Thirsty People, Thirsty God

(I am waiting in the Ottawa airport for my flight out West, and thought I would share this homily of mine from a few years back on the third Sunday of Lent, the Gospel of Jesus and the woman at the well, the Samaritan woman of John 4. Enjoy!)

This is a Gospel about thirst. In the Biblical culture, we can never forget that they live in the desert. The whole nomadic life we see in the Old Testament is driven by the need for water – you move because you need water to live.

So when we read in the Scriptures about thirst, we are reading about something on the basic level of survival here – we don’t get this too well because we are in a modern industrialized society – you want water, you turn on the tap, crack open the Dasani bottle – you got water. We are not very thirsty, often, really, and if we are it is no great dilemma or labor to quench our physical thirst.

But this Gospel about thirst is for us, too. We have thirst, too, we are a people on the move. What drives us? We are restless, we are nomadic in North America – a different kind of nomadism, but we are always moving on, to the next thing, the next job, the next relationship, the next well, the next water source, the next life source.

Why did this woman have five husbands and one boyfriend? That is, by the way, why she was going in the heat of the day – high noon – to lug a heavy water jar back and forth from the well. It’s a job you would do in the early morning hours, before the day got hot – she had to go at noon to avoid meeting the other women – her very presence there at noon indicates her status in the village.

She was thirsty – not for water, but for love, for connection, for acceptance – who knows what her story was. But she had moved from man to man to man – and as U2 would sing, “She still hadn’t found what she was looking for’. Thirst is driving her – it’s a matter of life and death – not physically, but humanly, spiritually, personally.

We are thirsty people, too. We need something – we can’t always say what, exactly, but we need something, and we go looking, here, there, this philosophy, that ideology, this fad, that fashion, this person, that job, maybe I’ll move to Chicago, maybe I’ll go back to grad school, maybe I’ll change this, maybe I’ll change that – restlessness. None of which is necessarily bad or wrong – but when we’re driven, then it’s thirst, never quenched, looking for life, for our deepest needs in what cannot meet it.

And so she meets Jesus. And he makes these crazy promises – water that will quench our thrist forever – water that will become a spring within unto eternity, forever, never running dry. All our needs, all our desires, all our thirst, all our hunger for life, for security, for love, for wholeness – come to me, and I’ll give to you, he says. Do we believe that? Jesus is all we need for our real life, our inner life which spills out into our outer life?

And he tells her everything she’s done. Not with condemnation, not with anger, not censorious – but simply saying, I know you’ve looked everywhere – you’ve broken the commandments, run after pleasure at the expense of righteousness, worshipped other gods (which is one of the whole problems of the Samaritans), but the Lord knows – he knows what you and I have done. He knows what other wells we’ve gone too. He knows that we have thirsted, and have not always looked to him, to the life that he can give us. He knows all that. And he bids us to come.

You see, God is thirsty, too. Not in the sense of neediness, not in the sense that he needs us to complete him or something – God is perfect and has no needs. But he is thirsty – Jesus thirsts in this Gospel, as he thirsts on the Cross – I thirst – not for water, but for us. Not because he needs us, but because he loves us very much, and he ‘seeks for people to worship him’ in spirit and in truth – in other words, people who will come to him, who will believe in him, who will make him the center of their lives. He is thirsty, and so he understands us, and has compassion on us.

I speak and write quite a bit about allowing Jesus to have absolute authority in our life, about entrusting our lives wholly and unreservedly to him, and about some of the hard moral choices this means for us – the things we cannot do, the profoundly counter-cultural decisions we have to make to be faithful to Jesus as Catholic Christians. This Sunday, the Lord shows us that we have nothing to fear by doing this. We have nothing to fear by bringing all our life, all our desires, all our thirst, to the Lord Jesus and to his Church where he gives us his spirit, and the food and drink for our life.

