Almighty God, guide us to seek your Truth: come
whence it may, cost what it will, lead where it might. Amen.
“Is
the Lord among us or not?” That is
the question that stands behind both our readings from Exodus and John this
morning. Is the Lord among us or
not? That question will also serve as an entry to considering our third
commitment in breaking out of religious routinism in this season of Lent.
As
a recap, the sermons in Lent are built upon the assumption that there are two
unhealthy poles in religious belief. On one end of the spectrum is religious
extremism, where the ideas of religion are applied too harshly, too violently,
too narrowly. The other end of the spectrum is religious routinism, where the
ideas of religion remain just that – ideas with no impact on our lives or
worldview. In most American churches, the trap that we fall into is not
religious extremism, but rather religious routinism, where Christianity is
often seen as an add-on to life instead of the absolute core of our being. The
focus of the sermons in Lent is to offer a different commitment each week that
will help us to break out of routinism and find a depth and richness to our
faith that may have been overlooked. We’ve already considered the commitments
to wakefulness and interconnectedness, and today our focus will be on
mightiness.
The
word “might” or “mighty” comes from an Old English root that means “to be
able;” so to be mighty is to be able. Generally, when the word “mighty” is
used, it is spoken of God – that God is able to do all things. But the focus
for today is also on our own mightiness. You are mighty; you are able. It has
been said that you may not be able to do everything, but you can do something.
A commitment to mightiness is a commitment to reclaiming our God given ability
to act, to accomplish, to do, to love, to serve, to make a difference. As Jesus
says in Luke, “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be
required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be
demanded.” We have been given mightiness from our Creator, and so it is ours to
use.
Again,
as with wakefulness and interconnectedness, this is not about simply believing
something as simple as “I think I can, I think I can,” but rather a commitment
to actually being mighty. This is so important because religious routinism saps
us of our mightiness. Routinism lulls us into inactivity, into apathy, into
accepting things as they are. Our faith though is rooted in Jesus, who lived,
died, and rose again, and if anything shows mightiness it is that story that
tells us about Resurrection after death. In Jesus, we see that the routinism of
death was broken, and it was a show of great might.
In
the language of the Bible, the word for power is the Greek word dunamis, which is where we get the
English word “dynamic.” To be dynamic is to bring about change and excitement,
and this is what our faith is about, not stale routinism. Dunamis is also where we get the word “dynamite;” faith is supposed
to be dynamite – shaking the foundations of the world, changing the landscape,
bringing great energy.
However,
this is not the way the world wants things to work. The world conspires to
minimize our mightiness. The way our world works is to have power, that is
mightiness, to lie with the select few. So we condense our power into the few
instead of with the many. Think about how much of our lives are built around
our being slaves to the financial markets – our jobs, our college savings
accounts for our children, our retirement, our investments all make us captive
to powers beyond our control. By design, systems are “too big to fail” and “too
big to change.” As a current example, just look at the quagmire going on right
now in regards to health insurance. Sure, there are different philosophies on
how best to provide and pay for health coverage for all people, but we haven’t
yet figured out how to implement any version of health care law in a way that
makes much sense. It’s precisely because the markets have been built in such a
way to rob us of our mightiness in their own self-preservation of mightiness.
So
many problems in this world seem to be beyond our ability to comprehend, let
alone address. Think about income inequality. The latest report is that 8
people have more wealth than the bottom 50% percent of the world’s population.
That’s 8 people with more financial resources than the bottom 3.8 billion.
Despite the relative wealth of Rowan County to the rest of the world, there are
still many children who go hungry in our community. The effects of climate
change continue to grow, and our recycling and driving a hybrid doesn’t seem to
be changing that. We work so hard to make St. Luke’s a wonderful church, and
yet more people, even more of own our members, are not here this morning, but
instead have chosen to stay home for one reason or another. The US has 5% of
the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prison population in which blacks
are 6 times more likely to end up in jail than whites, despite the fact that
the crime rate between races is nearly identical.
If
that list of issues doesn’t take the wind out of your sails, I’m not sure what
will. It seems that we simply don’t have the might to do anything about these
sorts of problems that are so systemic and large. And this is where having a
vibrant faith comes in. Our faith community and our rituals remind us that
whatever time we have, whatever gifts and blessings we have, whatever resources
we have, though we might not be able to do everything, we can most certainly do
something to make the world a little bit more better, to bring things a bit
closer to the dream of God, to love a bit more fully.
Who
are the people that we would describe as “mighty?” Often they are not towering
figures, but people who seem like they’d be easy to ignore. But because of the
strength of their religious convictions, they were able to stand up to
injustice, to systems bigger than themselves, to self-doubt, to naysayers, to
fears and anxieties. Harriett Tubman, Desmond Tutu, Rosa Parks, St. Paul: these
are just a few examples of people who had little power in the way that the
world typically thinks of power, and yet were so connected to God that they
become some of the mightiest people this planet has ever known. In his letter
to Rome, Paul writes that the same Spirit which raised Jesus from the grave is
alive in you. That mightiness lies within you. So no matter what the doubters
say, no matter what that voice in your head says, no matter how complex or big
the problem, you are mighty because you share in the mightiness of the One who
Created and Redeemed all that is.
