Community

All of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. (1 Peter 3.8-9)

Organizations

When talking with LGBT and other believers who’ve withdrawn from the Body of Christ, sooner or later the conversation comes down to this: “I have faith. But I want nothing to do with organized religion.” There’s no good answer to this—even though I’m convinced avoiding religious rejection is tantamount to accepting it. When we permit unwelcoming denominations, congregations, or individuals to force our surrender from seeking inclusion where we're welcome, we reinforce the notion we're unworthy of acceptance. We become complicit to the lie—the heresy—that God prefers certain kinds of people and doesn’t love all of us equally.

That everyone who comes to God will be received isn’t open to debate. It’s the bedrock of Christianity Jesus lays in statement after statement, most famously in John 3.16 (the most-beloved, oft-quoted, and—apparently—misread scripture of many who subscribe to exclusionary doctrines): “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (Emphasis added.) Given grace’s pricelessness, however, it’s easy to understand why some try to protect it with qualifiers. No less than Peter makes this mistake. In Acts 10, it takes an epiphany for him to confess, “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism.” (v34) Yet, despite Christ’s emphatic teaching and the Apostles’ determination to honor it, since the first, Christianity has been plagued by attempts to shut people out.

There’s no good answer for those who disdain organized religion because they’re absolutely correct. Organized religion falls short of its higher purpose by trying to safeguard core ideals with government and guidelines. Since faith is a human endeavor, it lends itself to a human approach. Thus we define what it is by what it isn’t—the same way we organize everything in life. From there it’s a hop, skip, and jump to categorizing who can and can’t believe, and what does and doesn’t evidence belief. Harms caused by our instinctive “this-not-that” scheme explain why so many resist organized religion. But, if we step back to see the wider perspective, we recognize their complaints focus on symptoms of a rarely acknowledged paradox: organizations are natural enemies of faith. By design, they set parameters and implement procedures, whereas faith breaks barriers by imparting principles to overcome them. That’s why “churches,” i.e., religious organizations, remain at perpetual loggerheads with The Church, the transcendent, universal community of faith—the Body of Christ, the physical entity that expresses God’s presence and fulfills God’s purpose in the world.

Organisms

The Apostles struggle mightily with this conflict. As we read the Book of Acts and the Epistles, we’re consistently struck by the Early Church’s fragile condition. Its leaders and people are keenly aware they’re doing something new and revolutionary. They have no template, model, or precedent, let alone a formally adopted text or theology, for reference; basically, they’re inventing The Church as they go. Its phenomenal growth—starting with 3000 at Pentecost, with hundreds being added by the day—as well as its unheard-of diversity (based on adamant belief in unrestricted inclusion) and rapid expansion across the Roman Empire create organizational nightmares. Urgency to adhere to Christ’s principles generates urgency to institute lines of authority so the teaching and far-flung congregations stay intact. After much prayer and discussion, the Apostles meet this challenge in a unique fashion. Instead of institutionalizing Christianity as a religion, they revert to its roots as a community of like-minded believers. Faith for them surpasses religion’s legal and ritualistic impositions on constituents’ lives. It’s a way of life that all believers share in common, yet each expresses individually in relation to Christ, just as the original disciples related to Jesus.

Therein lies the distinction between churches and faith communities. The former are organizations striving to protect ideals they profess by conforming to time-honored governance and guidelines pursuant to faith. The latter are organisms whose faith evolves with time, as they pursue commonly held ideals in response to the Holy Spirit’s guidance. In other words, churches are built; communities grow—if not numerically, always in spirit, knowledge, and obedience to Christ’s commands. Churches foster allegiance to their leaders, who are no less fallible than those expected to comply with their direction. Faith communities honor their leaders’ service to God, as Paul explains when chiding the Corinthians’ organizational disputes over leadership. “Since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned each to his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.” (1 Corinthians 3.5-6)

Reliable Indicators

Differences between churches/religious organizations and communities/spiritual organisms are subtle, yet nonetheless huge. What makes things all the trickier is faith communities are most commonly housed in churches. That’s why writing off organized religion is unwise. Believers in search of community who’ve also been hurt by church have to separate the two, realizing they’re unlikely to find one without the other. Now the question turns to how does one know he/she’s found an organic faith community nested in an organized church?

Contrary to popular thought, size, structure, style, activity, and/or presentation aren’t reliable indicators. Many large, enthusiastically run and supported churches thrive as organizations. Yet they falter as organisms by neglecting to nurture the common purpose and interpersonal dynamic 1 Peter 3.8-9 describes as chief markers of authentic faith communities: “All of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.” Community is where we practice our faith. It’s where we join with other believers in like-minded obedience to Christ’s commands. It’s where our capacity for sympathy, love, compassion, and humility is tested, where failure is forgiven and frailty is overcome. It’s where we learn how to answer our calling to repay wrongs and insults with blessings. Community is where we grow.