We have nothing to fear – he has promised us that he will give us life and water and peace and joy that is eternal. Every other well runs dry; every other stream fails; every other source of life is futile. Let us come to the Lord, believe in the Lord, follow the Lord, and above all know that the one who loves us beyond our imaging has come to fill our hearts’ desires and that he died for us so that these springs of living water could burst forth for us, for everyone who seeks them. 

This Week in Madonna House - March 16-21

I'm writing up this week's TWIMH post, which I normally do on Saturday or Sunday, today, as tomorrow I am travelling out to St. Therese Institute of Faith and Mission in Bruno Saskatchewan (that's on the great Canadian prairie, for those non-Canucks reading this). I will be teaching a week-long intensive course on liturgy and worship all next week.

In fact, while I have material for blogging for the week ahead, I'm not at all sure I'll be able to keep up the daily posts, as I will be fully engaged in this course and may not have the time or mental energy for my usual writing. We'll see - but if the blog goes a bit dark next week, that's why.

Meanwhile, this week in MH was marked by three main events. Monday, the feast of St. Patrick, was celebrated in a fairly low key fashion, mostly because it coincided with the mailing bee of our spring begging letter that evening. How does MH survive? How do we support ourselves? What is the business model that keeps the lights on and the gas in our cars?

We beg people to give us money, and they do. Great plan, eh? This was the first thing Catherine Doherty knew about the call God was giving her, the one thing she was absolutely certain of, from the first moment of her apostolic life. God wanted her to be a mendicant, a beggar, like St. Francis of Assisi and all the other mendicant orders in the Church.

Before she even knew she was founding a community (which came as a considerable shock to her, which took her some time to get over), she knew she was to live on the Providence of God as expressed through the goodness and generosity of others. And she bequeathed that to us, going so far as to say that, "The day MH stops begging, it will disappear from the mind of God."

There is a lot that could be said about that (and maybe I will some day), but for now, our practice is to send out a letter to our mailing list twice a year, and so we all get together on an evening to fold and stuff, stuff and seal, somewhere around 15 000 letters for mailing. It is a joyful, peaceful time together, when we are all increasingly conscious of the simple fact that, if God does not move the hearts of our benefactors to help us in our work, we will simply fold our tents in short order. And since Catherine began her work more or less in 1934, we have 80 years of seeing how God provides in the love and help we are given by all these good people.

Event Two was the Solemnity of St. Joseph on Wednesday. Besides being the great feast of the whole Church that it is, Joseph being the patron of the Universal Church and so many other things (Canada, for example!), it also has a local MH meaning. St. Joseph is the patron of our lay men's department, one of the three constituent parts that makes up the MH apostolate, without which it would be a radically and much impoverished vocation.

So we celebrated the feast as we always do, with good liturgy and good food (how else does one celebrate a feast?), and had special displays and tributes to the MH laymen, including a lovely digital slide show of all the men, past and present, which played on a laptop throughout the day.

Third was just yesterday, and came as a total surprise to all of us. As I said repeatedly throughout the afternoon, "When I got out of bed this morning, I had no idea I would be hosting the visit of a travelling pilgrim icon of Our Lady." But this is what happened.

Human Life International is sponsoring the From Ocean to Ocean Pilgrimage in Defense of Life  (read all about it at the link) with a beautiful and very large icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa, the Polish Black Madonna, travelling around here, there, everywhere to encourage prayer for a culture of life and an end to the outrages against the sanctity of life which are so rampant in our world today, abortion and nascent euthanasia primary among them.

So, having come to Canada and visited Montreal and Ottawa, the priest accompanying the Madonna, Fr. Peter West, decided to bring her here to MH! They arrived mid-afternoon, and we had a lovely time, enthroning her for the evening and night in our original chapel, where people could simply spend time praying before this image as the Spirit moved them.

Meanwhile, Fr. West and his layman companion had a tour, Mass, supper, and generally a great visit to Madonna House. They were heading back to the States today, and I had to laugh that Our Lady, on her first visit to Canada, knew that she had to come to Montreal, Ottawa... and Combermere! She certainly knows where the most important places are (that's a joke, folks...).

