“Even though you do not believe me, then believe the works...” (Jn. 10:38)

Homily at Church Divinity School of the Pacific, Berkeley, California
in All Saints Chapel--Lent 5, 2011 by Jan Robitscher

Friday, Lent 5                                                                                                                          

Jan Robitscher
All Saints Chapel
CDSP
April 15, 2011

                Jeremiah 20:7-11                                                                                                    

                Psalm 18:107                                                                                                                          

                John 10:31-42                                                                                                        

In the Name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Anyone who has ever come over to my house has seen a little pillow on my couch. It reads, “Believe in Miracles”. Not exactly what I was taught in the Bible courses I had in college and then seminary, or in much of the preaching I have heard since. But I do believe in miracles, and in a way that is particular to the Gospel of John. In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus’ miracles or “signs” or “works” as they are called, besides being visible interventions of God into human activity, always point beyond themselves, beyond Jesus, to God. And it is from them that we learn who God is and how much God loves us. But in John there is also a keen sense of time. So we could say that to understand--believe--this Gospel--this part of the Good News--is to be able to read “the signs of the times”.

So here we are, on the Friday before Holy Week. How does it feel? Has Lent rushed by so that we have not even started what we intended to do? Or has it seemed endlessly slow, as though it would never end--a great slog to Holy Week? Have you stopped to observe along the way or has life gone on apace?

As Christians, we are ever conscious of time. Indeed, much of our life together is spent sanctifying time or, as the title of Marion Hatchett’s book goes, Sanctifying Life, Time and Space. How we do that may vary from place to place. But that we do it is essential to who we are. Our lives are situated in the seasons of the Christian Year, of the week, the day and even of this hour. Alexander Schmemann puts it this way:

               

                        We are always living between morning and evening, Sunday 

                                and Sunday, Easter and Easter, between the two comings

                              of Christ.     

                                                                  (A Sourcebook About Liturgy, p. 126)

Our Gospel reading is set in its own “time”, both literal and figurative. It comes after the healing of the man born blind (which is the penultimate in the series of great signs in John’s Gospel--the ones we have heard on the Sundays of Lent) and then the verses about the Good Shepherd, but before the final, great sign of the raising of Lazarus (celebrated in the Orthodox calendar tomorrow, Lazarus Saturday)--a sort of “hinge” passage that propels us toward the final events of the Passion and resurrection of Jesus. The Pharisees are about to stone Jesus--again. But Jesus was not just going to die any old death. In many places he says “My hour has not yet come”--not yet, not until the he could willingly lay down his life, giving himself into human hands to the very end.

The argument with the Pharisees is also, in a curious way, set in time. They accuse Jesus of “making himself God”. In reality, God, at that time, has become human in Jesus; “him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world”. He tried to tell them and even invited them to “believe the works” if they didn’t believe him, so that they might know that Jesus was God’s Son. But they tried yet again to stone him and he escaped from their hands and went to the region where John had baptized, “and they believed in him there”. What did John’s followers get that the Pharisees didn’t? 

It seems the Pharisees were stuck in the present moment. They could only feel time closing in on them. The more and greater signs Jesus did, the more they felt threatened. The more Jesus identified himself with God, the more he tried to tell them that he was doing only his Father’s will, the more they refused to see God acting in their own time and place.  

John’s disciples, it seemed, were able to look at and through and beyond the signs Jesus did to see the coming of the Reign of God.  They were able to believe because they were not stuck in the present moment, unable either to learn from their past (Jesus’ reference to Psalm 82, “you are gods”) or to the future, toward which Jesus’ signs were always pointing.  

Only in the freedom of living “between the times” can we see beyond our present situation, individual or collective, and enter into the life of Christ, whose Body we are. That is why, in a few minutes, we will hear again the story of our salvation in the Eucharistic Prayer and be reminded again of God’s mighty acts. And we will make present (anamnesis) Jesus’ acts of the Last Supper. Then we will receive the very life of Jesus in a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, looking to his coming again in glory. We will, for a brief moment, be suspended in a wonderful, liturgical, present moment between the times, past and future, already and not yet.  

Jesus offered the Pharisees the opportunity to let go of the urgency of time and even of trust. “Even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” This is not what we usually hear about signs and miracles, so Jesus offers us a unique opportunity, too.Take time--all the time you need--to walk the whole walk of Holy Week. Allow yourself to be suspended in liturgical time. Look around you to see the signs and miracles everywhere--even right here.Take time to ponder and absorb and celebrate them. Don’t worry--you will know them when you see them; God will show them to you. And just as Jesus went across to the region where John was baptizing, where they believed in him, “believe the works”--Jesus’ signs--and follow the events of Jesus’ Passion, death and resurrection all the way to the “womb and tomb” (as Cyril said) of the font of an even greater baptism, of dying and rising with Jesus, receiving the greatest gift--of being created anew even to dwelling with him forever in the timelessness of eternal life. 

