Lent 3 A

We hear about a well today, a famous well a well that had been around for hundreds of generations of God's people. The best description that we have for the well is that it is a deep well. So deep indeed that a person would need a long rope and a bucket to get water. It wasn't easy to pull water from this well.

A deep well is really a sign that water isn't abundant. If you can dig a shallow well and always have enough water, flowing water, say from a stream just near the surface, living water as it would have been called in the bible, water that moves, then you are very fortunate, if you have to dig and dig and dig and dig before you finally get deep enough to find water that will fill a well at a reasonable rate so that a whole community can draw from it you are most unfortunate indeed. These wells are notorious. They go dry, they have problems that are very hard to solve because they are so deep. And in the days before electric pumps and indoor plumbing a deep well would have been a lot of work. At a shallow well at least the work of getting water is mostly carrying it from the well to where it is needed. If your well is deep the work starts much sooner, you must lower your bucket and then through great effort pull the water all the way up the depth of the well before you can take it anywhere. A miserable task if your fingers are cold and a sweltering task with the sun at your back.

In the gospel lesson today there is a dusty and thirsty traveler, a Jewish man sitting at this deep well in Samaria. Who knows why he choose to stop there or how long he had been sitting. Who knows why he choose a well with such history. It was famous for the people in the town who knew it was Jacob's well. Jacob being a patriarch of the people of God, grandson to Abraham. But I'm sure there wasn't a plaque there, no way for a stranger to know. Nonetheless this was a famous place with history and gravity like going to the family homestead or the church that your great great grandfather helped to build. And here sitting in this Holy place, at a place that was at least Holy to Samaritans was a Jewish man, a man who would sooner spit on than talk to a Samaritan, a man who certainly wouldn't talk to a samaritan woman. These people hated each other, envied each other, resented each other and were hurt by their common history.

So there is a dusty Jewish man looking for a drink and a Samaritan woman with a bucket to draw water from this deep well. Will he talk to her, will he not, will she draw water for him, will she ignore his very presence? Well she went about her business, she needed water, she had a bucket and there was a well so she began to draw water. And as she did the dusty foreigner talked to her. He asked for a drink and she asked him why. Why when your people think my people will make you unclean would you want water from my bucket. He tells her that if she understood how God works at that very well, she would have asked and he would have given her living water. Water that runs. Now we've already covered that this well is anything other than a place with abundant flowing, living water. But maybe because of how he said it she asks just what he means, just what he knows of living water. maybe she is thirsty too. Maybe she knows more about the history of the well than he thinks, this is Jacob's well she says the one where God blessed our people, mine and yours. Where does water live more than it lives here in this ancient and sacred place?

Here is where we need to know a little bit about this woman. She had been coming to this well her entire life. Day after day and things had gotten worse and worse for her. She had married and lost a husband. She needed someone to support her so she married again, again her husband died or left her, who knows exactly but again and again she had been broken and abandoned and again and again she had broken her own relationships until she got to the point where she finally decided to have no more ties and so she came to the well, to Jacob's well alone during the hottest part of the day, high noon. Where she could think of the promise of her ancestors, the love of God for Jacob's children, her own connection, her only connection to a real promise that had really worked and a real blessing from God. Now here was this man telling her he could make the water come alive.

So, she pleads, give me the water you speak of. And he tells her to wait, to bring her husband. What a cruel trick she was so close but it turns out her sin and misfortune would prevail again. She would have to confess. Head hung low she says I have no husband...

There is a pause and she holds her breath, maybe he will accept this answer without question. She so wants for new life to come to her through this precious well. The traveler tells her that she is right that her answer is true that he knows her, he knows her past whatever it was. And she is elated!

Somewhere in here she figured out that this is no dusty traveler but the Messiah, Jesus, the Christ, the one sent by God and she was thrilled that he knew all of her pain and dirty secrets. I don't know about you all but in general I think the more esteem that I hold someone in the better that I want them to think of me. If I were to meet the Son of God face to face I imagine I would be the opposite of elated if he then told me that he knew in detail about each and every one of my regrets.

But it turned out that for this terrified and broken woman God knew her every regret, her every move and still came to a deep and sacred place in the middle of the day to ask her for a drink.

We try to stress the need for confession during Lent. Confession is a hard word. It implies guilt which leads so naturally to punishment but when we think like that we miss the point entirely. We confess like the woman at the well did because God asks us to and when we do we hear that nothing we could ever say or do is unknown to God and yet what he calls us to do is to hear His word, be cleansed by His living water, eat at His table and praise Him right where we are in the midst of hanging our heads and hoping He won't notice just how deeply we need water from the living well.

