KICKING AT THE DARKNESS

Transcription

1 KICKING AT THE DARKNESS A sermon preached by the Rev. Aaron Billard St. John s United Church, Moncton, NB March 27, 2011 Please note: Because Rev. Aaron left his sermon in the office on Sunday morning, a different sermon was preached. Many thanks to Brenda MacFarlane whose first task as Chair of Worship and Music was to run to his office and get it! Here is the transcript from the prepared sermon. Respect. This is a story about respect. At a time of day when no one else would be where she was going, the woman going to the well was surprised to see a man leaning against it. It s hard to imagine what she felt. After all, she d been married a few times, and the man with whom she was living was not her husband. Yet, Jesus doesn t object to this. What he objects to is the fact that after daily trips to a well, she still has not found the water of life. And there he is. What s interesting is that in all of our morality as the church and the list of do s and don ts we ve managed to compile in our existence, Jesus doesn t address the fact that she s living with a man doesn t even blip on his radar he objects to her solitude. He objects to her loneliness. He objects to the fact that she has been isolated and is very much a lone and the one for whom she is looking is before her eyes though she has yet to recognize him. I m not sure what it is you re looking for in life. When it comes to faith, where is the well from which you draw faith? Where do you find your hope? We have so many different people competing for our time and our energy, that when at the end of the day we are exhausted and overloaded - there is but one place yet untapped: the Spirit. So much of life is soul-sucking and exhausting. We pour much of ourselves into black holes which consume energy yet don t give 1

2 it back that when we find ourselves at the precipice of futility we seek that which nourishes the soul, calms the heart, and eases the mind. That is what we think of as God. When s the last time you ve had an experience that you would describe as Spiritual? When s the last time that you felt that you ve touched whatever it is that is of God in your life? The sad, yet not surprising, part is that many of us can t recall that on a moment s notice. It would take some deliberate thinking. The water is farther down the well than we might suspect, and we have nothing to use to reach it. Or do we? Part of worshipping God each Sunday is part of that process of accepting God s presence in our lives, and part of the experience of life is searching for hope. Life coaches would try to tell us to live and do our passion, and if you re not doing that every day, then why not? The fact of the matter is that not everyone is set up to live their passion (unless your passion is trying to get others to live your passion and buy your book.) Needless to say, I m cynical about all of that because I work hard each and every day to see signs of hope in the world around me, in our city, in my family, and in my own individual days. Truth be told, there are moments experienced by all of us that aren t hope filled. But, what happens when suffering + endurance + character don t produce hope? What happens when they produce despair? Maybe Paul missed something. I can suffer and still have hope. But despair? The truth is, we can t truly understand what life is, or what Easter is, until we know darkness. And not just my flight got cancelled kind of darkness. But the part where there is no life - where death creeps in. Yet, sitting on the edge of darkness is hope. Bruce Cockburn wrote a song specifically about this, called Lovers in a Dangerous Time: You ve gotta kick at the darkness til it bleeds day light... And that s precisely what we have to do. Kick at the darkness. Kick at it. Don t stop putting pressure on it until there is a crack 2

3 of light and a glimmer of hope. And we kick and we wrestle and we push and we pull until there is something. Nietzsche says that, In reality, hope is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs man s torments. But, I disagree. The only way around despair is through it. It s the time spent in the deep, dark, cold cave that truly prepares us for the gasp of life that fills our lungs, energizes the soul, and gives us the hope that does not disappoint. But there has to be a period of despair, of suffering, and intentional spiritual waiting before something new emerges. And that s faith. Being faithful isn t always about believing. It s the pursuit of hope. Hope is a disciple. It s something we have to practice daily. And on this day, at a well, a woman seems to have lost hope. Jesus talks longer to the woman at the well than he does to anyone else in all the Gospels - longer than he talks to any of his disciples, longer than he talks to any of his accusers, longer than he talks to any of his own family. She is the first person he reveals himself to in the Gospel of John. She is the first outsider to guess who he is and tell others. She is the first evangelist, John tells us, and her testimony brings many to faith. This story shows us a God who is about equality and respect. There s a joke about someone applying for a job but he has three things against him. Also, the person applying is actually a dog: A local business was looking for office help and put a sign in the window stating: "HELP WANTED. Must be able to type, must be good with a computer, and must be bilingual. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer."A dog trots up to the window, sees the sign & goes inside. The manager tells the dog, "I can't hire you. The sign says you have to be able to type." The dog goes to the typewriter and types a perfect letter. The manager is 3

