5th June Trinity 2013, Field of Sorrow

June Trinity

John 11: 17-44

When Jesus got [to Bethany] there, he found that he [Lazarus] had already been in the tomb for four days. Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles away. Many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him. But Mary remained within. And Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.

Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

Martha answered, “I know that he will rise again in the great resurrection at the end of time.”

Then Jesus said to her, “I AM the resurrection and the life. Whoever fills himself with my power through faith, he will live even when he dies; and whoever takes me into himself as his life, he is set free from the might of death in all earthly cycles of time. Do you feel the truth of these words?”

And she said, “Yes Lord. With my heart I have recognized that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”

When she had said this she went and called her sister Mary and said to her privately, “The Master is here and is asking for you.” Jesus had not yet entered the town. He had stayed in the place where Martha had met him.

When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out, they followed her. They thought she was going to the tomb to weep there. But Mary came to the place where Jesus was, and when she saw him, she fell at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been there, this brother of mine would not have died. “

When Jesus saw how she and the Jews coming with her were weeping, he aroused himself in spirit and, deeply moved within himself, he asked, “Where have you laid him?”

They answered, “Come, Lord, and see.” 

Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him.” But some of them said, “Could not he who restored the sight of the blind man keep this man from dying?”

And again Jesus, deeply moved within himself went up to the tomb.

It was a cave, and a stone lay across it. And Jesus said, “Take away the stone!”

Then said Martha, the sister of him whose life had reached completion, “Lord, there will be an odor [he has already begun to decompose], for this is the fourth day.”

But Jesus said, “Did I not say to you that if you had faith, you would see the revelation of God?”

Then they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes to the spirit and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me; but because of the people standing here I say it, so that their hearts may know that you have sent me. Then he called with a loud voice: “Lazarus, come out!”

And the dead man came out, his feet and hands bound with strips of linen, his face covered with a veil. And Jesus said, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

5^th June Trinity

John 11: 17-44

June 23, 2013

In today’s reading, Jesus interacts with the three siblings, Martha, Mary and Lazarus. As one of them dies, each of them is plunged into the depths of human experience. We can look at each of these characters as archetypal parts of one human soul.

Martha is the active one; she goes out to meet Christ on the way, because her heart has recognized Him as the Son of God. Then there is Mary, the more inward side of the soul, sunk in contemplation and grief, waiting. And there is Lazarus, the rich young man who had asked what he must do to attain eternal life and who was told to follow the deep path of sacrifice. (Matthew 19:16, Luke 10:25) He has preceded Christ into the realm of death. After his own death experience, he will be able to stand under the cross and as the disciple John he will accompany Jesus’ death.

And finally there is Christ Jesus himself, who is both compassionate and ultimately called upon to draw on His deepest powers. Deeply stirred within, He pours out the power of his Life, the power that overcomes death. And He calls Lazarus forth from the grave, restoring him to Life. He is anticipating His own death, His own entombment, His own rising from the grave.

Martha acts; Mary waits; Lazarus has surrendered. They are all three images of what is necessary when the soul faces loss. We do what we can; we wait; we surrender ourselves to the greater will of God. And Christ comes. He takes away the stone that seals the grave of the heart in death. He brings new Life. Often it is the unexpected. One poet says:

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. ….
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

…Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; ….

The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen to you.[1]

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[1]  Sheenagh Pugh, “Sometimes” in Good Poems, ed. by Garrison Keillor

5th June Trinity 2008, Thirsty Fish

June Trinity

John 4, 1-26

  

At this time the Lord became aware that it was rumored among the Pharisees that Jesus was finding and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself did not baptize, though his disciples did.) Therefore he left Judea and went back again to Galilee.

Now he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a Samaritan town called Sychar [Si’-kahr], near the plot of land Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was also there. Jesus was weary with the journey, and he sat down by the well. It was about midday, the sixth hour.

Then a Samaritan woman came to draw water. And Jesus said to her, “Give me to drink.” For his disciples had gone into town to buy bread.

Then the Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a Samaritan woman?” For the Jews avoided all contact with the Samaritans.

Jesus answered her, “If you knew how the divine world now draws near to men, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give me to drink’, you would ask him, and he would give you the water of life [the living water].

“Sir,” the woman said to him, “you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. From where will you draw the living water? Are you greater than our Father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his flocks and herds?”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water that I will give him, his thirst will be quenched for all time. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up as true life for eternity.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may never be thirsty again, and need never come here again to draw.”

He said to her, “Go call your husband and show him to me.”

“I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You have well said that you have no husband. Five husbands you have had, and he whom you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly.”
“Sir,” the woman said, “I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews say that only in Jerusalem is the place where one should worship.”

Jesus answered, “Believe me, o woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship a being you do not know; we worship what we do know. That is why salvation had to be prepared for among the Jews. But the hour is coming and has now come, when the true worshippers will worship the Father with the power of the spirit and in awareness [knowledge] of the truth.”

Then the woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming who is called Christ. When he comes, he will teach us all things.”

Jesus said to her, “I AM he who stands before you and speaks to you.”

5^th June Trinity

June 15, 2008

John 4: 1-26

Sometimes a person is too ill to take anything by mouth, and it becomes necessary to give fluids directly into the bloodstream. As a result the person feels no thirst, for thirst is quenched in another way.

In this gospel reading, Christ meets a woman drawing water from an ancient well. It was a well established by Jacob the Patriarch and over the centuries had quenched many a thirst. But over those same centuries, mankind had become more and more ill. This illness produced a deep existential thirst that needed to be quenched in another way.

Divine Physician

The hope was that this thirst for meaning, a thirst for guidance and purpose, could be quenched by the five senses, represented by the woman’s five husbands. She is the Soul, looking everywhere for her missing half, for her completion. She looks for meaning through taste and touch, through sight and sound and scent. She looks to the past and to the ancient ways; she looks for purpose in high worship on the mountain. But no longer does any of this suffice. This experience is captured by Rumi:

I have a thirsty fish in me

that can never find enough

of what it’s thirsty for!

Show me the way to the ocean![1]

Humanity’s soul is ill. She needs the World Physician who will quench our deep thirst another way. “Whoever drinks the water that I will give her, her thirst will be quenched for all time. Indeed, the water I will give her will become in her a spring of water welling up as true life for eternity.”  John 4:14

Through our union with Christ, our deep existential thirst will be quenched, for we will be hooked up to the Source; we will find our way to the great Ocean, drinking in, filling ourselves with His life-giving love.

www.thechristiancommunity

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[1] Rumi, “A Thirsty Fish”, in The Essential Rumi, by Coleman Barks, p, 19.