Wrestling and Dreaming
Pastor Paul E. Hoffman
Third Sunday in Lent A
Beloved in Christ, grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
John sets this up as an engagement story. In Israel’s history, the well was the place where marriages were arranged. At this very well, two engagements took place that we know of. It’s where Rebekah’s marriage to Isaac was arranged. Not long after, Jacob finds his future wife Rachel by this well. John tells us that this well belonged to Jacob to remind us that it is a place of wrestling. John also tells us it once belonged to Joseph, reminding us that it is also a place of dreams.
Many engagement stories are like that, aren’t they? They’re stories of wresting, and stories of dreams.
Here by the well today, John uses the marriage images of commitment, faith, intimacy to invite us to a deeper level of engagement with Jesus.
Our engagement with the Living Christ also begins at a well. In its most robust celebrations, at the baptismal well we are stripped naked and handed into the arms of the body of Christ, to be engaged for life. It is a life that can be lived in the deepest, most tender forgiving grace of God if we will stop wrestling and surrender to it. It is also a life in which the Risen Christ calls us to be deeply engaged in God’s dream of loving the world.
God longs to be known by us deeply and intimately. In Christ, God meets us at the well, inviting us to share all that we have ever done, to lay it all out, and by his grace have it washed away. It will take some wrestling for us to do that, but do not be afraid. This very well, connected as it is to Jacob, has seen wrestling before. It is here that Jacob wrestled with his deepest demons, and came out on the side of God. There’s some verbal wrestling here between Jesus and the woman. All of it meant to give us courage. We may be weary, worn, and sad, but the voice of Jesus says, day after day, “Don’t wrestle with the world alone. Come to me and rest.” Jesus has living water for those who wrestle, who thirst, who long to be seen and heard as this Samaritan woman longed to be.
The plot where Jesus and the woman stand is a place of wrestling. It is also a place of dreams. Remember: Joseph, the dreamer, was there.
God dreams that the well which set us free will also be a well where dreams of living water for all people begin to flow. As engaged as Christ is with us, just so Christ dreams of us engaged with the world. The needy word. The lonely world. The brutal, punishing world. The world that surrounds us and longs for the sort of invitation to life-giving waters that Jesus offered the Samaritan woman at the well. The sort of living water that Christ offers us with the dawn of each new day.
Just one example of how much the world needs our intimate engagement runs parallel to this story of the well. Every day, every single day, 263 million people walk to provide water for themselves or their families. Most of them are women. Their daily walk for water is often frustrated by long lines and polluted wells. When they carry their water home, they are carrying 40 pounds, about the weight of one of your tires on your car. The time and energy that it takes 263 million women to carry their daily water robs them of time with their children, takes them away from their homes, punishes their bodies, crushes their spirits. It seems like we who have so much could do something about that. It seems like one day Jesus might ask us who do not walk, “Did you know the joy of full engagement with the world’s crying need? Did you have the privilege of making someone’s life a little less soul-crushing?”
There are as many ways of engaging with the world as there are people of God and imaginations that inhabit them. Having been given so much, having trust that God will care for us, we can dream of extending ourselves in love to others. And not to only dream, but do. Being a child of God is always lived on a two-way street, is it not? In the left lane, we’re so grateful for what we receive as a gift from the one who weds himself to us in love on the cross. And in the right lane, we recognize our call comes with the privilege and opportunity of being the hands and feet, the lips and ears of Christ in the world for all those in need.
The Bible says of the Woman at the Well. “she left her water jar and went back to the city.” She left it because of the confident faith that Christ inspired. When she left that jar behind, she risked everything to answer Jesus’ call. That jar was her life. Without it, who knew what tomorrow would hold? It was a question she was willing to live into, by faith.
Will we leave our water jars? Can we leave our water jars, in trust, and dream with God into a better world for all people everywhere?
We might not be quite ready for such a bold dream just yet. We may still be wrestling, like Jacob: with God, with ourselves, with all our stuff that seems so dear to us and is so very hard to walk away from. Yet every day we hesitate to dream of a deeper engagement as God’s hands and lips and heart in the world, a woman makes another lonely trip to the well. She makes the back-breaking, barefoot journey home. And in our own way, we too grow wearier and more worn down by a call we can’t quite live into, that stymies us by its enormity, that baffles us by its complexity. A call to engage with a world so needy we’re often plagued with compassion fatigue.
To all this weary world, the same voice of the Risen Christ calls one, calls all, to the living water where our thirsts are quenched, our souls revived, and our lives forever live in him. We wrestle. And we dream. God joins us in both, with a hope that does not disappoint us, but allows us to drink deeply of the Living Water that is Christ himself, to have our souls revived, and to engage deeply, deeply, with all this weary world. It is a holy marriage. And today, Jesus is proposing to us, one and all.