Mightiness
is a theme found in both Exodus and John this morning. In both texts,
because of God’s presence, a character is able to find and act on their own
mightiness. Moses, in Exodus, has led the people out of slavery in Egypt, but
they have not yet arrived in the Promised Land. As they wandered through the
desert, looking for a place to call “home,” they ran out of water. That’s a
tough situation to be in, and Moses could have resigned himself to despair or
powerlessness. He could have started to doubt this whole “freedom” thing, as
the people did. Sure, slavery in Egypt wasn’t great, but at least they didn’t
die of thirst. The question on their minds was “Is the Lord among us or not?”
The
people weren’t so sure. Moses though was sure of God’s presence. Moses
remembered the mightiness of God that appeared to him in the burning bush, he
remembered God’s mightiness at the Red Sea, and so he expected God’s mightiness
to still be with the people. Confident of God’s mightiness, Moses summoned up
his own. He went to the Lord and
said “we need some water here.” Then notice that God grants the people water,
but it comes through the mightiness of Moses. God could have just snapped a
finger or commanded the water to flow, but no, God wants Moses to participate
in this mightiness. So God tells Moses to strike the rock and the water flowed.
What
if Moses would have refused to do something as silly as striking a rock and
expecting water to flow? That’s the equivalent of throwing your computer out
the window when it doesn’t work – generally not the best way to fix things.
What if Moses doubted his mightiness to do anything? I can only imagine how the
people ridiculed him when Moses told the people “God told me that water will
come out of this rock.” Moses could have easily given up and been resigned to
hopelessness. But Moses knew that God was among them, and therefore knew that
anything was possible. In trusting God, Moses found his own mightiness, and
through Moses’ mightiness, the people found salvation.
Our
reading from John contains the longest single encounter that Jesus has in the
Bible and could serve as the foundation for at least 50 different sermons. In
the interest of time and focus, I’m going to pay attention only to the concept
of mightiness that we see in this woman at the well.
Certainly,
there were many obstacles that stood in the way of her mightiness. First of
all, she was a woman in a culture that was dominated by men. Secondly, she was
a Samaritan, a group that was a sworn enemy of the Jewish people. Thirdly, she
had been divorced five times. And it is worth pointing out that the fact that
she had been divorced so many times is no fault of her own. In her culture, a
woman really couldn’t easily initiate a divorce, as all of that power resided
with the husband. Her problem wasn’t that she didn’t value marriage, it was
that her husbands didn’t seem to value her. Scholars suggest that she was
unable to have children, which is likely why at least some of her husbands left
her. In a culture where infertility could be a seen as a sign of divine
punishment, she had that working against her.
But
through her interaction with Jesus, she comes to see and know that the Lord was with her. She says to Jesus, “I
know that the Messiah is coming.” And Jesus tells her “I am he.” Jesus then
tells her that she can have access to living water instead of simple well
water. There’s a great word play going on in the text. When you go to a fancy
restaurant, sometimes the waiter will ask if you want flat or sparkling water.
Water that is not moving is stale, flat, you might say stuck in its own
routinism. However, sparking water, or flowing water, or living water is water
that moves, that is dynamic, that has power. Waterfalls are described as being
mighty, puddles are not.
Jesus,
though, means more than simply providing this woman with a source of living
water in the sense of a stream; he means that he will provide the water of
life, that is, the ability to be a part of the flow of God’s love, salvation,
and mercy. When she recognizes that this mightiness of God is present with her,
she finds her own mightiness. A Samaritan woman who has been divorced five
times then goes to others and becomes an evangelist, with the result that
“many” Samaritans believed in a Messiah who was Jewish. It is a mighty story
about a mighty woman. Because this woman encountered God’s mighty power, she
was able to summon her own mightiness to do mighty things in the name of God.
Moses’
story and this woman’s story could easily be your story. Can you commit to
being mighty: to trusting in your God given ability, to using your God given
power? It has been said that a Christian is someone who is open to the
possibility that God is afoot. Might a commitment to reading Scripture help to
remember God’s mightiness and presence among us? Might a commitment to a
regular prayer life help you to summon up your own mightiness? Might a
commitment to being an active part of this church community give you the
foundation to act in mighty ways? There is nothing routine about being as
mighty as a stick of dynamite. You may not be able to do everything, but you
can do something. Because God is mighty and because you are made in God’s
image, you are mighty. Today, feed on the Eucharist to draw strength from God,
and then go out into the world and do something mighty this week.
