it. God's two hands - the hand of judgment and the hand of grace - are both redemptive. Our nation is now suffering under the hand of judgment. This can wake us up, enable us to see the hand of grace and forgiveness and restoration. Our nation can be reborn once again as a nation under God.
An experience of God, a divine encounter, is not just to be enjoyed, to be "a joy forever." It is joy, but it is also a call, a commission. God wants us to share what he gives us. He wants us to be the agents of his love, at work in the world. He calls us to mission (in keeping with our talents). That is our joy; that is our Life.
Listen as Thomas Wolfe beautifully describes his own life:
I was a boy from the mountains, came from a stange wild family, and went beyond the mountains and knew the state, I went beyond the state and knew the nation, ... I went to the greatest city and met strange and beautiful people, good, bad, and ugly ones, I went beyond the seas alone and walked down the million streets of life. When I was hungry and penniless ... all manner of strange folk came to my aid. In a thousand places the miracle has happened to me ..."1
Jeremiah, too, came from the country, a small village. But his family had instilled in him a sense of God. He went to the City; he went to the nations, under the command of God. He faced the evil of his day: he suffered for it. But the world has been a saner place because of Jeremiah.
Listen again to the burden that God placed on his heart. The burden was his contribution to the life of the world. This was a part of the historic build-up to the Cross of Jesus. Jeremiah, like Jesus, was caught between "the upper and the nether millstone," the selfish blindness of the world beneath and the righteous will of God from above. That will crush us, unless we are sustained by the power of God. Jeremiah was sent beyond his own familiar surroundings to the nations and kingdoms of the world. Why? Under the authority of God, he was "to root out, and to pull down, to destroy, and to throw down ..."
The whole world is tied together, nation-to-nation, people-to-people. What helps one helps another; what hurts one hurts another. God is in charge of the whole picture, and we must learn to see the oneness of humanity. Much evil in the world needs to be rooted out and pulled down before we can enjoy a brave new world. The Children of Israel had to be carried into captivity before a returning remnant could build a righteous nation. The gardener has to root out the weeds before the good seeds can grow.
What has to be rooted out in my life before the good life can be complete? What has to be rooted out and pulled down in our nation and in our world before the New Day can dawn? We have not planted as God would have us plant; we have not built as God would have us build. Jeremiah was called to be the agent of God's two hands: the hand of judgment and the hand of grace. Between the two hands of God, Israel was steered again into creative life. This, now, must happen to our world: the tearing down and the building up, under the direction of God. "To build, and to plant" is the word of God as it came to Jeremiah. This is what the Holy Spirit is now calling us to do in the life of our world.
This encounter must be a personal experience before it can be a national and international reality. Encounter with the Living God can be known in us through encounter with the Living Christ. We look at an incident in the life of Jesus. In him our problems and our hopes are joined. "Jesus set out for Galilee. He had to go through Samaria." The have-to's of life may sometimes result in encounter. "On the way he came to a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the spring called 'Jacob's well.' It was near noon and Jesus, tired after his journey, sat down by the well." As he sat on the well-head, he gazed out across the shimmering heat of the desert. "The disciples had gone into town to buy food."
"Meanwhile" - how full of possibility is "meanwhile"! -"Meanwhile a Samaritan woman came to draw water." It was strange that a Samaritan woman came alone. The trip to the well was a social occasion. But she was the "fallen" woman of the village. Her neighbors had no dealings with her. She was bitter, belligerent, ready to fight back at anything. She was not a likely prospect for encounter. She came to draw water, and nothing else.
"Give me a drink," Jesus asked. It was just as simple as that. In a natural situation, he opened the door to another person. She was defensive - mad at the world and ready to blow up. "Huh!" she said. "You, a Jew, ask me for a drink! Don't you know that Jews and Samaritans don't use the same vessels?" There was a Jewish fountain and a Samaritan fountain; a Jewish dipper and a Samaritan dipper.
