Kum Ba Yah Exodus 17:1-7, John 4:5-42

In her memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran, Literature Professor Azar Nifisi
remembers something that happened to one of the women in her reading circle.1
Six college-aged women decide to travel to a neighboring town
to visit the fiancé of one of the women.
They go to his house and he and the six women are seated in the walled outdoor garden
all modestly and properly attired.
Their manners are impeccable.
Suddenly, over the wall jump armed men.
They are the morality squad of the Iranian Revolutionary Committee
who have heard of illegal activities occurring on the premises.
They have obtained a search warrant, but a thorough search of the house
turns up no alcoholic beverages, no undesirable tapes or CDs.

Frustrated at finding nothing incriminating, the men arrest the seven students
who, though properly veiled, are said to be guilty of exhibiting a “western attitude.”
Following a night where the seven experience one humiliation after another
the next morning they are all given twenty-five lashes
forced to sign confessions of guilt and released,

Someone’s crying, Lord.
The account of Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman at the town well
has a rich history of interpretation, much of it based on nothing more
than anachronistic assumptions and imagined innuendo.
Throughout the two thousand years since John recorded the story,
various morality squads have jumped the wall of this text
and accused the poor woman at the well of being and doing all kinds of things.
From scant evidence, even reputable commentators have made her nails brighter,
her mascara darker, and her skirt shorter with each successive decade.2

For example, she is at the well at noon.
Biblical historians tell us that reputable women went to the town well in the morning.
If she is at the well ALONE at NOON she must be unworthy to mix with reputable folk.
Is it possible somebody simply knocked over the water jar and she had to get more?
That’s not the worst thing, though.
The worst thing is that she has had five husbands and is now living with a sixth man.
She’s a regular Britney Spears! An Elizabeth Taylor, if you prefer!
She’s a man-eating ingénue with out-of-control appetites!
OR…maybe she’s had a terrible string of luck – 5 husbands, all of whom have died.
We project on her our own cultural assumptions about the power of seductive women
to manipulate and control men when, in truth, women in Jesus’ day
were NOT in a position to do much of anything except what they were told.
Someone’s crying, Lord, kum ba yah.

Someone’s singing, Lord.
Azar Nifisi begins her memoirs by describing two photographs
of the young women she hand selected to be a part of her clandestine reading circle
that devoured such corrupt western novels
as Lolita, The Great Gatsby, and Pride and Prejudice.
In one photograph, taken outside, the women are all veiled,
garbed in black dresses and white head scarves that cover every inch of skin
except their faces and hands, not even letting one strand of hair escape
that might tempt a God-fearing man to lust.

In the other photograph, one taken inside Azar’s living room,
the women have taken off their veils
to reveal unique hairstyles of different color and length.
Some wear dangling gold earrings, others, brightly colored blouses.

The reading group provides for these young women a retreat into normalcy,
the possibility of stepping back through the looking glass, if only one afternoon a week,
where they can celebrate their individuality
and speak openly of their frustrations and hopes and dreams,
laugh out loud, if they wish, and fear no reprisal.
Azar’s living room is a refuge.
It’s like coming in from the bitter cold to sit before a fire;
like taking off mud-caked hiking boots
and soaking their tired feet in a whirlpool bath;
It’s like unbuckling a thirty pound bronze breast-plate
and laying it aside because in Azar’s living room they are safe.

Someone’s singing, Lord.
One of the reasons we are prone to think the worst of the Samaritan woman at the well
is because she seems so at ease with Jesus,
so willing to engage with him in a spirited repartee.
This is the longest recorded conversation between Jesus and ANYONE in the gospels
and we pick up on the disciples’ jealous indignation that this woman would be so bold
as to chat on and on with their teacher, a strange man, in public.
“How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” The woman asks.
Is that defiance we hear? A glint of fire in her eyes?
“Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep.
Say, where you gonna get that ‘Living’ water?”
Whew! Now that’s borderline sassy!
Should we think poorly of her for this?
Or should we, instead, see in this interchange a sign not of impudence but of grace.
Here she is, a Samaritan woman in the presence of a Jewish man -
that’s two strikes against her already.
She’s had five husbands and is living with a sixth man
so we can bet she’s had it up to HERE with feeling dependent on men.
Yet she seems very at ease in this conversation with Jesus;
very relaxed and unguarded.

