In God’s Embrace
February 24, 2008
David Brubacher
Text:
Exodus 17:1-7
John 4:5-12
Introduction: When I was in grade eight I was madly in love with a girl. At least I thought I was. Truth be told, I was not madly in love, it was probably more like St. Augustine says in his Confessions, “He was in love with the notion of being in love.” It was really nothing more than a school yard crush. Anyway, the story went something like this. Until I was eight we lived on neighbouring farms. I walked to school with her, her cousins and older sister. By the time of grade eight I began to think of her in a different way. But there was a problem. She was more interested in my best friend. And yes, I did the typical things boys that age do to get a girl’s attention. It did not help how I felt. We went to different high schools and I soon got over her and probably some other girls as well.
As a young adult I was again attracted to a woman in a relationship with someone else. I respected her and the relationship she was in. We lived in a shared household. What was I to do with my feelings? By now I was a little more mature than in grade eight and I decided to talk with her. I told her of my feelings. I also told her of my respect for her and her relationship and that I was committing myself not to do anything to interfere with her relationship. In addition, I also promised to tell a respected mutual friend what I told her as way of being accountable.
It worked. With things being appropriately in the open we were able to live in the same household as friends. Maybe we were not living in the embrace I might other wise have wished for, but we were able to live in an embrace that opened the door for a workable future for each of us. Within a year or two I met Lynda and, well, as they say, “The rest is history.”
Today is the third Sunday in Lent. We continue on our journey “out of the depths” of our aches and dysfunctions towards the outstretched arms of God, who longs to gather us up in a life giving embrace. Today the curtain is opened further and three candles reveal an increasing light in celebration of God’s desire for us. Yet in our obstinacy we often step away from God. Even so we recognize an unquenchable thirst for God. When momentarily we allow ourselves to settle into God’s embrace we taste sweat life-giving water.
As you may gather, the word and concept of “embrace” fascinates me. I was delighted when Aldred Neufeldt gave Embracing the Wilderness as the title for his sermon on the first Sunday in Lent. I believe the notion of “embrace” captures the movement of spiritual journey in Lent. An embrace is the result of a mutual action that brings us into an enfolding of outstretched arms. When we surrender ourselves in an embrace a dynamic is unleashed that is far greater than the sum of the intentions that brought us into the embrace. During Lent we also journey with Jesus to the cross where we see the fullness of God’s intention in drawing us into an embrace of satisfied life.
Today’s scripture texts come together to lay down a basic melody of life that continues today. There are two motifs. The most obvious one is water – life giving water. The other motif is that of love story – rejected and misunderstood love. If the cast of characters that come together to play this melody were an airplane it would look more like a rusted out school buss with wings, something that should not fly. But somehow in God’s embrace it does. And the person who emerges as the one who flies the plane is the least expected one. That’s what happens in God’s embrace.
In Exodus 17 the Israelites are grumbling and complaining again. In a way you could not blame them. This was now the second time they came to a place to set up camp and there was no water. They began to question why they had even let Moses convince them to leave the comfort of their misery in Egypt. At least there they had water to drink. Hot, thirsty and agitated people tend to get on each other’s nerves.
When things go wrong it is usually the leaders that get blamed. The Israelites began to wonder about this promised land that Moses talked about and suspected that maybe he had only brought them out into the harsh wilderness to be killed. Moses was on the hot seat, again.
Again Moses came to God for one of his, “What shall I do,” conversations. God instructed him to take the rod with which he struck the Nile River and strike the rock of Horeb. There would be water for the people to drink. I can only imagine what Moses would have liked to do with the rod. But he did as God suggested and there was water in abundance. They drank to their fill but the grumbling continued.
What was with these people? Had they forgotten the slavery from which Moses had delivered them? Would they ever get it? Well the fact that you and I are here today in a community of faith with its roots in that movement of humanity is proof that something went right, but what?
Think of it. Moses their leader first appeared on the stage as an adult killing one of his own people. Then he runs away and marries the daughter of an influential man. He meets God at a burning bush and is commissioned to lead the Israelite people from their slavery in Egypt. So here they were, after much effort on the part of Moses to convince both the Egyptian authorities and the Israelite people to let them go into the wilderness to worship, they found themselves in another predicament. Really, was God with them or not?