When we enter a church and observe these traits, we’ve crossed the threshold from organized religion to organic faith. And while it’s true, one need not be in community to have faith it’s no less true faith is unlikely to grow without it. Our gifts and needs ache to be expressed. Our faith longs to grow. Dismissing The Church as a monolith of organized religion—a human institution as apt to harm as to help—only hurts us. There is community somewhere inside its walls and not until we overcome our phobias to seek community where we’re genuinely welcome and accepted can it be found.

Churches are built. Faith communities grow.

Blind, Deaf--and Dumb

“Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out. (John 9.32-34)

Madcap Chaos

The 1937 screwball classic Nothing Sacred kicks into high gear when a hoodwinked Manhattan reporter tries to save his career by chasing down a young Vermont woman allegedly dying from radiation poisoning. He has the finest intentions. He hopes to lionize her as a heroine, using her story as a cautionary tale of technology gone awry. When he reaches her village—a company town owned by a watch manufacturer—his reception is less than ideal. The local store manager tells him “they don’t want any scandal-mongering New Yorkers snooping around.” Adults turn up their noses, kids pelt him with slush from an ice wagon, and a tyke bolts through a picket gate to bite his leg. By the time he locates her, he realizes he can’t help her if he hangs around the village. So he whisks her to New York, where she melts the city’s cold heart and madcap chaos ensues. It turns out she’s as phony as the shyster who nearly ruined the writer by posing as a sultan. But dwelling on that aspect steers us from why I mention the film in relation to this Sunday’s Gospel: the healing of a man born blind in John 9.

Without diminishing its profundities, this extraordinary episode unfolds in a bizarrely comic manner that very much reminds me of Nothing Sacred. The chapter takes off quickly, initially presenting the blind man as an incidental character Jesus uses to make a bigger point. He’s with the disciples in Jerusalem when they notice the man and, since his blindness is congenital, they ask whose sin caused the condition, his or his parents’. “Neither,” Jesus says, explaining the man was born blind “so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” (v3) He goes on to say, “As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” (v4-5) Thus, the sole purpose for the man’s disability leads to this moment, when Jesus combines miracle and metaphor to verify His divinity. In a gesture indubitably meant to evoke humanity’s creation, Jesus spits on the ground to make mud, packs it on the man’s eyes (ergo, recreating them), and sends him to wash in the Pool of Siloam. The man returns with perfect sight—which would be great, except Jesus and the disciples are long gone, leaving him to deal with the madcap chaos that ensues.

Crazy

John makes one thing clear right away: Jerusalem is a company town full of people who don’t like anyone upsetting the status quo. They’re not interested in rejoicing in the man’s miracle. They need to get to the bottom of things before the bosses show up. First, they confirm it’s the same guy who was born blind, since the whole thing may be a hoax. Next, they want the name of who’s behind it. But the man can’t identify who healed him. So they bring in the Pharisees, who get hung up on a huge detail the others miss. It’s the Sabbath. Whoever did this broke the rules! The whole thing’s crazy, as the anonymous Healer is a sinner and everybody knows sinners can’t work miracles. The Pharisees rustle up the man’s parents, asking if he’s really their son, if he truly was born blind, and if so, how is it he can see all of a sudden. “That’s our boy, alright,” they answer. “And he’s been blind since birth. But we have no idea how he’s cured or who did it. He’s an adult. Ask him.”

The comedy darkens. They recall the man for another grilling. After he sticks with his story, they resort to insults, basically asking, “Do you take us for idiots?” They accuse him of being Jesus’s disciple—a co-conspirator blindly following a sinner, nobody in their eyes. They pull rank, boasting, “We’re Moses’s disciples! God spoke to him. This Fellow? We don’t even know where He’s from.” But the once blind nobody sees through their religious darkness and blows them away with their own argument, which is crazy. “Nobody’s ever heard of opening the eyes of man born blind,” he says. “If this man weren’t from God, he could do nothing.” That does it. They won’t hear another word. They revert to the unenlightened myth that set off the uproar when the disciples asked whose sin is to blame for birth anomalies. The Pharisees bellow, “You were steeped in sin at birth. How dare you lecture us!” and they toss him out. If this were a screenplay instead of a Gospel, we might read:

Slowly fade to black, so the audience sorts out the irony. The man was blind since birth; the Pharisees are blind, deaf—and dumb—for life.