Is it something in his posture, perhaps, his tone of voice
that signals to her that she can take off her veil in his presence?
She can shake out her hair, shed the drab layers and reveal her true colors –
not in a provocative way, but in an honest, free, self-disclosing way.
She can even consider with Jesus the divisive history of their peoples
and the possibility of a time when they, a Jewish man and a Samaritan woman,
might worship God together.
Someone’s singing Lord, kum ba yah.

Someone’s praying, Lord.
One reason for Azar Nafisi’s reading circle was to offer an antidote
to the mind numbing dreariness of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution.
One day Azar discusses with her circle
Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Invitation to a Beheading
and an archaic letter of the alphabet, the name of which Nabokov made up.
He calls it an “upsilamba.”
Azar invites her group to join the author in his imagination,
to let their minds play over this made up word
and create new meanings of their own.

One says it sounds to her like the impossible joy of a suspended leap.
Another says it sounds like a dance.
“C’mon baby! Do the upsilamba with me!”
Still another say it evokes the image of small silver fish
leaping in and out of a moonlit lake.
One says she pictures three girls jumping rope, shouting “upsilamba” with each leap.
Another says it is the magic code that opens the door to a cave filled with treasure.
Another says it is an African boy’s secret name.

Nafisi writes, “Upsilamba became part of our increasing repository
of coded words and expressions…that grew over time
until gradually we had created a secret language all our own.
The word became a symbol, a sign of that vague sense of joy….
It also became the code word
that opened for us the secret cave of remembrance.”

Someone’s praying, Lord.
The woman at the well knew what her people said about the importance of Jacob
and that one could only worship God on Mt. Gerazim, not Jerusalem.
She was surprised that Jesus knew so much about her
and that he didn’t try to debate her.
Instead, he declared that true worship of God is not geographically defined
but is instead defined by God’s own nature, which is spirit and truth.3
In other words, God transcends sex, race, tradition, place and liturgy.
If this traveler from Jerusalem is greater than Jacob, is a prophet
and yet more than a prophet, the woman has but one category left: Messiah.
In her mind, a God whose nature it is to embrace all people in all places is a Messiah.

Maybe the most remarkable thing about this story of the woman at the well
is that, in recording it, John resists the urge to dress it up.
He could have written that the women recognized Jesus as God’s anointed,
fell at his feet and worshipped him,
and then went back to the public square to give a sure and certain testimony
to his identity as the Messiah, the Savior.
But instead John reports that the woman leaves in a state of distraction,
forgetting the water she has come to retrieve.
All the way back we hear her recounting the conversation in her mind,
her brain arguing with her heart.
“Could he be? Nah…it’s not possible! But maybe…?”

Instead of a bold statement of faith,
instead of writing a book entitled “Five Easy Keys to the Kingdom,”
and turning it into an international best seller,
the woman walks back to town,goes into the beauty parlor,
takes a seat in a vacant chair, looks around, blinks once and says,
“I just met a man who told me everything I’ve done.
He couldn’t be the Messiah, could he?
Someone’s praying Lord, kum ba yah.

Nobody had an answer for the woman, not then.
I don’t expect she really thought she’d get an answer anyway.
It’s not the kind of question that really needs an answer – not a verbal one anyway.
It’s like the letter “upsilamba” -
it’s not something you can pin down like an insect on a specimen tray.
It’s more like a silver fish jumping into and out of a moonlit lake,
a crazy dance,
a cave filled with treasure,
the impossible joy of a suspended leap.
It’s the kind of thing you think about when you can do nothing but weep,
or suddenly feel like breaking into song,
or find your heart filled with prayer.
Come by here, Lord, come by here.
Oh Lord, kum ba yah.
__
1 Nafisi, Azar, Reading Lolita in Tehran, New York: Random House, 2003.
2 Craddock, Fred, “The Witness at the Well (John 4:5-42), Christian Century, March 7, 1990, p. 243
3 Ibid.