Otherwise, a pretty ordinary kind of Lenten week in one of our quieter times of year. Guests keep rolling in and out - we seem to be popular as a place to spend part of Lent this year. I ask your prayers, you praying types, as I hit the road tomorrow for this little adventure in teaching, which is something of a departure for me--missions and retreats have been more my bailiwick of late.

I will try to keep blogging, but if it proves impossible, I'll be talking to you all in a week or so. Happy Lent-ing to you all, meantime!

What's The Use of Anything, Anyway?

The words of the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun?

A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.

The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hurries to the place where it rises.

The wind blows to the south, and goes around to the north;

Round and round goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns.

All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full;

To the place where the streams flow, there they continue to flow.

All things are wearisome; more than one can express;

The eye is not satisfied with seeing, or the ear filled with hearing.

What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done;

There is nothing new under the sun.

Is there a thing of which it is said,“See, this is new”?

It has already been, in the ages before us.

The people of long ago are not remembered, nor will there be any remembrance

Of people yet to come by those who come after them.

Ecclesiastes 1: 1-11

Reflection – I love the book of Ecclesiastes – I think it is just about my favorite Old Testament book. The O.T. is just such an intensely human document—this is what often gets missed in the stale debates of atheism vs. fundamentalist faith. It is a book about human beings—messy, messed up, weird, confused, mean, kind, stupid, clever human beings. And running all through this intensely human document and its intense exposure of the human condition in all its glorious sordidness, is God, a God not fully known, not always clearly revealed in His goodness and love, a God filtered through the haze and smoke of millennia of human perfidy, but the God whose holiness and righteousness shines more and more brightly as the story advances.

The O.T. is so deeply human, so much a testimony to the human condition in all its puzzlement and baffled anguish, as well as its little triumphs and sweet joys. And nowhere is this more clearly seen than in Ecclesiastes. This little piece of wisdom literature dares to set down, on tablets of stone so to speak, humanity in one of its darkest moods. That is, it records as Sacred Scripture, as the word of God among men, the question, ‘So what’s the use of anything, anyway?’

Such a human question, such a common cry. Why bother? What good is it? We’re all going to die soon and leave nothing behind, so what is the point of doing anything? This is the question of Ecclesiastes—vanity of vanities, all is vanity. In Hebrew it is hevel havalim—breath of breaths, all is just a puff of air that doesn’t amount to much in the first place and then vanishes forever in the second place.

And Qoheleth goes through all the possible goods of life—wealth, wisdom, pleasure, virtue—and dismisses them each in turn as, basically, a lot of hot air. It is quite the book, really, in its total rejection of the lasting and real value of anything we can accomplish or attain in this life. It keeps coming to the same point: we all die, and all of this is lost, and so what good is it?

And here’s the part that I love most about the book: it never answers the question. Oh, he comes to a sort of resolution by the end—just do the best you can with what you’ve got, and try to be a good person—but that’s hardly an answer. That’s a makeshift sort of thing: we have to do something, and this seems like the best thing to do.

The whole O.T., in a sense, is a question without an answer. I would say that our entire humanity, our human experience in itself, is a question without an answer. We are alternately such wonderful creatures, so filled with immortal longings and intimations of greatness, capable of profundities of virtue and marvels of wisdom and beauty. And then in a flicker of an eye it all changes, and we are vulgar, crass, craven little things, crawling on the face of the earth, doomed to be wiped out in the passing of an hour of cosmic time. Which is it? Both seem real, both seem right.

The human enigma, and nowhere is it confronted more simply and plainly than in Ecclesiastes, and in another way, in Job. A deeply human question that has no human answer. Ecclesiastes will not be answered, in fact, nor will Job, until God Himself comes into the human condition and gives the answer.

