Change can be very hard for me, I confess. It often costs too much in terms of people and things that are dear to me.

I am a calculator of risks by nature and by profession. Change for the sake of change does not appeal to me, but fear of the unknown is also abhorrent to me. My inclination when faced with a new prospect is to ask, “What is the worst that could happen?” and go on from there to plan and to implement.

This inclination to manage risk no doubt led me to a career in the law. The ordering of responsibility and obligation in a business transaction appeals to me. “The party of the first part will do this and that and the party of the second part will pay this much when that happens and if it doesn’t work our the matter will be resolved by the process set forth herein.” A place for everything and everything in its place, neatly signed or initialed, of course. A good contract keeps the peace.

The hard fact is that any effort to manage risk and change, how ever well informed, can be derailed by human error. It is possible to plan, train and check for that to reasonable limits. But there are vagaries of accident, illness, storm, flood, rebellion, crime, war, earthquake, tsunami and volcanic eruption that yield to no human device or strategy.

A good lawyer can’t control everything and, oh, does this ever tick us off! If something unexpected and uncontrollable blows the deal after we make it lawyers like to blame God. We call such occurrences “acts of God” because we like to think God’s the only one big enough to override and “wash out” our best laid plans. We reduce uncontrollable change to a “boilerplate” excuse: “The client’s failure to perform its obligations will be excused for wars, riots, insurrections, labor strife, strikes, transportation delays and acts of God.”

Here is a legal definition of an “act of God:”

.

Any misadventure or casualty is said to be caused by an “act of God” when it happens by the direct, immediate, and exclusive operation of the forces of nature, uncontrolled or uninfluenced by the power of man and without human intervention, and is of such character that it could not have been prevented or escaped by any amount of foresight or prudence, or by any reasonable degree of care or diligence, or by the aid of any appliances which the situation of the party might reasonably require him or her to use. Inevitable accident, or casualty; any accident produced by any physical cause which is irresistible, such as lightning; tempests, perils of the seas, an inundation, or earthquake; and also the sudden illness or death of persons (Black’s Law Dictionary).

.

So it is with the perspective of an experienced business attorney that I read these words from the opening of the Book of Joshua. “After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, the Lord spoke to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ assistant saying, “my servant Moses is dead. Now proceed to cross the Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I am giving to them, to the Israelites” (Josh. 1:1-2).

It is hard to imagine a bigger change than this one for the people in that time and place. For eighty years, Moses led the Israelites, communicating the will and way of God. They had developed a rhythm–manna to eat six days of the week and more manna for the seventh; cloud by day and fire by night; personal and public hygiene, worship, water from the rock–even the miracles became routine. Now, Moses was dead in fact, but Joshua had to be told that it was true and it was time to move on.

Who was Moses to them? The name means “to draw out.” He pointed out to the Israelites that they were in bondage, far from God’s purpose for them. He told them what they could do to be free. He helped them, confronting their enemy Pharaoh, risking his life for them in that initiative. He had a direct connection with God and conversed with him as a friend.

More than once, Moses saved the Israelites from death. He told them how to live as free men and women. He was crotchety and angry with their stubbornness and whining, but he stuck with them through their most stupidly fearful moments.

Moses was the only leader that a whole generation had known. He had failings (don’t we all? ), but they were the failings of passion, of a heart in the right place even when his actions didn’t show it. He promised them better things–a better place to live, prosperity, health and peace–and now he was dead and his assistant got the word to move on. That’s real change!

Businesses are often valued on the basis of their leadership. What was Jack Welch to General Electric, Thomas Watson to IBM,  Lee Iacocca to Chrysler, Henry Ford to Ford Motors, John D. Rockefeller to Standard Oil? What is Steven Jobs to Apple and Bill Gates to Microsoft?

Nations have been identified throughout history for particular defining leadership like France with Napoleon, Britain with Churchill, Germany with Bismark, China with Mao, the United States with Washington and Lincoln. What was Israel without Moses? This was the challenge for Joshua.

Each one of us faces the same challenge, sooner or later. Who is your Moses? Who helped you out of the pit of bondage, took your side, and shook you out of your slumber?  Who showed you the way to better things and how to get there? Who has meant survival to you and who is going to get you through now that your Moses is dead and gone?

Oh. I see.  You hate change also, notwithstanding all those wonderful books, articles, seminars, tapes, verses, refrigerator magnets and cute calendars urging you on to new and better things. In fact, to be honest, even when our own Moses tries to take us through the discomfort of change we are likely to rebel, resist and try “to kill the messenger.” (See Exodus 16:1-3; 17:1-7; 32:1-35; Numbers 11:1-35; 13:25-14:1-45; 16:1-50; 20:1-13, 22-29).

Human nature is a mash of pride and insecurity that causes you and me to think, “I may have my bad times right here, but I am making it with the help of my Moses, aren’t I? Why do I need to move on if it means trading off the known for the unknown? “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” isn’t it?”

As good as the promised land sounds, there are reports of hostile giants there (Num.13:25-33).There are so many questions and uncontrollable circumstances. We are tempted to play it safe with what we have right here and right now. We are angry with the act of God. We demand of God, “Why did you take our Moses away from us?”

“My servant Moses is dead,” God replies in a matter-of-fact manner. “Now proceed to cross the Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I am giving them” (Josh 1:2).

There are two points in God’s instruction to us that should reorient our priorities. First, God makes reference to,”My servant Moses,”  We thought this was all about us. We trusted the operating instructions that Moses gave us. We thought our lives depended on our perfection in following the formula.

Now we find out who our Moses was really working for. If our Moses was following God’s instruction when he brought us to this place, it follows that the death of our Moses must be part of God’s plan. Our present situation is in God’s plan. Our moving on must be in God’s plan.

Specifically speaking, you and I are not at the mercy of some act of God. You and I are an act of God and that act is no misadventure, no accident, and no excuse. You and I owe our very lives at this moment to God’s sovereign grace.

The second point of interest is  found in God’s instruction to cross the boundary and go where we feared to go before this. God says the place where he is sending us is his gift to us, not a punishment or mere consequence.

Again, specifically speaking, you and I thought that achieving the goal depended on our Moses. You and I now find out that the future does not depend on Moses. Our Moses is gone, but God’s providence continues. He cares no less for you and me. In fact, our dependence on our Moses, however well intentioned and loving, may have distracted us from an intimate, growing relationship with the Lord.

God told Joshua in the next verses. “Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, as I promised to Moses…No one shall be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will not fail you or forsake you . . . .  I hereby command you: Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” (Josh.1:3, 5, 9). We can’t ask for more than this. We are called to proceed with assurance in the leading and the providence of the Lord alone.

There is a passage in the writings of the French theologian Fenelon that puts all of this in perspective:

The best place to be is where God puts you. Any other place is undesirable because you chose it for yourself. Do not think too much about the future. Worrying about things that haven’t happened yet is unhealthy for you. God Himself will help you, day by day. There is no need to store things up for the future. Don’t you believe that God will take care of you?

.

A life of faith does two things: Faith helps you see God behind everything that He uses. And faith also keeps you in a place where you are not sure what will happen next. To have faith you cannot always want to know what is happening or going to happen. God wants you to trust him alone from minute to minute. The strength He gives you in one minute is not intended to carry you through the next. Let God take care of His business. Just be faithful to what God asks of you. To depend on God from moment to moment–especially when all is dark and uncertain–is a true dying to your old self. This process is so slow and inward that it is often hidden from you as well as others.

.

When God takes something away from you, you can be sure He knows how to replace it . . . . Eat in peace what God gives you. ‘Tomorrow will take care of itself’ (Matthew 6:34). The One who feeds you today will surely feed you tomorrow (Francois Fenelon, The Seeking Heart [Sargent, GA: The SeedSowers, 1992], p. 85-86).