Angel Food Mathhew 4:1-11, Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7

Angel Food
Matthew 4:1-11
Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7

Do you know the story of Tantalus?
It’s one of those Greek myths that tell us so much about ourselves.
There are different versions of the story,
but one version says that Tantalus was invited to Mt. Olympus to dine with the gods.
There he misbehaved and tried to bring ambrosia, the food of the gods,
back to his people so that they, too, would know the secrets of the gods.
Zeus, being Zeus, got angry
and, as punishment for daring to pull back the curtain and expose the divine council,
Tantalus was forced to stand in a pool of water under a low hanging fruit tree.
Every time he reached for a piece of fruit to eat, the wind would blow
raising the limbs with the fruit just beyond reach of his fingertips.
And every time he bent to take a drink,
the water would quickly recede before he could even wet his lips.
Today we think of Tantalus every time something we want is just out of reach
and we are “tantalized” by it.

The story of Tantalus begs the question,
“What would it be like to eat the food of the gods?”
What would it be like to slip out of our mortality and know what God knows?
Would it be so bad if you and I could, from time to time,
shrug off the heavy coat of bum knees and blurred vision;
unlace the corset of unfulfilled dreams and debilitating fear;
pull off the mittens of helplessness, the goggles of short-sightedness
and do something truly Olympian?
Know something or say something divinely profound?
As long as human beings have been telling stories,
we’ve spun yarns about this impulse we have to step over divine boundaries.
Greek mythology suggests that human beings are prevented from achieving divine power
because of the jealousy of the gods.
The gods simply don’t want the competition.
The stories of our FAITH, however, hint at another reason entirely.
The stories of our faith tell us that we as human beings must live within our limits
for our own good.
To try to go beyond our limits is to exceed the specifications for which we were created
and like a single engine airplane trying to break the speed of sound
or a fisherman trying to land a shark with a cane pole
it’s a sure-fire recipe for disaster.

Look at the story of the Garden of Eden.
Barbara Brown Taylor, writer and preacher, sums up the story of the Garden by saying
“The point is, God drew a line in the Garden of Eden and said,
‘Human beings on this side, God on this side.
Tree of Life on your side, tree of the knowledge of good and evil on my side.
Stay on your side of the line if you know what’s good for you’.”1
The resulting drama with the crafty snake, the gullible Eve, and the clueless Adam
is not, as some would spin it, a story telling us who to blame for evil in the world.
It’s simply a tale we tell to admit
that we human beings have never been good at respecting boundaries.
There are reasons for this:
We don’t respect the boundaries between the human and the divine
because we are so easily impressed by our own cleverness.
Just this past Friday I heard that someone has made a radio
that can fit on the head of a pin.
They made it out of something called carbon nanotubes.2
It seems that today’s technology, silicon chips
will soon go the way of glass vacuum tubes.
Somebody who can make a radio that will fit on the head of a pin
is pretty smart; pretty special – wouldn’t you say?

We don’t respect the boundaries between the human and the divine
not only because we’re so clever,
but because it’s so hard for us to get the distance from ourselves
that’s required to see ourselves for who we really are.
It’s so hard for us to understand why the values we hold dear
and our way of doing things and thinking about things
are not universally admired and copied.
I’m so smart and funny and compassionate and RIGHT
that I must be at least a little bit divine, don’t you think?

We’re clever and we’re near-sighted
and a third reason we don’t respect the boundaries between the human and the divine
is because being alive feels so permanent.
It’s simply hard to imagine that we AREN’T immortal.
When my eyes are open and my heart’s beating and my lungs are filling with air
it’s just difficult to take death seriously.

So listen, you may be clever.
You may be an upstanding citizen and have a firm grip on what you believe.
You may be a live wire, sure enough.
But you’re not God. Hate to break it to you. You’re not God. Not even close.
And that’s fine. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.
In fact, it’s the way you were made.

Despite the limitations, being human is a state of grace.
That’s what Jesus showed us in the wilderness.
Being human is a state of grace.

