“Awareness, Faith”
“Awareness, Faith”
Third Sunday in Lent Year A, March 12, 2023
Exodus 17:1-7 John 4:5-42
First Presbyterian Church of Sandpoint, Idaho
Andy Kennaly, Pastor
In film, a documentary mentions details on certain subjects. Interesting facts are documented, highlighted to show the uniqueness of whatever the subject matter concerns. In film, a documentary is different than a drama, action-adventure, or some other cinematic presentation. The art of cinema reveals not only through what is taught or mentioned, but also in how it’s presented and received. Using the camera in ways that communicate on an emotional or spiritual level helps people get out of their heads, away from information, and experience transformation in ways that words cannot express.
This morning’s scriptures are both subjected to lots of documentaries. Scholars write commentaries that highlight the details, such as the symbolic use of water, or cultural understandings of hospitality, shame, and honor, or draw out differences in tribal thinking between Jews of Jerusalem and Samaritans, or gender differences and cultural norms that get violated. Maybe we hear the definition of a prophet as Jesus has insights, or the social failure of this woman illustrated by coming to the well at noon rather than in the early morning like most women. Layer upon layer there are aspects to these texts that merit documentation.
But if I were running the camera in filming these scenes, I would start down in the hole, in the dark, the silence, the cool, moist air of a deep well. Then there would be muffled voices rumbling way up there, beyond a little spot of light. After a big splash, these voices would lure one to the surface as that small circle of light gradually filled the screen until one emerged into the blinding radiance of day. The full bucket would slosh water, whose droplets on the sand contrast the desert heat that becomes all consuming; like it was for the dying people who complain to Moses, or like Jesus, wearied to the point of being tired out by his journey.
That’s where the action of these scenes really takes place anyway, subterranean, subdermal, rivers of water unseen on the surface, but dependable and life giving, and the flow of heart and soul. These subtle ques are easily overlooked in the blinding sun and heat of the day and hunger of the belly that impose their demands upon us. Love does not have such bad manners, doesn’t impose itself, but invites, and patiently waits to be noticed and appreciated. Spiritual insight involves awareness of how to see that which is already there.
The woman sees Jesus, and then she sees Jesus and calls him a prophet. She goes back to town and invites others to come and see, and to bring their questions and desire to desire what God is doing in their midst. Even the disciples, who in some strange way, seem to represent the establishment, even they are astonished as what takes place, that Jesus is speaking to a Samaritan woman. They are so astonished they don’t say anything or ask why this is happening. Then they get confused when Jesus won’t eat the lunch they brought from town.
All of this is a quaint story with moderate interest if you view this as documentary. You can follow the drama if you are satisfied with what life’s given, conditioned to cultural influences, and domesticated to stay out of trouble. Then these stories have happy endings; they can be tied up in bow and set on the shelf.
But if your willing, like the ancient Israelites, to quarrel with and test God, or like Moses who doesn’t know what to do next, then you may notice the difference between water and living water, between a dark well identified by historical context and ownership, and the larger salvation story that invites all to slay their thirst and quell their hunger in nothing less than the living Christ and divine identity.
Many are satisfied with thoughts about God, but these are impoverished “when compared to the infinite mystery of very God beyond all thoughts of God.” (James Finley, Turning to the Mystics podcast, Center for Action and Contemplation, season 5, episode 9, dialogue 4: the perfect life).
In many ways, this story of the woman at the well is like a cinematic presentation that artistically reveals the depths of mystery, so deep that even thoughts are too limited to capture the experience of God’s Presence. Part of the intrigue involves Jesus knowing thoughts about this woman to the point she calls him a prophet; and the thoughts the woman has regarding where and how to worship God, the Messiah’s coming to proclaim all things; and the disciples who’s thoughts are status quo based on contextual religious and cultural understandings of the times.
But artistically, John is writing about thoughts to draw us deeper than thought, to teach us to let go of assumptions or thought or memory or any other finite function that tries to harness God to control God to the limits of our understanding. God as mystery flows under the scene, and yearns to be released, set free to flow and give life by the Spirit as only the Spirit can do.
Thankfully in our own time there are teachers like James Finley with the Center for Action and Contemplation who help equip us to see with the eye of the mystic, to notice. Learning disciplines like Centering Prayer, ironically, helps us unlearn, which can open us toward deeper understanding.
In this story of the well, the woman thinks she knows who she is, and on one level she’s right. But at deeper levels her understanding of who she is gets set aside because it’s based on limited thinking, cultural contexts, finite understandings that need to yield to the infinite, for only God has the authority to truly name who we are.
As James Finley shares reflections on thought and setting aside thought through prayer, he reminds us that when we sit in prayer we have thoughts about God, and this is normal. But we “notice that even thoughts about God’s infinity are finite thoughts about God’s infinity, that even a thought about God’s eternity is a fleeting thought of God’s eternity.”
We notice that thoughts “about God […] are impoverished when compared to the infinite mystery of very God beyond all thoughts of God.” In Centering Prayer, we take an attitudinal stance of refraining from the inclinations to think about any of the thoughts that arise. We use a prayer word to stabilize in this mysterious inner place of sustained receptivity to this love beyond all thoughts of God.” (Finley).
But then Finley amps it up a bit, like Jesus does with the woman. Finley reminds us that unknowing also applies to all our thoughts about ourselves and who we think we are. He says, “ultimately speaking, you’re unthinkable; that no idea of you is you; who you ultimately are is who God eternally knows you to be in giving the very gift of God to you as the depth of your very self, the very divinity of yourself, this identity in God, in your nothingness without God.”
We are invited to take a stance of a surrendered realization of this Love that utterly transcends and utterly permeates all thought, all memory, for those who are called to it, for those having tasted the oneness, there’s a discontent with anything less than the oneness, a oneness with the mystery you cannot feel, cannot grasp; you can’t attain it but its attaining you in your inability to attain it, in your call to surrender in this love.”
Jesus teaches a deeper way to understand understanding. The Living Christ cultivates within us the depths of God’s grace. But this is hard for us, to let go of our treasured, well defended thoughts of God and the comforts of our own self-definitions. Yet like Jesus, who has food they do not know about, spiritual nourishment helps the mind clearly process what it receives. We can take to heart God’s infinite love; this is what gives our soul consolation, this is the art of living.
May we live into the discomfort of transformation, may we trust in faith beyond the need to understand, and may we drop the bucket down deep to fill with what is stirring love’s droplets of grace. And may God be glorified now, and forever, Amen.
(Podcast dialogue: https://cac.org/podcast/turning-to-the-mystics/?season=tttm-five#season-details with quotes around the 22 minute mark. Written transcript of James Finley’s presentation: https://cac.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/TTTM_Transcript_TCUO_D4.pdf)