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in Him” (Ps. 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

My beloved speaks and says to me:

“Arise, my love, my fair one,

and come away;

For now the winter is past,

the rain is over and gone.

The flowers appear on the earth;

the time of singing has come,

and the voice of the turtle dove

is heard in our land.

Song 1:11-12

Mike Kirby spoke to me after the Good Friday worship service. To be exact, that would be Michael A. Kirby, Ph.D, Professor of Pathology and Anatomy in the Loma Linda University School of Medicine. He’s a soft-spoken, productive scientist who is researching brain development.

Ironically, Mike himself suffered a fast-growing cancer that metastasized into his brain and came very close to killing him. He was the subject of many prayers around the University. I remember the tone of the prayers getting quieter even they grew more desperate and hope was seemingly ebbing away with very little time left for Mike.

But the Lord spared Mike and restored his health. He is a gift to us. He is a much-respected and loved man. Another one of my friends and colleagues says, “Some people you can summarize in one word and for Mike Kirby that word is ‘kind.’ He is a kind man.”

What a wonderful thing to be known for your kindness. The world, indeed, our University, needs more kind men and women. Mike is a blessing of grace.

I work with Mike from time to time on legal and policy matters involving research affairs. I invited him to our “Remembering What Jesus Did for Us” service and he came.

He waited for me afterwards and said, “Thank you for inviting me. This was great. You know there is nothing that can speak to the soul like music.”

“That’s true,” I said. “That’s how God reaches our hearts. Do you do anything with music, Mike?”

“I played the cello when I was younger,” he said. “When I was sick, I missed the music and I told my wife, “I’d like to play the cello again. We found one and bought it. It takes about 20 years to break a cello in. But I played it and found it to be healing.”

“Do you ever play in public?”

“Well, I played for the Office of Research Affairs’ Christmas Party. I was a little nervous at first, but it went OK.”

“The Office of General Counsel sponsors an annual Christmas breakfast with a carol sing and worship,” I said. “Maybe we could play something together.”

“Maybe so,” he replied.

We went our ways, but I’ve kept Mike and his cello in mind ever since as I begin the early preparations for the Christmas breakfast.”

On Wednesday of this past week, I was sitting by Mike in the Research Oversight Committee. When the meeting was over, I said, “I’ve been thinking about us playing the cello and piano together at the Christmas party. I’ve been working on some songs. Can you improvise?” I asked.

“Not really,” he said.

“If we work off music, piano music, for simple Christmas carols, will that work alright for you?”

“Yes, I can play the bass line,” he replied.

“That will work,” I said. “How about other parts?”

“Yeah, I can play the alto or tenor part. The cello has a wide range.”

“OK, I said. “How about the key? What is a good key to play in for a cellist?”

“Bass clef,” he said.

“I understand that’s the preferred range, but what keys are you most comfortable playing in. I know string players often like playing in C or in the sharps,” I said, dreading his response. I have a psychological block in playing in the sharps on the piano for some reason.

“Any key is fine,” he said with a non-committal tone.

“How do you feel about playing in public? I mean, you told me that you were a little nervous when you played for the Research Affairs Christmas party.”

“Oh that’s no problem,” Mike said. “That just goes with the territory.”

He stood up and said,”I think I have some music in my office. I’ll get it and you can see what I am talking about.”

He left and I waited at the conference room table. I was feeling pretty good about encouraging a friend in developing his musical talent. At least that’s what I was thinking.

Mike walked back in and opened a well-worn folio of music on the table in front of me. To my utter, jaw-dropping amazement it contained the complete cello scores for all nine Beethoven symphonies, plus a Leonard Rose sonata.

I play a passable recreational piano, but the music I was looking at requires a technical competence at the professional level if it is to be played as it was meant to be.

“Do you play this music, Mike?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied quietly. “I used to play in the Phoenix Symphony. When I was an undergraduate at Arizona State University, I played in the orchestra there because they gave me some scholarships so I kept playing. Playing is how I ate in graduate school. I was in a string quartet and we would go from restaurant to restaurant and play so we could eat. I played in the Indianapolis Symphony under Izler Solomon. He was fabulous. I learned a lot from him.”

There are moments when the interjection “wow,” an expression of great amazement, wonder, or pleasure is the only word available and appropriate. As in, “Wow, Mike. You are not in my league, or better put, I am not in your league. ‘Wow’ is all I can say. I’ll be in touch about the Christmas program.”

A great sense of delighted peace filled me as I walked out of the Research Affairs Office into the unusually mild July day. Something that my friend Joyce once told me came to mind.

One spring day on a hike through a nature preserve, Joyce asked me, “Kent, do you realize that most wild flowers are never seen by any one but God? People see the blossoms along the roads and paths, but most of them are out there in the fields and meadows beyond human view. They are just as beautiful as the ones we see but they are there for the delight of God alone. Our opinions and approval don’t add or take away anything from his enjoyment of what he has made.”

Joyce’s observation is indisputably true and it says a lot about the unconditional grace of God. Mike’s musical gift has been unknown to most of us at the University, but no matter. God gifted Mike in the joy of his creative power and I suspect that if no one ever heard Mike play but God it would be enough for the two of them.

It is said that of all the musical instruments that the cello’s sound most closely approximates the human voice. It takes no leap of faith or logic to think that the Lord could speak healing into Mike’s brain and heart through the bow and strings of his cello. “God thunders wondrously with his voice; he does great things that we cannot comprehend” (Job 37:3).

I thought of Mike, sick unto death with cancer, remembering that wondrous voice, heeding its call, taking up the cello and reconnecting his damaged body and pain-ravaged soul to his Creator.

There is a prayer of “sighs too deep for words,” Paul said, “and God who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Rom 8:26b-27). I know my own seasons of distress and grief, I have played the piano alone in the darkness at midnight as a prayer and the Lord has used the chords and the familiar paths of melody to restore my soul and comfort my troubled spirit.

Only God and Mike shared the prayer in the bass clef, but when I left my path to chase a stray song I stumbled across the sacred echoes of their communion. I was humbled to a quiet, thankful reverence by glimpsing “the hope [that] does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom 5:5).

That hope has an unbreakable tensile strength that we can cling to without fear of failure because, through all the struggles, tears, fears, disappointments, afflictions and frictions of life in a jaded and broken world, the very thought and sound of God’s love ringing in the long forgotten places of our hearts announce his true intentions for us. Listen . . .

My beloved speaks and says to me:

“Arise, my love, my fair one,

and come away;

For now the winter is past,

the rain is over and gone.

The flowers appear on the earth;

the time of singing has come,

and the voice of the turtle dove

is heard in our land.

Song 1:11-12

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

When it comes to leadership, it is worthwhile to consider the difference between power and authority. “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of Hosts” in counsel to Zerubbabel, the Governor of Judah, about the difficult task of rebuilding the temple (Zech 4:6). The Holy Spirit carries with it the authority of God for conviction and inspiration. “We love because he first loved us” is a succinct summation of this point.

Power, on the other hand, carries with it the inherent stigma of coercion and distrust. The use of power says a leader must compel others to do what he or she cannot persuade or trust them to do.

The difference is summarized nicely I think in this quote from a 1999 address from the then National Security Adviser to the President of the United States:

There is a difference between power and authority. Power is the ability to compel by force and sanctions; there are times we must use it, but as a final, not a first resort. Authority is the ability to lead, and we depend on it for virtually everything we try to achieve. Our authority is built on very different qualities than our power: on the attractiveness of our values, on the force of example, the credibility of our commitments and our willingness to work with and stand by others (Samuel L. Berger, National Security Adviser to the President, Speech, November 4, 1999).