At the well Jesus said in Spirit and truth you samaritan woman whom my people hate, God wants you to worship him right where you are, right here at this well, right in your town where people know your secrets. right here in the world out in the open, God who knows you asks only that you share living water with strangers in the overwhelming heat of the day. Amen

Transfiguration A

Several of our lessons talk about mountains today. Mountains were sacred to people in biblical times. Ancient people built their temples on mountains and went to mountain tops to make sacrifices. The Greeks even believed that their Gods lived on Mt. Olympus. Mountains, in the bible too, are holy places. They are places where God can be found. Where God comes to speak to the people. The book of Isaiah talks about the mountain of God being the place from which peace, justice and truth flow. Moses goes up onto the mountain where God speaks to him and gives him the covenant.

In the gospel today, Jesus and his disciples take a trip to a mountain top. They start out in a sort of valley where Jesus has been speaking about his death. Where he tells his disciples that he will die and that life will be hard for them after he does. Then he picks a few companions to follow him up the mountain and in silence they ascend, each thinking his own thoughts.

Maybe Peter was thinking that he was wrong to put all of his hope in someone who would die at the hands of executioners like a common criminal.

James and John thinking of how they could have stayed with their father fishing, of how maybe they weren't ready to give their lives. Jesus feeling guilty for dragging them all along on this and feeling like he really didn't want to go on the long, hard walk to the cross in Jerusalem.

They were dirty and tired, their faces covered in sweat and dust. Their clothes torn and brown from the road and ragged. Their thoughts troubled.

But as they walked up the mountain something happened. Jesus changed. His clothes became clean and new. Whiter than any sheep had ever been. And his tired worn body was so filled with the love of God that a new light shone from his face. And for a little while on their long hard Journey, Jesus and his disciples were refreshed and renewed and they had peace to look at what they'd accomplished so far.

A voice from heaven said to them this is my son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.

To Peter that meant that as strange as it seemed death on the cross was the correct path for the Messiah. And James and John knew that they had come to the right place and by that light and that voice Jesus was filled with the strength and authority to start the long trek to Jerusalem reassured and encouraged.

Now if mountains are the places where we feel closest to God, where we have amazing and rare experiences then valleys are the places where spend most of our time, the everyday places and the harder places. There are the light valleys of everyday life when things are going pretty well and then there are valleys of the shadows, like the psalmist says. These valleys are hospital rooms and funeral homes, divorce courts, prisons and the like. And perhaps the fact that we spend most of our time in valleys both light and dark is the reason that we need mountain-tops.

Moses too was given a chance in the middle of a long hard trek across the desert to meet God's comfort and love on the top of a mountain. The mountain was like a sabbath rest for him and for Jesus and the disciples.

When Jesus' disciples got a taste of this sabbath, of this intimacy with God the first thing that they asked was if they could stay for a long time. Peter wanted to put up tents. But that wasn't why they were there. The light on this mountain quickly faded and everyone had to head back down. But, before they did they had a chance to linger and look forward and back and said to themselves it is good for us to be here, look how far we've come.

Any of you who have been on top of a mountain know that the thing about mountains is that when you are on the tops of them you can see for what seems like forever but things look a little different. The perspective is very unique. When I was young my father used to take me up on a mountain top near where we lived and he would point and say "over there when I was young there was a fire that took nearly a month to put out. there were firefighters from WA and ID and MT and two provinces in Canada." But when I would look the trees where he pointed were a brighter green than anywhere else because they had risen from the nurturing ashes of all of the noble old trees that had burned. Nowhere else but the top of that mountain provided so clear a view of what had risen from the destruction of that fire.

When Jesus and his disciples come down off the mountain they will start the journey to Jerusalem and the cross. That is the next thing that we will do as well. We will begin the journey of Lent, starting with Ash Wednesday, this very Wednesday, and ending with Jesus on the cross after 40 days. For us it is a time for reflection and repentance a time where we remember our baptism and think with wonder on God's presence in our lives.

In a lot of ways lent is really a time for us to live in the world. To take time in church in the presence of God to acknowledge the ways in which we are slaves to the everyday things that happen, the things within our control and the things that we are entirely powerless over. For many of us Lent will be our daily walk with present struggles. Struggles that come from losing a job and having to find new work or needing to figure out how to get more education. Struggles with addiction or illness or anger.

But we are given a gift here at the beginning.

The gift of a day to rise up above the struggles for a time to see and be reminded of how God is truly with us always. That, was what God really said to Jesus and the disciples on the mountain. He didn't say now that you're here I am with you. Instead he let them get some perspective on where they had been and he let them glimpse what was to come and then he said go back down the mountain. I was with you all along.

Today we get to stand with Jesus and the disciples in the presence of God.

And As we stand on the mountain this Sunday before lent starts, in this precious hour before our fast-paced lives start up again. We can see a bumpy road ahead but we know that we have the light of God lifting us up and the word of Christ guiding our paths and, unlike the disciples who couldn't quite see the the light of Easter from their mountain top, we look out towards the hill across the way where Jesus will be crucified and we are able to see what will rise from that destruction.

