"True Worship and True Thanksgiving
"
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Text: John 4:1-26
These days the word “transcendence” is used all too frequently to describe emotions or experiences or feelings. Often it is misused and misunderstood, for it has different meanings, but this day I want to talk about a transcendent moment I experienced this summer. By transcendent I don't mean in the Aristotelian way or in the classic philosophical way, I simply mean in the literal way, climbing beyond myself, seeing beyond. It occurred as I got out of my car and walked to the very foot of Mount Robson in the Rockies.
I gazed up and it was a clear and almost cloudless day, with one exception, one small cloud that had alighted itself on the very top of the mountain peak. For a moment it stayed there and slowly, second by second moved on into the distance to reveal a crystal clear peak reaching up to the sky. I just stood there, there were probably hundreds of people around me from all over the world but that didn't matter, for that one moment I stood in awe. I liked it so much and was so moved by it that I went to the gift store and actually bought a shirt with Mount Robson on it, along with a chocolate bar with Mount Robson embossed in gold on it, and I thought, “I'll keep this.” The chocolate bar lasted for 20 minutes! Yet, I still have the wrapper. I couldn't help but think, “Lord God, this is an awesome country.”
Whether it is from the fishing villages of Digby Neck in Nova Scotia or Pond Inlet on Baffin Island in Nunavut or whether it is standing before 15,299 feet of Mount Robson splendour, this is an awesome land. For one moment I felt small, for one moment I felt mortal. I thought to myself, “When I am gone, this mountain will still be here.” Clouds will come and go for eons, long after I do not exist, the wonder of Mount Robson will, and I felt humbled. I thought, “What a splendid God we have that makes such things.” What a great gift it is to be in awe of your surroundings - a moment of transcendence - climbing beyond the ordinary.
The problem is that when you have a moment like that, no matter what you try to do you cannot replicate it, you cannot capture it. I would love to have put Mount Robson in a box to bring it home with me and place it on a table so that I might experience that same sense of awe and wonder again, that I might gaze upon it and feel the same things I felt when I was at the bottom but I can't. No photograph, no souvenir, no document can capture the moment of awe before something magnificent. Is that not the case with Thanksgiving? Is it not the case that no matter what you try to do to convey to the Almighty, the Maker of everything, our sense of faith and wonder. There is nothing we can do, there is no symbol, no sign to replicate it, it is just to say, “Thank you.”
The same with our faith, there is nothing we can do, nothing we can build, nothing we can create to replicate the sense of awe and wonder before our living God. Oh, human beings have done it for centuries, they've tried to create great temples and they say, “Here, in this place you can worship God.” Or magnificent churches or cathedrals like this one and say, “Come here and worship the glorious God.” Maybe it is a particular mountain that people go to worship, to replicate the glory and the awesomeness of Yahweh. Maybe it is in a symbol, maybe it is in a sign, maybe it is in some structure we tried to create something to say that this is the awesomeness of God. Still, we cannot capture it anymore than I could capture the awesomeness of Mount Robson.
Indeed, when we try to do such things we tend to create idols and we all know that idols are no substitute for the living God. I think when Jesus encountered the woman by the well, this was something he wanted us to grasp. He wanted her to grasp, the disciples to understand, and all subsequent generations to realize one true fact: That true worship, worships in spirit and in truth. True worship cannot be replicated in a thing or a symbol or a place, but in recognizing the spiritual nature of God.
Look how he did it: Jesus didn't give a lecture on spirituality, he didn't outline his philosophy of God and of transcendence. He used an encounter with a person, as Jesus does throughout his ministry and is common through all the gospels, even though they give a different perspective and an analysis of Jesus' life. Still, we forget the commonality of them in the sense that Jesus is always engaging people to make a point. In this case, it was a Samaritan woman. She is a wonderful example of Jesus trying to make the most profound sense of who God is by having a conversation.
Put it in context, Jesus was tired of being badgered by the religious leaders. He had performed a wedding at Canaan, he had been to the temple - in the chronology of John's gospel - but now he is on his way home.
