Today in the Spirit: Lent 3A
“It gives me great pleasure to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.” The scriptures, contrary to Albert Einstein, regard stubborn disobedience to the word of God as a non-conformity in which the Almighty takes no pleasure (though he forgives through Christ). As a group, the readings assigned for Lent 3 perhaps deliver the harshest messaging the church delivers anywhere in the liturgical cycle. The selections for Lent 3A launch a collective strike against the obstinacy of unbelief in the sinful human heart.
In the assigned Gospel reading from John 4:5-26(27-38)39-42, Jesus, while showing great empathy with the Samaritan woman, patiently works through impertinent religious objections she holds even in desperate personal circumstances. A turning point in the conversation comes at this point: “Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this [well] water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water’” (14-15).
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The assigned Old Testament reading in Exodus 17:1-7 narrates the Israelites’ complaint to Moses about the lack of water during their journey to Mount Sinai. YHWH provides water at the “rock of Horeb” (6), but Moses names the site Massah (“testing”) and Meribah (“quarreling”) “because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord by saying, ‘Is the Lord among us or not?’” (7).
The appointed Psalm 95 (also assigned at Christ the King Sunday A) is a song of praise to YHWH as Creator and King. In an exhortation to worshipers at the end, however, the psalmist uses the incident of Meribah and Massah described in the Exodus reading to illustrate how the people of God must put off stubbornness in their hearts against worshiping the God of Israel: “Today, if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness” (8).
Near the beginning of the assigned New Testament reading from Romans 1:16-32, Paul teaches, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (18). From there follows a litany of indecent acts sinful people commit in open rebellion against the revelation of God of Israel in the world: “Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them” (32).
The assigned Collect, beginning with a devotional line from Augustine’s Confessions, is a passionate plea to God, out of his compassionate nature, to recognize our “heartfelt desires” as his people and to purify “our disordered affections.” In our worship, we lay out the problem of our stubborn clinging to sin in prayer, even as we wait for scripture readings that highlight it.
The Collect
Heavenly Father, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you: Look with compassion upon the heartfelt desires of your servants, and purify our disordered affections, that we may behold your eternal glory in the face of Christ Jesus; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Massah and Meribah (Exodus 17:1-7)
All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of Sin by stages, according to the commandment of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. 2 Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” 3 But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” 4 So Moses cried to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” 5 And the Lord said to Moses, “Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6 Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.” And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. 7 And he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord by saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”
Exodus 17:1-7
This text marks the end of a larger narrative subsection in Exodus (15:22-17:7), highlighting three consecutive incidents in which the Israelites complain to Moses and YHWH during their journey from the Red Sea to Mount Sinai. In this third incident, the Israelites have arrived at a place near the holy mountain called Rephidim, which in Hebrew means “place of peace.” But in this place there is no peace, just more of the same: the people quarrel with Moses and challenge the good name of the Lord to the point where they are asking belligerently, “‘Is the LORD among us or not?’” (7).
At some point during Lent, most of us in our worship will work through the Great Litany (BCP, pp. 91-96). In that liturgy, we begin with petitions that God will “remember not” our offenses and “spare us” from the everlasting condemnation we deserve. One petition pleads for God’s mercy “from oppression, conspiracy, and rebellion; from violence, battle, and murder; and from dying suddenly and unprepared.” In Christ, we as a people of God have arrived on our journey to a new and better Rephidim, the place of peace: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (Jn. 14:27).
Today, with the Spirit’s help, we receive the names “Massah” (Heb. “testing”) and “Meribah” (Heb. “quarreling” as places located in our own hearts, and we cry out in response, “Good Lord, deliver us.”
Do Not Harden Your Hearts (Psalm 95)
1 O come, let us sing unto the Lord; *
Psalm 95, New Coverdale Psalter (BCP 2019)
let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation.
2 Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving *
and show ourselves glad in him with psalms.
3 For the Lord is a great God *
and a great King above all gods.
4 In his hand are all the depths of the earth, *
and the heights of the hills are his also.
5 The sea is his, for he made it, *
and his hands prepared the dry land.
6 O come, let us worship and fall down, *
and kneel before the Lord our Maker.
7 For he is our God, *
and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.
8 Today, if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts *
as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness,
9 When your fathers tested me, *
and put me to the proof, though they had seen my works.
10 Forty years long was I grieved with this generation and said, *
“It is a people that err in their hearts, for they have not known my ways,”
11 Of whom I swore in my wrath *
that they should not enter into my rest.
