Mid-Week Lenten Sermon

“Choruses from the Rock”

III

Wednesday, March 27, 2019 – John 4:19-26

III

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?

T. S. Eliot

When will we get it right? 

The earth is the center of the universe its terra firma held up by pillars deep in the sea.  The sky is a dome holding back the waters that contains sun, moon, and planets.  A flat earth – a three-story universe – earth, sea, and sky - so we thought for centuries.  It was our anthropocentric view of who we are for centuries in Western civilization.

Then Copernicus, Galileo and others exploded that frame of reference and discovered the sun is the center of our solar system.  We are the third rock orbiting in a dance with the other planets.  Of course they paid a price for their insights.  Humans do not take to change easily.

In the 21^st Century we have come to a new point of re-framing.  Our sun and solar system occupies a tiny space on the outer spur of the Milky Way Galaxy.  The Milky Way has 200 to 400 billion stars or suns.  Our sun is indeed a mediocre star.  In 5 – 7 billion years our sun’s life will come to an end.  Add to that is we now know there are at least 2 trillion galaxies in the universe.  Our Milky Way galaxy is one of 2 trillion in the known universe.

We know and understand only 5% of the matter and energy in the universe.  Dark matter and dark energy make up the rest of the 95%.  We are touching 5% of the animal in a dark cave and trying to figure out the species.

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance.

We are limited.  We are near-sighted.  We only touch the edges of reality.  We are dust and oft times ignorant of the fading glimpses that we have from our place in the universe.  We lack the humility of our mortal limitations.

All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,

But nearness to death no nearer to God.

Where is the Life we have lost in living?

The Samaritan woman is asking a similar question.  She wonders where the Life is that she has lost in living.  Her life was not Life with a capital L.  Barren – unable to have children – she was thrown from man to man.

Ostracized from her village she goes to the well, alone, at high noon hoping to see no one and talk to no one.  She sits at the well and ponders:  “Where is the Life I have lost in living?” 

Then the Prophet approaches at high noon with no one else around.  His disciples, too, have gone to town.  She encounters LIFE, the Prophet, the Christ and discovers living waters.

The conversation turns to worship and she discovers her ignorance.  The Divine is not confined to any temple – be it at Beth-el or Jerusalem.  But true worship comes when worshippers worship God in spirit and in truth.

Then Christ reveals himself to her and offers her living water that will spring up in her – a believer.

In our ignorance we ignore the Divine right in front of our noses.  In God we live and move and have our being.  The god of the three-story universe is dead.  The incarnate God occupies every atom of our existence.  We live in the Divine Sea of living waters.  All of creation lives and moves and has its being in God. Life, true Life, is the ability to recognize the Divine in the human…the extraordinary in the ordinary. 

Ordinary water is holy and reminds us that we are baptized into Christ Jesus.  Ordinary bread and common wine contain the presence of the living God.  God is the ground of our being and in, with, and under all of creation.

Where is the Life we have lost in living?

At the conclusion of Thornton Wilder’s ‘Our Town’ – the main character, Emily, who has died and is given the opportunity to come back to life for one day, has the painful revelation that clean sheets, the voice of her father, the very ordinary things are extra ordinary and taken for granted.  She understands that at the conclusion of the play, but asks the narrator, Stage Manager:

Emily:  “Does anyone ever realize life while they live it, every, every minute?”

Stage Manager:  “No, saints and poets maybe…they do…some.”

How often we live without Living.  We are surrounded by the saints and the Samaritan woman. Is one of them inviting us to dive into the living waters of our baptism and once again discover LIFE?  Amen.

kennstorck@gmail.com

May be used with permission.