An occasional delving into the Sunday Scripture at my church. I attend an Episcopalian parish, and the readings are from the Revised Common Lectionary, Year A, NRSV translation.
The theme this week is “waters” and God providing. Well, sort of.
Old Testament: Exodus 17:1-7
This is the typical “Israelites grumbling in the desert” sort of thing. Having departed Egypt and being led into the wilderness, they get all pissy over there not being any water. “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?”
Moses characterizes this as a “test” against the Lord (“Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?”), and that’s usually the way it’s characterized. Indeed, this week’s Psalm, 95, has God characterizing it the same way — and using it as part of his anger at them, sentencing them to forty years in the desert.
But I beg to differ. There’s no sign that the people were told, “Hey, head off into the desert, but don’t be afraid, because I’m going to make sure you survive.” No, the people are just led into the desert, get thirst, and see no water, and start getting understandably concerned. There’s no element of faith or faithlessness here — they just “water to drink.” No water seems forthcoming until they ask for it, at which point Moses gets to work a miracle at God’s behest.
The Israelites seem blameless in this.
Interestingly, this passage is also part of why Moses doesn’t get to go to the Promised Land, either. In the Numbers 20 version of the story, Moses is told to talk to the rock and waters would flow, but instead he strikes the rock with his staff (as he’s told to do in Exodus) while not saying that it’s the Lord’s doing, and waters flow. So God zaps Moses’ chance for the Holy Land, too.
God doesn’t come out very well in this tale.
Epistle: Romans 5:1-11
Paul channel’s Yoda, with his paean to suffering — “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope” — which is all fine and good (though sometimes suffering produces hopelessness and, well, suffering).
Suffering is a funny thing. I look at times when I had bad times in my life in some ways, and I am a better person for it, all told. Does that justify the pain? I don’t know. I neither take Paul’s glib answer that suffering is a good thing, or the glib retort that suffering is always bad, regardless of the result. Nor do I choose to believe that suffering is just suffering, and has no other meaning.
On the other hand, Paul’s lesson here sure seems to escape all those right-wing Christians who rail against the (non-existant) “persecution” that Christianity undergoes in the United States. You’d think, along with that injunction from the Sermon on the Mount, that they would love to be persecuted and suffer for their faith.
The rest of the passage in Paul is some nice bits about how meaningful that Christ was willing to die for sinners — and that, if He did, how much more will God protect those who have been reconciled to Him.
Gospel: John 4:5-42
Yikes! This is a really long passage, but there’s some cool stuff in it.
- Jesus once again hangs out with Samaritans … and a woman, at that! And a divorcee who’s shacking up with dude number six! Unlike so many contemporary Christians who seem to spend their time trying to rid their churches and councils and conferences of those they “shouldn’t” be talking with, Jesus once again reaches out to folks that socially and politically he shouldn’t be hanging with. He demonstrates that Christians should engage, even with those they disagree with — and that those specific disagreements may very well be technicalities vs. what’s really important.
- Similarly, the Israelites above got dinged for asking for water. But Jesus tells folks they must ask for the living “water” that he represents. Frankly, I tend to think that sort of engagement makes a lot more sense — faith and faithfulness aren’t simple binary states, a light switch that can be simply turned on (or that stays on without tending and attention). It can’t be expected, it can’t be can’t be forced — and it’s certainly not something that’s the business of anyone beside the person and the Deity ivolved.
- And what’s the result? Because of that engagement, a bunch of Samaritans (and women!) welcome Jesus, and believe in him. And, even more importantly, they don’t stop being Samaritans (or women) in doing so. The externalities of who they were, even if they didn’t meet the expectations of good, obedient, orthodox, socially acceptable Jews, were unimportant compared their belief. Something conservative Christians today might bear in mind, too.