If this were a movie, it could end here. The irony is writ so large across the screen anything more would be anticlimactic. But since John is writing a sacred text about people who are gifted to misread sacred texts, he has more to do. News of the controversy has spread across Jerusalem (true to form for any company town) and Jesus comes looking for the man. He asks if the man believes in the Son of Man, i.e., the Messiah. The man replies he would if he knew who the Messiah was. Jesus says, “He is the one speaking to you,” and the man worships Jesus, saying, “Lord, I believe.” Here’s what Jesus tells him to believe: “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.” (v39) Outraged Pharisees keeping tabs on the man, perhaps to uncover his Healer’s identity, ask, “What? Are we blind too?” Jesus ends with the perfect button—screenwriter parlance for a closing line that puts the entire story into perspective: “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.” (v41)

Scathing Satire

Most of us feel confident we know this story fairly well until we reread the full chapter and learn we only remember the first six verses, in which Jesus uses mud to cure the man’s congenital blindness. We may not even recall his condition is congenital or why that’s the linchpin for the entire story. As the narrative progresses—and we observe how screwy it gets, along with how cleverly John builds to a concluding statement that socks us in the gut—we start to sense why so many prefer to focus on the healing and leave it there.

The miracle is merely a set-up for a scathing satire on insular faith communities and leaders who’d rather not see, hear, and learn the truth that Christ’s light incontrovertibly exposes. They’d rather cling to myths about sin and Sabbaths—obsolete doctrines and rituals—than embrace the uncertainty and faith the cured man witnesses by saying, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” (v25) When we say that, we confess we aren’t wise enough to predict what Christ will do, whom He will save, and how He will work.

Opening our eyes, ears, and minds to Christ’s light opens our lives to His justice, which insists no one is shaped or hobbled by sin, that everyone is created from birth to display the works of God. Jesus, the Light of the World, demonstrates God’s power of recreation. Alleged anomalies—sexual orientation, inherent sensibilities, purported inferiorities, and so on—that we’ve lived with our whole lives are merely seeds of life-changing renewal. “Sin” has nothing to do with our making. It’s the chosen occupation of those who choose to be deaf, blind—and dumb—for life. In the end, madcap chaos and lunacy we endure due to small-minded, religiously benighted communities and leaders are secondary. Jesus finds us, reveals His true identity, and we worship Him, saying, “Lord, I believe.”

Sin is the chosen occupation of those who won’t see, hear, and learn the truth that Christ’s light incontrovertibly exposes.

Postscript: Company Town

Here's the sequence from Nothing Sacred that set me down the path of viewing John 9 as a satire. It's hard not to imagine that many of the provincial, fearful attitudes lampooned in this movie aren't similar to those Jesus confronted in Jerusalem--a company town if ever one existed.

Esteeming Grace

For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. (1 Corinthians 15.9-10)

Significant Costs

Our church’s Lenten Bible study rounded a major corner this week, as the 40-Day Journey with Dietrich Bonhoeffer turned our thoughts from the disciplines of discipleship set forth in The Beatitudes to properly evaluating God’s grace. Although Bonhoeffer’s terminology has become common among theologians and seminarians, it was new—and somewhat unsettling—to us. He writes, “Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of our church. Our struggle today is for costly grace.” (p52) Cheap grace? Costly grace? Affixing financial modifiers to grace seems inappropriate, since it’s a priceless gift. That’s the paradox of grace: while it’s too great to be earned by good deeds or moral virtue, it’s offered to all. And, ironically, its being beyond our means is what causes us to undervalue it. We cheapen grace by treating it like carte blanche to persist in harmful habits because we know God’s grace will always be abundantly available. Yet grace is anything but a license to ill. Its primary purpose is enabling correction.

Grace clears our slates so we can replace unhealthy attitudes and behaviors with those that please and reflect our Maker. Thus, it’s given freely, without favor; yet in accepting God’s gift of grace, we assume significant costs: self-honesty by confession of sin; repentance that renounces wrongdoing; constant discipline and awareness to follow Christ faithfully; and active obedience that transcends lip-service to Christ’s principles and commands. In the final analysis, grace may be free, but it sure ain’t cheap. Its demands are costly and entail many sacrifices.

