The Woman at the Well

This past Sunday was the Third Sunday in Lent. The traditional story for this Sunday is John 4, the story of the Samaritan woman at the well. If I were to take a survey of my pastor friends, this story would rate very high on their list of Great Stories of the Bible. It's powerful, artfully written, and (perhaps most lf all) preachable! I'll make a confession: it doesn't do much for me.

I'll readily admit that it's a great story and an excellent example of Jesus transforming the lives of an entire community of outsiders. Still, it doesn't do it for me. I'm much more drawn to the story of Nicodemus, in the preceding chapter. The two encounters, Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman, are placed back-to-back for a reason; they're meant to be examined together.

There are similarities and start contrasts between the two encounters. The most obvious being their settings. Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night, in secret, in private, under the cover of darkness. Jesus himself comes to the Samaritan woman in the bright light of day, in public, for all to see. John's gospel is filled with images of light and dark, day and night, good and evil.

Despite the differences in setting, the conversations they have with Jesus are very similar. In typically Johannine fashion, they take place on two levels. When Jesus speak about being born again (in chapter 3) or about living water (in chapter 4), he is taken literally when he is speaking metaphorically. It takes some time in conversation before the different meanings start to become clear (something we should note, the role of Holy Conversation).

The stories end quite differently. The Samaritan woman rushes away to tell her neighbors, who come themselves to see and hear Jesus. Nicodemus goes away unsatisfied, much like the rich young man who Jesus instructs to give away everything. Maybe I'm drawn more to Nicodemus because I see him more often when I look around (or when I look in the mirror). Perhaps each of us comes to Jesus by night, to ask what's really required of us. Like Nicodemus, most of us go away unhappy.

As for the woman at the well, hers is a simpler story. She has an encounter with the Living Water and is transformed. She doesn't understand it all, but she understands enough. She gets it enough to tell her neighbors, and to ask the daring question, "Could this man be the Christ?" Each of us may encounter Jesus at our own wells. If we can't summon the nerve to ask that same question, we may never recognize him. This woman did and her faith transformed her entire community. It's a good story. A great story. Ultimately, they're both great stories.

They're both great because the story of Nicodemus doesn't end here. He comes back at the very end of John's gospel, after Jesus is crucified, to claim his body along with Joseph of Arimathea. The two were both members of the Jewish leadership who were secret followers of Jesus. They dared not claim him publicly for fear of their positions (and possibly their lives). Still, when most believed the story of Jesus to be over, they step out in a very public way, claim his body and see it safely laid to rest in Joseph's tomb.

Much of religious life, including Christian life, is guided by self interest. We ask, "Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" which is clearly an expression of our own self-interest. Some are never able to see past this, exulting in their own salvation (many even triumph in their neighbor's fall, so secure are they in their own victory). While our salvation may be personal, it is never private. It is never to be viewed outside the context of community (Christian and otherwise). This vain triumphalism ultimately betrays the Gospel.

This is why the actions of Nicodemus and Joseph stand out. They had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by standing up to be counted among Jesus' followers after his death. Believing (rightly|) the Master to be dead, their actions have no self-serving purpose. This is what John Wesley called Christian Perfection (by which he meant Perfection in Love), a love that thinks only of the other, with no regard to the self. Jesus was dead. He needed to be buried. These two men--who had worked so hard to hide their discipleship while Jesus was alive--now set all secrecy aside to perform this one service of Love after his death.

Many shake their heads at Nicodemus and the other "secret disciples." I do not, for when the time came, he stoop up to be counted. Ultimately, his faith transcended Jesus' death and he became a true Servant of the Master.

Go now, do the same...

Sad Birthday

I heard on the radio this morning that today is Kurt Cobain's birthday. Thinking about him always takes me back to the early nineties. David and I were living and working at Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut. Our friends were all college students and we got to hear quite a bit of college music from our neighbors (football-playing frat guys). I liked Nirvana at the time, one of the first music phenomena I was with when it was actually popular. I liked the whole college/alternative music scene of the early nineties, actually.


