You would think that would be the case when Jesus goes to a well and runs into a 1) Samaritan, who’s a 2) woman, who’s a 3) loose woman, and who’s also a 4) ostracized woman. Four strikes and you’re out?  Most people would push her aside and walk right past her as she’d so obviously been ridden hard and put away wet.

But not Jesus.

Jesus stops to talk with her.

Jesus gives her the time of day.

Jesus cares about her.

Jesus came to show this woman love. And in doing this with a no-name tramp he shows each of us that he intends to do the same.

The metaphor here is ‘living water’ – the translation is ‘love.’

Jesus says drink from that water.

Fill up on that water.

Take that water into yourself so deeply that it comes right back out.

It is God’s love that is no better demonstrated than by his care and regard for people for which no one else has any regard. It is the one thing that can fill us up and keep us. Our Lenten challenge is to drink from that water, go to the well, ingest what’s there, and let the world benefit from it.

What does ‘going to the well’ look like for you? How do you ‘drink’ of this living water?  Do we really think that, if God can give it to a woman like this, it’s also available to you and me?

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Reading

The War of Art – Steven Pressfield

Sentess – Hammond and Cronshaw

The Lean Startup – Eric Ries

While this may be a no-brainer it is also the most forgotten axiom in the Christian church.

I must confess, to no surprise of most, that I live much of my life as a functional atheist – trusting in my own gifts and skills and only really reaching out for God when I have a problem or need help. Sure, I go to church and offer thanks and praise, but going through the motions of my spiritual life is a bigger part of my life than I like to admit.

This Sunday you and I will hear about a wise Jewish leader named Nicodemus whose religion had become such a big part of his life that he was in danger of leaving God out of the picture.

Thankfully he reached out to Jesus and was reawakened to the reality of God.

And this is our Lenten challenge as well: to renew our relationship not with the church or religion, but with God. How can we draw closer to God during this holy season? After all, this is the most attractive part, not only of our faith, but of ourselves. Sure, we may be handsome, witty, well-liked, and well off, but we all know deep down that the most attractive part of us is the Jesus inside of us. What do we need to do to make that a bigger part of us?

Like all of Jesus’ commands, the idea that one is to love one’s enemies is not intended to stifle our authentic selves, compromise our humanity, or limit our freedom. Rather, the notion that one can look with love upon those who do not share our conviction is meant to ‘give us life, and life more abundantly.’

It has been said that the leading cause of mental illness is unforgiveness. My favorite definition is that unforgiveness is like drinking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die. We do well to understand the harmful effects of harboring resentments, including the hatred of our enemies. Mario Puzo said, ‘Never hate your enemies, it affects your judgment.’ Hate can make us into bitter people. It can contribute to no ends to our anxiety and stress. It can take us far off course of our life-quest, ‘to love one another as Christ loves us.’

After all, you and I were created to love. We find our highest and best fulfillments and pleasures in showing love to others. When we love we touch our deepest selves. Of course it’s counter-cultural – everything that taps into our higher source is – and that’s just it: hating panders to our lower selves. And that is not where deep fulfillment lies.

Who is our enemy? What will it take to love them? It may start with a pledge not to hate them for 2 hours. It may never get any farther than our hope, one day, to pray for them. But the sooner we decide to go down this road the sooner we will be able to embrace the wholeness Jesus has for us.

Reading

Do the Work - Steven Pressfield

Alexander Hamilton – Ron Chernow

Switch – Dan and Chip Heath

My friend got pulled over for speeding. He was doing 88 in a 55.

While still at the scene he called his lawyer – he was going to fight it. On his day in court his lawyer produced evidence that the police car that tracked my friend’s speed did not have proper air pressure in one of its tires. The speed my friend was driving, then, was deemed inaccurate. The ticket was dismissed.

The guilty go free – don’t you hate that?

We hate it because it happens so often. We live in a world where crooked dictators walk and well-heeled drug dealers get off scot free. We’re not happy about this. And neither is God.

In Sunday’s gospel we hear Jesus call on the carpet the kind of wiggling and wrangling that not only infuriates us, but is so much a part of our modern legal and political worlds. Jesus tells us it’s not enough to obey human laws that can never fully capture the essence of it all, but that we have a higher obligation to truth.

And it is a truth that you and I are scared of – which is why we are constantly trying to wriggle our way out of it. ‘I don’t deserve a ticket!’ said my friend, ‘I’m a good driver,’ and he really believes it. Do we think this deceit will have a detrimental effect on him – or at least the greater motoring public?  Maybe. Probably.

Jesus wants you and me to look at the ways we rationalize, diminish, sweep away, and refuse to fully consider the truths around us. God is trying to tell you the truth right now. What is it? How will you find out?

Jesus doesn’t want to do this to make us feel guilty (we do that rather well on our own), rather Jesus is out to liberate us and make us truly free, giving us a more abundant life, which always begins with honesty and truth.

So what are the lies we’re living behind? What are we trying to wiggle our way out of? Do we know? Can we trust someone to tell us? Can we pray that dangerous prayer: ‘Lord, show me your truth?’ Do it for yourself, and for those you love.

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Reading

Do the Work! – Steven Pressfield

Matthew for Everyone – NT Wright

Alexander Hamilton – Ron Chernow

When I was in high school I had no less than a dozen of my friends’ phone numbers memorized. Today I can hardly remember where I parked.

Yet at 51 my attempt to chalk it up to old age doesn’t quite wash – because I know it’s got nothing to do with my age and everything to do with our age – the age of anxiety.