Why are people in the world today so confused and destructive? Perhaps they, like the woman at the well, have lost everything worth living for, worth dying for. They have lost a sense of the holy. They are empty, defensive, ready to blow. Like an amoeba they are motivated only by dissatisfaction. They move only when they are irritated. Something needs to be rooted out, torn down. Life is more than a desperate walk between two darknessess.
"You ask me for a drink?" She meant to be insulting. Jesus could take it. He could see beyond it to a deeper need. Jesus was never defensive; he was sure of his relationship to God. He doesn't fight back when people seek to hurt him. He answered, "If only you knew what God gives; and who it is that is asking you for a drink." If we only knew that God is able to come to grips with the contemporary situation. If we only knew that there is so much more to life than we have ever dreamed. If we only knew, as Pascal suggests, "Even if it brings moments of terror and feelings of sinfulness, even if it demands self-discipline, it is worth it." The mystery, the strength, the surging of life in encounter with God is the greatest reality. If you only knew "who it is that is asking you for a drink." We mistake people. We take the "little shots" for the "big shots" and the "big shots" for the "little shots," and overlook persons of real depth and quality. We live in the same house with our wife or husband and children, and don't know them. We live next door to our neighbors, and never really share in depth with them.
Jesus spoke again: "If you had known, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water." You can have a new spirit! You can be set free! She had never dreamed this to be possible. She was "a fallen woman," and she was stuck with it. People reminded her of it every day. She wasn't ready for anything but a fight. She had had to fight everybody all of her life, and so she fought Jesus, answering, "Sir, you don't even have a bucket."
As we would put it, "God, you don't understand modern life. What do you know about the surface of the moon or the nature of an atom? What do you know about my sick child? The well is deep, and you don't have a bucket! Give me Living Water? That's a joke."
She wanted to go on hurting, as she had been hurt, so she said, "Who do you think you are? Are you greater than Jacob, our ancestor?" Are you greater than the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, the stock market, the international banks? She did not know that she was speaking with the One who was the vessel through which God's Life poured out to people like us.
A defensive person has no defense againt others who are not defensive. Jesus continued quietly without irritation, "Everybody who drinks this water will thirst again." Your father, Jacob, had to come back again and again - you have to draw water every day. You are a thirsty people. Youths are thirsty; the blacks are thirsty; both the rich and the poor are thirsty; the whole world is thirsty. That's what's wrong with it. There is something deeper in life that you can touch and know. I can give it to you.
Simone Weil, in the book Gravity and Grace, says it beautifully: "People need poetry more than bread. They need that their life should be a poem. They need some light from eternity. Religion, alone, is the source of such mystery. It is not religion, but revolution, which is the opiate of the people. Deprivation of this poetry explains all forms of demoralization." Simone Weil was talking about the same thing that Jesus was talking about: "Whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never thirst any more." But the poor, blind woman at the well had no concept of anything beyond the physical. Jeremiah could grasp what God was saying to him. But, like many of us, the woman at the well had almost no spiritual understanding.
We, also, suffer from her blindness: "We yearn for a simpler set of problems ... problems small enough for our shrunken faith." Jesus speaks of life and hope, confidence and joy, springing up inside us. In encounter, we touch a power that is in accord with a realistic view of the total universe! Now life sings again, and the parts fall together. A faith-life is the true life. The old gnawing is gone. We are strangely sustained.
"The Water that I give you will be an inner spring always welling up from the eternal to the eternal." It flows from the Source of things when my gate is open! It is life beyond the moment; beyond heart-beat; beyond separation; beyond death. It is the completion of life that God gives in the process and at the end of the process. This is the grace of God, the self-renewing force within, the Holy Spirit. We are not dealing with punctuation, but with concepts; not with symbols, but with reality. This is something that Jeremiah could not forget as long as he lived. All this is worked out in turmoil, in struggle, and in obedient ministry. It is an inner spring, welling up forever!
