Bible Tuesday for Lent III, 2017

Exodus 17:1-7

From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. The people quarreled with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” The Lord said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

The chapter before this story contains the manna episode. The Israelites griped using the same tone and perspective as they do in the above passage. “Life was way better in slavery than it is out here in the wilderness. You, Moses and God, you brought us out here to punish us and made us die!” The Israelites sound VERY different than the refugees I have heard, and met.

Moses complains to God about the Israelites and God solves the problem. The area around what scholars and archeologists believe to be the Wilderness of Sin (a place name, not a same after sins that might have been committed there) is full of porous limestones which can have droplets of water coming off of them. When they are cracked open, they may contain water. However, in this story, the water amount is truly miraculous and not simply a couple of water inside a rock. God provides enough water for the thousands of Israelites and the livestock they have not eaten yet.

Moses renames the place where the water came forth “The Place of Testing and Bickering”. Unfortunately, the entire book of Exodus is filled with events like this one, where the Israelites complain about how God is treating them. There are no places where Moses renames the place “Gratitude and Joy” because the Israelites never voiced any.

Psalm 95

O come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!

Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!

For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods.

In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also.

The sea is his, for he made it, and the dry land, which his hands have formed.

O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!

For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. O that today you would listen to his voice!

Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,

when your ancestors tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.

For forty years I loathed that generation and said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they do not regard my ways.”

Therefore in my anger I swore, “They shall not enter my rest.”

The beginning of this psalm voices the sentiments that Israel should have given to God time and time again. “Thank you, Lord God of heaven and earth, for providing for us at every turn.” The psalmist then goes on to give voice to God’s grievance against Israel, and to warn Israel to instead, sing songs of gratitude and praise, like the first verses of the psalm.

Romans 5:1-11

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

St. Paul reminds all readers/hearers that being made right with God is not something that happens at your death, or at the final judgment, but at Jesus crucifixion. So if we are already settled up with God, why is there suffering? Isn’t that punishment from God? St. Paul says that no, suffering can work for the good if through suffering we learn endurance, because that begins a chain reaction of maturity in Christ.

Paul goes on to refute the thought that Jesus only came to save the righteous people. Paul states that Jesus came to save those who need saving, that is, all humanity.

John 4:5-42

So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him. Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor .”Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

Jesus leaves Judea, the southern half of the former Kingdom of Israel, because the High Priest and Jewish authorities in Jerusalem were after him. Jesus took his disciples back up to Galilee through the shortest route, Samaria. Jews and Samaritans have a mutual disrespect/hatred that goes back to 900’s BC. First, after King Solomon, the third king of Israel, died, Israel divided along tribal lines, with the south being Judah and Benjamin, and the north being all the other tribes. The Southern Kingdom continued to worship at Jerusalem,, while the Northern Kingdom went back to worshiping at Shiloh, where folks worshiped Yahweh before Israel had kings. Then, when the Northern Kingdom was defeated by Assyria in the 600’s BC and the Southern Kingdom fell to Babylonia in 586 BC, the area which became Samaria in the Northern Kingdom, was left to continue its agrarian life and paid high tributes in kind to their conquerors. While the Northern and Southern Kingdom city folks were held in captivity on foreign soil, the Jewish farmers and trades folks in Samaria carried on as best they could, even intermarrying with their captors and local pagans. Their practice of Judaism was somewhat corrupted by the basic beliefs and tenets were still intact. When the Jewish captives were released and allowed to return to their Northern and Southern Kingdom lands, their homes and businesses, even the Temple in Jerusalem, were decimated. However, the Samaritans were still living as they had before the captivity. Great jealousy arose between the Samaritans and those who were returning. The Samaritans were seen as half breeds, since they intermarried with non-Jews. They were hated because they “bastardized” the true religion of Yahweh.

While all four gospels recount at least one event where Jesus leads his disciples into Samaria, John has Jesus doing so right away in chapter 4. Jesus breaks also kinds of social norms in this story. In Jewish society, women were not allowed to speak with men outside their families. If women worked in the market, their husband, son, brother, or nephew did all the bartering. If women had to make business transactions, they had to do so through a man, as they were not allowed in the courts unaccompanied by a man.

In this story, Jesus addresses a woman and asks her to give him a drink. Through their repartee, the woman makes it clear she knows she is looked down upon by Jews and wants no part of it. It times her tone seems snide, bordering on sarcastic. But then Jesus speaks the truth to her. “You’ve had five husbands and the one you have now is not your own.” If Jesus had spoken this with condemnation in his voice, she would not have responded with wonder. No, Jesus speaks the truth to her with empathy, compassion, love. And the truth spoken with love opens her up to a whole different relationship with Jesus.

So touched by Jesus is this woman that she goes into town and tells everyone who will listen that she has found a great prophet, a Jew. And so convincing is this woman’s testimony that many townsfolk “come and see” Jesus for themselves. The townsfolks are moved to invite Jesus and his disciples to stay with them, and they do!

Compassionate, empathetic truth telling is what God does with us and what we are to do with one another. Such power!