We are able to revel in what has come from the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. We can see the early budding of green growth. We see a Christ that works in our lives, raises us up out of the valleys to stand on the mountain peaks in the embrace of the Lord before we head back down into the mire. We stand on the mountain from which a light shines in the darkness and our faces shine with in the presence of God. This is good news.

Ash Wednesday A

Remember you are dust. Well, we're here already, straight through Christmas and New Years, we barely had an Epiphany season and it is Lent. Not only is is Lent, today, Ash Wednesday is meant to be the darkest most solemn day of the year. Even darker than Good Friday or Holy Saturday because on those days we harbor a subtle hope for Easter. We see very clearly a light at the end of the tunnel but today...Oh today. Today we focus on our mortality. Today we hear the words remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.

We remember that some day each of us will notice our frailty in one way or another. We remember that we are not invincible, that we are breakable. That as hard as we try to live life like we are the only thing that matters the truth is we are small compared to so many things.

We are small compared to the frailties of old age. We are small compared to the terror of sudden accidents. We are small compared to the great pains of depression. We are small compared to the very world in which we live. and we are small compared to the needs of humanity around us. And where does all of this smallness get us, why on earth would we want to dedicate a day to dwelling on it?

Hopefully it gets us to look around for something bigger. Like our Lenten Gospel Verse says, remembering our shortcomings and our frailties helps us to us to Return to the Lord. This is the reason too for Lenten disciplines, you've probably heard these spoken of before. We talked about them as part of the confession today. They are things that we are called to do all the time but that we especially try to do during Lent to help us remember that there is Good News even in our mortality.

The first Lenten discipline is Repentance. We Repent. We acknowledge that we live in a broken world and that sin is all around us. Our relationship with God and each other isn't right. We have knowingly sinned, broken the covenants that we have with God but beyond that we are part of a people whole live distantly from God. We turn inwards repeatedly. We care more for ourselves than those who might suffer because of our actions. We fight. As a world we have wars and are at war right now because we are sinful people who just can't quite get it right and so we strike out at one another instead of reaching towards our neighbors in peace.

And so we ask God to wash us through and through and to create in us clean hearts, generous hearts, loving hearts, peace-filled hearts and before the words are even out of our mouthes we hear a loving promise that God our Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and for this reason we have already been washed clean in the waters of baptism.

Remember you are dusty and dirty but you were washed clean in baptism and sealed with the indelible mark of Christ forever.
Our next discipline is Fasting in many ways fasting is an answer to the request that our hearts be changed. We don't live in world where fasting is very common at least not deliberate fasting. We do however live in a world where so many people can have whatever physical thing they want, including just about any food whenever they want it and yet people die because they can't get the very basic food, clean water and medical attention that they need. This is a sign of the sin that we repent from, the sin of a broken disordered and unjust world. Nothing is divided fairly. And so we fast, we try to limit what we take in, to eat leanly to cut out foods that have to travel thousands of miles and over oceans to get to us in order to be good stewards of all of our resources and we turn with the excess towards those around us in need.

Remember all your nourishment comes from the dirt of the earth and therefore, that dusty ground is precious and you are given the gift of caring for it and all people and things who live therein.
Our Next spiritual discipline is Prayer We are called to listen to God. We have already done our speaking to God through repentance and we know that God hears the sighs and desires of our hearts so to pray doesn't mean to ask for things but to spend time remembering loved ones, joys, fears and concerns in the presence of God and then to listen for God to respond. Meditate, read the psalms and as you do take notice of where you feel God in your life, what you feel God calling you towards and how you feel God feeding and caring for you.

Remember you are dust and ash but the Lord spoke to Moses through a burning bush and the Lord brought water for the Israelites from a stone. The son of God was born in the dirt of a stable. We are dust and God speaks to us from the very earth that surrounds us.

Our final spiritual discipline is to do Works of Love- We care for the whole of creation because we are a part of the whole of creation and we are called to care for the world, especially, Jesus taught us to care greatly, deeply and completely for one another. As part of our fasting and repentance we are called to find ways to give the things that we have hoarded to those who need them more. We are called to grant forgiveness to those who have sinned and trespassed against us and we are called to ask forgiveness of those we have hated, those we have fought against and those we have forgotten.

Remember you are dust but the whole world is made up of dust, you are from the same precious dust that your brother and father, mother and sister, uncle and neighbor, stranger and enemy are made from. We do works of love because we are knit together by our very human substance.
As you do your spiritual disciplines remember you are dust. We know we are dust because we hear stories of the creation of the first people and the scripture says that they came from dust...but dust wasn't all. There was dirt and then God breathed into the dirt. God filled the dirt with the breath of life and the very clay, the mud from the ground became alive with the breath of God. The breath of God filled the world and the breath of God fills each of us. We are earth and dust but we are made alive with Holy Substance so by all means today and always remember that you are dust. Amen