En [light] ed Suffering

The readings for the 4th Sunday in Lent, the morning Eucharist, were focussed on light and sight. From the Old Testament reading in 1 Samuel, we see the choosing of David as the next king to replace Saul, how 'man looks at the outward appearance but God looks at the heart'.

The reading from St John's gospel account (ch 9) tells of the healing of the man born blind. The blind man receives his sight but he becomes enlightened over and above the ecclesiastical leaders of the day who are revealed as truly blind as to whom Jesus is. But, to be enlightened costs the once blind man his place in the synagogue. To be enlightened is not to enter a suffering-free zone but to enter into suffering with one's eyes open.

At Evensong, we hear the cries of pain of the Hebrews in Egypt as their burdens are increased because of the promise of deliverance! Later in Matthew 27 we watch the betrayed and abandoned Jesus arraigned before Pilate. Pilate's wife suffers in her dreams. Judas suffers for betraying innocent blood. Pilate washes his hands of 'the blood of this innocent man' and suffers the agony of knowing that he has condemned a righteous man to death. So much for Roman justice! Jesus suffers rejection, flogging and finally condemnation to the cross.

This strange juxtaposition of light and darkness, seeing and not seeing, deliverance and suffering, reveals the life we now live. A surd of joy and sorrow it has been called. Surds cannot be resolved 'rationally' they can only be accepted as part of existence. We can along with all sufferers sigh but we sigh knowing the outcome of all suffering ends in perpetual joy.

Jesus at Jacob's well in Samaria

Many levels are evident in this account. Unfortunately, the story is very often imagined to be just a personal conversion incident. However, much more lies within its lineaments. Too often we focus on the woman. What if we rather look at Jesus, see what he is doing for a change, see what the Father is doing, and understand the significance of what they are doing.

Jesus 'must needs go through Samaria'. A strange statement because most Jews must needs never go through Samaria. If you were a pious Jewish Rabbi, you went the long way around Samaria and avoided going through the accursed place. Samaritans were heretics and accursed! Jesus waits in the heat of the day for a woman, this woman who is going to be bear testimony to his character in the city of Sychar, a ritually unclean place. But, this Rabbi, was concerned always to be doing the will of the One who sent him (v 34).

Jesus asks for a drink, which on the surface of things seems so pedestrian and trivial. However, with St John, every detail is important. The seen and the unseen things are intertwined but it is the unseen (the spiritual, the things of the Spirit) that one must understand in order to comprehend what Jesus is doing.

Jesus innocently asks for water but he quickly moves to distance his request from the water in Jacob's well. The water is Jesus Himself who is the salvation of the world (including accursed Samaritans in Sychar). The woman's attempts to treat him like a crazy Jew who doesn't know the proper manners of the time and embroil him in a Jewish-Samaritan argument gets derailed with Jesus moving from water to truthful worship that eclipses either Samaritan or Jewish worship. He then moves further when she asks about Messiah to reveal himself as that One.

The growing spiritual awakening of this woman prompts her to go and share what she knows with those in the city. A correspondent recently, quoting William Law, said that Christians are those who have died, gone to heaven and returned with good news!! It seemed the case with this woman. She had experienced the true living water with Jesus, the heavenly water, and went off impelled to share what she now had experienced.

Many of the Samaritans came to believe in our Lord as the Saviour of the world firstly because of the testimony of the woman but eventually because of hearing Jesus' own words during the two days he stayed with them. So the Word made flesh 'tabernacles' as the true temple of God with these outcast people bringing Himself as their salvation because God wants all to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.

Sleeping in busyness

The paradox in the Western business mindset, where so many things, if not everything temporal, is governed by a market mindset, is that the West is asleep in its busyness! William Law (1686-1761) wrote the classic, The spirit of prayer: or, The soul arising out of the vanity of time into the riches of eternity begins with man slumbering in darkness.