When the High Priest Caiaphas said to the Sanhedrin about Jesus, “It is better for one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed” (Jn 11:50), he was appealing to power, not exhibiting authority. Caiaphas’ comment and its implementation illustrate that when the preservation of bricks and mortar and image and influence become more important than the cost to flesh and blood, leadership has been corrupted from stewardship of souls to ownership of them in competition with the God who alone gives life.

When the door permitting light and movement toward God and grace is slammed shut on the musty, windowless, lifeless room walled by tradition, brittle commitments of the past and self-preservation, then leadership is nothing more than a cheap and hollow substitute of power for the authority of love.

An obscure and disgraceful episode in the life of David demonstrates the essential difference between authority and power.

The unlikely protagonist of the story was named Rizpah. She was a concubine of King Saul to whom she bore two sons. Saul died in battle with the Philistines and his weak son Ish-Bothshesh came to rule eleven of the tribes of Israel. Saul’s nemesis, and God’s chosen king, David ruled Judah to the south.

The strong man of the kingdom was Saul’s general, Abner. As Ish-Bothshesh was weak, Abner gained in strength in the royal household. To show himself as the heir to Saul’s power, he began an affair with Rizpah who had no power to protest. Ish-Bothshesh objected. “Why are you sleeping with my father’s concubine?” he asked Abner. (2 Sam. 3:7).

Abner responded with a self-righteous, angry tirade about his faithfulness to the memory and legacy of Saul. He ended by telling Ish-Bothshesh that “Just because you accuse me of an offense against this woman, I’ll show you. I’ll turn over everything left of Saul’s kingdom to David. (2 Sam. 3:8-11).

Great treachery followed. Abner attempted to make good on his threat by going to David and turning over the kingdom, but after their meeting, Joab, David’s jealous thug of a general, assassinated Abner.

Ish-Bothshesh suffered a fearful paralysis of nerve and spirit when he heard that Abner was dead. Ish-Bothshesh, in turn, was assassinated in bed by two of his subjects thinking to curry favor with David. Violence and war followed until David conquered the whole kingdom and established Jerusalem as his capitol. He then went to work through a combination of military strength and political dealing to consolidate his power.

Nothing more was heard of Rizpah for several years, that is until. . . .

A three year famine afflicted Israel. David asked God what caused it. God replied, “There is blood guilt on Saul and on his house, because he put the Gibeonites to death” (2 Sam. 21:1).

The Gibeonites were a remnant of the Amorites, a people that Israel had sworn to protect when they entered the land of Canaan. Saul broke that promise when he tried to exterminate the Gibeonites in an attempt to purify Israel. God expects his people to honor their word even when the result seems less than God would want (Psalm 15:4).  Saul’s attempt at ethnic cleansing  led to disaster for the Gibeonites through bloodshed and the Israelites through starvation.

David did not wait for God to give him instruction on how to solve the problem. He went to the Gibeonites and asked them what could make up for the harm done them. They told him “You couldn’t pay us enough money to make up for this and we don’t want to kill Israelites.”

David asked them, “What do you want me to do for you?”

“This is between us and Saul because he tried to destroy us. Hand over seven of his sons and we will impale them on poles on the mountain.”

David had made a promise to protect the children of Saul’s son Jonathan, so David spared Jonathan’s son Mephibosheth. He took instead five sons of Saul’s daughter Merab and Rizpah’s two sons by Saul. He handed them over to the Gibeonites who impaled them on the first day of the harvest so looking up from the fields they could see the corpses and know that Gibeah was avenged.

Rizpah took sackcloth and spread it out on a rock beside the poles. Throughout the harvest and into the winter rains she kept vigil there, day and night, shooing away the vultures and wild animals that came to feed on the corpses of her sons and their nephews. It must have been horrific for her.

We have seen scenes like this in the television pictures from places like Kosovo, Bosnia, Sudan and Iraq. A woman, deprived of home and love by the intrigues and power games of arrogant and violent men, confronts the death by torture of her children who are innocent of any crime except being born into families burning with ancient prejudices.

Where is the grace in this? Rizpah is the grace. She did the only thing she could do and it was everything. No mother ever gave birth that her children could suffer this fate. And when, in spite of Mother’s love and royal birth, evil ravaged them anyway, she kept them precious in memory and honored in rest by refusing to let the indignity visited upon them in life follow them into death. She had committed to bring them into the world and she would stay with them through hell itself as their life ended and beyond.

Rizpah’s path took her from a position of privileged mistress of wealthy and powerful men through the disruption of war and political deal-making  to the Palestinian mountainside where her sacrificial love transformed this squalid story into a testament of the Gospel. It brings her sons to life in our memory nearly 3,000 years later. Her’s was a pure act of grace; a gift of herself for no purpose but love.

God did not tell David to practice human sacrifice to end the famine. David exercised his power to “cut a deal” with the Gibeonites, but to no good result. His political act did not end the famine. It simply stained his kingdom and his legacy with the blood of innocents.

Rizpah’s vigil rebuked David. Word of her love, transcending famine, politics, horror and fear, shamed David to action. He had the bodies of the boys cut down and gathered up the bones of the rest of Saul’s family and gave them a state burial. Grace triumphed over disgrace. The authentic authority of love proved stronger than political power and death. It was only then, when love, not power, had its way that God ended the famine in Israel (2 Sam 21:14).

This story reveals the difference between power and authority. Abraham Lincoln said that the true test of a man is not how he handles adversity but what he does when given power. David, given power, went to God to discern the problem but he went to his own strength for the answer.

David had the power to take five children and two grandchildren of his defeated predecessor and sacrifice them for a political solution to a spiritual problem. But those five boys were the sons of mothers. They were flesh and blood. In the raw exercise of power, whether in war or peace, flesh and blood become commodities for the schemes of the powerful. “Might does not make right” is a concept we learn in childhood but too easily forget as adults.

I am in my thirtieth year as an attorney and administrator. I am privileged to represent religious organizations, educational institutions and hospitals. These are nonprofit organizations intended for helpful solutions to the basic needs of humankind. Even in such places with spiritual missions and altruistic ideals. one given authority to lead must deal with the temptation of power.

Eugene Peterson wrote: “Because leadership is necessarily an exercise of authority, it easily shifts into an exercise of power. But the minute it does that, it begins to inflict damage on the leader and the led” (Introduction to 2 Corinthians, The Message).  This what happened to David. It is tempting to a leader to do something just because he or she can do it. Doing something usually turns out to mean doing something to someone.

When we use someone else to make our point we exercise power. When we convince someone to agree with our point we exercise authority. The authentic difference is found in love and the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Henri Nouwen addressed the difference between the coercion of power and the authority of love in a passage that has fundamentally changed my thinking about my own leadership:

What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life. Jesus asks, “Do you love me?” We ask, “Can we sit at your right hand and your left hand in your Kingdom?” (Matthew 20:21). Ever since the snake said, “The day you eat of this tree your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil (Genesis 3:5), we have been tempted to replace love with power. Jesus lived that temptation in the most agonizing way from the desert to the cross. The long painful history of the Church is the history of people ever and again tempted to choose power over love, control over the cross, being a leader over being led. Those who resisted this temptation to the end and thereby give us hope are the true saints.

.

One thing is clear to me: the temptation of power is greatest when intimacy is a threat. Much Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead. Many Christian empire-builders have been people unable to give and receive love (In the Name of Jesus (Crossroad: New York, 1989) p. 59-60.

About a thousand years after Rizpah’s stand for love against power, another Son was nailed to a cross on a Palestinian hillside by power brokers. The night before Jesus died it was observed that “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (Jn 13:1). He stooped and washed the feet of his disciples including those who before the next morning would betray him for power and flee from him for fear of power. But Jesus chose the authority of love over power.