At first glance, the cutting edge of this psalm seems to be the dire warning near the end, which begins, “Today, if you hear his voice, harden not your hearts…” (9). But we must not pass too quickly over the passionate call to worship at the beginning: Note the repeated exhortations to physically gather (“come…come…come” 1,2,6); the demands that we participate wholeheartedly “sing unto the LORD” (1a) and “heartily rejoice” (1b, polite for “let us make a joyful noise,” ESV); and that we use our whole body “let us worship and fall down,” (6). There are no provisions for self-consciousness, no exceptions for temperament, no exemptions for preferences of style. Exuberance in worship is the biblical norm. The demand is to surrender to it; everything else falls under stubborn resistance, a grumbling in the wilderness.
Devotionally, as church-goers, we need to be careful not to overlook the call to raucous, joyous praise. Here is a question: Are you truly exhausted after worship? Worship in this psalm and many others requires every ounce of mental and even physical energy for as long as the service endures. And it is not only praise: By the time we have sung our hearts out, given careful consideration to the reading of Scripture and the preaching, focused carefully on the prayers and confessions of the body, and examined our hearts for the worthy reception of Holy Communion, there really can be nothing we are good for afterward but a good meal and a long nap. Is this your experience going to worship on Sunday?
C. H. Spurgeon uses nautical language most Britons of his day would recognize to preach on worship: “I hope the doctrine that Christians ought to be gloomy will soon be driven out of the universe. There are no people in the world who have such a right to be happy, nor have such cause to be joyful as the saints of the living God. All Christian duties should be done joyfully; but especially the work of praising the Lord…Never hang your flag at half-mast when you praise God; no, run up every colour, let every banner wave in the breeze, and let all the powers and passions of your spirit exult and rejoice in God your Saviour. They ‘rejoiced’. We are really most horribly afraid of being too happy.”
Today, in Lent, prompted by the Spirit to let fly our desire to worship the Father and the Son, let us put aside our thinly veiled stubbornness, making us unwilling to join in corporate praise to God with joyful abandon.
Against All Ungodliness (Romans 1:16-32)
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” 18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. 24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. 26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. 28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
Romans 1:16-32
It is important to observe the flow of this passage in context. Paul opens his letter to the Roman Christians, telling them how eager he is to see them and “preach the gospel” (1:11-15). He begins explaining that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the revelation of the way to righteousness with God through faith (16-17), and then, suddenly, he stops. “The righteousness of God is revealed” is only a teaser, and he will not pick up this train of thought again until 3:21. From 1:18-3:20, he will teach from the opposite starting point: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men” (18).
We might ask: why organize things like this? Why such a seemingly disjointed presentation? One devotional reason might be summarized this way: before we can ever grasp how good the good news about Christ is, we must face how bad the bad news about humanity is. This rule applies not only to this section of Romans, but to all of Scripture (OT bad news, NT good news), and to most methods we learn for making evangelistic presentations (bad news on sin, good news on salvation).
From our passage, the Jewish Christians in Rome may be led to think the “they” Paul is on about refers to Gentile pagans, but soon he will draw them in as well: “You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law” (2:23). And then the citation from Psalm 14: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God (3:10-11). The bad news is bad for all of us. We can only really ever accept the revelation of Christ in the world from a position of humility, hopelessness about our sinful condition.
Today, Holy Spirit, in this season of Lent, meditating in worship on this severe passage in Romans, help us to come to grips again with the depth of our sin that the good news of Jesus is for us, “the power of salvation to everyone who believes” (16).
Come, See A Man (John 4:5-26 (27-38) 39-42)
5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. 7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.” [27 Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” 28 So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” 30 They went out of the town and were coming to him. 31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. 36 Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”] 39 Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 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.”
Make no mistake: Our Lord is making as vicious an attack against misguided religious devotion here with the Samaritan woman as he does with any religious leader. It is stunning, given her circumstances, how proudly the woman presents herself as a Samaritan at the site of Jacob’s well. Jesus patiently parleys with her until she admits that she, too, is waiting for the Messiah—and it’s there, right there, in the narrative that Jesus has her right where he wants her. John reports that the woman says, “I know that Messiah is coming…When he comes, he will tell us all things” (25). What did she really mean by “tell us all things?” Jesus knows that the dear woman really wants not solutions to abstract theological questions but answers to her deeper, more intimate secrets that will change the trajectory of her life.
Beloved, our Lord desires that we get our thinking straight doctrinally, but what causes us to leave off what we are doing and tell others is the insertion of himself into our personal lives. Notice how John’s narrative repeats the woman’s claim that he “told me all I ever did” (29, 39). That is the message that brings many Samaritans out of their town. They do not really care much about her. “But maybe,” they thought, “he will speak into my life too.” Let us be ready with our personal testimonies to the love of Christ in our lives–healings, provisions, and resolutions to family crises. Spice them up with biblical promises you have memorized to fit each occasion. And always name the name of Jesus. “Come and meet this man, this Jesus, as he came to meet me and make my life different.”
Today, by the Spirit of Jesus who continues parlaying with us patiently until our faith is renewed, receive your life-giving word from Jesus and testify to others about him as often as you are given opportunity.
Today in the Spirit
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