“Jesus said to [the Samaritan woman],
‘Give me a drink.’”

(Jn. 4:5)
Yr. A Lent 3
Exodus 17:1-7 Ps. 95
Jn. 4:5-26 (27-38) 39-42
Evensong
St. Mark’s Church
March 11, 2007

In the Name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Water. It covers most of the earth. It comprises most of our bodies. It is the essence of life, itself. While we could go for many days without food, it would take only about 3 days for us to die without water. The Israelites were keenly aware of this as they traversed the desert. Our reading says they quarreled with Moses and said “Give us water to drink.” Eventually, Moses went to God with the request and God granted it, though not without consequences because they doubted God’s presence and ability to sustain them on their journey. This is only one of many references to water we hear in the Hebrew Scriptures, perhaps the most dramatic being the deliverance of Israel at the Red Sea, which we will hear at the Great Vigil of Easter.

Then there was the well. It was a hot, sultry day. Jacob’s well had been a place of meeting and of conversation among the women who had gathered there early in the morning. Now it was an empty, lonely place. Jesus came and sat down by the well. A Samaritan woman came, alone, to draw water. She was, by every standard, an outcast of her society. Alone, in a foreign country, of “ill repute”. There she was, trying not to be seen when she encounters a man. And not just a man--a Jewish man. For his part, Jesus did the unthinkable: he spoke to her. “Give me a drink”, he asked. And this prompted a conversation of gentle listening and honest questions which would lead her to encounter Jesus as Messiah, and to leave her precious water jar to go and tell the townspeople what she had heard and seen. Through her words, they, in turn, came to see and believe for themselves.

“Give me a drink”, said Jesus. Of the many surprises in this story, perhaps the most startling is that it was Jesus who asked for a drink of water.[1] An antiphon from Orthodox vespers captures this well:

Jesus met the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well.
The One who covers the earth with clouds
asks water of her.
Oh! What a wonder!...

Jesus was willing to become vulnerable and to break every taboo so that a conversation with this woman could happen. But it quickly turns as Jesus speaks of giving her “living water”:
“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,
but those who drink of the water that I will give will never
be thirsty...”

Now Jesus and the woman have found common ground. They are both thirsty. Jesus’ human thirst would echo again from the cross with the words, “I thirst”. But his thirst goes deeper. It is a thirst for peace--shalom. The woman also thirsts--for dignity, for respect, for a purpose in life. Suddenly there is something she can do for him. This, too, reminds us of Jesus’ words,
“And whoever gives a cup of cold water to one of
these little ones in the name of a disciple--truly I
tell you none of these will lose their reward.” (Matt. 10:42)

Here is a wonderful exchange! The woman gives Jesus a cup of cold water and he offers the “living water” of eternal life.

When the disciples returned, they must have been scandalized to see Jesus speaking with a Samaritan woman. Yet, this is the example he is giving them of the very ministry to which he is calling them: to listen across all boundaries and taboos, and to allow others--perhaps the least likely others--to minister to them, too. The woman runs away, leaving her water jar behind. She doesn’t need it any more, for the spring of living water is welling up inside her, just as Jesus said.

We, too, thirst for “living water”. Not the water of the grumbling Israelites in the desert, but the “living water” which we find in Jesus. This story was used by the Early Church to prepare candidates for baptism--and for good reason. Baptisms were done in “living water”--running water. In baptism we are reborn to new life in Christ. But it does not stop there! It is the water of Jesus’ gift of eternal life. But what does this encounter at the well--and Jesus’ gift of “living water” have for us?


Perhaps if we were to approach others as Jesus did we would find the world and the Church less divided. Perhaps we could find the common ground of our thirst--our real thirst--and then ask Jesus to give us the “living water” that wells up inside us.

As we continue toward Holy Week, let us remember that this story moves us, with those preparing for baptism, toward the “living water”. It also moves us to remember Jesus’ death and resurrection. Let us remember that Jesus still thirsts today, and let us see ourselves as that Samaritan woman. For we come here to Evensong month after month to drink of this well.

But Jesus comes here, too, and asks us for a drink.
Are we ready to give Jesus a cup of cold water?
To talk with him?
To listen to him?
To reveal our brokenness to him?
To make our full commitment to him?
To go and tell others about him so that they, too, might believe that
“[Jesus] is truly the Savior of the world”? (Jn. 4:42)

If we are, then we will be ready to hear the invitation from the Revelation to John:
The Spirit and the bride say,
“Come.”
And let everyone who hears say,
“Come.”
And let everyone who is
thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes
take the water of life as a gift. (Rev. 22:17)

Receive a drink from Jesus--the “living water that...will become.. a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (Jn. 4:14)

[1] the Rev. Kirk Alan Kubicek, sermon for Yr. A Lent 3 found on the website Used with permission.