That’s a good question; as good today as then. Waldemar Janzen in his commentary on this text speaks of the Israelite’s wilderness journey as a paradigm for life. For the Israelites the wilderness came between the rich land of slavery, the journey’s origin, and its destination, the promised land. As people of faith today, we are also on a journey of becoming what God is calling us to be. The journey often leads through the wilderness of life. In our wilderness we also long for the promised land here and know. As we wander in the wilderness of misfortune, misguided decisions and tragedy we too look back from where we have come. Nostalgia for the past is often an unproductive coping method for dealing with a difficult present.
God offers another alternative. No matter where or why we are on the journey, God offers an embrace of healing love. No longer hidden in the shadows of fear and doubt but in the open of God’s grace and mercy, surrender in G
od’s embrace reveals doors not noticed before swinging open. Will we drink the water and enter the story of God’s healing love?
The story of the Samaritan woman is also laid over this melody we have been humming. It was in the hottest time of the day that Jesus stopped at Jacob’s well while traveling through Samaria from Galilee to Jerusalem. A Samaritan woman came to draw water and Jesus asked her for a drink. Surprised that a Jewish man would talk to her, a woman and a despised Samaritan, she asks how this can be. Jesus engaged her in a lengthy conversation about if she knew who he was she would ask him for a drink and he would give her living water. She noted he had nothing with which to draw water and that “living water” came from a stream not a well. The conversation continued and she decided she wanted this water of which Jesus spoke.
The conversation shifted and her real thirst was made known. “Go, call your husband and come back,” Jesus said. Again they spoke at length about her complicated past. Traditionally commentators have associated her numerous marriages and the fact she was not married to her current partner as reflecting moral problems.
Today consideration is being given to the fact that she may have been a victim of her culture and context. Why did this woman come to draw water at the hottest time of the day when most came at cooler times? Given what we know today about the dynamics of sexual abuse, some have wondered whether this woman may have been a sexual abuse survivor, explaining a string of assumed failed marriages. As such she was an outcast among her own people and came to draw water in the off hour to avoid public ridicule. But she found in Jesus something that satisfied her aching thirst. In the eyes of Jesus everything was known, but nothing was rejected. She drank from the water he offered and stepped into God’s embrace. Another love story unfolds. As lover God pursued Israel to lead the people out of slavery in Egypt. But they longed for an earlier love in Egypt and resisted stepping into the fullness of the embrace God opened for them.
As love stories go Israel would be expected to return God’s love. In the conventions of the day, as a woman, as a Samaritan and as one with a complicate past, it would have been doubted that the Samaritan women would enter God’s embrace. But she did. Even though Jesus knew all about her she experienced the warmth of God’s love through him in a way not thought possible for her. She openly stepped into God’s embrace and found healing for life’s aches. Her thirst was satisfied. The love story that unfolded was unexpected.
How are we like the Samaritan woman? Do we go to great lengths to keep our aches of life a secret? Do we feel it necessary to build walls protecting ourselves from the scorn of others? Do our choices or life’s circumstances blind us from seeing God’s embrace extended for us? Like the Samaritan woman we can receive the waters of God’s love, step into God’s embrace, and experience a dynamic encounter opening doors of possibility not visible before.
To consider these stories as a paradigm for our personal lives is one thing. How might we consider them as a paradigm for our lives together as TUMC? Individually and collectively we also know of complicated pasts and points of dysfunction. Yet, as we have seen in these stories, God uses people like us to accomplish God’s mission in the world today. Maybe we look like an aircraft that should not fly. But when we step out of our darker shadows and into the arms of God’s embrace, somehow things work.
TUMC has journeyed as a partner with God in mission for approximately sixty years. Community has been a constant theme on the journey. Life giving stories are recalled of fellowship, of working together to build this facility and of being there for each other in times of emotional and spiritual need. TUMC has long been blessed with strong pastoral leadership and gifted lay leaders.
But there have been times of wilderness. The human sexuality discernment was painful for everybody. Even though remarkable steps were taken toward healing and reconciliation pain lingers.
During this year of interim ministry we will set the stage for the next segment of TUMC’s journey. The visioning process will give an opportunity to ask what kind of a congregation we want to be for that leg of the journey. We will build on our strengths and shared passions. We will discern constructive ways to use our rich diversity as an asset. As we step into the open embrace God extends, we will see doors of opportunity open, which today may only be a shadow of hope.
Conclusion: Together we have traveled a long way. There have been times of wilderness. There have been times ripe with the fruit of boundless life. Today, individually and collectively, let us step into God’s embrace for the journey that is unfolding before us. Today, let us hear the voice of Jesus and walk in the light of life for these traveling days. Amen.