Author: C R Taylor

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The Water Is Alive

Third Sunday in Lent  |  John 4:5-42

John writes of simple things. Light. Bread. Water. All of them speak to us of God, of this person Jesus.

In the noon-day heat of the story, Jesus sits by a well and tells a woman about water that is alive. Those who are raised in Christianity, who grew up surrounded by its imagery, will not even pause at the words—living water—being already steeped in such language.

OverlookingStream 002Living water.

It is an odd phrase, particularly in modern English. In Greek in the first century, the phrase meant water that moves. Living water comes from a stream or a gushing spring: it is water that is not still, unlike the water of a well. In John’s gospel, though, the words point to the source of life.

The woman doesn’t seem to understand. Jesus tries again. He claims that the water he could give would keep springing up inside the drinker, an odd thing. The woman, being of a practical mind, takes his words literally and so misunderstands, thinking only of freedom from hauling buckets of water from the well.

Jesus stops trying to explain the water. He finds other ways to open her mind.

We might see that like Jesus and this woman, God waits for us at the point of our need. When she arrived at the well, Jesus had arranged to be there. That gives us hope that when we find ourselves in the noon heat with an empty bucket, God is already there waiting.

Like the gospel writer, we might also pay attention to simple things. While God could make an appearance with trumpets and a chorus of angels, this gospel tells us that God is more likely to be present in a drink of water, the taste of bread, the sunlight. The evidence of scripture is that God prefers simple things.

Light. Bread. Water. These are the most basic things we need for life. John uses them to teach us of the nature of God.

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The Other Thief in the Night

Second Sunday in Lent  |  John 3:1-17

The relationship between Nicodemus and Jesus is strange, as is the story in the third chapter of John’s Gospel.

Candlestick at NightNicodemus comes to Jesus, acting out the role of a thief in the night, though that phrase is not used to describe the messiah in John’s Gospel. In this gospel, the thief comes to steal (John 10:10). Are we to consider Nicodemus as a thief, coming to take what is not his?

Another oddity is the shifting voice of verse 11. Suddenly Jesus is speaking in the plural—we speak of what we know…what we have seen. The same shift occurs at the end of the gospel in 21:24, where we hear the voice of the Johannine community speaking. 1 John 1:1 offers the same plural voice, a similar attestation to having seen. Are we seeing layers in the text, the words of the early community placed alongside the words of Jesus?

How about the reference to Moses and “the serpent in the wilderness” in verse 14? Did anybody really understand the first time this image occurs in Numbers 21:9? It sounds less like faith and more like magic.

Perhaps it is a suitable objection. After all, a great deal of what passes for faith is actually magical thinking cleverly transformed into religion. Magic is the practice of ways to control hidden power, ways to get the deity to do what one wishes to be done. The question is whether that is so very different from the way most of us practice Christianity: if we do this, God will do that.

True faith does not ask for a response from God. True faith is a response to God. Anything else is just us fooling ourselves.

Jesus tells Nicodemus that the Spirit of God is like the wind, coming from places we cannot imagine and going anywhere it likes. The wind, like the rain, does not touch only the righteous. Instead, the wind blows across everything in its path.

Nicodemus found that God was already waiting for him, even in the dark.

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On A Different Mountain

First Sunday in Lent  |  Matthew 4:1-11

Last Sunday the lectionary marked Transfiguration Sunday, a remembrance of the story of a mountaintop experience in which Jesus transformed into a glorious figure. Moses and Elijah made a striking appearance as well.

Valley thru Trees 003For the first Sunday in Lent, we remember a different story of visiting a mountain. This time Jesus has the devil for company.

We know the story of the temptation of Christ, though we may wonder who told the details to Matthew. Jesus has purposefully fasted for forty days and nights. Along comes the devil with three temptations: turn stones into bread for your hunger, throw yourself off the pinnacle of the temple and let the angels catch you, and worship the devil to gain the whole world.

We get that last temptation, because it is reasonably clear to most of us that worshipping anything less than God is wrong, even in order to get everything in the world. The other two, well, it is a little more difficult to find anything wrong with the ideas.

Throwing oneself down from the pinnacle of the temple is not unreasonable, given that one was up there anyway and angels are really going to catch you. No harm done, and it would be amazing. The idea seems to be that one should not put God to the test, just for the sake of doing it. God doesn’t perform circus tricks on demand.

That first temptation, though, is the hardest one of all to understand. What is wrong with having a little bread? Provided one has the power to do it, and nobody in the story seems to question whether Jesus actually could turn stones into bread, why not?

On one level, it seems to be about observing human limitations. Human beings cannot, generally speaking, turn stones into bread. On the other hand, human beings cannot, generally speaking, heal the sick, raise the dead, feed thousands of people with a child’s lunch, or pull tax money out of the mouth of a fish. Yet, in Gospel stories Jesus did all of these things.