You and I live in stressful times. A time of devolution perhaps in which anxiety and worry may be causing us to actually reverse our development. Social scientists tell us our brains are being re-calibrated so that our abilities to listen, pay attention, and thus, think are becoming seriously compromised. Can you remember the last time you spent the afternoon undistracted as you read a book? Count the number of smartphone apps that have to do with list-making and time efficiency, it’s about half. Because when we’re under stress we make lists and we make lists because we aren’t listening and we’re not thinking.

This has detrimental effects on nearly every aspect of our lives. Businesses go south, relationships fail, each one of us can come up with at least one example of how our exposure to stress and anxiety has damaged our ability to really listen, pay attention, and think about the things that matter most.

In Sunday’s gospel you and I hear Jesus call us salt and light – a people who enhance and bring illumination to the world by being truly who we are and authentically present in the world. These are graces that God has worked inside of us for which we cannot take credit. We are to be salt and be light – and the only way we can lose our saltiness and illumination is to stop being what we are.  The call of the Gospel is to be who we are.

In an age of anxiety this becomes a big deal. It means taking the time to think, listen and pay attention – to be – time to understand what that ‘be-ingness’ is all about. It means contemplating our self-image and self-understanding in the light of our faith.

This also means putting in safeguards to curb distraction. Engaging in intentional practices that keep us focused on the things that matter – prayer, meditation, and Scripture. It means being slow to accept distraction (which is often fueled by the fear that we might be missing something) and instead rest secure that in God we are held, there is no fear, and what we may be missing is not worth the price.

As we know Jesus, who also lived in anxious times, spent a great deal of his life engaged in the intentional practices I just mentioned. He kept his sanity, deeply loved others, and saved the world.

Yep, that's how he did it, how about us?

I had spent nearly a year working weekends as a cub reporter in Kalamazoo when I got the call from a news director, offering me a job working weekdays in Cincinnati.

Bigger market, better pay, better schedule – a big promotion no matter how you looked at it. I was given an opportunity I instantly recognized and could not resist. I turned in my resignation. Immediately.

There are just some opportunities that come our way that we know we need to take. They’re no-brainers, slam-dunks, positive steps in our lives.

Perhaps this is what’s happening in this Sunday’s gospel when the first disciples got the call from Jesus. It was with great haste and no sense of looking back as we heard how they were given an opportunity they instantly recognized and could not resist.  So they dropped everything and followed. Immediately.

Readily answering God’s call should be like that. We should jump at the opportunity to follow Jesus with great joy and excitement.  But that’s not how it works. For a variety of reasons we hesitate and resist, probably not fully understanding the golden opportunity that lies before us.

So our job is not so much to drop everything and follow, but figuring out why that would be an attractive option. What is it God is inviting us into? What are the nets we need to drop? What does the big or small call of God look like in our lives?

Reading

Matthew for Everyone – NT Wright

Matthew – Leon Morris

Alexander Hamilton – Ron Chernow

Reading

The Lean Startup – Eric Ries

The Guidebook (NRSV Bible)
Alexander Hamilton – Ron Chernow

It was a warm August morning when my wife gave birth to our first-born.

It was emotional, unforgettable, and life-changing. And I remember the feeling as we left the hospital and made our way to the car with that tiny little boy snuggled into his car seat. And as I buckled him in for the first time I recall thinking that Beaumont hospital had made a huge mistake: they had absolutely no business entrusting the life of this sweet innocent babe to me. Who was I to know what to do – if not just that night, but for the rest of his life?

I’m sure I’m not alone in experiencing feelings of inadequacy as a new parent. In fact, I’m sure I’m not alone in experiencing the myriad of thoughts of troubled self-esteem that characterize the human condition.

In Sunday’s gospel we hear of Jesus going to the River Jordan and requesting baptism from John. We read that this great saint’s first reaction is to want to prevent this pinnacle act, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’

In other words, if it were up to John, he would not have baptized Jesus.

And we can’t help but ponder how our own self-esteem issues can, and do, interfere with God’s greater plans. What we may think of as simple self-deprecation or the avoidance of high-mindedness, can turn into something much more harmful.

How do our own fears, insecurities, and limited self-esteem prevent us from living into God’s plans for our lives? What fears do we camouflage by being overly humble? How might God be calling us to rightfully stake our claim - owning up to our place and responsibilities in life?

Reading

The Lean Startup – Eric Ries

Beyond the Possible – Williams/Mirikitan
The Bible - NRSV

I called a friend recently to wish him a happy birthday.

We enjoyed a pleasant chat, then as we wound down our conversation he said, ‘Can I ask you a question?’ I said, ‘Sure.’ He said, ‘You called on my birthday, how did you know?’ I paused for a minute – then told him, 'Facebook.'

As many Facebook users know every day we log onto Facebook this powerful social media platform gives us a notice on whose birthday it is.  We don’t have to consult the sources we’ve been programmed to check, our calendars, diaries, or memory, we have a way of learning through a new and different path.

For many of us our bibles and church services are the way we’ve been programmed to find and experience God. We have come to see the Word and our faith community as central mediators of the Divine in our lives.

However, in this Sunday’s gospel we see that God is intent upon giving us experiences of the Numinous well outside traditional delivery channels. When we understand the Three Wise Men from the East came upon the revelation of God with Us BEFORE the rest of the Chosen People, we have much to ponder. We see that God’s way of revealing God’s self is not, at all, limited to the ways we might traditionally think of God being made known.

So the question is: how is God coming to us today – outside of the ways we’ve grown accustomed? In what ways is God using other people, movies, books, and our own rather average life experiences to communicate important truths to us? It’s been said that the most common and repeatable transgression there is, is not paying attention to our lives. Perhaps by doing this more intentionally in 2014 can bring us closer to the One to whom our lives belong.

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Reading

The Social Media Gospel – Meredith Gould

A Distant Mirror – Barbara Tuchman
Codependent No More – Melody Beattie