The whole O.T. cries out, in an unified voice, ‘What is this thing called ‘man?’ and finds no answer, nothing but vanity and empty wind. The New Testament calls out in a voice that fills the cosmos, ‘The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and to all who receive him, who believe in his name, he gives power to become children of God.’

The ‘hot air’ of Ecclesiastes, the empty passing breath, is taken up into the Breath of God, and becomes a living Spirit, a life-giving current that animates and revivifies the flesh of man and transforms it into resurrected glory. And that is God’s answer to Qoheleth, and Job, and Abraham, and Jacob, and any number of O.T. characters. Believe, receive, and become children of God in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, forever. That’s the point, that and that alone is ‘the good of it.’

A God Who Deals With Persons

Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw that the earth was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth.

And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth. Make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch…

For my part, I am going to bring a flood of waters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life; everything that is on the earth shall die. But I will establish my covenant with you; and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. And of every living thing, of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female.

Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every kind shall come in to you, to keep them alive. Also take with you every kind of food that is eaten, and store it up; and it shall serve as food for you and for them.” Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him

Genesis 6:11-22

Reflection – OK, first, I am not going to talk about the silly movie, OK? I haven’t seen it, but everything I’ve read about it indicates that it has scant resemblance to the scriptural story and is overlaid with the typical concerns of post-modern secularism. I’m not all irate about it; I just am not interested.

The trouble, of course, with movies like this, is that they become the focus of attention, and then everyone’s discussing the movie and whether it does or does not accord with Scripture, and then the whole discussion devolves to concerns about the historicity of Noah and the ark and where the ark is and geological evidence of the great flood… and things that I am also totally not interested in.

Now virtually all the ancient tribes and cultures of the region have some kind of record of a flood, OK? So probably at some point it stands to reason that there was indeed a big old flood in the ancient near East, and lots of people died. Beyond that, I’m not willing to accord historicity to this specific story, nor do I think that it is of the slightest importance, honestly. And if I am wrong, and every last word of Gen 6-9 is totally true, that’s fine too.

All these endless wrangling and un-concludable debates detract in my view from the real depth and beauty of the Noah story. I hold that this depth lies in seeing it as, truly, a third creation story. Gen 1 and 2 are each separate creation stories; now we have a third one, the story of the re-creation of the world, damaged by sin. The world in the first place came out of a watery chaos; we see in this story that human wickedness has the precise effect of returning the world to this watery chaos, that sin is the great undoing of the creative work of God: “Let there be… and it was… and God saw that it was good.”

Human beings, saying no to God’s creative plan, un-create the world. But God is not defeated by our wickedness. At the same time, God never repeats Himself. He does not simply wipe it all out and start again in a garden with a man and a woman. Rather, he chooses one man, one righteous man, and his family, and with him recreates the world. This is the key thing—God created the world unaided and supremely sovereign; He does not recreate the world, heal the world, in this way. He chooses a man, one good person, and says ‘Will you do this thing for me? Will you help me out here?’ Not because He needs us, but because it is His sovereign will to raise us to that dignity, to be co-workers with God in healing the damage sin and evil have wrought.

And this Noah story, the first beginnings of the healing and restoration of the world, sets the pattern all salvation history will assume. God works his healing grace by the choice of a single man, a single family, a little tribe, a nation, but then always back to the individual, the prophet, the king, the anointed one of God.

God is neither wholly Alone in his work in the world, nor is He some diffused abstract ‘spiritual force,’ like a gas pervading the atmosphere. Our God is a God of particulars, of individuals, a Personal God who deals with persons. And so the whole of God’s saving work comes to rest on the Christ of God, Jesus of Nazareth.

And Jesus is incarnate in the womb of Mary of Nazareth. And Mary of Nazareth is entrusted to the care and protection of Joseph of Nazareth (Happy feast day!). And later on the life and mission and saving work of Jesus Christ is entrusted to the apostles, the disciples, the Church, you and me. And on and on and on. Always the pattern, always coming down to this one and that one, and will you be obedient and will I be obedient, and so help God heal the world.

