Friday morning I woke with a disquiet spirit. I had gone to bed conflicted about going ahead with next week’s concert in Winnipeg on account of our civic leaders asking us all to help slow the spread of the coronavirus by canceling non-essential public events. To be truthful, my conflict was mostly based on economic concerns… but once I got past it, it was obvious to me that canceling is what love looks like in the current situation.
By the end of the day my manager and I had not only cancelled next week’s concert in Winnipeg but the whole next months’ events (as have many of my colleagues) including a retreat in Calgary this weekend and several college appearances over the next few days. Yesterday we were able to change our flights and made our way home.
En route home, it occurred to me that I might use this newly freed-up time to put something online that could serve as a bit of spiritual reflection for those who will be shuttered today with canceled church services, or isolated because of compromised health concerns.
I looked at the lectionary (scripture) readings for today to see if I may have a thought and an appropriate song to share, and lo… I do!
Water and Thirst
Both the Old and New Testament readings for today revolve around the relationship between water and thirst.
The gospel reading (John 4:5-42) recalls when Jesus, en route to Jerusalem from Gallilee, met a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. Completely disregarding social convention, Jesus indicates he is thirsty and asks her for water, but quickly the conversation turns and he cryptically offers her “living” water instead.
“But you have no bucket and the well is deep!” she objects.
Jesus responds by claiming that he is what he is offering, saying “I Am the living water,” echoing the I Am saying of ancient Israel’s God (Yahweh) found in Exodus 3:14.
The Old Testament reading (Exodus 17:1-7) recalls the story of the ancient Israelites having just escaped the terrible tyranny of Egypt’s Pharaoh only to find themselves roaming a vast desert feeling rather insecure about their food and water supply. In their insecurity, the people eventually turn on their leader, Moses, with threats of violence. Fearing death at their hands, Moses turns to Yahweh (I AM) for help.
God instructs Moses to go to Horeb and promises to be standing on the rock there. “Strike the rock and water will come from it so that the people may drink.”
Grace: A New Response
A detail of the story I wouldn’t have noticed, but that my friend Rikk Watts once pointed out, is that in striking the rock, Moses would be striking God. In other words, God voluntarily takes the hit, and rather than responding in kind with violence, God responds in grace… with water. God absorbs the Israelite’s death blow and returns life in its stead revealing something rather startling about the who-ness of God. We should be hearing echoes of the Good Friday/ Easter story here.
Remember that the Israelites had just escaped a cruel monarch who claimed to be a god but who maintained his glory and rule by inflicting violence… not absorbing it. But here, in this place of desolation, far from the crush of centralized power, Israel was coming to know a God (Yahweh / I Am) who was “not like the other gods.”
As the story goes, Moses struck the rock, and life-sustaining water flowed.
My Own Story About Water
Years ago my wife and I purchased an acreage in the Interlake region just north of Winnipeg and proceeded to build a home on the property there. It wasn’t a good time for me. I was just coming out of a season of burn-out and depression and was feeling (metaphorically speaking) desperately thirsty. My faith held that God was there, but my felt experience suggested otherwise.
Early in the building project, I hired a company to drill a well for our family’s water supply. The contractor explained that the area was such that water may be found dozens to hundreds of feet below the surface and that selecting a location for the easiest results was a bit of a crapshoot. Given that the cost of drilling was billed by the foot, and that already the project had been fraught with accidents and cost over-runs, I was nervous. But more than that… I was interiorly desperate. My spirit needed the consolation of knowing that despite the surface aridity of our property, that there was life-giving water somewhere below.
The day the drillers came I was quite anxious about the whole affair. The thick bit started grinding through dirt and rock: ten feet… thirty… fifty… eighty… And with each foot, my anxiety rose. I no longer remember how deep they drilled but finally, there was a lurch and the drillers stopped and waited. Soon, cool, crystalline water came bubbling up to soak the surrounding ground with the promise of life, and my grateful tears fell to the ground to meet and mingle with the good gift rising up from the deep.
Ironically, the day we moved into the house was a miserable, rain-soaked day… I didn’t mind.
An Ancient Voice
One quiet night, months after we had moved in, I found myself sitting alone in our new screened porch, serenely listening to the evening’s toad-chuckle and cricket-song. Overwhelmed with gratitude and relief, I sensed in my bones an ancient echo, and heard in my heart an ancient voice, “See? I AM here.”
The Psalm reading for this day (Psalm 95) encourages us to remember and to worship; remember the aridity, remember the insecurity, remember the panic that caused the ancients to forget. Above all, remember the water, and the God in whose hands are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains; the seas 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.” (Psalm 95: 6,7)
listen below:
THE WATER RUNS
Music and Lyrics by Steve Bell
album: Waiting for Aidan (2001)
You break from the city in the pouring rain
To settle in the middle of the Interlake
Where the green browns over in the summer sun
But under it all the water runs
As if that’s not enough – summer dies
It all freezes over and you’re buried alive
You gotta admit that you panic some
But under it all the water runs
The water runs
And courses deep
Beneath the imprint of these troubled feet
So much is done to stay the creep
And slay the fear that there’s nothing here
Or underneath
You carefully plan to minimize mistakes
You just get started and you break a leg
It’s not so easy when it’s not much fun
But under it all the water runs
The water runs
And courses deep
Beneath the imprint of these troubled feet
So much is done to stay the creep
And slay the fear that there’s nothing here
Or underneath
Every single day now
I recall the fright
Sink a hole and pray now
Many times
Many times a night
Peace-moon hovers and the forest sleeps
Sitting alone among the rustling leaves
I’ll retire when my pipe is done
‘Cause under it all the water runs