In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Worship, Sunday, March 12, 2023
Third Sunday in Lent
Download worship folder for Sunday, March 12, 2023, 10:45 a.m.
https://youtube.com/live/LDFSVqTr_7s
Presiding and Preaching: Interim Pastor Paul E. Hoffman
Readings and prayers: Brad Holt, lector; Vicar Mollie Hamre, Assisting Minister
Organist: Cantor David Cherwien
Sent Out and Called Back.
God calls us to share the word of God and the Lord’s Supper together to help one another grow–not just for when we start our baptismal journeys, but for our whole lives.
Vicar Mollie Hamre
Midweek Lent Service, Week 2, Year A
Texts: Isaiah 55:6-13, Psalm 121, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, Matthew 15:29-39
Beloved in Christ, grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
There was a young girl in my home congregation who was fascinated by communion. The girl was preschool age or so, having long pigtails in her hair that would go over her shoulders. On Sundays her family would go to the front to kneel for communion, with her looking at them to watch. Watch as they would hold out their hands, watch the way they would receive communion, and then look at the way the Pastor would place the bread in their hands.
And eventually, this preschooler started to do the same. Practiced quietly waiting her turn, figuring out the kneeling up at front, and holding out her hands. Once this had been all put together, she was ready. Except instead of looking to the Pastor… She turned to her mother with open hands. Surprised, her mother quietly turned to the daughter, broke her communion in half, and then shared communion with the preschooler.
At last, finally holding the piece of communion in her hands, the daughter looked up and gave her mother an enormous smile. For the first time, this young girl got to be a part of what was happening.
When thinking about our baptismal lives, I am constantly reminded that children are wonderful teachers. They have genuine curiosity as well as questions that make you stop and think. They are exciting to share and learn with. And I know from my two-year-old nephew, they have plenty to talk about. So, in the baptisms of each child we see, bringing the Word of God and the Holy Supper come naturally. We want to teach, see that development, and be a part of that hope. These are the baptismal promises we make as a community.
But what about these promises in our lives when we become older? What about when that excitement and curiosity for the world turns into doubt? Into questions? Turns into seeing the parts of our world that have suffering. In baptism, we say the words in such a simple way: bringing one to the Word of God and the Holy Supper. But stating that and conceptualizing it are completely different. What about when we have read the Bible, take Communion together, and then are not sure what comes next?
Our text from Isaiah today reflects on a different angle to this question. The writer speaks about rain and snow as they fall to the ground, coming to Earth. Isaiah specifically notes that the snow and water do not return until it has watered the Earth making it “bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater.” Bringing growth in the forms of food and nourishment for the creatures of the Earth. I could not help but be amazed because it sounds like the water cycle. We know that when rain and snow fall on our ground, it cycles backup to nourish our world once again. Continuously feeding one another so that the Earth and creation may flourish.
Take that image and think about the Word of God and the meals we share. God comes to us, each of us, feeding us through community, literal meals, and hearing God’s words through those we do not know. And that community and Word grows in us. Telling us that we are loved, important to this world, and that the promises we make in our baptisms are held. Cycling back as we connect to our Triune God.
This is not the type of cycle one might expect.
So often we hear metaphors of faith lives being compared to pouring oneself dry and then having to go back to fill one’s self back up. Giving this image that in order to be filled, we must be empty. But what if we thought about our faith lives as a cycle? The cycle of each week when you enter into this space dipping your hands into the baptismal waters knowing that God moves throughout God’s creation, sending us “out in joy and [being] led back in peace.” Being sent out to live into the Word of God and share in the Lord’s Supper, then returning in peace to be part of those sacraments once again.
This sending out and being led back takes so many different forms today. It looks like telling LGBTQIA folks that in amidst injustice, they are loved, held, and supported. It looks like listening to our students in schools to ensure safe learning environments. It looks like aiding and standing with people in Ukraine, Turkey, Syria, and Afghanistan who are all suffering and in danger. It looks like calling for a greener world with less pollution and more hope for the future. These, and many more, are all ways the spirit moves within us, sending us out into the world and calling us back. Cycling within us the baptismal waters leading to growth and hope.
For the child in my home congregation, these cycles, these movements bring change.
Change that needs community, nourishment and continued growth, even into adulthood and past that. These promises made in baptism are not just for the ones being baptized in order they know the Bible or consistently take Communion, but that they know our Triune God continues to be present. That they know the spirit continues to move through them as well as through each person in the community. God continues to work through us. God calls us to share the word of God and the Lord’s Supper together to help one another grow–not just for when we start our baptismal journeys, but for our whole lives. Calling us to the table, to the baptismal font, and to one another.
In the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Worship, Wednesday, March 8, 2023
Midweek Lenten Vespers, week of Lent 2
Download worship folder for Vespers, March 8, 2023, 7:00 p.m.
https://youtube.com/live/NOMgSmHryiU
Leading: Interim Pastor Paul E. Hoffman
Sacristan and reader: Art Halbardier
Organist: Cantor David Cherwien
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 51
- 52
- 53
- 54
- 55
- …
- 346
- Next Page »