When he finished washing and drying their feet he asked, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord–and you are right , for that is what I am. So if I, your teacher have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you” (Jn. 13:12-15).

Rizpah did not live and Jesus did not die in vain. Their stories call us to live and love under the faithful authority of Jesus Christ by His grace alone.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

It is an odd place for a California business lawyer–a conference center in the Smoky Mountains, teaching a seminar called “Your Relationship with Christ” and giving talks at night to a group of young adults on gospel themes.

After I finish speaking most nights, Patricia and I change our clothes and shoes and walk around the lake on the grounds. The path is paved and well-tended.

Lightning flashes off to the south and east beyond the Blue Ridge in the general direction of South Carolina. Rain spatters us here and there.

The darkness cloaks the young couples slipping by us, the girls trailing perfume into the warm, humid air.

There is something about camp meeting for 16-19 year-olds, give or take a year, that mixes the fervent preaching, stirring gospel songs, the freedom of being away from home and routines, hot sun and balmy nights, and the presence of interesting members of the opposite sex into an intoxicating emotional brew. The cynical world would call it “infatuation,” but these sweet innocents call it “having fun” or “getting serious” depending on their particular personality and frame of mind.

It was so for Patricia in Arizona and for me in Central California on camp meeting nights many summers ago, and for our parents before us.

From the shadows of the gazebos and benches along the shore, we can hear murmuring of hopes, fears, likes, dislikes, and endearments. One them, most likely the girl, is no doubt frequently checking a luminescent watch dial so as to comply with parental curfews back at the cabins.

The setting of the time is not hard to imagine. “Mom, we are going to walk around the lake after the meeting to get some exercise.”

“Well, OK, but you be back here and your “good nights” said, by eleven o’clock sharp!”

“OK. I promise.”

One night, Patricia forgets her flashlight. “Do you want me to go back and get it?” I ask twice, knowing that she has problems with her peripheral vision in the dark.

“No,” she says. “I think I’ll be OK.”

But she’s not. The shadows are erratic and make it hard to pick out uneven places in the path. There are blinding headlights from the adjacent road. It is a slow, tentative effort that takes us around. My own eyes are adjusting to my first pair of prescription glasses.

At times, Patricia can follow the gleaming whiteness of my untanned, bare lawyer’s legs as I walk ahead of her, limping on an arthritic knee, leaning on a walking stick for relief.

On the far side of the lake, where the woods crowd the shore and the lighting is sparse, we hold hands and match steps — fiercely independent, both of us — more used to walking alone than together, but in need of the light of companionship in the darkness. Together, we make it around without incident.

Forty years ago, it could have been us out there, slipping into the night like it was day on strong, tanned legs, knowing exactly where we were going together and why. We didn’t know that the path might get darker, not lighter. We hadn’t a thought that our knees might be fickle and our bright eyes might not see through the shadows.

God asks, “Do two walk together unless they have agreed to do so?” (Am 3:3). Thirty-four years ago, Patricia and I stood before witnesses and pledged so easily “to have and to hold each other in sickness and in health, for better and for worse.” Now, stumbling along in darkness deeper than we had imagined back then, the pledge has come due and it proves good in our hearts and on the path.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps 34:8)

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

For several days and nights, I’ve preached the Gospel to teenagers, thirty-somethings, and those who have paid the dues of time and life and have the white hair to prove it. I’ve poured out my heart to them about grace–receiving grace and living grace, praying grace and forgiving grace, grace for the prodigal and grace for the elder brother, grace everywhere for everything–and salvation that comes with grace as a package deal.

The result has been uneven like planting a garden and having the carrots all bunched up at the end of the row and nothing at the other and the corn stalks growing up into a gap-toothed grin.

On Thursday afternoon, I speak about making room in one’s heart and life for Christ and how the prayers and loving diligence of parents and teachers can build that room to be filled for eternity with the love of the Father revealed to us in Christ.

I tell of my own Dad living out that love with generous heart and spirit. Dad bought me a Bible and hymnal set at camp meeting when I was twelve and taught me to love the Word and the hymns of faith as practical guides to living. I share with the group Dad’s loving acceptance of his children who were always welcomed home no matter where we had been or what we had done.

“This,” I say, “gave me a glimpse of the love of our heavenly Father and built a room in the hearts of my brothers, sister and I where Christ lives and where we still return, again and again, to find life and hope and healing. That room built in prayer, kindness, and family worship is the greatest gift a dad and mom can give their children.”

The people who come up to talk to me afterwards thank me for being “real.” One old man in a yellow coat and a straw fedora to match his ivory goatee approaches me with stern eyes and trembling body. “I hope that you are grateful for what you have,” he says with fire in his voice.

“Excuse me, sir.”

“I hope that you are grateful for what you talked about . . . what your Dad did for you.”

“I am very grateful, sir.  Everything that I told you starts from my father’s love pointing me to Jesus. . . .”

He does not let me finish. “Because my father never gave me any of that.” He pauses, obviously fighting for control.

“He was illiterate and could never hold a job for the shame of what the other men would say about him. He never told me he loved me. He never gave me advice or tenderness like you talked about. Nothing! Nothing! I never even had a Bible until I was 24-years old.” His voices rises in an anguished sob and he turns away from me for a moment.

I can see that the old man trembles because my talk of father-love has awakened emotions long since buried in his soul. He is fighting hard for control of something that is eating him away from the inside.

Now, as the late afternoon thunder rolls across the mountains and the west wind spatters rain on the windows of the conference center, he turns back with me and squares off his stance in front of me. His voice is hard as he snaps the words, “You need to be grateful, that’s all!”

The old man is rigid and fierce before me, even if moved, unmoving. He has kept the hole in his heart covered for a long time. Somehow my words have cleared away the brush and pulled the tarp back and there is the hole. He sees it now with nothing to be said for it except, “There it is!”

All my carefully crafted words of the past hour about the love of the Father are a drop in the bucket of the old man’s need that threatens to pull me in. The other people waiting to talk stand back a respectful distance from the charged electric field between the old man and me.

“Sir,” I say softly, “God is the Father that no one has ever had–not you and not me. The best of parents are only human and come up short, but our Father in heaven loves us and doesn’t quit loving us. I believe this and you need to know this in here.” I tap my finger over my heart for emphasis.

Even as the words come out of my mouth, I think, “This is preacher-talk and he knows that I am no preacher.” I doubt that my trickle of words will soak into the drought-hardened soil of the old man’s heart.

But yet, here he is in front of me responding to the message of the Father’s love with a ferocious demand that it be true. The message has come late, maybe  for the last time, so it simply has to be true.

There comes a whisper in my heart of a Scripture, but with a new understanding: “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mk 9:24). That was the cry of an anguished father for his child. It is Christ who answered it then. It is Christ who will answer it now when the anguished child cries out for the Father.

The word I have delivered has exposed the wound, but it is Christ who will tenderly heal it. There is something sacred happening here and my fingerprints should not mar it.

The old man stares at me for another long moment with eyes full of remembered pain and regret. Then he turns away and so do I to greet the next person in line.

All I know is that the old man is there in the third row on Friday afternoon. I see him smile when I speak of forgiveness. I do not hold back in speaking of the power of Christ to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves in prying loose the grip of the past from our souls. May the good Lord, as he knows and as he wills, have healing mercy on the pieces of the old man’s broken heart that still rattle around in my mind and prayer.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

This is the eighteenth and last message in a series on Jesus’ encounter with the woman at Jacob’s well recorded in John 4.

This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know his testimony is true (Jn 21:24).

It is the scholarly consensus that John wrote his Gospel about 60 years after Jesus’ death. The passage of time is helpful to a writer because it brings perspective on what is really important out of past circumstances.

