The Jesus Experience: Like Water for the Parched, Thirsty Soul

for the 3^rd Sunday in Lent, 27 March 2011

John 4

            This Lenten Season, we continue to read from the gospel of John, wherein we meet four people who each have a “Jesus Experience.” These stories invite us to contemplate how we experience Jesus in our lives.

            We meet the woman at the well today. The Samaritan woman. Both words are significant. As the text reminds us, Jews have nothing to do with Samaritans. The writer assumes we already know what everyone living on the rim of the Mediterranean would know, in the first centuries of Christianity: Men do not speak to women. Correction: virtuous men do not speak to women who are not their mothers, sisters, or wives. And a virtuous woman would not respond to a man who is not her father, brother or husband. That is why, later in the story, the disciples are scandalized to see him talking with a woman. They are so preoccupied with Jesus’ boundary violation, wondering furthermore if he took food from this woman, that they don’t notice what is happening around them.

            While the disciples are preoccupied with Jesus’ rule-breaking, boundary-busting behavior, the Samaritan woman is doing their job! She is telling people what she knows about this Jesus. Intrigued, the villagers come out to meet Jesus for themselves. The disciples listen, dumbfounded, as Jesus tells them they will reap where another has sown, and here comes the sower herself, bringing in the harvest!

            But let’s go back, to the Jesus experience at hand. What do we know about thirst? Do we know thirst like the Samaritan woman’s thirst? Jesus knows her, she is the woman who has had five men, and the man she has now is not her man, he is, presumably, someone else’s man. She is the woman who is searching for that one person who will make her life complete, who will quench her thirst for meaning. Can we relate to that? She is looking for that one perfect opportunity which will allow her to use her full potential. She is searching for the perfect place that will finally feel like home. She is thirsty for love, hungry for ultimate meaning. That is the woman at the well.

            In Jesus, she finds someone who knows everything that she has ever done, but does not condemn her. In Jesus, she finds everything she has been thirsting for-- so much so, that she forgets why she came to the well in the first place. Leaving her water jar behind, she begins a new life, as a witness, an apostle, a messenger of the gospel. She tells everyone in town what she has experienced, and they run to Jesus to see for themselves. They, in turn, have their own encounter, and invite Jesus to stay with them. And Jesus accepts their offer, and stays with them for days.

            The woman who first came to the well alone, utterly alone, returned to the well with a family, a whole community. The one who was an outsider, and accursed, was honored by that community as the one who brought them the living water. She became the vessel, she became the water jar, of living water.

            Now I invite you to enter into a guided meditation. Consider for a moment, what are you thirsting after? What is it you are constantly returning to, to quench that thirst? What’s your well or watering hole? Go there now, in your imagination.

            If Jesus were to meet you there, and tell you “everything you ever did,” what would he say?

            And if you were to leave something behind, like a water jar, what would it be? What is encumbering you? What’s getting in the way of your freedom to tell others what you have experienced as Jesus in your life?

            And finally, when you leave that water jar of yours behind, what will you say to the others. How can you share your Jesus experience with others?

            I invite you to contemplate these questions, as we listen to the interlude and prepare to sing the hymn.

           

The Jesus Experience: Like Being Born. Again.