Maybe it was also a question of doubt. The devil does not propose the bread simply as food: “If you are the Son of God…” Such a miracle would prove, presumably to Jesus himself or to the devil since no one else is present, that he is indeed God incarnate. Still, self-doubt doesn’t seem to be a problem. The gospels do not record an instance of Jesus wondering about his own identity, except in the eyes of others.

The real problem of these temptations is that they would alter the true nature of Jesus. He was an authentic human, complete, what our species aspires to become. Acts of self-doubt, or self-acclamation, would have torn the fabric of Jesus’ being, would have made him less than he was.

Perhaps that is how we can measure temptations that come our way. Regardless of the hunger that might be filled, or the apparent lack of harm, or the ends that we might achieve, we measure our choices by the injury done to our humanity, to our souls. There are worse things than hunger,  obscurity, and the lack of wealth.

Matthew tell us that Jesus went up on another mountain, and this time he was followed by crowds of people. Maybe when he sat down to speak, he remembered his own temptations.

“Blessed are the poor,” he said. “Blessed are the meek…blessed are the hungry….”

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The Kingdom of Ought and the World of Is

Ash Wednesday  |  Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

Eggs on GravelWe live in the world that is. One might think that is obvious, but it isn’t.

People all over the world, all of their lives, keep expecting the world to function as it ought to do, but it doesn’t happen. The world is as it is, not as it ought to be. Realizing that fact can be disheartening, but it makes one a better adjusted citizen of this world.

It is also an opportunity.

People of faith lay claim to a different kingdom, a kingdom that does function as it ought. The pursuit of what ought to be makes the world a livable place.

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus keeps using two phrases to describe two groups of people: “Truly, I tell you, they have their reward” and “Your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” The first group of people appear to be what they ought to be, but they aren’t. The second group are what they ought to be, though they may not look it. Both groups may fool us, one into thinking them better people than they are, the other into believing they are only what they appear to be.

God, we are told, knows the difference, and so ought we.

Jesus’ words are not really concerned with rewards and recognition, whether from God or from the world. It is simpler, and harder, than that: despite what the world is, be as you ought.

Don’t seem. Be.

We live in the World of Is, but we are bringing to pass the Kingdom of Ought.

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Transfiguration Sunday | Strange Things on the Mountain

 

Transfiguration  |  Strange Things on the Mountain  |  Matthew 17:1-9

Strange things happen on mountains. Moses meeting with God to chisel out a new way of living comes to mind.

Matthew’s story of the mountaintop experience raises questions that have few answers. Why a mountaintop? Why just Peter, James and John—what’s so special about them? What is transfiguration anyway?Mountain Range Over Ledge 005

Where did Moses and Elijah come from when they appeared up there on the mountain, and where had they been in the meantime?

Is the cloud a cloud or an actual manifestation of God, and do we really know the difference? What about the voice—is this God speaking? Is God talking about God as someone else, someone who is also God? Can we make sense of God in one place or form making a reference to God in another place or form—God talking about God? Are the aspects of God, whom we call Father and Son and Spirit, always manifested separately, or do we simply perceive God differently from beings who are not God? Was all of this real or some kind of hallucination?

Why are they all afraid?

Where did everybody go afterward—Elijah, Moses, the cloud? Why did Jesus touch each of the men? Was there something in his touch that worked differently than his words?

Why was it all a secret?

For whatever reason, physical reaction or mental shock, the men fall to the ground in fear. Jesus tells them, “Get up and do not be afraid.” We have this statement plain and simple from Matthew’s story. Is there anything we can make of it? Could Jesus be demonstrating what God would have us do? Could it be that God does not wish or need us to fall on the ground in fear, but that God wants us standing, unafraid, even in the very presence of God? Is it human to react with such poise?

We can speculate on entities made of energy, on parallel worlds separated only by a breath from our own. We can wonder whether it is our reality that is limited or our ability to perceive it. All of these things are fascinating. All of them are simply speculation.

Whatever happened on the mountain, most of us have never been there. We are like the other disciples, wondering about the amazing experiences that these special ones shared, wondering why we were not invited to join them.

We live in the lower places.

We might feel ordinary, and maybe we are. We might think the mountain climbers to be special, and maybe they are. It might be that Peter, James and John were special, but only in their need. Maybe the other folk, left down in the valley, did not need to see Moses or hear voices.

It may have bothered John, all those years. Much later, long after Matthew had put out his gospel, John wrote another one. John’s perspective was different, his themes and emphasis different. It was John, who had been up on the mountain that day, who gave us another saying, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Faith is easy on the mountaintop, but there is little use for it. Down in the lower places, the valleys, the flat lands, faith is not so easy, but it is much more needful.