He has been in Judea, the southern part of the country and is on his way north to Galilee. The problem is, as all Jews encountered, to go from the southern part to the northern part meant that you had to travel through Samaria. Most decided to go east, to the other side of the Jordan, go north and then come back into Galilee from the east. Not Jesus, he goes through Samaria, a land that was inhabited by people who were considered to be outcasts. Outcasts for the simple reason that during the exile when the Jews were in other countries there were some who married Gentiles, so they were of a mixed race. Also, their traditions had changed somewhat. They still believed in the authority of the first five books of the bible, they still believed in the authority of Moses and the law, but they worshipped God and saw the central place to worship God as Mount Gerizim not the temple in Jerusalem, as Jews did. After the exile when they rebuilt the temple, the Samaritans were not allowed to join in the rebuilding. From that moment on, this mixed-race people who worshipped in Gerizim were no longer seen as authentic followers of God.
It is interesting that Mount Gerizim, this great mountain of some 3,000 feet on the West Bank is near the town of Nablus, and we all know the modern history of Nablus and the pain that has been caused. Jesus walks into Samaria deliberately and comes upon a woman at a well. He is tired and thirsty after his long walk and says to her, “Give me something to drink.” In the Greek it sounds very forthright, very bold, and it was. Jesus was thirsty but most of all he wanted to engage in discussion with the Samaritan woman.
The woman responded, “You are a Jew and I a Samaritan, we shouldn't be talking to one another, why do you want to be bothered with me?”
We all know the discussion that takes place between Jesus and the woman. He talks about living water that she can receive. She talks about water from Jacob's well and that fact that he doesn't have a bucket to gather the water.
Jesus says, “Go and get your husband.”
She responds, “I have no husband.”
Jesus says, “You have five husbands and the one you are currently with is not your real husband.”
She is in awe, considers him to be a prophet and the discussion goes on. It is a wonderful dialogue between the two. However, it is at the end that things come to a head, the purpose of the story is to tell us something, not so much about the Samaritan woman per se, but about God. Jesus conveys to the woman that the time is coming when people will worship God in spirit and in truth. In other words, the things that divide you and me right now are washed away. I am here now as the Messiah and I am telling you as the Messiah of the Jews, from the Jews, that God is spirit and they will worship God in spirit and truth. What a powerful moment, a moment when Jesus revealed the very nature of God, the Father. And he did so to a Samaritan woman. So, what is he doing and why is it powerful, and why, in this transcendent moment do you and I have something to learn?
Clearly, Jesus was rejecting the barrier of culture. He is saying to this Samaritan woman, “Never mind the cultural divide that exists between us, let me tell you that God is spirit and that this God transcends the restrictions of culture.”
I had another transcendent moment this summer in Slovakia. I was invited to help perform a wedding on the border of the Ukraine and Poland in northern Slovakia, in a little village in the Carpathian mountains. I was asked because the bride is from Toronto and the groom is from Manchester in England. “Who better to do this wedding than Stirling,” they thought. I went as the official interpreter, by the way. Not between the English speaking and the Slovaks but between people from Manchester and Toronto! I was asked to give the message. We got into this little Catholic church that celebrates through the Byzantine Rite, the Eastern Rite and there were all these icons around. Some of you will have seen this in Church News, when I was surrounded by an iconostasis. The visiting priest, who I had never met, a powerful man from the Ukraine, who spoke in a little-known language called Rusyn, addressed the couple. He addressed them personally and powerfully. Only a few of the people in the congregation understood the language he was speaking, most spoke English. Nevertheless, there was a power and commitment to what he was saying. It sounded to me like it was a really strong, good message.
I then had the daunting task of giving a message in English. As I spoke, and the images I used to describe marriage, those who could speak both Rusyn and English looked absolutely flabbergasted. I thought I was saying something rather bizarre because the look of their faces was incredulous. I spoke to the couple, people nodded and the service ended. Just afterwards, one of the people who was fluent in both languages came to me and said, “Andrew, do you know that your message was almost identical to the one that was given by the Rusyn priest? Similar words, similar texts, similar images, same ideas of God, same messages for the couple. Did you two get together and plan this?”
I said, “I only met him five minutes before the service.”