Matthew tells us,
“Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil.”
Jesus has just been baptized by John in the Jordan.
He’s felt the touch of the Spirit on him and heard a voice, a DIVINE voice, from heaven
saying, “This is my son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
It’s the kind of experience that might turn a man’s head;
the kind of experience that might start a man thinking about stepping over the line;
testing the boundaries between himself and God.
But, Jesus doesn’t just sit and dwell on his baptism.
In no time flat he finds himself in the Judean desert looking for water,
fasting for all he’s worth.

We’re told he fasted 40 days.
Don’t take that too literally.
In the Bible, the number 40 simply means
“the right length of time to accomplish the purpose.”
Jesus fasted 40 days in the wilderness –
or, just enough time to fully experience his flesh and blood humanness
in all it’s weakness.
“He was FAMISHED,” Matthew tells us. Nothing but skin and bones.

Those who look to this story to try to understand the “Devil”
or to get a firm grip on the nature of evil or the effects of temptation
are sure to be disappointed.
In fact, in Matthew’s account the Devil seems quite the gentleman.
He’s no psychopathic serial killer, no tyrannical dictator, no beady-eyed CEO.
He’s just as beguiling here as he was in the Garden story,
tipping his hat and cutting quite the figure in his snakeskin boots.
He’s there simply to tempt Jesus to cross the line;
to get him to deny his humanity by giving into the impulse to play God;
• to be as compassionate as God by turning stones into bread so none need hunger;
• to be as unfettered as God so as to be free even of gravity’s downward pull;
• to be as omnipotent as God, ruling over every king and kingdom.

We know that later in his ministry the Scriptural witness to Jesus will, in fact,
record instances when Jesus does all the things the Devil suggests:
• feeds 5000 with just a few loaves and fish
• ascends into the clouds following his resurrection as the disciples look on
• takes his place at the right hand of God to rule in power
so that every knee bows and every tongue confesses him as Lord.
But Jesus does these things in his own time and on his own terms.
He does them only after he has asserted his full humanity.
He does them only after he has felt hunger, known loneliness, embraced fear.

In the story of the Garden of Eden, the humans, Adam and Eve, give in to the temptation;
they do not accept the built-in limits of humanity;
The irony is, in trying to exceed the limits of their humanity
they end up falling short of the full potential of humanity –
the reason for which they were created in the first place -
which is to have an uncomplicated, loving relationship with their Creator.

In the story of Jesus in the wilderness, the human, Jesus, resists temptation
embraces the limits of flesh and bone, head and heart, and in so doing
restores for each of us our capacity to be close to God.

If we’re honest, we admit that we chaff under the itch of our humanity.
Sometimes it feels like a cheap wool sweater two sizes too small.
But this season, the season of Lent, is the time to buck up and claim our humanity;
to encourage one another to embrace our limited-ness.
It’s the time to acknowledge sadness, pain, disappointment and even death
as part of the deal; as part of the package of being in this world.
Even if we could somehow catch the comet’s tail and rise above it all,
think of what we would lose in the process.

Matthew ends his story by saying that when the Devil was through with Jesus
angels came and waited on him.
As a child I heard that line and imagined a huddle of winged beings
around the weakened, emaciated Jesus, tut-tutting and tsk-tsking,
holding fine china plates and feeding him with polished silver forks.
And what did they feed him?
Not ambrosia, no way! They fed him angel food cake, of course.
The kind my mother would bake from scratch that funny looking cake pan.
It always seemed a miracle to me, how that cake would come out of the oven -
a perfect circle, eight inches tall, golden brown on the top and light as a feather.
Mom had a special thin wire cake cutter just for cutting angel food cakes
and I see her now lovingly laying a thick wedge on my grandmother’s china plate
spooning out stiff whipped cream and a topping of fresh strawberries.
Mom quit baking years ago. She slipped into dementia at the end of her life.
She lost the ability at the end of her life to follow a recipe, even the old ones in her head.
When I think of her dementia, her decline, her death – her humanity - it stinks.
But without her, without her humanity, I never would have tasted the food of angels.
______
1Taylor, Barbara Brown. Remaining Human, “Living By the Word,” The Christian Century, February 7, 1996.
2 Nano Scale Radio Shows Carbon Electronics Potential, Ira Flato interviewing John Rogers, NPR Talk of the Nation Science Friday, February 08, 2008.