But many of us, like the woman that Jesus met in encounter, have so long been satisfied with a minimum view of life that we cannot see anything more. Christopher Martin describes it in William Golding's book: "The end to be desired is rescue. For that the bare minimum necessary is survival. I must keep this body going. I must give it drink and food and shelter. When I do that it does not matter if the job is well done or not, so long as it is done at all. So long as this thread of life is unbroken it will connect a future with a past, for all this ghostly interlude." But full life doesn't work out on a minimum basis. Rioting and violence, frustration and emptiness are the fruits of life lived on a minimum basis. God called Jeremiah; Jesus calls us to something far more meaningful and beautiful.
Again Christopher Martin is described by William Golding as he struggles alone with his guilt on a bit of rock in the Atlantic Ocean: "On the sixth day he created God ... in his own image created he Him ..." (Something inside is muttering:) "what do you believe in? ... The thread of my life at all costs. Repeat after me: at all costs ... I have a right to live if I can! Where is that written? ... Consider ... I will not consider! I have created you and I can create my own heaven. You have created it. He glanced sideways along the twitching water, down at his skeleton legs and knees, felt the rain and the spray and the savage cold on his flesh. He began to mutter. I prefer it ... Poor mad sailor on a rock! ... He ran about on the lookout, stumbling over scattered stones."2 There are some things we cannot do for ourselves! Nor can our self-made god handle things for us. Christopher Martin had a meaningless encounter with himself. If he could have had an encounter from beyond himself, as did Jeremiah, the results would have been different for him.
There is that other vision: life at its highest. There is a quality of life that becomes great and real in encounter. Let me quote a young man growing up in the unbelievable pressures of this present world, who has been in encounter with the same Person who sat by the well. Out of his present struggle he writes, "I hope you can read this card. The joy you spoke of is becoming very real ... Knowing that God is my Shepherd, and that he will see me through this trial, I have great hope. He will perfect me, establish me, strengthen me, and, one day, settle me ... Thank you for helping me find and establish the cornerstone of peace ... I am growing daily." Encounter! Thank God!
"Sir, give me this water ... and I won't have to come all this way to draw." I want it as I define it. I want to be helped out of this present jam. Jesus wanted more for her. He wanted to give a Spirit that would become an inner living strength in all jams and crises. She was getting close to it, but not close enough. She had not really gotten to the root of her problem. Boldly Jesus continued to probe: "Go home, call your husband and come back." Go home to the village; discover your problem. Is it family relationships? Fear or worry? Is it guilt or bitterness or hate? Is it loneliness? What is it? What's wrong? Where is the misery? Where is the hurt? Jesus wanted to help her, lastingly.
She answered a half-truth: "I have no husband." Jesus gently continued: "You are right; you have had five husbands, and the one you are now living with is not your husband." The truth was out; the disease was revealed; the healing could now be accepted. Her problem was false human relationships which separated her from life. One of our problems is living life at the shallowest level. This leaves an ever-growing thirst. Life at its deepest level, discovered in encounter, brings satisfying human relationships, a growing peace of mind, a sense of achievement, a sense of being alive, a deep love, a shared joy!
"Sir, I see you are a prophet." Like most of us sinners, she began to dodge. Jesus was getting a little too close to the problem. She was scared. She took refuge in theological argument: "Our fathers worshiped God in this mountain; you Jews worship in Jerusalem." This will keep us busy, she thought, this will turn the attention away from me. Jesus continued: "The time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem." Play games, play fast and loose with God, and you will lose him. Jesus continued: "The time cometh - is indeed here - when those who are real worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth." Is there any other way to come to grips with God than to be frank, honest, obedient, thinking, willing to grow?
The woman answered: "I know that Messiah is coming! When he comes he will tell me all things." To hope is good. We live by hope. It leads to encounter. It enables persons and groups to survive; and, yet, there is a trap in it. It's going to happen "some day," but not now! Thus the present is lost and we are off the hook. But Jesus broke in on her distant reverie: "I who speak to you am He." What do you do with that? The Truth; the Life; the Way; at the present moment, now; you are in encounter, acting and being acted upon, in the life situation.