John apparently had two primary concerns that he wanted to address: He wanted to engender faith in the person of Jesus and he wanted to discredit the religious authorities who denied Jesus’ acceptance as the Messiah.

He has many stories to choose from his years at Jesus’ side. At the end of the book, John writes: “There are also many things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (Jn 21:25).

So why does John choose to describe Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well during a rest stop in a “back water” town?  He devotes 42 verses to telling the story in a detail that would have been described after-the-fact by Jesus and the woman since there were no apparent eye-witnesses to the story? Why does this encounter stick with John for 60 years as one of the most important things that he’s witnessed in his time with Jesus? I have pondered this question for a long time.

Obviously the conversation says something that John considers important to his theme of faith in Jesus as the Savior of the world who gives power to become children of God to men and woman who believe in his name (Jn 1:12).

Here is a woman on the margin of society, a member of an ostracized ethnic and religious minority, despised in spiritual matters because of her gender, and apparently shunned by her own strictly traditional people as an adulteress. Jesus, with apparently every reason not to do so, talks with her and leads her to faith in him, restores her relationship with her neighbors and, through her, brings her whole village to belief in him as the Messiah. This all happened despite the prevailing prejudice that “Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans” (Jn 4:9).

We are too superficial in our reading of this story if we think only of the effect on the woman and the villagers of their encounter with Jesus. We have to consider the effect on John who writes the story.

John was no doubt one of those who came upon the conversation and were bemused that Jesus was speaking with a woman. The silent questions, “What do you want?” or “Why are you speaking with her?” are likely in his mind since he describes them (Jn 4:27). It sets him to thinking and John needs to think about who Jesus is and what he is about.

John has connections to the most privileged religious class of Israel (Jn 18:15).  Yet, John and his brother James have such a volatile temperament that Jesus gives them the nickname “Sons of Thunder” (Mk 3:17)

That nickname proves most apt when James and John come upon a Samaritan village that refuses to receive Jesus because he is headed toward Jerusalem. The Samaritans have no hospitality to offer Jews going to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover (Lk 9:51-53). James and John want to call in a divine air strike and obliterate the entire village (Lk 9:54). Old prejudices die hard, but Jesus has no time for them. He rebukes the agitated brothers and moves on (Lk 9:55-56).

Even when Jesus pours out his heart to them about his impending betrayal and execution, James and John are locked in arguments with the other disciples over who is the greatest among them (Mk 9:30-34). Jesus has to call them back to the humility of service and childlike faith that he is seeking (Mk 35-37).

The brothers, however, ignore Jesus’ repeated descriptions of his unjust and painful death to come, and concentrate on their ambitious conniving. They try to box Jesus into giving them the most honored places in his kingdom. This provokes yet another angry argument with the other disciples (Mk 10:32-45).

James’ and John’s request indicates that they have completely misunderstood Jesus’ mission and refuse to hear what he has repeatedly told them about his manner of dying. It has to be heartbreaking for Jesus to know his closest associates would rather fight than surrender to him and his way of love.

But love is Jesus’ way, in fact his very nature (1 Jn 4:19). Love, the kind that lasts for eternity, is typically not an “at-first-sight” kind of thing. It has to soak in over time and over our aspirations, expectations and best intentions.

John was mending nets on the deck of the family fishing boat on the day Jesus called him (Mk 1:19-20). He was astounded at Jesus teaching, for “he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (Mk 1:22). But what is that authority?

Matthew sees Jesus as the long awaited king of prophecy and the successor to David. Mark sees him as a prophet and martyr-messiah preaching and practicing action for spiritual renewal. Luke sees Jesus as God’s Son, the savior of humanity, who brings the kingdom of God to the ordinary lives of people.

The other gospels are written and in circulation before John sits down to write his. He has the benefit of a life-time of experience in putting the teachings of Jesus into practice as an evangelist and pastor. Those teachings are the distillation of truth to John. He writes to one of his churches in Asia Minor, “Everyone who does not abide in the teaching of Christ, but goes beyond it, does not have God; whoever abides in the teaching has both Father and Son” (2 Jn 9).

John must have reflected on what had led him from the deck of his fishing boat on Galilee to shepherd six congregations along the coast of the Aegean Sea. It was the reality of Jesus that moved him. “The Word became flesh and lived among us” (Jn 1:14). Jesus manifested God in common things–bread, water, light, life, word, shepherd, door, way.

John watched and listened to Jesus salvage the joy of a wedding celebration (Jn 2), help a leader of the Jewish nation understand God’s plan of salvation (Jn 3), transform a Samaritan woman and her town in a simple conversation (Jn 4), heal a hopeless cripple (Jn 5); feed a crowd of 5,000 plus with a boy’s sack lunch then describe himself as the Bread of Life (Jn 6), walk across the water to tell tired and struggling fisherman not to be afraid (Jn 6), extend an invitation to the thirsty to come to him and drink the living water of his grace (Jn 7), face down a crowd of rock-throwing vigilantes intent on killing a woman for her sins (Jn 8), heal the eyes of a blind man with his saliva and mud (Jn 9), use the principles of sheep herding to describe his ministry (Jn 10), bring his dead friend back to life (Jn 11), strip down and wash his disciples’ dirty, scuffed feet (Jn 13), take great care to explain his mission and encourage his disciples who were challenged to understand why events were unfolding as they were (Jn 14-15), reveal the ministry of the Holy Spirit to keep them connected with God after he left them (Jn 16), pray for his disciples to be one with his Father and him (Jn 17), endure a sham trial and torture with calm poise (Jn 18), be crucified on a Roman cross with his last expressed thought for John to take care of his mother, Mary (Jn 19), rise from the grave to comfort and instruct (Jn 20), and call the distraught disciples back to their place with him with a breakfast on the beach (Jn 21).

John concludes that love is the common element in these incidents and stories. He realizes that the authority of Jesus is love (Jn 15:9, 17:23). Jesus knew that he had come from the Father and was going back to him and also knew that he would be betrayed from within his inner circle. Yet, John marvels, “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (Jn 13:1).

On the night that John comes to understand that love he reclines back against Jesus and may even feel his heartbeat. From that night on he refers to himself as “the disciple that Jesus loved” (Jn 13:23, Jn 19:26, Jn 21:7, 20). He goes on to write that “Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love” (1 Jn 14:7-8).

Who knew that the Son of Thunder, a man quick to take offense and to argue for his prerogatives, the would-be destroyer of Samaritan villages in defense of Jesus, would become a lover and a follower of Christ renowned for his gentleness? But that is what John becomes–the beloved of Jesus. Part of the becoming was watching Jesus tear down walls that afternoon at the well to set a child of God free. Water flows and love thrives in freedom.

Along the way, John stops thinking of God as the great, big “No-Trespassing” sign of Temple-centered, hereditary, “go-through-the-motions” religion and realizes him as “a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14). “No one has ever seen God,” John writes. “It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known (Jn 3:18).

John writes the story of the woman at the well to show that Jesus is not put off by who we are or what we have done. He is waiting to reveal the Father’s heart to her when she walks up for some well water. He gives her the Living Water because she says that she wants it. Her own heart is so full and satisfied that she doesn’t even take the water jar with her when she returns to the village.

John comes to know the same fullness by watching Jesus work with people like the woman.  He writes, “From his [Jesus] fullness we have all received, grace upon grace” (Jn 1:16).

And you, what do you want? What is it that you thirst for as you walk through your daily routines? Why does that jar that you carry with you never seem to hold enough?

Jesus says, “Those who drink of the water that I will give will never be thirsty. The water that I give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (Jn 4:14).

“Sir, give me this water” is all you have to say with an honest heart to never thirst again (Jn 4:15).

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him.”