The Ministry of Silly Walks Jeremiah 9:23-24, 1 Corinthians 1:18-31

In 1953 the young comedian Andy Griffith recorded “What it Was, Was Football.”
It was a country boy’s commentary on the strange spectacle
of grown men running up and down a cow pasture
fighting over a pumpkin while surrounded by convicts blowing whistles.
He concludes his commentary with this observation:
“And I don’t know friends, to this day, what it was they was a-doin’ down thar,
but I have studied about it. And I think that it’s some kindly of a contest
where they see which bunchful-a them men can take that pumpkin
and run from one end-a that cow pasture to the other,
without gettin’ knocked down…or steppin’ in something.”

The heart of Griffith’s routine of course; what made it so popular;
was that it exposed the silliness of something we take so seriously.
Especially today, Super Bowl Sunday, when there are millions of dollars invested in
and bet on the outcome of the game between the Giants and the Patriots,
people all over the world will take four, five, six hours out of their lives
to not only watch the game, but the pre-game, the post-game, AND the commercials.
People have spent the last week planning their menus of Super Bowl snacks.
They’ve maxed out their credit cards to buy the biggest TV on the block.

When it comes down to it, there’s no sport that doesn’t have an element of silliness to it.
Basketball – men or women in matching short pants DRIBBLING.
Baseball – Players waving clubs, laying down bunts, popping up flies.
Lacrosse, field hockey, pole vaulting, curling
and GOLF! Don’t get me started!
Some people claim not to like sports because they are so silly.
These are the same people who surf the net, spending hours on Ebay
bidding on original edition Superman comic books.
They’re the same ones who put on a red hat and go out to lunch
with others wearing red hats.

Except for the things we MUST do for our own survival -
build shelter, secure food and water –
every other activity we engage in has an element of silliness to it;
a touch of absurdity and nonsense.
The only time there’s a problem is when we try to pretend
that what we’re doing is entirely rational,
or that what we say inherently makes sense just because WE said it!

My parents did a pretty good job with me, I think.
They provided for all my material needs without going overboard.
They led by example – teaching me right from wrong;
the importance of loyalty, integrity, and honesty.
The one quibble I have with the way they raised me – and it’s just a little thing, really -
but the one quibble I have is that they didn’t value silliness.
It was probably a reaction to the Great Depression
where the mere struggle for survival didn’t leave much room for silliness.
“That’s silly,” my mother would say with a disapproving frown.
Or, “Don’t be silly.”

“Don’t be silly.”
I really don’t fault my parents, they meant well.
But you might as well tell the sun not to shine;
might as well tell my big, fat fuzzy cat not to shed on the furniture.
The problem is not with people acting silly.
The problem is when people try to convince themselves
that what they think and how they act can somehow on some level NOT be silly.
It’s the ones who can’t see the inherent silliness of the human condition
who are likely to cause the most trouble.

Look at people who run for office.
The more serious the image they try to project the more absurd they appear.
If you’re old enough to remember Michael Dukakis’ bid for President in 1988
then chances are you remember the photograph of Governor Dukakis
wearing a helmet and goggles and poking up like Jack out of his Box
from an M 1 Abrams military tank.
He was trying to combat the image that he was soft on defense.
It must have seemed like a good idea at the time; a way to look serious and tough.
but to this day, “Dukakis in the Tank” is shorthand for any public relations fiasco.
Because he was trying to act so serious, he ended up looking silly!

