Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday September 4, 2022
Scripture: John 4:1-15
One of my favourite bands is U2 – yes, I was in high school and university in the 90s, and that is reflected in my musical taste! And one of my favourite U2 songs is called “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” The song opens with these words:
I have climbed highest mountains
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
I have run
I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
Only to be with you
But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for
And later on, the song ends with:
I believe in the kingdom come
Then all the colours will bleed into one
But yes, I’m still running
You broke the bonds
And you loosed the chains
Carried the cross
Of my shame
But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for
This is a song of searching – a song of longing. The singer never reveals what it is that he is looking for, only that he hasn’t found it yet. When I listen to this song, I wonder if the singer even knows fully what it is that he is searching for, but he knows that he will recognize it when he finds it.
And I find it a deeply hopeful song, even though singer’s longings haven’t been fulfilled yet. It’s that word “still” in the title and in the chorus. I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. The search is ongoing and the singer hasn’t given up. I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. The singer will keep on searching, trusting that those deep longings will be filled some day.
Every time I listen to this song (usually in my car and singing along), my heart is filled with the ache of longing and with the ache of hope.
Selah.
A woman is longing – what for, she doesn’t know. She has been ostracized by her community because of her family circumstances – have you heard that she has had five husbands, and now she is living with a man that she isn’t married to? To escape her neighbours’ accusing stares and words whispered behind her back, she goes to the well at noon to draw her water – at noon when all sensible people are resting in the shade from the heat of the sun.
When she gets to the well, there is a strange man there. Women in her culture don’t have anything to do with men, unless it is her father or her husband or her son. And not only is he a strange man, but he is from another tribe, another faith; and everyone knows that Samaritans and Jews don’t have anything to do with one another.
She tries to hide from him, but if she returns to her house now, she’ll have to come back to the well later on when all of her gossiping neighbours are there. So she keeps her face turned away from the stranger and goes to the well to draw her water.
But he isn’t content to let her draw her water in peace. He breaks all of the cultural taboos of gender and ethnicity and religion, and he asks her to give him some water to drink.
She takes a step back. She asks him, “Why are you asking this of me.”
And he gives a most puzzling answer: “You don’t know who I am. If you knew who I am, you would be asking me for the gift of living water.”
She is confused, but at the same time his words stir up a deep longing in her. He continues: “Everyone who drinks water from the well will eventually be thirsty again; but the person who drinks the water that I can give will never be thirsty again.”
He continues to speak to her: “The water that I give will become to those who drink it a spring of water that bubbles up into eternal life.”
The woman didn’t know the longing that she carried deep within her until he spoke, and now she knows that for her whole life, she has been craving this living water – the thing that will satisfy the ache deep inside her. What this person can give to her – this person who dares to transgress the borders that the world puts up – the water that he can give to her will satisfy the thirst that she has carried her whole life, without ever recognizing that she was thirsty.
Selah.
You have probably noticed that I’m dancing around this week’s hymn, “Creator God, You Gave Us Life.” I love this hymn deeply – I was one of the people who voted for it back in the spring. The thing is, the words of this hymn are beautiful poetry, and my fear this week is that if I start analyzing the words to it and parsing out the meaning behind the words, then I will become like an English teacher (and apologies to all of the English teachers out there), analyzing a poem to death and robbing it of all of its beauty and mystery and poetry.
I think that it is a hymn of longing – a hymn about our search to comprehend the mystery.
When I was talking to Bertis this week about today’s service, I realized that the word “comprehend” is a slippery word. Comprehend can mean to understand, but that isn’t how I understand its meaning in this song. We comprehend the mystery – we perceive the mystery, we take in the mystery, we grasp the mystery, but we can never fully understand the mystery. Mystery will always be mysterious.
Selah.
It has been a couple of months since our last celebration of communion – next week at the picnic we will celebrate communion – and the communion meal is a time when, together, we comprehend the mystery. We dare to approach the Holy. We perceive the mystery of God’s love without any hope of ever understanding it. We take in the mystery of how the Creator of All chooses to convey love through the ordinary-ness of bread and juice. We hear the voice of Jesus saying to each of us, “This is my body, given for you.” We allow the overwhelming love of the Divine roll over and through us. We comprehend the mystery without any hope of ever understanding the mystery.
Selah.
I think that we spend our whole lives searching for God, longing for the Divine, craving to be drawn into Mystery. But it seems to me that when we try to look directly at God, we can’t see anything – the eyes of our heart are blinded. Maybe there is some wisdom in the ancient tradition that no one can look directly at God and at God’s holiness and live.
But when we search for God sideways; when we try to look at God slant, then maybe, just maybe we might catch glimpses of God out of the corner of our eyes. And it is through poetry, through music, through art, through the sacraments, through stories, through the book of creation, through all of the love in the world – these are the things that give us glimpses of the Holy Mystery that is Divine Love.
And may all of us seek this Mystery, and may all of us be gifted with glimpses of the Divine, without ever hoping to understand it. Amen.
"The Magnetic Field Along the Galactic Plane"
This image shows the interaction between interstellar dust
in the Milky Way and the structure of our Galaxy’s
magnetic field.
© ESA/Planck Collaboration. Acknowledgment: M.-A. Miville-Deschênes, CNRS – Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale, Université Paris-XI, Orsay, France
Used with Permission.
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