I remember when Kurt Cobain died. It wasn't a where-were-you-when-JFK-was-shot moment, but I remember hearing the news and seeing the effects. My friend Amina was devastated; I watched her cry as she stared at the cover of Rolling Stone (above) that week. Perhaps that's what gets me when I think about Cobain, how his death hurt those around me. He was a gifted songwriter and musician in a great band. I can't say that he was the modern Mozart or the next Elvis, maybe he was just the canary in the coal mine. All I can say is that when I think about him, it makes me sad.

As a Christian, I struggle with the suffering in the world. More than anything, I hate Easy Answers that overlook the harsh realities of life (or, worse, blame those realities on the people who suffer them). One of my least favorite is "God never gives us things we can't handle." I think this is a kind of wishful thinking, an expression of how we hope God will treat us, but I can point to countless example of people who were given more than they could handle, people who bent and broke beneath the load.

A convenient [un]Christian response is to blame the victim, to say that a person simply didn't have enough faith (or perhaps not the right kind of faith). While there are times that this might be true, it's heartless to think that everyone who has ever been overcome by despair lacks the faith to see it through. Men and women of sincere faith can and have been driven to the edge and beyond by life, and perhaps by God.

Nor is it helpful to look at Cobain's life and death as nothing more than tragic vanity (this is what I may have done at the time). On the surface, his inability to cope with fame and the insane expectations of American consumer culture seemed like just another Counter-Culture Pose. An eternal optimist, it's too easy for me to dismiss such pain as self-induced. It's too easy to say, "Cheer up, stupid! Life getting you down? Change it!" Such Can-Do platitudes ignore complexities, they also ignore the realities of genuine mental illness. Worse than ignore, they place the blame for them squarely on the shoulders of those who suffer from them.

While I'm hesitant to make a messiah out of Cobain, I'm not afraid to ask the daring question: Did he die for us? I can't help but see his death as a warning to all of us against the invasive effects of consumerism and greed. We're all subject to the same ambitions our culture presses on us. We chase after success, wealth, power, and influence at the same time our subconscious is telling us to run away. We are in the exact place where Jesus was, when he was tempted in the desert. When offered the chance to be powerful, influential and important, as he was, we want to say "Yes!" But the true path leads us downward, not upward. We're meant to head towards humility and selflessness, until the only thing left is love. This is True Power.

Do we have the courage to say "No" to the enticements of the world? How are we to think of those who say "Yes?" What about those, like Kurt Cobain, who are caught between the two choices? Ultimately, his death may be a warning to all of us. Whatever else it was, is and may yet be, his death was a tragedy for his friends, his family and for me. Not because of who we has, but because:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. (John Donne, Meditation XVII)

That's what's on my mind this morning. Love to all.

Back from Vacation! Whew!

We got home last night from a week in Virginia. We spent the week hanging our with friends, doing some home repair at my Mom's place, and eating out! It was pretty exhausting. We took Baby, our dog. We had to give her doggie drugs for the long car rides, but she seemed to enjoy the trip.

At my Mom's we removed a bathroom sink/vanity, then relocated a sink from another bathroom and replaced it with a new sink. Lots of annoying work in very tight spaces with me flat on my back on tile floors. In the end, all sinks were working and fully installed. They look pretty good.

For my next vacation, I need to go somewhere without distractions and do nothing. I'd like to visit Yosemite National Park one day; I think that could be a good vacation. We discussed with friends a trip to Nova Scotia as our next group vacation. I have an old programming friend who lives in Halifax and he has always told me how nice it is.

I also want to try to do a bit of camping this year (we went to REI, which always inspires me). Nothing dramatic, maybe just some nights at our local NY State Park, Stony Brook. It could be good practice for future vacationing. I haven't been camping properly since I was a kid.