Which brings me to our friends in Corinth
and the main message Paul wanted them to hear.
Paul was fighting an uphill battle in Corinth,
a cosmopolitan seaport that probably had a dynamite Chamber of Commerce
and banners hanging at both ends of town saying, “Come Alive in Corinth!”
Paul had a hard time with the church there
because they seemed to have no sense of humor,
no flexibility or gentleness to them.
That may sound odd, given the fact that they apparently had
some significant sexual impropriety going on,
not to mention a certain shallow way of expressing their faith
that seems more a personality cult than a genuine trust in Christ.
That’s just it - they were frivolous and they didn’t know it.
Absurd but unaware.
We know that because of the way they treated each other.
They had no forbearance in their life together.

You know what I mean when I say “forbearance?”
They were brittle, impatient, quick to insist on their own way,
intent on having their own needs met
before they could even think about the possibility of meeting the needs of others.
There was a pecking order in the Corinthian church
even though, according to Paul’s assessment,
none of THEM were exactly the cream of the crop,
or the upper crust of Corinthian society.
Still, sometimes it’s those who have little
who are most desperate to find someone who has less;
sometimes those who have nothing much to brag about
who boast the loudest.

Paul assessed the state of faith in the Corinthian church
and he must have seen right away what the problem was;
I mean, it’s so obvious. Someone had told them, “Don’t be silly.”
Someone had convinced them to take themselves much too seriously.
The former Jews – they were living on tradition,
congratulating themselves for being heirs of Abraham; the chosen people;
placing such a high value on the accident of birth
and that God had shown God’s favor in the past through signs of God’s presence.
The Greeks? They were all puffed up with their penchant for rational discourse,
logical propositions, intellectual debate.
They were standing on the shoulders of Socrates and Plato and all that wisdom.
To both the Jews and the Greeks Paul writes,
“You are not going to really get Jesus until you get over yourself.
You are not going to experience the power of what God has done in Christ
until you come to terms with how weak and foolish you really are.
“There is no shame in being foolish,” Paul writes.
“In fact, God chooses the foolish to shame the wise.
There is not shame in being weak.
God chooses the weak to shame the strong.”

The most potent symbol of the wisdom of foolishness and the strength of weakness
is the cross on which Jesus died.
The cross is just SILLY, and I mean that in the most reverent way!
To the Jews. the cross is nothing more than a sign of Roman oppression.
To the Greeks it is symbolic of the failure of logical people to work out a compromise.
But to those who get it, really get it, the cross is so much more.

By it’s very shape, the cross is God’s way of telling us
that in God’s kingdom, things are not going to line up in neat, parallel lines;
for people of faith things are not ever going to BE as they SEEM.
Under the power of the cross,
those who would rule must be servants.
Those who would find comfort must expect to mourn.
Those who would know victory must seek peace.

If you were a fan of Monty Python’s Flying Circus back in the early 70’s
chances are you’re familiar with what some call their most popular sketch,
“The Ministry of Silly Walks.”
“Ministry,” of course, in British terminology, refers to a government agency.

In the sketch, John Cleese is the Minister of Silly Walks and he is petitioned by a man
who is seeking a grant to fund a silly walk he’s been developing.
Alas, Cleese has to turn the man down because his walk is just not silly enough.
Cleese explains that though the Ministry of Silly Walks is SUPPOSED to be funded
on par with the Ministries of Defense, and Health, and Housing
their funding has, in fact, been lagging.
They just don’t have the budget to support a “walk in progress.”

It occurred to me that we are people who are called to the Ministry of A Silly Walk.
We are called to follow a path that, to those who don’t get it, seems foolish.
It really seems silly, especially today, when we are here to worship
and everyone else is at home, already in front of the big screen,
getting primed for the big game by football prognosticators.
This silly walk to which we are called seems most absurd, especially today,
when we meet around a table to sip grape juice and eat bread crumbs
and talk about being filled with God’s Spirit;
especially today when we splash around in water
and sprinkle a child’s head and talk about how we are all part of God’s family.

We are people of the cross who have our moments of embarrassment
because it seems so overwhelmingly SILLY sometimes
to affirm life in the midst of death or hope in the face of despair.
But then, by God’s grace, we have glimmers of understanding,
moments when the truth shines through.
‘The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing,
but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.’
And thanks be to God that the resources are endless and funding never runs out
for those of us who’s silly walk is still a walk in progress.