for the 2nd Sunday in Lent, 20th March 2011
text: John 3:1-17

During this season of Lent, the Revised Common Lectionary, which is the list of scriptures used by many churches, assigns passages from the gospel of John. Now John’s gospel is, to put it in polite Minnesotan, “different.” I remember reading the gospels in canonical order for the first time, staring with Matthew, then Mark and Luke, chapter one verse one until the end. [This was when I was in high school. I used to read the Bible before I went to bed at night. Because I didn’t want my parents to worry that I was turning into some religious freak, I hid the bible in a shoebox under my bed.] When I got to John, I thought, “Is this the same Jesus?” John’s Jesus talks differently, thinks differently, relates to people differently than the Jesus of the other gospels. There are stories and characters in John’s gospel that appear nowhere else. It really bothered me. For a long time it has bothered me.
But, [as I wrote previously in my blog] perhaps the gospel of John is to the other gospels as a poetic ballad is to a historical novel. Perhaps the gospel of John is an attempt to convey the experience of Jesus. John’s gospel was compiled as many as 40 years after Mark, decades after Matthew and Luke. It is different. The gospel according to John is not another collection of the sayings of Jesus, not another collection of the letters of apostles-- the church already had those by the time the gospel of John was created. So the gospel of John had another mission. I think this gospel was an attempt to convey the experience of Jesus to people who had never met him in the flesh. It was an attempt to explain to new Christians “This is what it is like to meet Jesus.”
The people we meet in the gospel of John-- Nicodemus, the Samaritan Woman, the man born blind, and Lazarus—each one is, in a sense, an "Everyman," or "Everywoman." Their stories are examples of how we might experience the Christ in our lives.
This week, we will consider how the Jesus Experience is like “being born again.” Next week we will consider how the Jesus experience is like drinking water so pure and refreshing that you are never thirsty again. The following week, how the Jesus Experience is like seeing the world clearly for the first time ever, and finally, like coming back from the dead. “The Jesus Experience” is an invitation to contemplate the presence of Jesus, the Christ, in our lives.
So, meet Nicodemus. A Pharisee. One of THOSE people who were always critical of Jesus. And yet, Nicodemus is drawn to Jesus. This is Nicodemus’s first appearance in the gospel, but we will meet him again, as we read along. At this point, in the third chapter of John’s gospel, Nic’s relationship with Jesus is just beginning. In the beginning, Nicodemus seems to be suffering from a divided self. Nicodemus follows Jesus in secret, because he is firmly entrenched in his family and community as a leader of the conservative movement, the movement that views strict adherence to the law, or to a particular interpretation of the law of Moses, as Israel’s only salvation. He continues to live as a Pharisee, but follows Jesus in secret, and that’s what I mean by a divided self, he is trying to live in two worlds. So the story goes that he comes to Jesus in secret, to say (in paraphrase), Hey, I’m on your side. I know you are from God, because no one could do what you do apart from God.
Jesus called him out. You can’t follow me half-way.
Jesus said, you must be born again, born anew, born from above. (All acceptable translations.)
“Born again” is one of those terms that people in my tradition say with at least a hint of derision. My tradition is “cradle Christianity.” It was the goal of 19th century Congregationalists and Presbyterians and others in the mainstream Protestant tradition, who invented the “Sunday School,” that a child born into the church should never know what it is NOT to be Christian. I think they did their job well, so well in fact that it is hard for us “cradle Christians” to understand just how difficult it is to make a change from being “not particularly religious” to claiming the name of Christian. It is like being born again. Because a person who leaves one identity, one community, one family for another is completely vulnerable, naked and scared, and in need of special care and protection. Like a newborn infant.
The image of being born again of water and the Spirit is a reference to baptism; that reference would have been clear to the first Christians reading John’s gospel. In the early church, adult converts were baptized during the great Easter vigil. In the pre-dawn darkness, catechumens were led to the baptistery, a circular building outside of a church, often a womb-like structure, where they undressed, immersed themselves in the water, and emerged cold and wet as a new born babe. They were then received by their new family, their Christian family, toweled off and anointed with oil, and dressed in a new white robe. Just like a newborn baby.
If you are, like me, a cradle Christian, if you have a hard time imagining what it would be like to embrace a life that is wholly foreign to your family and your community, then perhaps you can think of a different sort of change in your life that has been like being born again. Your coming out, your leaving home, your return from battle. Think of a welcome change, which made you tremble in anticipation of – you knew not what.
That is what it is like having Christ in your life, it is like being born again, naked and screaming.
Now, in the past, if a church like ours has grown, it has grown because people who were raised in a tradition like ours moved to our town and transferred their membership from their church in Anoka or Wadena or Zumbrota to became a member of our church. That was then, this is now.
Now, the fastest growing religious demographic in America is that group that checks the box “no religious preference.” Now, when a young couple comes to me for a wedding, and I ask them if they are affiliated with a local church (because, I believe being a professional means I shouldn’t steal some other pastor’s wedding!), usually they have to go back two generations to identify a religious affliliation. The bride and groom didn’t go to church, their parents didn’t go to church, but they seem to remember that Grandma used to go to St. Something or Other until she moved to Florida. So now, if the church is going to grow, it is going to have to be ready to care for infant Christians. We as a church have to be born again, we have to change our way of thinking and relating to the world. The old assumptions no longer apply.
We now need to be ready to care for those who are completely new to the faith. Those who, because of their decision to follow Christ, might need a new family. Our newest members will need us to be their family. We will need to think like a nursery, if we are to help other people have the Jesus experience that we cradle Christians have taken for granted. The Jesus experience is too good to keep to ourselves. It is an experience that we want to share with others.
But, I don’t want you to get the idea that it’s all work, work, work. Just as a new baby brings joy to a family, newborn Christians infuse the church with new joy. New and newly born folks tend to have the energy and stamina and enthusiasm to bring new life to an old congregation. If we let them.
We have watch ourselves, lest we be tempted to say those killer words, “We’ve never done it that way before.” We ought to be ready to say, “We’ve never done it that way before. Let’s try it!”
We may even find ourselves being born anew, to a new understanding of our faith. Being born again doesn’t necessarily happen only once. As one of my favorite musicians named after two apostles, Paul Simon, sang:

I was born before my father and my children before me
And we are born and born again like the waves of the sea.
That’s the way it’s always been. That’s how I want it to be.
(Senorita with a Necklace of Tears, 2000)

Born and born again. That’s the way it’s always been, and God willing, that’s how it will be. Thanks Be to God. Amen!