Afterwards during the reception we had a translator sit between us and he and I talked. We had much in common. He had suffered under the hands of the Communists. I had suffered under the hands of the South African government. We both love the church and we both love Christ and we both pray in the name of the Trinity. I thought, “Isn't this just amazing?” Had I not experienced it I could never have said this, but there was something about the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit at that moment that transcended culture, that spoke a word of clarity and power and that priest and I were simply tools in the hands of a gracious spiritual God.
This transcends also the power of race. When Jesus came to the Samaritan woman, did he talk about the ethnic divide? No. Did he talk about the background of the peoples? No. He affirmed his Jewishness and said that salvation comes from the Jews. He didn't apologize for it, he simply sat down with her and she recognized him to be the Messiah. You see, race cannot stand in the way either, of those who truly want to worship God. Nothing like that can stand in the way.
This summer Dr. Bill Fritz, who formally served here with us, gave me a book and said, “Andrew, I really think you should read this.”
With all the other reading I had to do I put it on the shelf, but a couple of weeks ago I picked it up. It's by Bruce Smith, who is the Chaplain of the King-Bay Chaplaincy downtown. Many of you will know him more for having been a captain of the Toronto Argonauts and one of the Argos greatest players. Lord, they need him now. I've met him, he is a big man, and when you stand in front of him you might as well be in front of Mount Robson, it's an awesome experience.
In this book he shows a tender side. He writes about having grown up as a fatherless child in the segregated south in Texas. He talks about how he was belittled for his race, how he was bullied because he didn't have a father to protect him, how his mother struggled to bring him up and give him opportunities. There was a deep hurt and pain in his heart. He carried that with him and no matter how famous he became or how much money he made or how popular he was, there was still the pain and the hurt of being a fatherless black child from the south. Near the end he writes, and I tell you, it goes to the heart:
The only reason that I can help so many people is because by the grace of God I have been spiritually and emotionally healed and restored as a son, a man, a husband and father by God, my true Father. The proof of this is evident today in my family, in my marriage, my life and my work. The reason there is now good fruit in my life is because there is a new root. I firmly planted it in the garden of God. This reminds me of a famous song, sung by the legendary B.B. King, The Thrill is Gone. Well, I'm no longer singing the blues, instead I'm rejoicing and my song is, the pain is gone, for God has filled the void, nothing else could fill and healed the pain that no one else could heal because of the spirit, the transcendence of God.
Jesus knew that there was a need to break down the barriers, also, of tradition and of place. “Not on Mount Gerizim,” said Jesus, “Not even in the temple of Jerusalem, is God to be worshipped supremely. For God is spirit and those who worship God, worship in spirit and in truth.” Do not misunderstand me, this text is not a flaccid universalism. Rather, this affirms that through the very presence and grace of God in Jesus Christ, all people regardless of culture, race, ethnicity, language or place, can come now before the living God in awe to worship him. This is the affirmation of the overall parentage of God. It is the affirmation of the magnificent power of the ministry of the Messiah. It is a statement about the power of the spirit at work.
Said John Calvin in his commentary: “This is not just the defence of the divinity of the Holy Spirit, it is even more than that. It is an affirmation that God is spirit and cannot be confined by mortals.” We cannot then, put God in a box, we cannot bring him home and place him on a table, we cannot mount him up on a wall or put him in a building. This God is a transcendent God, a God who is there in all his might and glory and in an encounter with an outcast, with a Samaritan woman at a well, Jesus reveals this great and this glorious truth.
This Thanksgiving I pray you will capture that, that you will understand the awesomeness of God and that in the power of the spirit you will worship him. Not only when there are good times should you give thanks, not only when your table is bountiful and your stomach is full of pumpkin pie should you praise God, but at all times and in all places.
In 1636 Martin Rickert, the famous German pastor ministered to his congregation during the 30 Years War. It was a time of famine and of disease and in one year alone he lost 5,000 members of his parish. Some days he was doing 15 funerals. He lost his wife, a child, yet in the midst of all this, when it seemed like there was no reason to worship the living God, he wrote:
Now thank we all our God,
with heart, and hands, and voices,
who wondrous things has done,
in whom this world rejoices;
who from our mother's arms has blessed us on our way
with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.
Like the woman at the well, may we have that transcendent moment and be thankful to the living God. Amen.