Nothing and Everything; Everything and Nothing

God’s gift of grace is the crux of Jesus’s message, and it’s impossible for us to comprehend how absurd the concept strikes those who first hear of it. Like all ancient worshipers, they pay for wrongs via specific animal sacrifices mandated for two classes of guilt: moral trespasses and physical impurity. Trespass offerings require a sacrificial ram—symbolizing one’s social and financial stability—to make restitution for losses inflicted on others. Sin offerings secure forgiveness and purification on a sliding scale; prices range from a young bull for high priests to one-tenth a bushel of fine flour for very poor people. Both trespasses and sins are assumed to be unintentional errors. Intentional crimes are adjudicated per a labyrinthine penal code that exacts extremely brutal punishments. Thus, when Jesus talks about God’s unconditional love and grace—a God Who gives rather than demands—He unravels the fabric of Jewish worship and society. That’s why we often hear disciples and listeners question how this works. Freely given forgiveness and mercy sound improbable to them. There must be a price. And there is, which is why Jesus repeatedly emphasizes how costly grace is. Because nothing about us can possibly earn God’s love and forgiveness, grace costs us everything. Or, as Jesus puts it in one of many similar statements, “Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 10.39)

When Jesus introduces the concept of grace—which He teaches relentlessly and ultimately ensures by sacrificing His life—it’s so revolutionary it has no name. Although Luke 2.40 says from childhood Jesus “was filled wisdom, and the grace of God was on him,” and John 1.14 declares Him “full of grace,” none of the Gospels cites any instance when the actual term passes His lips. It’s only after Early Church leaders consolidate Jesus’s words, life, death, and resurrection into a unified doctrine that “grace” enters Christian usage. No surprise, Paul rallies as its greatest champion. (Of the 124 times the Bible mentions grace, 80 are credited to him.) Virtually every statement he utters in the Book of Acts and every sentence he pens circle back to God’s grace and our responsibilities as its recipients. His confidence and enthusiasm know no bounds because he, above all Apostles, knows from experience that God’s grace is boundless. As he confesses in 1 Corinthians 15.9-10, “For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect.” From the moment Christ halts him on the Damascus road to his dying breath, God’s grace flabbergasts Paul. He owes everything to grace and nothing it costs is too much to pay.

The Riches of God’s Grace

Esteeming grace becomes Paul’s lifelong theme, while inspiring all believers to do likewise becomes his life’s mission. One marvels at the passion in passages like Ephesians 2.4-8: “Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive in Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” Love, mercy, life, acceptance, honor, kindness—the riches of God’s grace are not to be cheapened by underestimating them. Nearly as often as he extols grace’s inexhaustible wealth, Paul insists there’s no excuse for abusing it; knowing God’s love and forgiveness know no bounds isn’t our ticket to do as we please. After five chapters of reveling in God’s grace, he begins Romans 6 by posing and answering a hypothetical question: “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” In other word's God's grace doesn't free us to sin. It frees us from sin.

Lent is traditionally regarded as a season of penitence, when the desert’s harsh solitude sets our failures and frailties in sharp relief and we confess them to God. This is an invaluable pursuit that every believer should practice every day of the year, not merely 40 of 365. The self-honesty predicating sincere penitence unlocks grace’s treasures. “If we confess our sins,” 1 John 1.9 tells us, God “is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” At the same time, it accounts for costs we incur as recipients of grace: conscious repentance that renounces sorry attitudes and behaviors, fervent obedience to Christ’s commands to love God and our neighbors, and the disciplines of true discipleship. Esteeming grace always, never underestimating its riches, keeps us mindful it sure ain’t cheap. Yet how could we possibly believe it’s not worth the price? We owe everything to grace and nothing it costs is too much to pay.

God’s grace is a paradox. While it’s freely offered to all, those who accept it incur significant costs.

When No One's Around

Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (John 4.6-7)

With gratitude to Rev. Larissa Kwong Abazia, whose sermon, “Living Water,” inspired this reflection.

The Perfect Time

John’s account of Jesus’s encounter with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well is packed with revealing details. As a Jewish man conversing openly with a Samaritan woman, Jesus flouts every conceivable taboo and debunks the myth that Jews have exclusive rights to God’s love and acceptance. That would be plenty on its own. But Jesus also demonstrates the difference between knowing a person’s history and judging his/her character by it. He tells the woman He’s aware she’s been married five times and now lives with a sixth man. Yet He neither questions nor condemns her. When she tactfully changes the subject to their differing beliefs, He blows the lid off sectarianism by radically redefining worship. He says, “A time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” (John 4.23-24) The woman says she too believes the Messiah will revolutionize worship, whereupon Jesus reveals His identity, something He’s never disclosed to anyone—and will be reticent to admit thereafter. “I, the one speaking to you—I am he,” He says. (v26)

There are enough breakthroughs in this synopsis to leave us breathless. Before looking at the core of their conversation, Jesus’s promise of living water, we should note a few added details. Because—unlike the other Gospel writers, who paint their scenes with a few strokes and zero in on the big points—John lingers over specifics to endow his narrative with meaning we’d otherwise miss. Here, he tips us off to several crucial facts. Jesus and the disciples are taking a shortcut through Samaria, a calculated risk, since hostility between Jews and Samaritans raises prospects they’ll be viewed suspiciously. Jesus is road-weary and hungry. With the disciples off buying food, He sits at Jacob’s well—a bold gesture, as Jews bitterly contest Samaritans’ claim to be Jacob’s descendants also. Finally, it’s about noon, the hottest time of day. The morning chores are done and what’s left waits for the cool of the afternoon, when the well will get busy with women drawing water to cook and wash up before bed. For now, Jesus is alone—until a woman comes to the well. Suddenly, incidental mention of the hour acquires major importance. Only someone avoiding her neighbors draws water in the heat of the day. This profoundly touches Jesus. Meeting this lady when no one’s around provides the perfect time for Him to fix her situation.

