The Preciousness of Life

Tonight I sat in a little Italian restaurant in Saratoga Springs, NY thinking about life and death and the things that are most precious to us.

                I am truly convinced that the most precious gift we have in life is the gift of our families, of our loved ones and our friends.  God lets us view his love for us through the people who love us and whom we love.  Sometimes they aren’t the nicest, or happiest, or best people.  Sometimes they hurt us and sometimes we hurt them.  Sometimes we take them for granted and sometimes they take us for granted.  Sometimes we don’t realize the very special moments we have when we have them and sometimes we can treasure up those moments forever.

                Nowhere is this more true than when we lose someone close to us.  Nothing can replace a person when we can no longer look at them, no longer hold them, or touch them, or hear them, or be annoyed by them.  It is in those moments when we realize the magnitude of our loss and the enormity of our isolation.

                The beautiful things about people is that no one’s relationship is quite the same and no one can experience the same person in exactly the same way.  Think of a mother when she holds her baby the first time.  That baby is going to grow up, make friends, laugh, jump, play, get a job, drive a car and all sorts of wonderful things.  But the mother who is there moments after that baby came into the world has a unique experience of that person that nobody else can lay claim to.  When we think of the special people in our lives, what do we think of? Who do we think of?

                There are so many special memories I have.  I remember one day when I was a pastor, and it was raining and there was a loud crack of thunder and my oldest daughter leapt in my arms.  It was the first time I felt truly needed by my daughter.  I remember the way my other daughter laughs when she thinks she is being funny.  I remember the way my mom used to make pretend that Gingerbread cookies had voices and cried out in pain when we ate them (yes…that explains a great deal about me).  I remember my wedding day with all of the nervousness and excitement that was going on in those moments. 

                I wonder what people remember about me sometimes.  Do people just remember the way I irritated them or the funny things I do? Do people remember that I tried to sing and dance my way through the Pajama Game? Do people remember the times I loved them, the times I hated them? Do people remember my anger, my frustration, my nerdiness?

                As I write this, I am preparing to help a family say good bye to their son.   I never met their son and so I do not have any memories to share.  But I think about their loss and I cannot comprehend what it must be like to say good bye to a person you gave birth to.  Or a son that you nurtured and loved.  Do you think about their tiny feet and the way they smiled and laughed? Do you think about the way they broke the furniture or made you so mad that you didn’t know what to say or to do?

                Sartre was famous for saying that “hell is other people,” as if all you needed was contained within yourself and other people merely served to distract you from that.  I think just the opposite, I think that heaven is other people.  Because as we love and experience love, we can truly see the face of God. 

                Enjoy the people you are with, because you won’t have them forever.  Treasure each moment, each memory, each special time you have…this day and every day.

Are you Somebody?

Nuala O’Faolin recently wrote a book whose title, Are you Somebody?, says it all.  She takes it from a question she was asked one day.  In her account of her life, she attempts to answer the question…maybe not the answer the person who asked the question was looking for, but an answer nonetheless.

            Are you somebody?

            Isn’t that a question that we are asked…and we ask ourselves…a thousand times a day.  The question may be asked in terms of “are you somebody important?”  Or maybe the person wants to know, “are you somebody I know…or I should know.”  Perhaps underlying all of this is the unspoken assumption, “are you somebody I should care about?”

            Are you somebody?

            How would you answer that question about yourself?  Are YOU somebody?  Perhaps it might depend on what you meant by ‘somebody’.  I mean, aren’t we all somebody? We all have our own personality, our own interests, our own quirks and our own habits.  Maybe you might say, “well, I’m somebody to some people” I have a family that loves me…and if they don’t love me they at least acknowledge that I belong to them. But am I somebody important? Am I somebody valuable? Well now we are getting into dangerous waters indeed.

            Are you somebody?

            Our Gospel lesson today introduces us to somebody who might have been asking this very same question.  In John 4, we meet this unnamed ‘Samaritan Woman’ who epitomizes the question we have been asking.  And even though we don’t get to know much about this woman, we find out what it means to be somebody through her eyes.

            It seems like an ordinary day.  Jesus has been out preaching and he is thirsty and tired.  He sits by a well in a small town in Samaria while the disciples go off and do…disciple things.  As Jesus is sitting there, this woman comes up to him.

            This woman…this unnamed woman coming at the well at noon.  Not in the morning, when everybody else would come to the well.  At noon.  So she wouldn’t be noticed by other people.  So she could avoid the other women in the town.  So she could be alone.  As she comes to the well, Jesus begins to talk to her.

            Are you somebody? Ok…not the question he asks.  Rather he asks with the benign request for a drink of water. 

            She responds, “How is it you a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (4:9).  She responds, “Are you somebody?”  She is confused because it was a social custom that Jews and Samaritans would be kept separate from each other.[1]  Not only this, but this is a man asking something from a woman.  There is a high wall of social norms, laws and regulations that are being overcome and it understandably makes the woman uncomfortable. 

            The best part of this story comes with Jesus’ response to this.  If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, ‘give me a drink’… What a great statement.  Essentially Jesus is saying “Well I actually AM somebody…in fact I AM” but then goes on to bring the conversation back to her again.  “I could give you ‘living water’.” 

            The story then takes another turn when Jesus tells her to go get her husband and come back to talk to him.

            Then comes the truth.

            I have no husband.

            Jesus replies, “You are right in saying that you have no husband. In fact, you have had five husbands and the man you are living with now is not your husband.”

            Five husbands.  That’s a lot.  But it is also the reason why the woman is out at noon by herself.

            No matter what the reasons are for having five husbands, the fact of the matter is that in a small town like Sychar, having five husbands meant you were somebody.  You were that woman ( you can feel free to fill in what ‘that’ meant).  You were that woman that five men couldn’t stand so they left you.  You were that woman who was cursed by God and had her husbands die on her. You were that woman that you couldn’t even make the current guy marry you.   

You were somebody…but you were really nobody.  You were nobody that anybody wanted to be around.  You were nobody that anybody cared about. You were nobody that anybody wanted to see.

You were alone in the world and you can imagine what this felt like. 

She might have felt that she had been cursed by God.  She might have felt unclean because of her current circumstances.  She definitely felt alone.

Cursed.  Unclean.  Alone.

The nature of her five (failed?) marriages doesn’t really matter.  What really matters is how she felt.  Ostracized by her community, forsaken in love, abandoned by everyone and everything important.  It is no wonder that when given the opportunity to talk to Jesus, she talks about an old theological dispute.  Something that’s not personal, not about her.  Something that’s safe.

Cursed.  Unclean.  Alone. 

I bet that we have all felt like this at some point in our lives.  One of the memories I have of growing up was being called a “waste of air”.  But so many people have had to endure so much more.

I think of Anna, who grew up hated by her father only to marry a man who cared even less for her.

I think of Dan who gave his life over to drugs at an early age, kicked out by his family and lived his life on the streets.

I think of Mildred, the elderly woman that nobody wanted to visit and nobody wanted to listen to her pain.

Cursed.  Unclean.  Alone.

When we find ourselves like this.  We may ask ourselves, “Am I somebody?”  And the answer comes back in our heads and nestles in our hearts, “I am nobody worth listening to, I am nobody worth being with; I am nobody worthy loving.”  “Am I somebody?”  “NO” the answer echoes in the stillness of our rooms with only ourselves to hear it.

But when we consider this story, a different answer must be given. 

At its’ heart, this story is about the man who did pay attention, who did listen, who did care.

At this point in John’s Gospel, the reader knows fully well who Jesus is.  In fact, we cannot avoid this fact.  John’s Gospel begins, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was With God and the Word was God”.  John makes it pretty clear that Jesus is the Word, that Jesus is God.  “All things that were created were created through him.”  Jesus is God, He is the creator of the universe, of all that was and is and will ever be.

Reimagine this story.  Here is a woman, a broken, lonely woman going to the well one day.  Who does she meet? I AM.  The Beginning and the End the Alpha and the Omega, the CREATOR of the universe and all that is. 

This God became flesh, became man, and sat at the well with this woman.  He took an interest in her.  He offered her ‘living water’, everlasting life and life with hope.  He offered her a future where the God of the Universe loved her and took an interest in her.  In Her! 

This may not seem like a lot…but it is EVERYTHING.  It doesn’t matter what the other people in town are saying.  It doesn’t matter that life hasn’t worked out according to plan.  It doesn’t matter that our hearts are broken (it does, but hear me out).  What matters is that the GOD of the Universe, the one who holds worlds in the palm of His hands, is uniquely interested in YOU.  He wants to hear from YOU.  He wants to know what is going on in your life.  He wants to know your pain.  He wants to know your joy, he wants to know your life.

Are you somebody?

Yes, yes you are.  You are somebody of great importance to the great God of the Universe.  You are His beloved child.

You are somebody, and of slightly greater importance is that He is somebody.  He is God Incarnate.  He is the Christ.  He is the one who offers you living water to drink, both now and forevermore.

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[1] Jewish people of Judea (southern Israel) considered themselves to be ‘pureblood’ while the Jews of Samaria (Northern Israel) were descendands from mixed races.