Lent is the season for taking steps away and revaluating who we are in God’s eyes and what in life is good for us as we run. We would like to say that God is very good for us by being good to us. We are invited to the desert for a while. Not just ‘do-without’, but ‘do-with’ such experiences as hunger, silence, solitude, and thirst. Is there anything good for us as we do with doing without?
In Exodus, we have a wonderful story of Lent in the life of our Jewish ancestors (Exodus 17:3-7). They had left the slavery and flesh pots of Egypt. They had been freed, but they didn’t find this good for them just yet. They grumbled and complained against Moses who feared he might get stoned for his having led them out into the desert. They were not doing well with the with-out. They were thirsty and there didn’t seem to be any water handy.
Tension creates revelation in our lives. Tensions are good for us. The followers of Moses were in physical and spiritual tension and they turned in fear to Moses who turned to God in faith.
Lent is a time of graceful tensions which we can choose to grumble through or wait for relief which is promised. Water is one form of relief and it satisfies for a while, the short run, but there will be more tensions and more revelations. God would say to Israel, “Do you know what’s good for you? I Am is good for you!”
John’s Gospel continues this theme of one thing being good, but a second thing being better (John 4:5-42). To enjoy and profit from this reading you’ve got to understand irony and double meanings. John uses both in many of his stories. In this Gospel, John uses a well and plays with water and thirst.
Jesus asks a woman from a foreign country for a drink of water. She will play with the superficial meaning of water while Jesus will take her, (and us the listeners) below the surface to drink a deeper meaning. Jesus is the “living water” which is meant to satisfy our deepest thirsts. As good as water is for us; this Living Water is ultimately better.
The conversation between Jesus and the woman results in her becoming aware of being renewed by her drinking in Jesus’ words and meaning. She runs off to tell others what would be good for them and they too come to drink in and believe in this new well.
Jesus gives her her truth, her real self which is very good for her. Jesus almost sounds like my dad when He says, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” She drinks it all in and knows it is good for her.
What in Lent is good for us? These two scripture readings invite us to plunge deeper into our longings for God. Nature abhors a vacuum; human nature flees emptiness. The desert isn’t good for anything and tensions are to be resolved through the most convenient solutions. Lent is a graceful period for us to make friends with those human realities which can be good for us if we have faith in the God Who gave them water from the rock. We must stop drinking the salt-water experiences which lead only to superficial “satisfictions.” The woman had five husbands in her search for completion and Jesus invites her to see that she too thirsts for a water that springs to eternal fullness.
We are invited to that same confrontation with our shallow sips of life and the offering from Jesus to trust the tensions which human longing provides. God longs to give us what is good for us, but there has to be some deserts, some hospitality within us if we are to be truly human and blest.
Finally, Lent is the liturgical season that invites us to plumb our emptiness and alienation from God and to return to Jesus. Like water from the rock reviving the Jews wandering in the desert, like living water from Jacob’s well promised to the Samaritan women, we acknowledge our thirst and pray with Paul that the love of God may be poured more fully into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Romans 5:1-8).
No comments:
Post a Comment