Truth and Mercy

Jesus doesn’t bother with assessing the woman’s mood or sensibilities. As they are, their circumstances crackle with volatility. He stuns her by requesting the unthinkable: “Will you give me a drink?” Her jaw drops. “How can you, a Jew, ask that of me, a Samaritan?” she replies. (The basic protocol breached by a man addressing a woman in public is a given.) Jesus tells her if she knew Who He was, she’d give Him water and, in exchange, He’d give her living water. Before asking what He means, she reminds Him of a pragmatic issue that prevents her from honoring His request. He has nothing to draw with. Jews and Samaritans don’t drink from the same vessel, and the well is too deep for her to scoop up some water and pour into His hands. Then she asks where “living water” comes from. Jesus answers, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.” (v13-14) John doesn’t confirm the woman understands what Jesus is saying. It’s unlikely she does. But, if nothing else, never thirsting again will relieve her need to draw water in the noonday sun. “Give me this water!” she says.

Jesus knows exactly what He’s offering. He’s going to heal the woman’s self-confidence and restore her reputation so she’ll be welcome at the well when those who presently scorn her are there. He adeptly shifts the discussion from what the woman wants to who she is. He tells her to get her husband and come back to the well. Since Jesus is a foreigner, she very easily could fabricate a reason why her husband is unavailable. Yet she truthfully confesses, “I don’t have a husband,” validating what anyone who saw a woman drawing water at noon would presume. Yet there’s a problem: if she attributes anything Jesus says to guesswork, all of His words can be explained away. So He lays out her life story—without blinking an eye. The combination of truth and mercy amazes her. “I can see you are a prophet,” she says. (v19) Jesus knows who she is, and she thinks she knows Who He is. As a prophet, His interests focus on spiritual matters, not village scuttlebutt. She engages Him in theological talk, which inspires Him to reveal He is more than a prophet. He’s God’s Son, sent to bring truth and mercy to a world obsessed with pretense and judgment.

High Noon At the Well

What we see at the well are two outsiders. One, for reasons never explained, has never enjoyed marital stability. Most readers assume she’s a serial divorcée and hence, by ancient moral standards, an adulterer. Yet we can’t rule out the possibility she’s been widowed five times; no longer a viable bride, she may have taken a lover to provide her protection and companionship in middle age. Her rejection at the well may be fairly recent, due to her current arrangement. Whatever brings her to the well at noon, there she meets a ragtag Rabbi Whose true identity compels Him to buck religious traditions and ignore social taboos. Jesus sits by the well at noon, tired, hungry, and thirsty, because He has nowhere else to go. He’s as much a pariah as she. And in those quiet, uncomfortably hot moments when no one’s around, not only does He reveal that He knows everything about this alienated lady (yet doesn’t’ judge her). He reveals everything she should know about Him. Her encounter with Truth and Mercy Incarnate restores her confidence and self-respect. She goes into the village and invites the neighbors who’ve rejected her to the well. “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” she says.

So it is for all of us who, for one reason or another, trudge to the well in the heat of the day—looking to quench our thirst for life and sustain our faith. Prime time isn’t our time. We’ve come to the well then, only to be told we’re not welcome. But high noon at the well is the perfect time. That’s when we meet another Outsider. He knows everything about us. He neither questions nor condemns us. He talks to us as one Outsider to another. The truth and mercy in His words revive us and restore our confidence and self-respect. But most of all, He entrusts us with full knowledge of Who He truly is. The encounter with Jesus so changes us we invite the very neighbors who pushed us aside to the well and say, “Come, see a Man Who told me everything I ever did!” Some will come. Many will not. Nonetheless, what happens at high noon at the well changes how we view the well. It’s no longer their well, or the patriarch’s well, a Catholic well or a Protestant one. It’s our well, where we first tasted living water that forever changed our lives. We will never thirst again.

The well at noonday, when no one’s around, is where and when we find out Jesus knows all about us and Who Christ really is.

