3 Lent a March 23, 2014
Ex.17:1-17
Ps.95:6-11
Roman 5:1-11
John 4:5-42
In the history of the Christian church, one can find the manifestations
of several kinds of fundamentalism. Two
forms of fundamentalism might be called ecclesiastical literalism and the other
might be call biblical literalism.
Ecclesiastical fundamentalism is found in churches which tend to give
too much power to the people who are a part of the hierarchy; such people have
attained even the so-called “infallible” status in some matters of church
order. Other Christians have come to
read the Bible in such a literal way that they believe the actual words of the
Bible are causatively absolute of this world; as if because the words are in
the Bible, it made the world to happen. So to them the world is but a few thousand years
old and the whole world order is going to climax in a battle at Armageddon. Often in the history of the church, people
with different fundamentalisms have been opposing each other to control the
message for the peoples of their faith traditions.
What’s the solution to fundamentalism?
Read carefully the Gospel of John.
The discourses of Jesus in the Gospel of John include satirical
presentations of literal interpretation.
The literal Nicodemus said, “How can I get back into my mother’s womb to
be born again.” The woman at the well
says, “Jesus, you don’t even have a bucket to draw this “living water.” Jesus said that the “Pharisee who could see were
blind, and the blind man was the one who truly saw.” On the way to raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus
told his disciples that Lazarus was asleep.
The literal disciples said, “Well Jesus, isn’t sleep good for him?” And Jesus said with my very uncharitable and
misrepresenting paraphrase, “You dumb literalists, Lazarus is dead.” In the living bread discourse the persons who
interpreted literal cannibalism walked away from Jesus when they thought that
Jesus meant literally eating his flesh and drinking his blood. And yet there has been a history of transubstantiation
literalism that has been founded upon this phrase of Jesus in John’s Gospel,
the very one that was mocking such literalism.
John’s Gospel is the last Gospel written and it is artfully written and
it contains in it the layers of what has happened within the church for eight
or nine decades and it interweaves the church practices of these decades within
a narrative discourse of the life of Jesus.
The church of John’s Gospel has become a Gentile church but the writer
wants this Gentile church to know that the roots of Jesus are within the Judaic
tradition and it is a church which wants to continue to include Jews. The church of John’s Gospel is a church which
baptizes for initiation and also practices the Eucharistic meal. The writer of the Gospel of John tries to
retrace the meanings of these liturgical practices within a presentation of a
narrative of the life of Jesus and the writer creates “might have said”
discourses of Jesus.
The discourse which we have read today is called the living water
discourse and in it is a baptismal discourse, with the spiritual meaning of baptism. The setting at the Samaritan well tells us
that the church of Gospel of John has overcome the enmity between the Jews and the
Samaritans. It indicates to us that
Jesus as a man and a Jew is not practicing either ethnic nor gender nor sectarian
segregation which would have characterized Jewish custom of his own time. The woman at the well was a member of a hated
group, the Samaritans, she was a woman and therefore unapproachable by a man
and she belonged to the Samaritan religion based on Mount Gerizim and
possessing their own versions and translations of the Hebrew writings. So we could assume that the church of the
writer of John’s Gospel had overcome in Christian practice these previous
barriers to fellowship.
Baptism was not invented by Jesus; it was not invented by John the
Baptist. Water purification rites were a
part of the Jewish religion in its various forms of historical
development. Many water pools for Mikveh or baptismal
pools have been excavated by archaeologists in the vicinity of the Temple
complex in Jerusalem. Such rites were even
described by some rabbis as “new births” and so the teachings about water
purification rites made figurative reference to the amniotic fluids which
attend natural birth. You understand why
Jesus questioned Nicodemus’ lack of understanding about being born by water and
the Spirit. As a Jew, why did he not
know the rabbis teaching about the new birth of water baptism? There
were also different kinds of water purification rites. Women had to do monthly water purification
rites so homes that could afford it kept tanks or large stone jars around for
such practices in the home (so it makes it almost hilarious the event of Jesus turning 155
gallons of purification water into wine for a wedding feast). “Mom, you want some wine for the wedding? Poof. How about 155 gallons of wine, will that be
enough?”
Jewish water purification rites also had requirements for the type of water
which could be used. The highest form of
baptism had to have “living water.”
Living water meant there was motion involved; an ocean, a lake, a river
or stream, or a fountain or the living river underground which was drawn from a
well. The Jordan River was living water
for the baptisms of John the Baptist.
In the metaphors of the Gospel of John, we are instructed that the Holy
Spirit is a stream of living water or a fountain within. This is a complementing metaphor to the
understanding of water as an external bathing and cleansing. The message is that we need to practice both
external and internal cleansing. John
the Baptist said, “I baptize you with water; but Jesus will baptize you with
the Holy Spirit.” In Christian symbols
then, the Spirit is the cleansing of refining fire and the continuous fountain
of interior cleansing of a rising and bubbling Holy Spirit within us. This interior energy of cleansing is the
essence of the living water discourse that we have read today.
This cleansing was available to non-Jews, to Samaritans, Greek and Romans.
This baptismal practice was also
consistent with a requirement for non-Jews who wished to convert to
Judaism. In addition to circumcision
required of males, baptism was required for a person to be cleansed from their
old “pagan” ways and be born through the amniotic waters of baptism into their
new family of faith. Early Christian
baptism, obviously integrated this notion of proselyte baptism in the formation
of the Christian rite of initiation.
John’s Gospel is no refuge for the literalist. It begins by suggesting that Jesus is the
Word of God from the beginning. The very
Gospel is based upon the creativity of “Words.”
John’s Gospel teaches us that we cannot get to anything; we can only
interact with words. When we posit that
there is a Holy Spirit, we ask, “what’s that?” It’s God like breath or wind? How is God’s Spirit literally breath or
wind? It’s like a Presence we feel with us. What is feeling and Presence? It’s like something close. What does something close mean? So you see how John says word is what
creates our human experience. And words create other words to
explain former words in an endless referential pattern. And yet we feel there be to a Greatness beyond
all referential words and it is so great we can only believe we know that it is
there without controlling it with words that we must use to recognize the Greatness beyond words.
But let us embrace the words about the Holy Spirit being living water
within us. This Lenten Season we are
invited to the practice of mediation.
Let us use this Living Water or Interior Fountain metaphor as
visualization for our meditation. Let us
visualize our deepest life energy or desire as this Living Water of God’s Holy
Spirit which is always able to arise in us and cleanse and forgive and wipe the
slate clean for us to take on another day in bubbling and flowing delight.
We have been baptized with the external water of baptism; let us forever
be baptized and re-baptized and re-purified by the Living Water, the Spirit of God
whom we can discover within ourselves.
Amen.
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