Violence comes from those who have no real hope, those who have lost the perspective of the possibilities of life! The Spirit of Christ has broken in upon persons and civilization again and again. Jeremiah and the woman at the well bear witness to this fact. These persons and civilizations have been renewed. This will happen again and again until the end of time. "I who speak to you am He." Now! This is your moment of time.
"At that moment, the disciples returned." It happens every time. Just at the moment when you hold your breath, and you could hear the whisper of God, the disciples come thundering in. But, in encounter, something had already happened that could not easily be erased. "She put down her water jar and went to town!" She had forgotten why she came! She forgot her thirst! Something new was welling up in her!
At the village she spoke to the people. Who is this speakng? It was the town's "bad woman," the outcast whom they had no dealings with. Encounter had changed her, and she had become the instrument of encounter. They listened - not because it was she, but because this person was different. She was excited, glowing, filled with a newness that was strange. She was beautiful. A miracle! You cannot cover up encounter! Your face shines, and you do not know that it shines. You have touched another world.
With a new voice, she spoke calmly: "Come see a man that has told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?" Could it be? They felt her yearning; and they yearned too. The miracle happened! It happened at mid-day, to a whole village! Encounter was multiplied: "They came out of the town and made their way toward Jesus." They closed up the town! They gave up their siesta! They marched through the mid-day glare to an ancient well where something was happening!
Jeremiah's encounter with God moved from judgment to grace. Jesus' encounter with the woman by the well moved from judgment to grace. May we now realize the judgment of our personal and national breakdown. May we acknowledge the fact that God is in charge - and we need him.
May we let him "Root out and pull down" what needs to be rooted out and pulled down. May we work with Him in "building up and planting" what needs to be built up and planted.
"The word of the Lord came unto me saying ..." Jeremiah's Encounter with God led to the coming of Christ. Our Encounter with Christ can lead to the coming of His Kingdom.
1. Thomas Wolfe, "Writing is my Life," The Atlantic Monthly, 1947.
2. From Pincher Martin, copyright (c) 1956 by William Golding, renewed 1984 by William Gerald Golding. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
An encounter with God always comes as a surprise. I just don't believe this can happen to me - but God wants it to happen to everyone. If we are open to it, it will come. Here it comes to a young man, Jeremiah. An exchange takes place. This is beyond reasoning thought; this is a "happening." It is not thinking about the Truth; it is a direct meeting with Truth. It is a direct, face-to-face realization of Truth. It is meeting God, person-to-person. All of us are wandering between two worlds. At times these two worlds collide; both worlds become one, and we are living simultaneously in both.
For young Jeremiah it was a shocking, irrefutable experience: "Then the word of the Lord came unto me saying, 'Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.' " (Jeremiah 1:4-5) Imagine - all of that spoken all at once, unmistakably, in the mind of a young man!
Jeremiah knew instinctively that God had spoken, and his defensive response was immediate: "Then said I, 'Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child.' " (Jeremiah 1:6) We are all children in the sight of God. In fact, we are never fully mature until we get to heaven. This whole of life is a learning, growing process. That's why we are here. Not to grow is to die, to die eternally.
God had an answer for Jeremiah's excuse: "But the Lord said unto me, 'Say not, "I am a child;" for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak.' " (Jeremiah 1:7) Put yourself in young Jeremiah's place: "You will go wherever I send you; you will speak whatever I command you." That's life for the committed person. There is no argument. God has spoken: I obey. When we come to this experience, life still has its ups and downs, but we move with amazing confidence and assurance, fearlessly. God is speaking; I am obeying. Nothing can hurt me. Not really. God will see me through. God will sustain us in anything that he calls us to.