Postscript: “The Woman at the Well”

In her sermon, Larissa referred to this video—a monologue by the woman at the well—that shakes us with the realities of what transpires when we encounter Christ. “To be known is to be loved,” she says, “and to be loved is to be known.”

Processing

The time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they do not; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away. (1 Corinthians 7.29-31)

From Service to Sentience

One of Lent’s abiding beauties is discovering each season’s character, for no two of them is ever alike. As a relative newcomer—my traditional upbringing didn’t observe Lent—I’ve walked sacred deserts, revealing ones, and one or two bordering on the mystical. Still, none has confronted me with the intellectual rigor of the current one. In part, it results from the 40-Day Journey with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, our church’s adopted Lenten guide. Bonhoeffer’s all-or-nothing map is tough-minded stuff aimed at restoring the disciplines of discipleship by revolutionizing how we perceive following Christ. It’s less about our response to life’s daily challenges than the thinking that molds responses to Christ’s commands. This adds unusual stress on reflexes not often exercised by Lent’s passage. Meanwhile, the standard pursuits—self-denial, contemplation, prayer, consecration, penitence, etc.—are assumed, not replaced. At two weeks into this journey, I find weariness of mind and the toil of reorienting my concept of discipleship from service to sentience are my closest companions. They ask much of me; based on comments at last Tuesday evening’s study group, I’m hardly alone. Throughout the discussion, people said, “This was a rough week.”

It turns out we (i.e., our local faith community) are hardly alone. Comments here, along with posts and comments elsewhere, email exchanges, and conversations with other believers—none of whom, to my knowledge, is digging through Bonhoeffer—express comparable sentiments. Numerous bloggers journaling their travels, sharing personal impressions or daily contemplations, likewise seem to hear a call for heightened awareness of Christ’s presence and lordship in their lives, a sentience that informs their service to God and their neighbors.

Schooling

Such an endeavor is wearying work, even vexing at times, as we labor to wrap our minds around concepts we thought we understood or overlooked because we don’t understand them as well as we should. At the risk of gross presumption, our present desert seems to be guiding many of us back to basics, asking us first to distill what we know about the mind and nature of Christ and then ground our thoughts and behaviors to reflect them more accurately. This schooling is very close in form to Jesus’s wilderness experience. Matthew 4.1-3 confirms the desert’s 40-day course prepares us for temptations awaiting its end: “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. [Then] the tempter came to him.” The desert's cauldron refines our character down to its essentials.

Lent endows us with discipline to overcome future tests. It clears our heads of what we think and are told to believe, leaving us with what faith teaches us to know. It’s the training ground where we identify and confront weaknesses that compromise discipleship in a constantly changing, uncertain world. Year after year, Lent’s message is “Be prepared.” Since only God sees what’s in store for us, individually as disciples and collectively as the Body of Christ, our course of preparation is the Spirit’s domain. In John 16.13, Jesus says, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.” Thus, this season’s widely noted call for keener sentience to Christ’s presence and principles anticipates the coming months. We’re being schooled for future service to God and our neighbors.

Urgency

Processing Lent’s lessons mounts our sense of urgency. This year, our desert travels seem constantly interrupted by proof of how desperately the world needs authentically disciplined, fully prepared followers of Christ—people who take their duties as the salt of the earth, the light of the world, and living beatitudes with the utmost seriousness. If nothing else, the past two weeks have vividly taught us how fragile our existence is. Not even the ground under our feet is stable. Every day finds us leaping headlong from one disaster into another. Preparing for any eventuality leaves no time to for haggling over what we can hang onto and still meet discipleship’s demands. Paul’s urgency for the Corinthians to release any impediments to their preparation speaks to us: “The time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they do not; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.” Be sentient. Be prepared. Only God knows what lies ahead.

The Holy Spirit sets our Lenten course, preparing us for what lies beyond the desert.

Faithful Attraction

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. (Matthew 5.7)

The Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” (Luke 5.30-31)

A Merciful Response

The parables of Jesus are designed for easy access, which is why parents and Sunday school teachers are so fond of them. We grow up with the prodigal son, the wise and foolish builders, and the Good Shepherd alongside the tortoise and hare and Red Riding Hood. We need Jesus’s stories when we’re kids, as they’re the best way to establish His basic teaching in young hearts. Unfortunately, though, too many of us outgrow them (or think we do). We store them next to Aesop’s Fables and Grimm’s Fairy Tales and rarely revisit them when we’re older. But Jesus’s parables aren’t fables or fairy tales. They’re remarkably nuanced studies in human behavior, stories about adults for adults. When we reread them later in life, we’re often amazed by the subtleties we missed as kids.

