03/12/23 - Have Your Bucket Ready! - Westminster Presbyterian Church Westminster Presbyterian Church | Serving God and others with open mind, hands and heart - 03/12/23

03/12/23 – Have Your Bucket Ready!

HAVE YOUR BUCKET READY!

March 12, 2023
Third Sunday in Lent
Ex. 17: 1-7; Ps.95; Rom. 5:1-11; John 4: 5-42
Rev. Denise Clark-Jones

Here in the middle Midwest, we haven’t experienced the wild weather changes of the coastal states. As much as we all like to complain about the weather, my years in Peoria have been relatively mild and seasonally what is expected. Reading familiar stories in the bible can be like that, we see what we expect to see. When we read the familiar stories of Creation, the Fall the Exodus, Jesus, and the woman at the well, we know what to expect. Occasionally, we might find a new detail or a different perspective that catches us by surprise. With all the references to the Exodus story, we might wonder: why is it mentioned so often? It’s old news but just keeps cropping up.

The Exodus story is the Creation story of monotheism and the foundational myth of the Jewish people. The saga of the escape from slavery in Egypt and the 40-year trek in the desert establishes the relationship between God and a group of people chosen to bring all people to God. The rise and fall of a great nation lifts the Creation story into a crowded world stage, with similar temptations to stray from God.

We read two weeks ago the story of Adam and Eve and the Fall. In the biblical account of Creation, it didn’t take long for sin to enter into the world. It started with mistrusting God and blaming others for the consequences of disobedience. Adam and Eve’s punishment for disobedience was expulsion from the idyllic world God prepared for humankind. The rest of the bible is a saga of humanity struggling to live with God and one another and often failing because we insist on putting ourselves first in a lifetime competition of one-upmanship.

During Lent, we are supposed to look within ourselves and find what is separating ourselves from God. We are also challenged with discovering the ways we separate ourselves from one another. These are both relationship issues. In Paul’s epistles, such as the letter to the Roman congregations from which we just heard, this is the definition of sin – it is what we do that separates us from God and one another.

God is great until God either interferes with our desires or doesn’t come to our rescue when our desires are thwarted. The story of the Israelites’ exodus out of slavery in Egypt is another archetypal story which describes who God is, what God does, and how humanity responds. The Exodus memory is repeatedly invoked in the Old and New Testaments in the continuing saga of God and humanity – often prefaced by the imperative verb, “remember.”

As the background for today’s Old Testament reading, let me remind you that as soon as the Israelites were led by God’s chosen leader out of bondage in Egypt to begin their trek to the Promised Land, the Israelites began to complain and rebel against Moses. Oh, at first, they were singing God’s praises and dancing with delight that God gave Moses the power to part the Reed Sea for their escape and then released the water to destroy the Egyptian army chasing them. But at their very first water stop, they complained that the water tasted too bitter to drink. The people accused Moses of leading them into the desert to die and demanded he take them back to Egypt. The Lord heard their cries of discontent and acted. The Lord told Moses to take a stick and throw it into the water and immediately the water tasted sweet.

But the Lord also demanded something in return. The bible tells us that “There the Lord made for them a statute and an ordinance and there he put them to the test. ²⁶He said, “If you will listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is right in his sight, and give heed to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians; for I am the Lord who heals you.” Then they got their water – lots of it!

As the story goes, the Israelites traveled further along, and their next complaint was the lack of bread. Again, they demanded Moses take them back to Egypt. In response to their need, God sent manna from heaven. God’s only condition was that they gather no more than they needed for each day and did not hoard the manna, or it would become rotten and inedible. But, like Adam and Eve, they just couldn’t trust that God would provide as much as they might desire and they tried to hoard the manna for themselves, with no regard for their neighbors who might not be able to gather enough to eat because they had taken more than they needed for a day.

If that is not a parable for the economic disparity in the world, I don’t know what is. Just take the deep tax cuts for the corporations and wealthiest Americans a few years ago. Did the corporations raise the pay of their workers whose salaries had decreased in relation to the continued increase in cost of living over decades? Did they bring back the manufacturing jobs they had sent to desperately poor countries, leaving American towns in dire economic circumstances. No, they took their windfall and bought more shares of their own stocks, like the Israelites hoarding their manna. The wealthiest Americans made more personal investments and bought more luxuries.

This past week I attended the Peoria Candidates’ Forum in which one candidate responded to a variety of different questions with the complaint that Peoria can’t afford to pay pensions for firefighters and police officers; and if relieved from that financial obligation, the city would have more money which would trickle down to the people. Will voters fall for that one again? Of course, there was also the complaint that Peoria isn’t doing enough to fight crime because they can’t get enough people to work as police officers. Is it not obvious the values and intelligence is being questioned? We may be talking moolah instead of manna, but the manna-hoarding instinct continues to lead us into sin.

Throughout history, the Church has fallen into that same mindset. What Jesus and the Apostle Paul envisioned was a community of faithful believers who come together to enact the fellowship Christ demonstrated in his ministry and made a sacrament in the Eucharist. What many churches have become are marketable entities which cater to the kind of religion that the Lord condemned. For many churches, Christian identity has become what is marketable – what caters to individual desires rather than the witness of Jesus Christ. Too many Christian churches have become a competitive market with people who want the church to serve them rather than for them to serve Christ through the Church. For Jesus, and the Hebrew scriptures which formed his faith, faith in God is not private religion. It is a community of believers who put God and service to others at the center of their lives.

Like the Israelites who wanted to put God on trial for not fulfilling their desires, we church members often place our own demands on what the church should provide for us with less consideration for what Christ has asked us to do for others. In the case of teaching the faith to our children and our children passing on the faith to their children, it has too often failed.

Now, the church is engaged in competing for the approval and participation of a few young adults who still profess to want to be disciples of Christ and teach their faith to their children. The Presbytery of Great Rivers is not alone among presbyteries which cannot get lay persons to volunteer for service. The laity claims to be too busy for the Church. Family time is now often a matter of one parent taking one child to an athletic or “personal enrichment activity” and the other parent taking the other child to one of the same. If they become members of a church, the church must have lots of children to serve as social companions for their own children. Church activities for children and youth must be there but are only utilized when other more personally gratifying activities are not competing for their time. What about witnessing and evangelizing to invite other families with children to join Christ’s church? The concept of an intergenerational church has been discarded in favor of desires that have nothing to do with faith. Ultimately, children learn from their parents whether or not Christian faith is the way to understanding the meaning and purpose of one’s life. Children learn to value what they see their parents value.

What the bible tells us is that our witness to our children has nothing to do with sports achievements or special instruction as paths to worldly success for our children’s future and our own pride. What we are to offer our children is that living water of relationship with God and our neighbors. These relationships are based on mutual respect and caring. The most regrettable occurrence in our current society of Christians is those of us who have dropped out – eschewing the faith due to our negative judgment of other Christians. When my mentor in ministry was told by someone they didn’t want to go to church because it was filled with hypocrites, he responded: “Isn’t it good these hypocrites are in church where they might learn something rather than out and about causing trouble.” Instead of working to reform the church, which requires giving of oneself for God and our brothers and sisters, we submit to the temptation of dropping out and blaming others like the petulant Israelites in the wilderness.

When the Israelites threatened Moses because there was no water at Rephidim, God instructed Moses to take the same staff God had given him to touch the Nile, making it poisonous for the Egyptians, and use it to strike a rock at Horeb (another name for Mt. Sinai). When Moses followed God’s instruction, water flowed from the rock. Invoking the memory of God’s protection when the Israelites were kept in bondage by the Pharoah, God used the staff that cursed the lives of the Egyptians to bless the Israelites with life-giving water. Despite the Israelites’ failure to trust God, God continued to sustain them on their journey to freedom in the land God promised them. This ancient story gives us a vivid picture of who God is and what God does for us even when we fail to live up to our promises to God. The steadfast love, mercy and grace continues, even when our wells run dry.

God gave the Israelites the life-saving water they demanded but also much more. Like the living water Jesus offered to the Samaritan woman at the well, God offered the Israelites, and us, the thirst-quenching water of relationship. If we don’t have it, we become consumed by filling that thirst with that which is not of God. God’s love for us and our love for one another is the water and manna God provides to make us whole, and to live abundantly and peacefully. There is never not enough. The supply never dwindles if it is shared. As the writer of John’s gospel declares: Jesus is the living water poured out for us. Have a bucket ready and extra cups to share it.

Amen. May it be so!

My Story

“Throughout the week, there are many worldly things pulling me away from my commitment to God. I come to church on Sunday at Westminster to reconnect and renew my relationship with Him. Part of my worship is to ask him for forgiveness for my lack of faithfulness. I leave, reminded that he loves me, forgives me, and walks beside me every day. What a profound blessing that is!”