|
Sermon preached
at Bradford Cathedral
The Third Sunday of Lent 24th February 2008 Romans 5: 1-11; John 4: 5-42 |
| When Jesus was tempted
in the wilderness to turn stones into bread he responded with the words:
'Scripture says, "Man cannot live by bread alone; he lives on every
word that proceeds out of the mouth of God"'. With these words we are
taken to the heart of our gospel passage today. The encounters that Jesus
has here-with the Samaritan woman, the disciples and then also the inhabitants
of Sychar- are opened up by thinking further on what Jesus meant when he
said: We live, not on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the
mouth of God. The mouth is a place of eating long before it is a place of speaking. Another word for a young child is an infant, infans, which in Latin means without words, a dumb body, still before the birth of speech. The hungry mouth of a child knows the wisdom of eating: the small baby knows that reality of made of hunger: before she or he even latches on to the breast, that open mouth is confident that something will be there to satisfy it, that the void will be filled. Picture a nest of newborn birds: eyes closed; beaks open. Trusting that they will receive. Rubem Alves, the author of this little book (The Poet, The Prophet, The Warrior, SCM Press, 2002), writes: hunger and food; void and fullness; desire and satisfaction; restless heart and God. As the child sucks at the breast, it enjoys blessedness, it enjoys pleasure, and desire is born, desire for pleasure for evermore. But as the child grows up, she or he discovers that not everything in the world is good to eat. Some things are hard, sour, bitter, unhealthy. With eyes open now, the adult seeks for the rest of his or her life that original blessedness of good food, freely given. At God's right hand there is pleasure for ever more. But between times; between the state of fulfilment at the breast, and until we reach that state of blessedness when our restless hearts find God, we yearn for satisfaction. We eat to fill our stomachs. We crave the satisfaction of other desires, too. Spiritual desires, ethical desires, aesthetic desires. Desires we seek to express through words, art, all sorts of cultural texts. And we become, as the theologian Ludwig Feuerbach said, what we eat. We are what we eat. We fill ourselves with all sorts of things to satisfy our desires. We consume, therefore we are-in today's world. But It's there, throughout the bible, the image of another banquet, the central image of life. It is the image at the creation, and at the fulfilment of life: that you eat and drink at my table in my kingdom. What we eat and drink, how we eat and drink, reveals much about our desires, our need to consume. The brilliance of St John's gospel is its central insight that in Jesus we offered the fulfilment of all our desires. He is the Word-the word from the beginning. He is flesh-body. He is the Word made flesh. The incarnation. A word that is good enough to eat. This is my body, This is my blood, says Jesus. Eat and be satisfied. Jesus tells the tempter that he can bear the suffering of having nothing to eat because he has words that are good enough to eat in his provisions. Words that proceed from the mouth of God. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. A word uttered in hunger. Rowan Williams has written of a hungry God, a God who is hunger, a God who is love. That it is the same thing. We love, we long for, we hunger. In Jesus, who is the word made flesh, all our hungers are satisfied. One of the unforeseen benefits of fasting this Lent is that I read the bible-the Word of God-differently. Jesus lived a much more hand-to-mouth existence. Much of his teaching and actual ministry is to do with food and water. I know now how dominant thoughts of food become when you're hungry. And so we hear in the gospel story that the disciples had gone to buy food, and Jesus is sitting by Jacob's well. He's tired, and thirsty. His energy levels were low. And there follows the longest sequence of words exchanged-conversations-that we find in the New Testament. First with the woman of Sychar, then when the disciples turn up, then with the villagers as they come, curious to check out this strange man who has so enthralled the woman. And all the words circle back to water and food. We don't hear that Jesus actually eats or drinks during these conversations. Instead of satisfying his body, he talks about a different sort of water and food. The lack of it as he sat there by the well has made him know his real dependence upon God, living water and food that the disciples do not know about. Jesus is using his hunger and thirst to challenge his listeners away from their desire only to satisfy their flesh and towards an awareness of their spiritual need. And he does it by using words. Words that proceed from the mouth of God. Words of spirit and truth. I had lunch on Thursday with two members of this Cathedral who also are fasting. Simple, delicious food set out on the dining room table. A feast for the eyes as