The Jesus Experience

 

An American missionary was hiking in the wilderness of New Guinea, through the forest, up the mountain. Two Guineans served as guides and companions on the rigorous trek. When they arrived at their destination, a mountain village, the villagers brought them water and food and asked about their journey. Each of the guides took turns telling the story of the hike, and as they told it the American was wondering if he had been on the same journey! The story the guides told was, to put it politely, embellished, to put it crudely, pure bull$*@#.
When the villagers left the travelers to their rest, the missionary asked the guides how they could lie like that. “What do you mean?” they asked.
“None of that stuff actually happened.”
“We spoke the truth,” the guides insisted.
But as the missionary settled in and became accustomed to village life, he learned that the kind of stories they people told each other were true, in the way that poetry is true, in the way that folktales are true. The guides were trying to convey to their listeners the experience of the journey. Not a map of the journey, but the experience. Their story was meant to convey what it was like to climb the mountain that morning.

...an invitation to contemplate the presence of Jesus in our lives.

The gospel of John stands in sharp contrast to the other three gospels. I remember reading the gospels in canonical order for the first time, starting with Matthew, then Mark and Luke, chapter one verse one until the end. When I got to John, I thought, “Is this the same Jesus?” John’s Jesus talks differently, thinks differently, relates to people differently than the Jesus of the other gospels. It really bothered me. For a long time it has bothered me.
But, perhaps the gospel of John is to the other gospels as a ballad is to a historical novel.
I think the gospel of John is an attempt to convey the experience of Jesus. It is not another collection of the sayings of Jesus, not another collection of the letters of apostles, the church already had those by the time the gospel of John was created. I think this gospel was an attempt to convey the experience of Jesus to people who had never met him in the flesh. It was an attempt to say, “This is what it is like to meet Jesus.”
The people we meet in the gospel of John, Nicodemus, the Samaritan Woman, the man born blind, and Lazarus, are each, in a sense, an "Everyman," or "Everywoman." Their stories are examples of how we might experience the Christ in our lives.
Having the Christ in our lives is like
-- being re-born. (March 20)
-- drinking water so pure and refreshing that you are never thirsty again (March 27)
-- seeing the world clearly for the first time ever (April 3)
-- coming back from the dead (April 10)
That is what I am calling “The Jesus Experience.” It is an invitation to contemplate the presence of Jesus, the Christ, in our lives.

Mountaintop

A Communion Sunday Meditation.
Text: Matthew 17:1-9

The day we had set aside to climb Camel’s Hump Mountain was wet with a gentle rain, but it wasn’t pouring, so we went anyway. We had hiking shoes and slickers, and the trail was well traveled, and we made it to the top of Vermont’s second-highest peak with just enough difficulty to make it feel like an accomplishment. The peak is above the tree line, just skree and moss, like a rock garden, and many hikers were unpacking their knapsacks for lunch. It was like a meeting of the nations, people from all across the country and some foreign visitors too, enjoying their tour of the Long Trail. There was a sense of camaraderie. Then, for an instant, there was a clearing in the fog, a break in the clouds, through which the sun shone and you could see the green mountains spread out below, and it was such a sight you could hear a great collective sigh. I think some of us applauded. It was just a brief moment, and then it passed. And eventually, we gathered up our granola bar wrappers, and checked our boot laces, and one little group after another went on, down this mountain.
It was an experience that defies description. As much as I have tried to keep the memory of that day, I know I have lost many of the details. As much as I have tried to convey it to you, to share the way the rocks felt beneath my feet and the way the mist caressed by face, you really had to be there.
Everyone needs to have their own mountain top experience.
I believe that is the intent of the gospel story, of the mountaintop experience shared by Peter, James, and John. It was a moment of enlightenment. They told the story to convey the experience, to share it with the other disciples, who in turn passed the story on to others.
You have probably had your own mountaintop experiences, which you have treasured in your own hearts, and have longed to share with others. If only we could bottle those experiences and return to them whenever we feel the need. But the presence of the holy rarely comes in the same way twice. We always have to come down from the mountain, or home from the wilderness. After enlightenment, the laundry.
We keep these stories for each other. We keep them to remind ourselves that the Spirit moves, in this life, in this world. We keep the stories to remind each other that God’s presence comes, the spirit comes, the Christ comes, and comes again. Holy ground is wherever the Spirit is present, Holy time is whenever the Spirit is present, a holy meal is whenever we break bread together.
We break the bread and share the cup in the presence of our Lord, the one who comes to us on the mountaintop and the one who walks with us down the mountain, the one who is host, and guest, and servant at the table all at once. May this be for us a sacred moment, a memory and a foretaste of the full presence of God in our lives. Amen.