No better example exists than the story of the Good Samaritan. A Jewish man is brutally mugged on the Jericho Road. A priest and a temple steward—both Jews—see him, cross the street, and keep going. A Samaritan, whom Jews view as racially inferior, finds him, picks him up, tends to his wounds, and sees to his recovery. Jesus tells the story after restating His command to love our neighbors and someone asks, “Who is my neighbor?” For children, the answer is simple: everyone is our neighbor; no one is beneath our care. Yet as adults, we study the Samaritan’s behavior more closely. Luke 10.33-35 says, “When he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’”

Merely seeing him, without asking why or how the man got beaten, evokes a merciful response. The Samaritan goes to him. He touches him. He pours valuable oil and wine into the man’s wounds and binds them up. He lays the victim—bloodied, bruised, and broken—across his own donkey, unconcerned about contamination or suspicions he’ll raise in Jews and Samaritans alike when he’s seen walking his donkey with a severely injured Jew in his saddle. Nor is he daunted about stirring up controversy when he finds a room, where he sits with the victim overnight to ensure the man’s safety and wellbeing. The following morning, he entrusts the man to the innkeeper, promising to return and pay for his healthcare. There’s a lot more going on in this story than first meets the eye.

One of Them

With so much information packed in a few sentences, we may overlook what’s not there. The Samaritan has no idea who this man is. He could be a random target. He could just as well be a casualty of gang life—a criminal left for dead. We don’t know where or why the Samaritan is traveling, when he’s expected to arrive, and whom he keeps waiting while he delays his trip to stay with the victim. We know nothing of his background, beliefs, experience with Jewish prejudice, or financial means. All we know is he sees someone in need of mercy. He goes to him and cares for him—at great risk, as the extent of his kindness breaks all sorts of taboos. Yet something inside the Samaritan trusts the mercy he gives will be returned. And so it is. His efforts aren’t thwarted by others’ prejudices and fears, which are so commonplace even “holy” people feel no compunction to care for one of their own. That expands the parable’s meaning to include the fifth Beatitude: “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”

If Jesus were all sermon and no substance, we could dismiss the Samaritan story as a fable—a wise tale with a high-flown, idealistic moral. From start to finish, however, we watch Him practice what He preaches. Jesus surpasses the Old Testament edict to welcome the oppressed and outcast. He goes looking for them and becomes One of them. Many have romanticized His tendency to gravitate toward society’s margins as intentionally subversive, casting Jesus as the ultimate Rebel with a Cause. While it’s true, Jesus upsets many apple carts—and ends up being executed for it—His purpose runs deeper than crusading for social change. He cares about the people He associates with. Their need for mercy attracts Him and He sees the risks He takes to offer what society withholds from them as legitimately worth the flak and derision He faces in the process. Mercy drives Him to the cross. Over and over, we see a band of naysayers hovering nearby to condemn Jesus for the company He keeps. When He persists, they turn on His disciples. “Why do you eat with tax collectors and sinners?” they ask. Before they can patch together an answer, Jesus explains, “It’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” (Luke 5.30-31) Jesus doesn’t hang with a tough crowd in order to be seen with them or to look tough. He’s there because the tough crowd needs His care, kindness, and healing. His faithfulness to them constitutes an act of mercy on par with the Samaritan’s.

Needs on Both Sides

Our faithfulness as disciples automatically includes a faithful attraction to those who are excluded, oppressed, and prejudged. Waiting for them to come to us—“being there for them”—isn’t an option. Beside the unlikeliness they will seek us out, expecting them to make the first move automatically suggests a sense of superiority on our part. There’s no equal exchange. Mercy makes equality possible by creating needs on both sides of the equation. Our need to offer it becomes as pressing as others’ needs to receive it. As we travel through life, we look for opportunities to be merciful. When we find people who’ve been battered, wounded, and left by the wayside, we ignore the risks, taboos, and customs—even when more “qualified” leaders submit to them—to show them mercy. We go to them and become one of them, not to be seen with them or to gain notoriety as social activists and do-gooders. Mercy drives us. Whether or not we share anything in common with them socially, religiously, or politically, their need for mercy attracts us, because we too have needed, will always need, mercy. And however logical our hesitance may be, something inside reassures us mercy we give will be returned. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

Jesus’s attraction to the oppressed and outcast runs deeper than social subversion. They need His mercy and He needs to provide it. (The Journey Project: “RSVP.”)

