Welcoming the Day (3rd Sunday of Lent -A)
How do you welcome the new day? What do you first think of? What’s the first thing you say? These things largely define how we will encounter the whole day.
Do you grab your phone and scroll for rage bait, juicy gossip, the weather, whether anyone liked what you shared yesterday, or off-color humor? Perhaps you’re more like Fred the Baker from the 80’s commercials, for whom every day is first and foremost about the day’s work: “time to make the donuts.”
Clergy are obligated to pray at least Morning and Evening of the Liturgy of the Hours every day, and all the people of God are encouraged to pray some of the Divine Office. Here’s how a cleric’s day begins, or should begin: by making the sign of the cross on our lips, and praying “Lord open my lips, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise,” then we pray the invitatory psalm, which is almost always today’s responsorial, Psalm 95.
When I’m on my A game, that prayer “Lord open my lips, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise” is the first thing that comes out of my lips. When I’m on my B game, they’re second and internal, right after “thank you love” to Karen as she hands me a coffee. If I’m not at least on my B game, encounters of the day are more difficult, and I am less able to recognize the presence of God all day.
I’ve recited, sung, and sometimes actually prayed Psalm 95 something like 5000 times. Sometimes I’ve thought about Meribah (testing) and Massah (strife), and not just mumbled my way through it. This is a very familiar story for having been repeated so often, but the Church invites us to pray it so often because it provides the correct answer for an important daily decision: do I welcome the day with praise, or with complaint and conflict, with testing God and strife with my neighbors, with meribah and massah?
The Children of Israel are always complaining. They’re always demanding that Moses do something new to prove to them that God is with them. Whatever they just got isn’t good enough, they’re always wanting more. They thirst for freedom, so God gives it to them. Once they’re free, they complain of hunger, so God sends manna. Today, they already forgot how God miraculously delivered them from Egypt, and are just sure they’re going to die of thirst and God must not be accompanying them, because when they arrived at the oasis of Rephidim, it was dry. It’s a bit melodramatic, but God makes water come from a rock. Pretty soon they will be tired of lembas bread, I mean manna pancakes, and wonder if they would have been better off staying in slavery, so God will send birds from the sea that they can kill and eat without any ritual.
The trend here is pretty obvious, isn’t it? God’s people are full of self-pity and entitlement, and they are constantly arguing among themselves. They play the same card every time: “Oh, woe, woe, if only we had <insert thing here> then we’d know that God is with us.” They test God, and they strive with each other.
The Children of Israel needs a new heart. They need a new spirit within them.
Thankfully, we’re not like that. We’re not seeking after a transactional relationship with God. We don’t demand God put up or shut up as if we were coin-operated mechanical goldfish who can’t remember the last time God fed us a nickle. We don’t complain and criticize. We don’t fight among ourselves. We’re truly transformed. We’re thankful. When our lips open, they praise God. …right?
If only that were more perfectly true. But, I do think that if we would pay attention to how we welcome our day and how we encounter God in prayer, we might find ourselves transformed. We might find ourselves truly converted to Christ, and aware of accompanying Christ throughout the day and the days of our lives.
Before my career went to heck in a handbasket, I mean before I was delivered from slavery to corporate America, I did a lot of thinking and reading about leadership. One of the things that stuck with me and actually matters in real life is the difference between transactional and transformational relationships.
A transactional relationship is all about getting what you’re due. Put in energy, get work. Invest, get a return. Give, and get back. Put in a quarter, get a gumball.
A transformational relationship is about inspiring and influencing individuals to think well and become more authentically the person God created them to be.
God desires to transform. The Children of Israel were not really interested in being transformed. They primarily wanted mutually agreeable transactions with God. They wanted “a God with benefits,” a relationship that is contractual, rather than covenantal. They didn’t really care what God desired, and perhaps little for God, only what they needed to do to earn God’s favor.
And what does God desire? Jesus tells us. “[T]he hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him.” Peter (2 Pt 3:9) and Paul (1 Tm 2:4) both write that God desires that all come to the truth and repent. St. Augustine says that confession is to speak the truth. We confess our sin, and we confess the goodness of God. The woman at the well did both. So should we.
In fulfilling the Father’s will, Jesus is as refreshed and satisfied by his encounter with the woman at the well as if he’s had a meal. Just as when he again said “I thirst” on the cross, and also about the 6th hour, his thirst was not only physical. St. Bede said “He thirsted.. to do the Father’s will in her and complete His work.”
As an aside, but important to remember, St. Bede the Venerable is important to English-speaking Christians. St. Bede wrote many English commentaries, and began the first translation of the Bible to the Old English vernacular with his translation of John’s gospel in 735AD. That’s 800 years before Coverdale finished the heretic priest Tyndale’s English Bible translation in 1535. From this, you can see, I think, that contrary to common thinking, it was not so much a common language Bible the Church opposed, but rather she was primarily opposed to heretics who provided translations full of subtle errors contrary to the faith. May God have mercy upon those led astray by false teachers, translators, and prophets, and send His Spirit to guide them to, and keep us in, the truth.
So Jesus thirsted, and was himself satisfied by a truly transformational encounter with the woman at the well. She went to the well at an off time. Likely, she was trying to avoid the morning crowds, possibly because she was not perceived as… entirely wholesome, since four men had dumped her already. Jesus didn’t do any miracles other than speak the truth, and inspire her to also seek the truth. He did an ordinary thing for the most part, stopping by the well for a drink after a long morning’s walk. But he encountered this woman. I mean he really encountered her, and then he accompanied her back to the town. This is something our Bishop would encourage us to emulate with his unofficial motto and repeated exhortation: welcome, accompany, encounter – this is the work of evangelism. Jesus welcomed and invited her to conversation, despite social obstacles. He saw her. He listened to and encountered her. She was transformed, as was her relationship with her neighbors, and Jesus did not go on his way, but accompanied them for a time.
But I noticed something new this time I read the story – what about the disciples?
They went into the same town, they bought food, and they left. They completed a transaction. These people who were so excited to hear from the woman about the messiah? They were almost certainly some of the same people the disciples saw in the marketplace. Perhaps the disciples bought food from someone who was hungering and thirsting for righteousness, eager for the coming Messiah.
But they came, they shopped, they left. They didn’t do anything wrong. They were serving Jesus by getting lunch. But, they didn’t really do anything especially right, either, did they?
Jesus was a spring of water overflowing. He welcomed, encountered, and accompanied. The disciples, well, not so much, at least not yet.
What about us?
Let’s consider how we welcome the day, our God, and our neighbor
Let’s allow our encounters with God and neighbor be transformative
Let’s recognize that we accompany Christ throughout the day, and are called to accompany others. It is Jesus and I who drive in traffic. It is Jesus and I who stop to help… or don’t. It is Jesus and I who watch what’s streaming.