4 stunned, and then tells the dog, "But the sign says you have to be good with a computer." The dog jumps up, goes to the computer, demonstrates his expertise with Word, Excel, Outlook, and Power Point and produces a sample spreadsheet and presents it to the manager. Stunned once again, the manager replies, "I still can't give you the job. You have to be bilingual." The dog looks him straight in the face and says, "Meow." When the woman at the well steps back, Jesus steps toward her. When she steps out of the light, he steps into it. He will not let her retreat. If she is determined to show him less of herself, then he will show her more of himself. "I know that Messiah is coming," she says, and he says, "I am he." It is the first time he has said that to another living soul. It is a moment of full disclosure, in which the triple outsider and the Messiah of God stand face to face with no pretence about who they are. Both stand fully lit at high noon for one bright moment in time, while all the rules, taboos and history that separate them fall forgotten to the ground. By telling the woman who she is, Jesus shows her who he is. By confirming her true identity, he reveals his own, and that is how it still happens. The Messiah is the one in whose presence you know who you really are--the good and bad of it, the all of it, the hope in it. The Messiah is the one who shows you who you are by showing you who he is - who crosses all boundaries, breaks all rules, drops all disguises - speaking to you like someone you have known all your life, bubbling up in your life like a well that needs no dipper, so that you go back to face people you thought you could never face again, speaking to them as boldly as he spoke to you. "Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done." Something that attracts me to this story is that there is no healing, just good conversation. We re so used to sound bite 4

5 Jesus that it s interesting to see the person behind the Messiah. It s refreshing to think of Jesus sitting beside a 1,200 year-oldwell that was made famous by someone else. This story is divinity and humanity holding hands, laughing back and forth, and even getting a bit testy when the comments hit too close to home; but it s a conversation held in what becomes mutual respect. Thomas Moore said, Heaven is not some impossible, idealized world; it is ordinary life made brilliant by a philosophy of mutual respect. That is precisely the perceived problem here: mutual respect. It s also what is at stake. Because for several reasons, including race, religion, and gender, what Jesus is doing is considered wrong by the people around him who loved him most. Sarah Parks Ricker, a member of our congregation, share with me the idea by Robert Alter in, The Art of Biblical Narrative where he talks about Hebrew type-scenes in which stock characters would act a certain way every time. In the Hebrew stories, it sometimes happens that when a man meets a woman at a well, they get married. So, if you didn t know who Jesus was, to Hebrew ears, this was a possible outcome, and was a great way of telling a story. Because not only is this a story about divinity and humanity, it s a story about love and, while not hate, about the people whom we aren t supposed to love. John s story takes place in a Samaritan city called Sychar. More specifically, near a well called Jacob s Well. It was, and remains over 100 feet deep. It s the kind of well into which water percolates and gathers. The water that Jesus brings, he says, gushes up. What gushes up for me in this story is what a professor of mine once said. He said that any time we label someone as other, 5

6 for whatever reason be it social, political, racial, religious, sexual, we dehumanize them. That s a slippery slope. With the label other it becomes easier to call someone a name. It becomes easier to limit rights and create a second-class citizen. It becomes easier to do things that are so cruel and inhuman that we are left wondering how did this happen? The greatest sin just might be complacency. What dictated the conversation between Jesus and the woman at the well was respect. And when that humanity was shown in a conversation about divinity, both left the experience fuller, having drunk deeply from the well of mutual respect. In the end, the woman leaves her water jar behind. Perhaps it was an act of kindness towards her new friend, or perhaps it was because her thirst had been quenched. I want to thank the woman at the well for reminding me that even when I know that things aren t what they could be in my life, or in the world, God draws closer into a holy conversation. I want to leave you with this question: What do you do when you re thirsty, and you have no bucket, and the well is deep? 6