3-23-14: Burn Out

Burn Out

 

Exodus 17: 1-7 (NRSV)

From the wilderness of sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. The people quarreled with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink>” Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” The Lord said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

 

John 4: 5-42 (NRSV)

So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)^. Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’ Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’

Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’ The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’ The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am he,^* the one who is speaking to you.’

Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, ‘What do you want?’ or, ‘Why are you speaking with her?’ Then the woman left her water-jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, ‘Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?’ They left the city and were on their way to him.

Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, ‘Rabbi, eat something.’ But he said to them, ‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’ So the disciples said to one another, ‘Surely no one has brought him something to eat?’ Jesus said to them, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, “Four months more, then comes the harvest”? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, “One sows and another reaps.” I sent you to reap that for which you did not labour. Others have laboured, and you have entered into their labour.’

Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me everything I have ever done.’ So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there for two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Saviour of the world.’

 

At this point, a lot of you probably know that I listen to a lot of contemporary Christian music. And, since I’ve given up listening to secular, non-classical music for Lent, I’ve been listening to that much more Christian music the last few weeks.

One of my favorite contemporary Christian groups is called Tenth Avenue North. When I took a gander at which texts the Revised Common Lectionary has picked for us to hear this morning, and especially when I saw that we would be hearing about the struggles of our brother, Moses, there was one song in particular that I listened to several times over the course of the week while preparing this message—a recent single from Tenth Avenue North called “Worn”.

When the group’s lead singer, Mike Donehey, was asked what inspired the lyrics and message of this particular song, he responded on his blog,

“I used to think I knew what tired was.
I played soccer in high school.
I pulled all nighters in college.
I’ve driven through the night, for weeks on end.
But then… I had kids.”[i]

 

While some of you might have recent experiences, or vivid memories, that make it easy for you to relate to Mr. Donehey’s stories of utter exhaustion as a new dad, the thing that makes his band one of my favorites is that we can all relate to the lyrics that come from his stories. In this song, “Worn”, he sings,

I’m Tired, I’m worn
My heart is heavy
From the work it takes
To keep on breathing
I’ve made mistakes
I’ve let my hope fail
My soul feels crushed
By the weight of this world

And I know that you can give me rest
So I cry out with all that I have left

Let me see redemption win
Let me know the struggle ends
That you can mend a heart
That’s frail and torn
I wanna know a song can rise
From the ashes of a broken life
And all that’s dead inside can be reborn
Cause I’m worn[ii]

 

You don’t need to be a young dad or mom to be able to relate to these words. Words like these need not be about the challenges of caring for yourself and those you love—but they could be. Or they could be about the battle you wage against an illness, or injury. Or they could be about the pressures you face keeping up with the mark at work or school. Or they could be about how we all feel when we tune in to the news and hear about another tragedy, another war, another government mishap, another act of human greed, or another loss of life. Or they could be about how the majority of us feel right about this time of year, when we just want to break out the spring clothes already and our meteorologists predict a few more days of sub-freezing temperatures.

Or, they could be about a man named Moses. They could be about a man who had a home, a job, a family, and everything he ever wanted when he was suddenly taken from all of it by an incinerating shrubbery…one that could talk to him. Many years after his first encounter with the divine, here Moses is, in the middle of nowhere, with a vast group of people that constantly remind him that he took them away from the only livelihood they’ve ever known, with nothing to say in his defense except that a God they don’t worship commanded this of him. His exasperated cry to the Lord, “What shall I do with these people?”, is as pointed as it sounds. Moses is completely and totally burnt out. And there’s no end in sight to his journey in the wilderness.

Meanwhile, a few thousand years and some miles removed from the desert, a woman comes all by herself at high noon to the town watering hole looking for a drink. A Samaritan woman. That’s right, one of those politically dubious, idol worshipping people from the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The people on the wrong side of the tracks. Not only is she one of those people, and not only is she the classless type of woman who walks around the well all by herself in the middle of the day—yikes—but she’s also the survivor of five failed marriages, and everyone knows. She’s worn and spent. And it’s only noon.

Sometimes you’ve given all you’ve got, and it’s still not enough. Sometimes the challenge seems so great, and your means seem so few, that you don’t know whether you can go on. And sometimes the nay-sayers around you will be all too happy to declare your work a failure, and see you give up.

But sometimes all you need is a good drink of water. And if you can hold on with faith just long enough, you can have it.

And, most importantly, sometimes you need to let other people help you.

Just at this moment of utter dejection, as this woman is about to go get some water, who happens to be the only other person at the well? Jesus.

Or, more like, just at this moment when this woman can’t take any more, who’s right there waiting for her? Jesus.

And the first thing he does is shock her right out of her exhaustion. And not by picking that moment to perform a miraculous sign, or even by saying anything particularly deep, at least not yet—but just by talking to her. By asking her to give him some water.

Why would a man, a man who is not a relative, an upstanding Jewish man from the Southern Kingdom, even give the time of day to her?

But he does. And not only is he willing to talk to her, but they set the record for the longest conversation that Jesus has with anyone throughout all four Gospels.

He tells her there’s a better life out there for her than one with five men who, as best as we can tell, left her, and one who treats her so bad he doesn’t deserve to be called a husband. He also tells her there’s more to life than the day-to-day grind of walking water jugs back and forth from the well.

You don’t have to feel like you’ve got it all together and figured out for God to love you and deem you worthy. You also don’t need to feel like you have a whole lot to give for God to make a great minister out of you. You just need to hold on. And you need to put your trust in God.

By the time of this morning’s Old Testament lesson, that was all Moses could do. He turns to God, and says, tell me what to do, these people are ready to kill me, and I’m all out of ideas. I can’t get them to the Promised Land; I can’t even get them some water.

God says back to him, do you still have that stick I gave you? Take a few people with you, and go hit a rock with that stick.

And there was water. And Moses and the Hebrews kept going.

Meanwhile, over in the city of Sychar, a Samaritan woman, who was a total social outcast not long before, converted most of her neighbors to the Jesus Movement by doing no more than repeating what he said to her.

Hard as it may be to believe when we’re at our wit’s end, we can always find refuge in God. We can always find renewal and strength for the day in God. And, just at the moment when you’re totally out of breath and down to your last ounce of belief, that one ounce might be all God needs to change the world through you. And, in the meantime, we all have this place to turn to every week to renew and remember that belief.

May it be so.

Amen.

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[i] You can read more of Donehey’s thoughts about this here: http://mikedonehey.tumblr.com/post/31798128080/worn

[ii] “Worn” was performed by Tenth Avenue North, and written by Mike Donehey, Jeff Owen, and Jason Ingram. You can watch the music video for the song here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zulKcYItKIA&feature=kp