Renouncing Righteousness

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. (Matthew 5.6)

The word of the LORD is right and true; he is faithful in all he does. The LORD loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love. (Psalm 33.4-5)

Right All the Time

Great-aunt Pearl was a loving, godly woman with one exasperating flaw. She believed she was right all the time—so much so she felt she’d never been wrong. One evening, the family listened as another great-aunt read letters written by her sisters when they were young women. She came on one Pearl sent soon after she married, before she and my great-uncle switched from the denomination they grew up in to a Pentecostal church. “Clyde has a good job and we’re tithing at First Methodist,” the letter said. Pearl stopped the reading. “I didn’t write that letter.” She agreed it was her hand and signature, but insisted she didn’t write it. We asked why. “Because we never tithed anywhere but The Church of God.” We did our best to persuade her tithing to any church is always correct. Yet she was so certain that her current denomination was the right one she preferred looking foolish rather than conceding she once held different beliefs. At first, we laughed. But when she wouldn’t drop the matter—as if someone forged the letter to discredit her faith—we called it a night. The whole thing got too silly to pursue. Now that I look back on it, however, I’m sad twice over. Once, because Pearl’s compulsion to be right all the time severely distorted her idea of what being right was. Second, it saddens me because her denial was flagrantly wrong. She knew like the rest of us that she wrote the letter. In rushing to tout her righteousness, she lied.

If you’ve never met a Pearl or two, live long enough and you will. There’s no shortage of people so convinced they’re always right they’d rather sin than admit they’re wrong. And while I pray none of us fits this bill, I’d venture to say we’ve all fallen into the syndrome a few times (at least). That’s the problem with banking on our own righteousness. Sooner or later, we mess up. We impulsively say or do something undeniably wrong that backs us into a corner. Either we admit our error, and thus confess we’re not as righteous as we let on—which, for the record, would be the right thing to do—or we maintain the righteous façade at all costs. Plan B gets us in a world of trouble, though, because at some point it incites patently wrong behavior, whether its protecting our pride, lying, alienating others, and so on. Believing we’re right all the time is a fool’s game, a gamble we’re unwise to take, given that everyone who plays it always loses. “There is no one righteous, not even one,” Romans 3.11 informs us, echoing dozens of Old Testament texts like Isaiah 64.6: “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.”

The Source of Righteousness

Equal doses of reality and humility help rid us of faith in our righteousness. Yet once we’re cured, where does that leave us? Aren’t we called to be righteous? Actually, we’re not. If we think about it for a moment, it makes no sense that God would ask us to do what we’re completely incapable of achieving. With very, very few exceptions, when Scripture mentions righteousness and us in the same breath, great care is taken to qualify the Source of righteousness, making it abundantly clear our righteousness isn’t the subject. “Righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ,” Paul explains in Romans 3.22. In chapter 6, he tells us, “Offer every part of yourself to God as an instrument of righteousness.” (v13) Speaking of Jesus, 2 Corinthians 5.21 says, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” In Philippians 1.11, Paul prays that his readers will be “filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ.” Peter likewise addresses his second letter “to those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours.” (2 Peter 1.1)

So our righteousness isn’t important, after all—a good thing, since what of it exists has yet to prove worthy and durable. We’re called to seek God’s righteousness. Matthew 6.33: “Seek first God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness.” Second Timothy 2.22: “Pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” And finally, Beatitude No. 4: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” (Matthew 5.6) That changes the dynamic, urging us to rethink this righteousness business in a different context, on a larger scale than being right, thinking right, and—everyone’s favorite—“living right.” We have to back up and ask, “What is God’s righteousness and how do we get it?”

Taste and Appetite

God’s righteousness permeates all God says and does. Psalm 33.4-5 does a splendid job of capturing the basics: “The word of the LORD is right and true; he is faithful in all he does. The LORD loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love.” Look at the attributes orbiting God’s righteousness: truth, faithfulness, justice, and unfailing love. God loves these qualities—and they’re typically the ones that get sacrificed when we try to prove how righteous we are. Thus renouncing our righteousness is the first step to finding God’s righteousness. Faith in human righteousness is—or should be—taboo for all believers, right up there with idolatry and hatred. Since God Alone is righteous, righteousness is not a state of being, but one of becoming. Gradual acquisition of God’s nature is what we’re after: growing in truth, gaining strength to stay faithful, practicing justice, and loving all people and creation at all times.

As Christ’s disciples, our happiness is shaped by our hunger and thirst for God’s righteousness. Jesus’s choice of verbs amounts to more than pulpit poetry. He’s telling us to discipline our taste and appetite to crave righteous thoughts and behaviors. They should become obsessions driving us to seize every opportunity to savor them. But first we must cleanse our palate by renouncing righteousness. Being right all the time is like a steady junk-food diet. It makes us heavy, sick, and tiresome. Once we get its poisons out of our system, we’ll starve for God’s righteousness. If we seek that, Jesus says we’ll be happy and satisfied.

Our righteousness is like junk food; it makes us heavy, sick, and tiresome. That’s why Jesus instructs us to discipline our taste and appetite for God’s righteousness.