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

Dear Friends:

Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there 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 indeed the Savior of the world” (Jn 4:39-42).:

“I declare that I am personally acquainted with the facts in this statement. I declare these facts to be true of my personal knowledge under penalty of perjury.” These are the statements of a witness testifying by affidavit or what we call in California, a “declaration.”  Such a statement may be used in many legal proceedings.  I have prepared hundreds of these declarations in my career. The key to its effectiveness is the witness’s personal knowledge of the facts.

If a witness gives live testimony in court, he or she is subject to the same personal knowledge requirement. Testimony that depends on something that was said or done when the witness wasn’t present is objectionable on the ground of hearsay because it is no more reliable than gossip. An effective witness has personal knowledge of the facts and communicates them in a truthful manner.

Common sense often tells us when someone is telling the truth. We call it the “smell test.” A communication passes the smell test when the circumstances and knowledge coincide to make sense. Failing the smell test means the facts, as communicated, defy logic or experience and are inconsistent with other evidence.

The Apostle Paul watched victorious legions returning to Rome and found a smell test for Christian witness. The armies would parade their human captives through the streets along with animals and plunder from the exotic lands at the frontiers of the Roman Empire. Some of the captives were destined for life as household slaves. Some were going to die for sport in the Coliseum. Their faces reflected this life and death saga and the tension was palpable as they passed by the cheering citizens. Paul described it this way:

But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads in every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not peddlers of God’s word like so many; but in Christ we speak as persons of sincerity, as persons sent from God and standing in his presence (2 Cor. 2:14-17).

The woman’s witness to Jesus as the Christ is passing the smell test with the Samaritans.

The Samaritans are a religious people. The very name “Samaritan” derives from a Hebrew word for “keepers” referring to the law of Moses. The Samaritans claim to follow a more authentic version of the Torah followed by Israel prior to the Babylonian exile. They assert that the Jews returned from exile with amended and watered down religious practices. The rough equivalent in modern Christian terms would be that the Samaritans would claim to follow the King James Version of Scripture and practice “old time religion” while claiming that the Jews read the New International Version or even The Message and engaged in contemporary and worldly worship practices.

The Samaritan woman likely came to the well alone in the heat of the day to avoid the heat of the judgments of her pious neighbors about her past and current relationships. Now she returns to them in the early afternoon with a surprising message. “Come see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” (Jn 4:29). What she had hidden in shame, she now discloses without embarrassment and even names who caused this transformation in her attitude.

The honesty and wonder that accompany the experience of being in Jesus’ presence is infectious. People want to know who or what has made a difference that cannot be manufactured or manipulated. One blessed by such an encounter is a credible witness and attracts those who hear the testimony of Christ as nothing and no one else can. A living witness to the grace of Christ always carries more authority than an accurate but cold presentation of doctrine.

The Apostle Paul describes why this happens. “You show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts. Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor 3:3-6).

One has to witness something personally to be a true witness. The authenticity of Christian witness depends upon a personal experience with Jesus Christ. It requires a partaking of his life given to us and poured out as Living Water in ordinary places like the town well.

The Samaritans know the prophecies of the Christ (Jn 4:25-26), Now one of their own says that she may have met him and offers as proof an accountability for her sin and a change of heart that cannot be explained in any other way than the power of God which is called “grace.” Her testimony compels her neighbors to speak with Jesus for themselves and they come away from that conversation absolutely convinced that He is their Savior and Lord.

This openness of response and authenticity of witness did not make its way from a theory in my head to a reality in my heart through seventeen years of Christian education and an upbringing in a Christian home. It did not come alive for me in the first eleven years of service as an administrator and attorney for Christian institutions.

Like the woman at the well, the resources of my self proved inadequate to the challenges of my life. I had my own confrontation with Jesus in the middle of the day while on a business trip. He devastated me with the grace I had thought was for the other persons in the world who didn’t have my spiritual “advantages.

Those advantages proved to be elements of faith, but it took the personal application of the love of Christ to my needy, sinful soul to transform that faith from a “parts inventory” to a working model. Witness comes to life in the experiential encounter with Christ. The last words Jesus spoke on earth to his followers announced this principle: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in all Judea and Samaria, and to all the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Interestingly, Jesus had a heart for Samaria, the place he had just been passing through when he met the woman at the well and her neighbors. Part of the legacy of her conversion is this instruction to the new church.

When I returned to my office after my encounter with God, there were three active believers out of 26 employees, and I wasn’t one of them. I quietly and spontaneously began to tell others what happened to me. Some of them experienced the same reality and passed it on. Years went by and many co-workers and friends accepted Christ as their Savior and Lord or renewed a languishing relationship with him. The number grew through contacts in town and small groups and community formed.

Before this happened I thought Christianity was best transmitted from a pulpit or teacher’s desk. I was taught that it was important to learn “proof texts” from the Bible and tell them to non-believers wherever you found them. Best of all get these people in the door of the church or the evangelistic meeting to hear the “truth.”  Well, it does little good to possess answers to questions that aren’t being asked or try to reach people in places that they don’t normally go. The effort is so unnatural, awkward and downright painful that I, along with most of my “well-trained” Christian friends just avoided it. After all, isn’t that why we hire preachers–too take care of stuff like that?

The religious establishment, on the other hand, berates us to do more. Pass out gospel tracts, hold Bible studies with your neighbors and co-workers who you may have never shared a personal word with before now, show them that your lifestyle is really better than theirs by not smoking, drinking or running around with members of the opposite sex that do, put a bumper sticker on your car, give liberal offerings to evangelistic ministries–do something!!!  The whole thing is pitched as a slightly smarmy, personally intrusive, competitive enterprise labeled “soul-winning.” So in reaction we fall into a graceless, lifeless existence. Knowing that we can never do enough, we attempt nothing at all. We leave the whole thing to the professionals and do not attempt the same feats at home.

It doesn’t have to be this way. What changed all of this for me was a personal encounter with Christ on a warm October afternoon in 1989. I saw, I heard and was convicted of the ultimate truth of Jesus Christ. This reality dominated my waking and thinking. Everything was different. I could testify of my own personal knowledge of the fact of Christ. To my considerable shock, this mere testimony has persuasive power. Personal experience made me a witness. Persons of my acquaintance began to seek out Jesus on my “word of mouth” recommendation.

We all approach the equivalent of Jacob’s well every day. There is our workplace, the gym, and the stores and restaurants that we frequent. There are on-line email relationships and chat rooms. We don’t have to lead with “Jesus” in those places. We need to be led by Jesus into the quiet conversations of our relationships.

People are jaded by superficial relationships and alienated by the results of trust misplaced on to people and institutions who have proved unfaithful. If you have a genuine relationship with Christ–meaning you have frequent and pleasant conversations with him as your best friend, take delight in reading his letters and live by his Spirit–then you have something real to share with someone by demonstrating love without asking for anything in return and, when you are asked, by sharing where you find hope and encouragement (1 Peter 3:15-16, 4:7-11).

Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well isn’t just a nice story. Its power lies in the fact that Jesus takes an ordinary encounter, on an ordinary day, with an ordinary person and offers an extraordinary future and a hope to her in love. She then simply tells her story of who Jesus is and what he has done for her and her whole town comes to belief. Witness doesn’t have to be fancy and should never be complicated or angry. Our testimony of Christ should be straight talk among true friends.

Your witness has to be as authentic as requesting a drink of water on a hot day from whoever you meet that can give it to you and thanking them or by offering someone the same hospitality; by sharing the story of what Jesus has done in your heart and mind with someone who knows, really knows, that you care about him or her;  by truthfully telling where you find hope and encouragement when you are asked; and by living honestly and openly regardless of the circumstances. Anything more than that and you are probably making it up and your witness will fail for lack of credibility.