[Pryr-1.1-1] The greatest Part of Mankind, nay of Christians, may be said to be asleep; and that particular Way of Life, which takes up each Man's Mind, Thoughts, and Actions, may be very well called his particular Dream. This Degree of Vanity is equally visible in every Form and Order of Life. The Learned and the Ignorant, the Rich and the Poor, are all in the same State of Slumber, only passing away a short Life in a different kind of Dream. But why so? It is because Man has an Eternity within him, is born into this World, not for the Sake of living here, not for any Thing this World can give him, but only to have Time and Place, to become either an eternal Partaker of a Divine Life with God, or to have an hellish Eternity among fallen Angels: And therefore, every Man who has not his Eye, his Heart, and his Hands, continually governed by this twofold Eternity, may justly be said to be fast asleep, to have no awakened Sensibility of Himself. And a Life devoted to the Interests and Enjoyments of this World, spent and wasted in the Slavery of earthly Desires, may be truly called a Dream; as having all the Shortness, Vanity, and Delusion of a Dream; only with this great Difference, that when a Dream is over, nothing is lost but Fictions and Fancies; but when the Dream of Life is ended only by Death, all that Eternity is lost for which we were brought into Being.

Pausing in silence

We are less inclined these days to repress our sexuality-consciousness but wholly given over to repressing our 'God-consciousness' (Viktor Frankl). Not that that is new in our era because mankind has always be active in the wilful suppression of the truth (St Paul). One way we avoid God and the truth of God is by busyness. Carl Jung was held to have said, 'busyness is not of the devil; it is the devil'!

Even in church, congregants keep themselves busy by 'redeeming the time' (!), by doing things that keep their attention diverted from what God might be saying to them at this time. They talk and socialise before the service in such a way that God may be kept out of their conversation.

Churches can be known for rushing through services and denominations once known for the ability to pause during the service, so that people may remember what they are doing, are perhaps doing this less today. We think we will be heard by God for our much talking and noise. We forget that God is interested in teaching us to be present to Him.

Pausing is a vital activity for churches to do. Take time to pause after the sermon, for example. Perhaps, people are thinking, Thank God that's over! Now we can get on to the next thing. But, God is waiting for us to say, Speak Lord for your servant is listening. Few sermons or bible readings do not have the potential for God's present word to us to be conveyed.

The audience of ONE

I remember seeing a Roman churchman being assailed by a gushing, smart Alec interviewer on some issue that involved his having taken some action that would displease many Australian people. 'Aren't you afraid that doing such a thing will cause you to be seen by others outside the church in a negative light?'

'I have only one primary commitment, he said, and that is to please the One who is the divine head of the Church. I am much more concerned about His opinion of us than of any other person or group of people in Australia or anywhere else.' The reporter suddenly lost all her gush! I suspect this occurred because this churchman wasn't playing by the normal rules the media operates with: that self-presentation (Goffman) or 'impression management' is always centre stage and therefore every word and gesture is calculated to put one's self in the best light. But, what do you do with someone who has a higher calling than that?

On another occasion I heard a Cistercian monk being interviewed about the work of his particular abbey and being asked, 'Do you make cheese, honey, plough the land and grow crops?' 'No, said the monk, we simply pray.' The interviewer was entirely thrown by this answer because to 'simply pray' didn't fit into his notion of proper work. The monk went on to say, sensing the young man's puzzlement, 'that we believe that all of the energy of the good work done in the world comes via prayer!'

And, I sometimes wonder with the world's ability to squeeze the Church into its mold (Rom 12: 2, Phillips) http://www.ccel.org/bible/phillips/JBPNT.htm, that we have lost a pervading sense of the divine 'audience of One' (Os Guinness) http://tinyurl.com/ysa6kq who calls us for His glory and His pleasure alone.

church boredom and how not to think about God

Church services are invariably connected with boredom. Growing up in Pentecostalist circles, the services I attended were sometimes boring because of the number of words spoken, mainly by persons other than the people of God!! And there was nothing to look at, no pictures, no symbols, no smells to enjoy as in Orthodox worship for example, little sound (except that of the preacher's voice), no colours or candles. Being partly sensory, children especially need the sights and sounds of the Faith enacted before them. We all do. Holy sensory-rich rituals arising out of living faith is most necessary and each is dead without the other.

When we get bored, though, maybe we should just learn to sit with our boredom and not try to use the modern panacea of entertainment to suppress it. Sometimes, the Lord is in the midst of boredom and we may miss Him if we try to avoid it.

Nowadays, it seems that churches are so overly sensitive to what outsiders think that they have to adopt the modes and manners of the current 'plausibility structure' (Berger), which in part has led to the model of church services as entertainment. We are frightened are they that people will get bored with 'normal' church services that we forget that primarily the church is here not to entertain or soothe people's fears. The congregation assembles to proclaim and listen to the Word given by all available means participating in the drama of redemptive love outpoured.