The word of God to Jeremiah continues: "Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord." (Jeremiah 1:8) They say that Jeremiah had a rough life and suffered a terrible death. Whenever God calls us to confront the forces of evil in our time head-on, we are in for trouble; but God is with us, and we know it. In this experience there is a grand sense of freedom and independence. We see beyond "the powers that be" to the Power that really is. Jeremiah survived gloriously and eternally. And so will we, when we obey our call.
God did not stop there. He prepared Jeremiah for the immediate task: "Then the Lord put forth his hand, and touched my mouth. And the Lord said unto me, 'Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth.' " Imagine speaking for God! Sharing his truth with fellow human beings, all under his care and guarantee. Jesus said to the disciples, "Don't worry about what you should say; my Holy Spirit will tell you what to say." Surely the Holy Spirit spoke through Paul's writings. Surely He spoke through Luther and Wesley. All of us, lesser persons, when trying so hard to make truth clear, when desperately trying to help someone with a difficult problem, have felt guided, have spoken with a wisdom and insight far beyond our own. We, ourselves, were strengthened and blessed, and we knew in our hearts that we were the agents of God's truth and love.
When I was made so painfully aware of our nation's moral and spiritual breakdown, of violence and crime and dishonesty and untruthfulness everywhere, I cried out in my soul: "only the authority of God can reorder our human selfishness; only the recognized Love of God can save us and restore our sanity!" God is in charge! Yet we deny him. He will touch our mouths and speak his saving word through a million mouths today, if we let him. Only God can save us; and yet even God is helpless until we obey him. "O, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thee, but ye would not, ye would not." The agony of God is: God on the Cross of our sin and our disobedience.
God has more to say to Jeremiah: "See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant." (Jeremiah 1:10) God cannot save us and help us until we obey. But God is not helpless. He is the Living God; the creator and ruler of the universe. Here we have the powers of evil and the power of God in conflict: two worlds in collision. God holds the ultimate power: we can accept it, or reject it. God's two hands - the hand of judgment and the hand of grace - are both redemptive. Our nation is now suffering under the hand of judgment. This can wake us up, enable us to see the hand of grace and forgiveness and restoration. Our nation can be reborn once again as a nation under God.
An experience of God, a divine encounter, is not just to be enjoyed, to be "a joy forever." It is joy, but it is also a call, a commission. God wants us to share what he gives us. He wants us to be the agents of his love, at work in the world. He calls us to mission (in keeping with our talents). That is our joy; that is our Life.
Listen as Thomas Wolfe beautifully describes his own life:
I was a boy from the mountains, came from a stange wild family, and went beyond the mountains and knew the state, I went beyond the state and knew the nation, ... I went to the greatest city and met strange and beautiful people, good, bad, and ugly ones, I went beyond the seas alone and walked down the million streets of life. When I was hungry and penniless ... all manner of strange folk came to my aid. In a thousand places the miracle has happened to me ..."1
Jeremiah, too, came from the country, a small village. But his family had instilled in him a sense of God. He went to the City; he went to the nations, under the command of God. He faced the evil of his day: he suffered for it. But the world has been a saner place because of Jeremiah.
Listen again to the burden that God placed on his heart. The burden was his contribution to the life of the world. This was a part of the historic build-up to the Cross of Jesus. Jeremiah, like Jesus, was caught between "the upper and the nether millstone," the selfish blindness of the world beneath and the righteous will of God from above. That will crush us, unless we are sustained by the power of God. Jeremiah was sent beyond his own familiar surroundings to the nations and kingdoms of the world. Why? Under the authority of God, he was "to root out, and to pull down, to destroy, and to throw down ..."
The whole world is tied together, nation-to-nation, people-to-people. What helps one helps another; what hurts one hurts another. God is in charge of the whole picture, and we must learn to see the oneness of humanity. Much evil in the world needs to be rooted out and pulled down before we can enjoy a brave new world. The Children of Israel had to be carried into captivity before a returning remnant could build a righteous nation. The gardener has to root out the weeds before the good seeds can grow.
What has to be rooted out in my life before the good life can be complete? What has to be rooted out and pulled down in our nation and in our world before the New Day can dawn? We have not planted as God would have us plant; we have not built as God would have us build. Jeremiah was called to be the agent of God's two hands: the hand of judgment and the hand of grace. Between the two hands of God, Israel was steered again into creative life. This, now, must happen to our world: the tearing down and the building up, under the direction of God. "To build, and to plant" is the word of God as it came to Jeremiah. This is what the Holy Spirit is now calling us to do in the life of our world.
This encounter must be a personal experience before it can be a national and international reality. Encounter with the Living God can be known in us through encounter with the Living Christ. We look at an incident in the life of Jesus. In him our problems and our hopes are joined. "Jesus set out for Galilee. He had to go through Samaria." The have-to's of life may sometimes result in encounter. "On the way he came to a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the spring called 'Jacob's well.' It was near noon and Jesus, tired after his journey, sat down by the well." As he sat on the well-head, he gazed out across the shimmering heat of the desert. "The disciples had gone into town to buy food."
"Meanwhile" - how full of possibility is "meanwhile"! -"Meanwhile a Samaritan woman came to draw water." It was strange that a Samaritan woman came alone. The trip to the well was a social occasion. But she was the "fallen" woman of the village. Her neighbors had no dealings with her. She was bitter, belligerent, ready to fight back at anything. She was not a likely prospect for encounter. She came to draw water, and nothing else.
"Give me a drink," Jesus asked. It was just as simple as that. In a natural situation, he opened the door to another person. She was defensive - mad at the world and ready to blow up. "Huh!" she said. "You, a Jew, ask me for a drink! Don't you know that Jews and Samaritans don't use the same vessels?" There was a Jewish fountain and a Samaritan fountain; a Jewish dipper and a Samaritan dipper.
Why are people in the world today so confused and destructive? Perhaps they, like the woman at the well, have lost everything worth living for, worth dying for. They have lost a sense of the holy. They are empty, defensive, ready to blow. Like an amoeba they are motivated only by dissatisfaction. They move only when they are irritated. Something needs to be rooted out, torn down. Life is more than a desperate walk between two darknessess.
"You ask me for a drink?" She meant to be insulting. Jesus could take it. He could see beyond it to a deeper need. Jesus was never defensive; he was sure of his relationship to God. He doesn't fight back when people seek to hurt him. He answered, "If only you knew what God gives; and who it is that is asking you for a drink." If we only knew that God is able to come to grips with the contemporary situation. If we only knew that there is so much more to life than we have ever dreamed. If we only knew, as Pascal suggests, "Even if it brings moments of terror and feelings of sinfulness, even if it demands self-discipline, it is worth it." The mystery, the strength, the surging of life in encounter with God is the greatest reality. If you only knew "who it is that is asking you for a drink." We mistake people. We take the "little shots" for the "big shots" and the "big shots" for the "little shots," and overlook persons of real depth and quality. We live in the same house with our wife or husband and children, and don't know them. We live next door to our neighbors, and never really share in depth with them.
Jesus spoke again: "If you had known, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water." You can have a new spirit! You can be set free! She had never dreamed this to be possible. She was "a fallen woman," and she was stuck with it. People reminded her of it every day. She wasn't ready for anything but a fight. She had had to fight everybody all of her life, and so she fought Jesus, answering, "Sir, you don't even have a bucket."
As we would put it, "God, you don't understand modern life. What do you know about the surface of the moon or the nature of an atom? What do you know about my sick child? The well is deep, and you don't have a bucket! Give me Living Water? That's a joke."
She wanted to go on hurting, as she had been hurt, so she said, "Who do you think you are? Are you greater than Jacob, our ancestor?" Are you greater than the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, the stock market, the international banks? She did not know that she was speaking with the One who was the vessel through which God's Life poured out to people like us.
A defensive person has no defense againt others who are not defensive. Jesus continued quietly without irritation, "Everybody who drinks this water will thirst again." Your father, Jacob, had to come back again and again - you have to draw water every day. You are a thirsty people. Youths are thirsty; the blacks are thirsty; both the rich and the poor are thirsty; the whole world is thirsty. That's what's wrong with it. There is something deeper in life that you can touch and know. I can give it to you.
Simone Weil, in the book Gravity and Grace, says it beautifully: "People need poetry more than bread. They need that their life should be a poem. They need some light from eternity. Religion, alone, is the source of such mystery. It is not religion, but revolution, which is the opiate of the people. Deprivation of this poetry explains all forms of demoralization." Simone Weil was talking about the same thing that Jesus was talking about: "Whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never thirst any more." But the poor, blind woman at the well had no concept of anything beyond the physical. Jeremiah could grasp what God was saying to him. But, like many of us, the woman at the well had almost no spiritual understanding.
We, also, suffer from her blindness: "We yearn for a simpler set of problems ... problems small enough for our shrunken faith." Jesus speaks of life and hope, confidence and joy, springing up inside us. In encounter, we touch a power that is in accord with a realistic view of the total universe! Now life sings again, and the parts fall together. A faith-life is the true life. The old gnawing is gone. We are strangely sustained.
"The Water that I give you will be an inner spring always welling up from the eternal to the eternal." It flows from the Source of things when my gate is open! It is life beyond the moment; beyond heart-beat; beyond separation; beyond death. It is the completion of life that God gives in the process and at the end of the process. This is the grace of God, the self-renewing force within, the Holy Spirit. We are not dealing with punctuation, but with concepts; not with symbols, but with reality. This is something that Jeremiah could not forget as long as he lived. All this is worked out in turmoil, in struggle, and in obedient ministry. It is an inner spring, welling up forever!
But many of us, like the woman that Jesus met in encounter, have so long been satisfied with a minimum view of life that we cannot see anything more. Christopher Martin describes it in William Golding's book: "The end to be desired is rescue. For that the bare minimum necessary is survival. I must keep this body going. I must give it drink and food and shelter. When I do that it does not matter if the job is well done or not, so long as it is done at all. So long as this thread of life is unbroken it will connect a future with a past, for all this ghostly interlude." But full life doesn't work out on a minimum basis. Rioting and violence, frustration and emptiness are the fruits of life lived on a minimum basis. God called Jeremiah; Jesus calls us to something far more meaningful and beautiful.
Again Christopher Martin is described by William Golding as he struggles alone with his guilt on a bit of rock in the Atlantic Ocean: "On the sixth day he created God ... in his own image created he Him ..." (Something inside is muttering:) "what do you believe in? ... The thread of my life at all costs. Repeat after me: at all costs ... I have a right to live if I can! Where is that written? ... Consider ... I will not consider! I have created you and I can create my own heaven. You have created it. He glanced sideways along the twitching water, down at his skeleton legs and knees, felt the rain and the spray and the savage cold on his flesh. He began to mutter. I prefer it ... Poor mad sailor on a rock! ... He ran about on the lookout, stumbling over scattered stones."2 There are some things we cannot do for ourselves! Nor can our self-made god handle things for us. Christopher Martin had a meaningless encounter with himself. If he could have had an encounter from beyond himself, as did Jeremiah, the results would have been different for him.
There is that other vision: life at its highest. There is a quality of life that becomes great and real in encounter. Let me quote a young man growing up in the unbelievable pressures of this present world, who has been in encounter with the same Person who sat by the well. Out of his present struggle he writes, "I hope you can read this card. The joy you spoke of is becoming very real ... Knowing that God is my Shepherd, and that he will see me through this trial, I have great hope. He will perfect me, establish me, strengthen me, and, one day, settle me ... Thank you for helping me find and establish the cornerstone of peace ... I am growing daily." Encounter! Thank God!
"Sir, give me this water ... and I won't have to come all this way to draw." I want it as I define it. I want to be helped out of this present jam. Jesus wanted more for her. He wanted to give a Spirit that would become an inner living strength in all jams and crises. She was getting close to it, but not close enough. She had not really gotten to the root of her problem. Boldly Jesus continued to probe: "Go home, call your husband and come back." Go home to the village; discover your problem. Is it family relationships? Fear or worry? Is it guilt or bitterness or hate? Is it loneliness? What is it? What's wrong? Where is the misery? Where is the hurt? Jesus wanted to help her, lastingly.
She answered a half-truth: "I have no husband." Jesus gently continued: "You are right; you have had five husbands, and the one you are now living with is not your husband." The truth was out; the disease was revealed; the healing could now be accepted. Her problem was false human relationships which separated her from life. One of our problems is living life at the shallowest level. This leaves an ever-growing thirst. Life at its deepest level, discovered in encounter, brings satisfying human relationships, a growing peace of mind, a sense of achievement, a sense of being alive, a deep love, a shared joy!
"Sir, I see you are a prophet." Like most of us sinners, she began to dodge. Jesus was getting a little too close to the problem. She was scared. She took refuge in theological argument: "Our fathers worshiped God in this mountain; you Jews worship in Jerusalem." This will keep us busy, she thought, this will turn the attention away from me. Jesus continued: "The time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem." Play games, play fast and loose with God, and you will lose him. Jesus continued: "The time cometh - is indeed here - when those who are real worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth." Is there any other way to come to grips with God than to be frank, honest, obedient, thinking, willing to grow?
The woman answered: "I know that Messiah is coming! When he comes he will tell me all things." To hope is good. We live by hope. It leads to encounter. It enables persons and groups to survive; and, yet, there is a trap in it. It's going to happen "some day," but not now! Thus the present is lost and we are off the hook. But Jesus broke in on her distant reverie: "I who speak to you am He." What do you do with that? The Truth; the Life; the Way; at the present moment, now; you are in encounter, acting and being acted upon, in the life situation.
Violence comes from those who have no real hope, those who have lost the perspective of the possibilities of life! The Spirit of Christ has broken in upon persons and civilization again and again. Jeremiah and the woman at the well bear witness to this fact. These persons and civilizations have been renewed. This will happen again and again until the end of time. "I who speak to you am He." Now! This is your moment of time.
"At that moment, the disciples returned." It happens every time. Just at the moment when you hold your breath, and you could hear the whisper of God, the disciples come thundering in. But, in encounter, something had already happened that could not easily be erased. "She put down her water jar and went to town!" She had forgotten why she came! She forgot her thirst! Something new was welling up in her!
At the village she spoke to the people. Who is this speakng? It was the town's "bad woman," the outcast whom they had no dealings with. Encounter had changed her, and she had become the instrument of encounter. They listened - not because it was she, but because this person was different. She was excited, glowing, filled with a newness that was strange. She was beautiful. A miracle! You cannot cover up encounter! Your face shines, and you do not know that it shines. You have touched another world.
With a new voice, she spoke calmly: "Come see a man that has told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?" Could it be? They felt her yearning; and they yearned too. The miracle happened! It happened at mid-day, to a whole village! Encounter was multiplied: "They came out of the town and made their way toward Jesus." They closed up the town! They gave up their siesta! They marched through the mid-day glare to an ancient well where something was happening!
Jeremiah's encounter with God moved from judgment to grace. Jesus' encounter with the woman by the well moved from judgment to grace. May we now realize the judgment of our personal and national breakdown. May we acknowledge the fact that God is in charge - and we need him.
May we let him "Root out and pull down" what needs to be rooted out and pulled down. May we work with Him in "building up and planting" what needs to be built up and planted.
"The word of the Lord came unto me saying ..." Jeremiah's Encounter with God led to the coming of Christ. Our Encounter with Christ can lead to the coming of His Kingdom.
1. Thomas Wolfe, "Writing is my Life," The Atlantic Monthly, 1947.
2. From Pincher Martin, copyright (c) 1956 by William Golding, renewed 1984 by William Gerald Golding. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