My hope in all of this is to spread some more grace around and encourage you to do the same. Our Father is rich in love, you know, and there is plenty to go around. We need to take this word to heart and spread the good news.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps. 34:8)

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

Dear Friends:

Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat of 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 the sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’I sent you out to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor” (Jn 4:31-38).

“There is a time for everything,” said Solomon (Ecc 3:1). For the disciples, it is time to eat.

They’re still missing the point of Jesus. He has just revealed himself to the woman as the Messiah, but they see him as no more than a teacher. . . “Rabbi,” they call him.

They offer friendly blandishments, “Eat something. You have to keep up your strength for the journey.”  People are always urging him to do something, “Save the wedding reception” (Jn 2:3-5); “Give us a sign” (Jn 5:30);  “Make a good showing in Jerusalem” (Jn 7:3-6); “Come home with your family and straighten yourself out” (Mk 3:20-21, 31-32).

His schedule isn’t our schedule for sure. “My hour is not yet come” he tells his mother at the wedding reception. “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here” he tells his brothers who are trying to goad him into a public display of his powers (Jn 7:6). He rebukes those who try to stop him from blessing children (Mk: 10:13-16). He stands still on the road to Jerusalem waiting for a blind beggar to catch up with him while the disciples urge him on (Lk 18:40). He stays two extra days along the Jordan rather than go to the side of his dying friend after he has learned of the illness (Jn 11:6).

The disciples are thinking that they are on a retreat from the stress of ministry in Jerusalem. Jacob’s well is just a rest stop on the road to Capernaum where they will unwind, do a little fishing, and make some plans. Whatever their work with him is leading up to will occur in the future. They think that it’s not only not the time for ministry, but it also isn’t the place and how could a Samaritan woman be worthy of Jesus’ time and attention? They clearly don’t want to think about it, so they say, “Let’s eat.”

Something is energizing Jesus and he doesn’t hide it from them. “I have food that you know nothing about.”

They grope through the dark tunnel of literalism. “Surely no one else has brought him something to eat.”

He makes it plain. “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work.” He isn’t here to line up with our interests. He’s here to line us up with his interests. That’s what it means to be a disciple.

He tells them, “You think that you have work to do and time to do it. Four months from now everything will be ready and you’ll reap the harvest. But I’m telling you the time is right now.

“Look around you,” the grain is ripe and ready to be cut. Quit thinking that you can only harvest what you’ve planted and watered.This is grace that I am talking about. The harvest isn’t dependent on your work. It depends on your willingness to take the opportunity that the Father gives you to introduce the souls that he’s prepared to him.”

This is a lightning bolt of a message in any age. We plan, we prepare, we work hard, and fix a time in the future when it will all come together. We do this personally, we do this professionally, and we do it institutionally. Somehow though the arteries carrying the fresh blood of the Gospel harden and our attention, individually and communally, turns from living to preserving.

This transition is very seductive. “We have to take care of ourselves and keep our strength up,” we say. “We have to eat before we work,” literally as well as figuratively. Then we get together and form an enterprise and say, “We must have a profit margin before we can have a mission.” But inevitably we come to focus more on building strength than expending it. The margin never seems quite large enough for the uncertainties of mission. So we turn to re-paving the parking lot rather than building launching pads, and establishing endowments rather than surrendering all.

We dream and fund-raise to build mega-barns (Lk 12:16-21). Meanwhile sparrows fall while we accumulate pennies (Mt 10:29-31), and the principal of the”the widow’s mite” (Lk 21:1-4) becomes no more than an illustration for offering appeals to other people.

Jesus is going to send the disciples out like lambs among wolves, with no equipment, and no advance planning, and only the peace of fellowship to be their guide. He will tell them, “Don’t be looking around for a better house, better meal, or a better class of people, but stay and bring them healing and the good news that the kingdom of God has shown up in their town and household” (Lk 3:6-11).

But now at the well, he’s telling them “lesson one” in spreading the Good News is to look up from your lunch, your Bible, your bank statement, your retirement plan and even your prayer and see who is around you because that is who needs a Savior now, not four years, or even four months from now.

If we don’t take that “look” to see who around us is ready for “harvest,” then we are no better than the scribes who knew Bethlehem was the place of Jesus’ birth, but made no effort to see for themselves, or the religious scholars who keep spiritual knowledge to themselves, but don’t act on it and keep others from acting on it (Mt 2:1-6; Lk 11:52).

There is an exposition of this in the Letter of James that challenges motivated, organized, “just-get-it-done” types to trust grace, not their good intentions and abilities.

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”­ yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for that person it is sin. (Js 4:13-17)

We are to do the right thing for God when it needs to be done instead of  planning out our future with the specificity of “this is what will happen and this is when it will happen.” Rather, we are to submit ourselves completely to God and do what he shows us needs to be done in the moment (Rom 12:1-2). This does not require strength and endurance so much as it requires the discipline of alertness. As Solomon noted, “Again I saw under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor riches to the intelligent, but time, and chance happen to them all. For man does not know his time” (Ecc. 9:11-12).

Too many of us spend our time and efforts trying to figure out the specifics of the future and our place in it instead of submitting all things to God and living for him in every moment of our lives. So we are fearful and tentative because of what we don’t know much of the time.

Jesus’ original and unadorned teaching turns us to a different truth that should cause us to look around ourselves and look for opportunities for God everyday in the people who he puts into our lives. “I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, or what you will drink, nor about your body, what will you put on . . . your heavenly Father knows you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will have trouble enough on its own. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Mt 6:25, 32b-34).

The day may be hot, our throats dry, our feet tired and sore, and the people we’re seeing along out path are neither who we expect or want to see in our human frailty and limited perspectives, but our heavenly Father has other plans and no “write-offs.” Jesus is driving the point home to his disciples that we are only indulging out pride, if our following of Christ is conditioned on expectations of future service and success.

There are no perfect days on earth, or even ideal moments, and the Lord knows that there are no perfect people. What matters is the immediacy of his power and presence in the hearts and actions of surrendered men and women who reach out to give Jesus’ love and hope to those who do not know him or have forgotten.

The entire power of the Gospel is embraced in this statement of Jesus: “Your Father is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Lk 6:35. Cf Mc 6:8). By its very terms, that statement requires us to look around and do what we can now. Four months from now who knows where we will be, but right now someone needs to know the grace and truth of Jesus so tell them in actions and words if necessary. Another lesson from the well.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

Dear Friends:

Then the woman left her water jar and went back into the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything that I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he? Then they left the city and were on their way to him. (Jn 4:28-30).

“Everything” is known about her and precisely because it has been brought out in the noonday light, it has lost its dark, oppressive grip on her soul. Nothing seems the same. It is as if she has awakened from a coma.

Job emerged from the fog of suffering, doubt and self-absorption and said to God, “Wow! I had heard of you with head knowledge, but now I see you in my heart and it devastates me with a desire for your difference” (Job 42:3-6, my paraphrase). She feels like that.

“This Living Water is great stuff!” She leaves her old water jar behind when she leaves for the city. It had brought her to Jesus, but now she didn’t need it. When you possess the spring, you don’t need the canteen.

“What is this strange feeling, exactly? It’s joy. . . incredible!” She has to tell someone. That is her sudden, overwhelming urge .

The townspeople, especially the women, have held her past against her. This shame has defined her life right down to her everyday trudge out to the well alone

No more! Forget all that now! The locals wouldn’t speak to her and shunned her with silence. But now she talks to them with a surprising message, “I’ve met a man who told me everything about me like he’s known me all my life–EVERYTHING! Could he be the Messiah?”

In our day, someone who has been overwhelmed by grace and kindness in the face of great shame might ask, “Could this be Jesus?”

Indeed, he fills your heart until you want to leave the old buckets and bottles behind to run ahead. A changed and open heart is the wellspring of new life shared together (compare 2 Cor 6:11). You, who were so fixed on just getting yourself by, now want to share this blessing with others so they can experience the joy too.