Building an ark. Gathering animals. Doing the work of love and service that is before us today, now. Praying that God’s will be done in us and in the world. Entrusting the whole of our lives and our loves and our cares to Him. Preserving the Gospel, protecting it within ourselves, carrying it with reverence and awe and then handing it over to the world, as Mary and Joseph did in the temple. This is how the world is healed, with and in God, bit by bit, person by person, day by day.

An Assault From God

The same night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had.

Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.”

So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him.

So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.

Genesis 32: 22-31

Reflection – Jacob is the most human of the patriarchs, isn’t he? At this point of the story, this guy has been lying and cheating and maneuvering his way through about ten chapters of Genesis. His very name Jacob means either ‘heel’ or ‘supplanter.’

At this juncture of the story, he is returning to Canaan the promised land, to his brother Esau who he cheated, after fleeing his uncle Laban who he despoiled, with his two wives, two concubines and twelve sons. He suspects Esau will want to kills him, and so has sent his wives and children across the river to safety, and is preparing to encounter Esau alone.

So at this point in the story Jacob has grown, then. No longer is he just a sharp operator out for his own benefit, but now he is a genuine father, provider and protector, of his family. But the night before he has an encounter with a mysterious being. A man… or is it? An angel? A demon? God? Esau?

The text is deliberately vague. “Why do you ask my name?” Jacob is returning to the land and to his brother – but he has to get past this figure first. Is it God? If it’s God, it’s a very different aspect of God. The God we met yesterday, Abraham’s God, was of a promiser, a provider, a tester of faith. Jacob’s God is an opponent, a combatant.

It is dark, enigmatic manifestation of God in the midst of his struggle and labor. And they wrestle all night – an encounter in struggle and sinew that is very mysterious, very close, very intimate. Who is this Jacob is wrestling with, and why? And the match is inconclusive. So is this really God? Is Jacob as strong as God? But if it’s not God, who is it…

In this story, nothing of this is answered, nothing made clear. We are left in enigma and mystery. God is revealing himself to Jacob, but the revelation makes God that much more mysterious. In the midst of this very human story, the old standby arc of a guy going from rags to riches and trampling down his competitors, suddenly there is this mysterious encounter, this wrestling match.

And then this strange dialogue, which sheds little light, even as it is a pivotal moment in the history of God’s people. I will not let you go unless you bless me. What is your name – Jacob – Not Jacob, but Israel.

Israel – the people of God - emerge from this encounter. To face God, to struggle against God, to cling to God, to refuse to let go of God – out of this something new emerges. A name, a people. And a blessing. But still shrounded in deep mystery – why do you want to know my name?

Walter Brueggemann is one of my favorite Scripture scholars, and he writes about this: “God remains God, his hiddenness intact. But Jacob is no longer Jacob. Now he is Israel. That is how Israel comes on the horizon. Israel is not formed by success or shrewdness or land, but by an assault from God. Perhaps it is grace, but not the kind usually imagined. Jacob is not consulted about his new identity. It is given, even imposed. When daylight comes, the stranger is gone. And so is Jacob. There remains only Israel, who had not had a good sleep that night.”

A new name, a new blessing, and another new thing. A new limp. A new crippling. We encounter God and from this receive the deepest truth of our life, but we are not left unmarked by the encounter. Jacob struggles with God and man and prevails, but he bears the scars of this. God enters the fray with us, and our lives and God’s life in us are entwined in ways that baffle us. But God remains God. We… well, we limp along. “Paul, my grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness… When I am weak, I am strong.”

Jacob in this story sees the face of God, but he is both strengthened and weakened by the encounter. Humanity comes in contact with God, and it is indeed a mysterious struggle – there is wounding, and blessing, a crippling and a mission given, a nation created.

Jesus is crucified for us, and his wounds remain, but from comes the new name, Christian, the new blessing, eternal life in Christ, the new Israel, the new people of God, limping along on the path to the new Jerusalem and the heavenly kingdom.