well as the stomach. Different colours and tastes, shared food made all the more enjoyable by the lack of it the day before. Then, when I read the biblical texts for this sermon, the image of their dining room table came to mind. The bible readings, the word of God, itself a feast set out before us. These ancient stories and discourses have fed our minds and hearts for centuries-and continue to do so today. When you open the bible, it's like sitting down to a meal, and finding before you so many things to taste, to relish. Words to ruminate upon, sentences that flow like pure water and nourish the soul. And so often you sense, don't you, that the gospel writers-John here, and St Paul, with his letters, wrote with love and delight in their subject, Jesus Christ their Lord and ours. To follow Jesus is to be captured by the Word-the Word that was in the beginning of all things, the word made flesh who was, and is, and is to come. As John names him at the climax of this passage-the Saviour of the world. Truly the Saviour of the world. The Word of God that gives nourishment-living water; fruit for eternal life. Water and food that change the lives of individuals and communities-even communities of long-standing hostility, such as that between Jew and Samaritan, in our story this morning. The words themselves feed and transform us, if we allow them. If we chew them over for the nutrition they offer. In this passage John conveys much of the narrative movement through conversation. The woman's understanding deepens with each interchange with this man before her; she moves from her first challenging question: who do you think you are, that you can provide better water than this, better water than that which satisfied Jacob, and all his sons and flocks? There's irony here, because of course the water that Jesus offers is superior-it is living water, gushing up to eternal life. She finds herself drenched with this water, drenched with grace. It takes a while, but she begins to be convinced as Jesus shows his extraordinary insight, his knowledge of her personal history, with no condemnation, but with a straightforward acceptance of who she is. Yes, she says, I see you are a prophet. But more than that, says Jesus to her. More than the old religion where God is worshiped in Jerusalem or on Mount Gerizim-I am he, who comes to proclaim a God who is worshipped in spirit and in truth. I am he-one of the great affirmations in the Gospel of John that echoes the I am who I am that Moses heard from the burning bush-that first Word of God. I am he, says Jesus. She is convinced-and she goes to share this good news, to tell her family and friends. This strange, unclean, disreputable woman, with her chequered past, with her current live-in boyfriend, becomes the bearer of the word, the bearer of the rich feast of Christ. It was strange food, though, for the disciples. They return to see their teacher conversing with a Samaritan woman, made unclean by mixing her. The disciples were astonished, speechless. To them this conversation would be dirty, disgusting. I don't think we grasp just how deeply the purity codes would have affected people then-cultural taboos and prohibitions that would have rendered food and people profoundly distasteful. Words - not good to eat. So they too are challenged to change-anticipating Peter's experience in Acts, when the cloth descends from heaven and he is asked to eat the unclean food. The disciples are given words that change them at gut level: this Jesus they have followed is not just theirs, but belongs to the whole world. Their prejudices, the purity codes engrained in them since birth, are overturned in the two days that they spend with him in the village. Different food indeed. And we who follow Jesus today-how are we challenged by this word made flesh? Like the disciples we need to expand our cultural horizons, challenge our own prejudices, and be ready to share what we have received with those we meet, whoever they are. Jesus offers a feast-living water, fruit for eternal life-that draws everyone in. He is the Saviour of the world, not just of our narrow communities of family and friends. On this healing Sunday, there's much to receive as we are welcome to come forward after communion for the ministry healing. The laying on of hands that makes real our gospel story, with its message of reconciliation instead of hostility, deeper understanding instead of prejudice, wholeness and joy instead of fragmented lives, a sense of being found instead of a continual searching. All fruits of the healing spirit of Christ which are offered to us as we encounter Jesus and are healed. We need to open ourselves to the Word and let it nourish us. So that our faith deepens and strengthens. We believe in Jesus, truly the Word made flesh, the one is was, and is and is to come. Let us with pleasure receive him at Eucharist: receive his own body and blood, a living, spiritual food that satisfies us as no other food can. May the living water flow in our veins and bring us through Lent to the day of Resurrection. |