What makes the Living Water “live” is the Spirit of God blowing across it as on the first day of Creation (Gen 1:2; Jn 3:5-8). Thirsty people come for the drink and are swept away together by the tsunami of grace.

“He has told me everything that I’ve done.” The bared soul is an absolute essential in a life with God. If we cling to our secrets and maintain our pride, he cannot cleanse and fill us. David prayed in repentance,”You desire truth in the inward being. . . Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. . . The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Ps. 51:6-7, 17). Cleansing is the first step in the new life with Christ.

Confession keeps the community of believers real, accountable and healthy. “Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed” (Js 5:8). This blessing has been obscured to this age along with the sense of sin that compels the confession. It has been hidden behind a haze of humanistic teachings and pop-psychology fads ranging from existentialism to the self-esteem movement, excusing sin as mental illness or addiction or the product of genetic and environmental determinism of evolution. These alternatives deceptively contend that we are excused rather than pardoned. They deny human freedom of choice.

Without choice there is no confession. Without confession there is no forgiveness. Without forgiveness there is no freedom before God and others. The First Letter of John tells us succinctly that there is no other way to salvation and the community of faith except entry through our honest confession of sin into the light of Christ.

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true, but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us (1 Jn 1:5-10)

One of the words used by Scripture and believers for the gospel is “The Truth.” Introducing someone to Jesus as the promised Messiah is referred to as “Bringing her to the Truth.” Jesus knew what she had done in the past. The townsfolk knew a lot about what she had done. Now, with joy and without sad defensiveness, she acknowledges the truth with her own lips and gives credit to Jesus for making an honest woman out of her. The authenticity of her testimony compels them to want to meet Jesus for themselves.

That’s the way it is in my experience. It’s been a blessing for me to lead a number of men and women to meet and receive Christ as their Savior and Lord and it has been authentic, unpretentious testimony of who Christ is and what he has done for me that has made the connection.

When I have tried to reach people with formulas, principles and doctrines, I have been answering questions that they aren’t asking. It was like trying to sell fur parkas to residents of Tahiti. They weren’t buying it.

When I have said, “This is who I am, warts and all, this is what I have done, but this is the difference that Jesus Christ has made in me and for me, they often say, “Tell me more. How can I know him too.”

The woman leaves the water jar behind when she goes to share Jesus because she has become the vessel, nothing fancy, just the credibility of an experienced, flawed, grateful woman sharing the truth. That’s what the Apostle Paul is talking about when he writes to the Corinthian believers:

We have renounced the shameful things that one hides; we refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God’s word; but by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God . . .  For we do not proclaim ourselves, we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord . . .For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us (2 Cor 4:2,5-7).

You can look it up for yourselves, but Jesus usually faced arguments in the synagogue and at the temple. Generally, those encounters ended with plots or efforts to kill him. He won people’s hearts in fishing boats, hillsides, market places, living rooms, campfires, pig farms, city streets, dinner parties, tax collector’s offices, and here at the town well. In other words, he appeals to people in the everyday reality of their lives. He comes for those who need him, where they need him.

The week of his crucifixion,Jesus told the priests and the elders that the despised prostitutes and tax collectors would enter the kingdom of God before them because they believed they needed God, but the religious leaders believed that their position, knowledge and virtue were enough (Matt 21:28-32). His invitation is to all of us, but can only be accepted by the honest.

“Come to me all of you who are exhausted, stressed-out, hassled, insecure, working too hard and carrying loads beyond your strength, and I will give you rest. You will find the connection with me won’t jerk you around and walking in step with me won’t blister your feet. Learn from me that it is so much easier to live with me than without me because I will carry your load and you can lean on me all the way” (Matt 11:28-32, my paraphrase).

This story began with conflict and prejudice. Harsh judgments were the rule. Now ,In the village of Sychar, on this hot afternoon, the men and women, boys and girls, are excited to find out through the most unlikely of their citizens the truth. God loves them and comes to them personally, not in Jerusalem or on their own holy mountain, but right where they live. There is no greater or healing truth than that–for us too (Jn 3:16) Receive it for what it is. Receive him for who he is.

As I wrote this message a favorite song of mine ran through my mind. Here it is. I hope it speaks to you the essence of what I am writing about.

© MCMXCIII Penn Avenue Publishing / BMI Rory Knapton Music / BMI
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him (Ps 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

Dear Friends:

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?” (Jn 4:27).

This is a direct, in-depth conversation between Jesus and the woman. No one else’s fingerprints are on it. Jesus speaks to her with a directness that respects her dignity as a woman and a daughter of God. He knows all about her past, her failed relationships, struggles, loneliness, and “the put-downs” that she endures daily. He honors her intelligence by listening to her and responding with caring honesty.

This is the way that women and men hope it will be with Jesus–a real, intimate relationship in everyday life–not a power contest to dominate or be dominated in the name of virtue. Jesus brought ethical reform to a society and a religious culture that made divorce so easy and advantageous for feckless men that women and children were turned out into the streets in droves, suffering and powerless.

In every encounter with a woman, whether poor or wealthy, married or single, Jew or Gentile, Jesus broke with patriarchal tradition to give righteous respect. In the words of Dorothy Sayers, Jesus “treated women like human beings.”

Since, by Jesus’ own confession, “The Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing,” this respect for women originates with God the Father.

While the disciples were out running their errands, Jesus was sticking to his mission which is reconciling men and women to God. He makes no distinction between them in offering them full citizenship in his kingdom (Gal 3:28).

The disciples have followed Jesus seeking change through his teaching, but the thought that his teaching and the hoped for change might include women apparently has never occurred to them. This reduces them to speechless confusion. They can’t decide whether to ask the woman or Jesus what is going on. Writing sixty years after-the-fact, John keenly remembers the awkwardness of the moment.

I wish that the disciples had asked their questions on this hot noonday. Jesus would have had opportunity to address the great and wounding silence regarding the place and role of women that has afflicted Christendom for 2,000 years and denied the world half of the voice that could be publicly proclaiming the message of Christ.

Some might say that he could have read the disciples’ unspoken questions the way that he read the woman’s real thirst and he could have given a definitive answer on the role of women. But Jesus was answering their questions by speaking with the woman and listening to her with great care. He’s heard her out on issues ranging from the practical to the deeply spiritual and responded to her with gracious dignity.

Soon he will receive the people from the town of Sychar that she, a former social pariah transformed by his grace, will introduce him to as their Messiah. “Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony” (Jn 4:39a). There is only one other example in the Gospels of such powerful evangelistic witness following an encounter with Jesus (Luke 8:26-39).

Women have been influential in leading me to Christ and encouraging my walk with him. I am amazed, humbled and eternally grateful for the devotion of female spiritual guides, preachers and leaders who persist in their God-given gifts and Spirit-led ministries in the face of antagonism, abuse and stolid rejection.

The disciples are learning something new that is from God and of God in watching Jesus with the woman. They may have their questions but they have a choice to make between what they see Jesus doing and what they have believed all their lives. If there is some belief in our human hearts and minds that Jesus cannot soften and cannot change, then at best we are only devoted to our idea of him, and at worst we are entrenched in our strongholds of proud rebellion. Will we embrace Jesus’ example or attempt to explain it away?

Even as the boundaries and walls occupy the attention of those who would preserve and strengthen them and those who would eliminate them, we must remember that “Something greater than the temple is here” and he desires “mercy not sacrifice” (Matt 12:6-7).  Construct carefully and slowly or tear down as we may, it is Jesus who will stand and live when it is all said and done (Jn 2:20-22). Against all other competing voices, thoughts, preconceptions and demands, Jesus is the one to whom we must pay attention.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent