Based on Exodus 17:1-7, Romans 5:1-11, John 4:7-15
Welcome to the third Sunday in Lent and our reflection on imagining God’s life-giving hope. Our altar this day reflects the biblical symbology associated with hoping in God. The Cross and Anchor incorporate two enduring symbols of our faith and trust in God. The cross is the ultimate symbol of hope. It represents the sacrificial death and victorious resurrection of Jesus the Christ, through which believers receive forgiveness of sins and the promise of eternal life. The anchor is a prominent symbol of hope in the Bible, representing stability and security amidst life's storms. Hebrews 6:19 states, "We have this hope (in God) as an anchor for the soul, firm and steadfast." The second symbol is the Tree of Life which is mentioned in the beginning and end of the Bible, and which symbolizes eternal life and the hope of God's kingdom coming to earth.
Symbols help us imagine the power of God at work in the world. Ashes, repaired bowls, connected chain links, anchors, crosses, trees – they all call us back to the hope that we as beloved children of God often forget. We forget the boundless love and caring presence of God when the world turns dark and life gets challenging. However, that’s when we need to lean into the lived experience of our spiritual ancestors and imagine how the stories they left us can be lived in our day to bring us hope in God.
The Lectionary for this week presents us with three powerful stories that can help imagine God’s life-giving hope at work in us and our world. The first is from the letter Paul to the believers in Rome. The beginning of the fifth chapter addresses the need for the followers of the Christ to be at peace with God through Jesus and to boast to others of our hope in God’s glory and Almighty power. Paul writes, “…let us also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit…”
Our next story of hope in God comes from the Gospel according to John. Here Jesus and the disciples are traveling through Samaria and stop outside the town of Sychar. Jesus is tired and stops at Jacob’s well while his students go into town to get food. A Samaritan woman comes to the well and Jesus engages her in conversation about water. Jesus asks her for water and in their dialog he tells her that he, the Messiah is “living water” – the refreshment that revives and restores the soul.
The final narrative for today is from the Book of Exodus. Moses is leading the people through the wilderness to God’s mountain. The people are quarreling with Moses because they have no water to drink and they and their animals are thirsty. They are becoming anxious, even though God in the form of pillars of cloud and fire is always visible to them. Moses chastises them for testing God and then cries out to God for relief. God provides all the water they need when Moses strikes a rock with his staff.
The Bible exists for us to explore and then to imagine how to use its wisdom and insights in our own lives. Spiritual blogger, Laura Kelly Fanucci reflects on the power of sacred stories help us live into our hope in God. She writes about the chosen people receiving hope in the wilderness in spite of their behavior, “…Grumbling and anger and bitter mumbling among the murmurs - all this way for this? To wander hungry and hopeless? To die in the wilderness? When at least we had bread and fleshpots back there in Egypt, back where we knew our suffering at least, where the familiar was all around us and not this awful unknown? Why did you do this to us now? To kill us and our children with thirst? There it is: quiet and simple and true. The deepest memory, the of-course of the ancient story, the same anger and despair, the fearful frustration of the wild unknown…
God tells terrified Moses to take his trembling staff and slam it hard against the rock - the huge, heavy, daunting boulder in front of him and all those angry (and thirsty) Israelites. And when he strikes the stone, water gushes forth. Fresh hope, new life, clear truth. The shock of exactly what they needed. This is always the way the story ends. We wander and forget and despair, and then God says, see – “I (Am)” makes all things new. I bring forth life and love and hope where there seems to be none.
Stay close to the stories. I have been hearing these words in my head for weeks, scribbled them down on a note next to my latest project because I thought it was a reminder about the work. No, I realize then. It was the reminder about everything.
Because if I am going to claim this Christian way as mine, if I am going to dare to live into what this life and love and identity mean, if I am going to survive in this dark and daunting world, then I have to stay as close as I can to the stories. The stories are what make hope.
Anthropologists and sociologists, writers and preachers - they will all tell you how much stories matter. How they make us and break us, how we know each other and ourselves within them, how they hold the only power for transformation. And I know this, I believe it on my best days, but in the doubting moments, the fists slammed on the wall moments, the threats to life itself moments, it is so tempting to feel alone. To despair at the present troubles. To wander far from the stories. To stare at the looming rock and forget that water can spring forth...”
What are your stories of hope in God from your own experience? Further, how do you use scriptures as your anchor in times of challenge, trial and fear of the unknown? I find the stories in the Bible to be indispensable to me not only in my work as a pastor, but in navigating my life as a believer in Jesus the Christ. My trust in God has grown from my time in Sunday School memorizing verses to my current wrestling with the texts to gain understanding, wisdom and hope from them. I spend time with the Bible almost daily, not just because I have to have something coherent to share every Sunday, but because I can’t imagine living without the guidance I receive from the inspired messages given to me by God.
For me, imagining God’s life-giving hope flows from the stories of how God’s people have struggled and succeeded in their relationship with God and with each other. Paul’s struggles alone on behalf of his evangelism, his church planting and nurturing for the Christ are enough to convince me that I can hope in the same God which made things possible for him to do what he did. Paul knew first-hand that his suffering in response to his working for the Christ led him to a deeper understanding of the life-giving hope that comes from God.
Paul was incarcerated multiple times, beaten, chased about, and had people actively plotting to kill him. Each time, God provided a means of escape so that he could continue his ministry to the Gentiles. Through all of this, Paul developed perseverance and abiding trust which defined his character as an apostle. The hope in God that came from his sufferings was never defeated, because Paul could not imagine anything in all creation that could come between him and Jesus.
Likewise, the Patriarch Moses went through many trials and tribulations as the mouthpiece of God to the newly freed Hebrew people. The people, many thousands strong, were often a quite unruly group. Life was hard in the desert lands and they suffered many hardships – but God provided manna in the morning and quail in the evening every day for 40 years! God cared for them as God cares for us – providing what we need when we need it.
God’s life-giving hope which never disappoints grows in us when we spend time with God’s Word and with God’s people. If we are going to make this life of Christian discipleship our own; if we are going to dare to live into what this life, love and identity mean; if we are going to thrive in this dark, daunting, and often terrifying world; then we must learn to embody the stories in the Bible. Those stories when brought to life in us provide all the hope that we need to help God transform our world. May God’s love provide what we need to imagine living God’s hope out into our world. Amen and amen!