-
Listen
- Watch
Summary
She came to Covenant House clutching a paint can. Wherever she went, whatever she did, the little homeless girl took the paint can. “It’s mine,” she’d say, as she would hug the can. At breakfast one morning, Sister Mary Ellen said “Kathy . . . what’s in the can?” “It’s my mother,” Kathy finally responded. “It’s her ashes. I didn’t really know her. She threw me in the trash.” (They checked her story, it was true). “I lived in foster homes, angry at my mom. But then, I found her. She had AIDS. I met her the day before she died. She told me that she loved me.” And Kathy wept.
Sister Mary Ellen wrapped her arms around Kathy who was wrapped around that can of dust and ashes and the deepest of all thirsts — the thirst for one more drop of Love.
God is Love (Thing #1). Dust, Adamah, is Thing #2. God breathed Thing #1 into Thing #2, making Thing #3 (a soul, a “psyche”), and we began to protect Thing #3 with Thing #4 (fig leaves, fear, and flesh). And now we’re all getting pretty thirsty.
In John 4, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well at the sixth hour of the day. And He says, “Give me a drink.” She’s shocked that, being a Jew of Judah, He’d speak to her, a woman of Samaria. “If you knew the gift of God…” says Jesus, “you would’ve asked, and He would have given you living water.”
“Living water” is “flowing water.” Well water is dammed water, like water in a dam, blood in a clot, or Thing #1 trapped in a paint can or earthen vessel.
“The water that I will give will become a fountain of water welling up to eternal life,” says Jesus. “Give me some!” she says (most likely jesting). “Go call your husband,” He responds. “I have no husband,” she replies. “Right,” says Jesus. “You have had five, and the one you’re with (the sixth man) is not your husband. This is true.” (Little harsh, Jesus?) “You’re a prophet,” responds the woman. “Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you say Jerusalem is the place.” “The hour is coming and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth,” says Jesus. The woman responds, “I know that Messiah is coming.” Jesus says, “I am, the one who is speaking to you (or even, ‘I am the one speaking you’).” She left her water jar, ran back to town and said, “Come see a man who told me all (“All!!!”) that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”
What did Jesus tell her that she had done? She had “worshipped what she did not know,” like the rest of the Samaritans, AND she had utterly failed at finding her helper, her husband. Odds are that she was so thirsty for love that she sucked the life out of those who had tried to live with her… and they sucked the life out of her, leaving her even more thirsty… like a can of ashes.
Someone once said, “Marriage is like two ticks and no dog: two blood suckers and no blood to suck.” In the Revelation, John reveals that we are the Bride of Christ; Adam (humanity) is to be married to God whom the Old Testament repeatedly calls our “ezer,” our “Helper.” On the Sixth Day of Creation, Adam couldn’t find his Helper, who was with him and all around him (In God we live and move and have our being.) If there’s one animal that’s never thirsty, I would think it would be a fish. And if there’s one animal that has no concept of water, that might also be a fish.
Adam was in God and couldn’t find God; Adam was “alone” in an ocean of Love. So, God made Adam male and female and made himself a Helper (a God/man) fit for Adam. It then appears that He left us alone with a snake and a tree, but on the tree is the Good and the Life who is our Helper. We all take the Life on the tree. We suck the blood right out of our Helper. And now we’re thirsty.
The Samaritan woman must feel incredibly rejected, unseen, unheard, and insignificant. And then, in her words, the Messiah tells her “all that she has ever done.” AND all that she has ever done is fail at love, and love is all that any of us are ever commanded to do! And yet, she acts as if this is Good News! She announces it to the village, saying, “Come see a man who told me all that I’ve ever done!” Is she drunk?
It’s surprising what Jesus tells her… and doesn’t tell her. He doesn’t blame her as if she could’ve done anything differently, as if she didn’t know what she was doing. And He doesn’t excuse her as if she didn’t actually fail. He doesn’t explain her, and He doesn’t prescribe anything to her, like “Try harder!” He just says, “If you knew… then you would’ve asked.”
He didn’t give her more “knowledge of Good and evil.” He gave the Good and the Life to know. He gave Himself to her. He is the Seventh Man, the Eschatos Adam, the “Gift of God.”
If you think that you must earn the Gift of God, you cannot perceive the Gift of God. He speaks you and all creation into existence; He is the Word of God, who is Love. You literally swim in an ocean of Love that is the Gift of Love, but you cannot perceive the Gift of Love because you think you must earn the Gift of Love and so cannot be what you truly are: The Gift of Love.
“I find it to be a consoling idea that, before God, I am always in the wrong,” wrote Soren Kierkegaard. Perhaps this news is Good News for it’s the revelation of Unconditional Love — our Husband. And isn’t this where Easter happens? “Here in dust and dirt, the lilies of his Love appear.” It happens at a grave in a garden at a tomb that is a womb to a woman that had been afflicted with seven demons and just had all her dreams nailed to a tree… as it happens to Peter, Paul, and all His disciples. And at first, she thinks He’s the gardener. And of course, He is.
Once in my life, I heard the Lord audibly. He said, “Peter, you don’t love my bride very much, do you?” In an instant, I saw that I had gone into the ministry because I hated the church — who is all of us — because of my can of ashes, my dad’s ashes. In an instant, I saw all that I had ever done. I had utterly failed at saving the world by exalting myself, which is the essence of all failure and why this world is dammed. Instantaneously, I turned into a fountain of tears. And yet, I was so very aware that it wasn’t me that was crying; it was Jesus for me, with me, and as me from the bottom of my well. There was not a drop of blame, only an entire ocean of Compassion and Unconditional Love.
In John 4, because of the woman’s testimony, Samaritans run out of the village to meet Jesus at the well, saying, “We know that this is the Savior of the World.”
If Jesus told her “all that she ever did,” then all she ever did was make bad choices. But look at what she’s doing now: She drops her earthen vessel; she loses her psyche. She forgets herself and starts worshipping. Something has reversed the flow. If she sucked the life out of people before, she’s now speaking the Life into people. Jesus didn’t tell her to do it. She wasn’t making herself do it. She didn’t do it to get something; she wanted to give something. If all she did was make bad choices, the Good Choice of God is now making her, the way music makes a dance or Love makes babies, the way Love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
The Life wells up from inside of her as if it had been dammed up within her behind a curtain that ripped when she heard the Word. She said that He told her “all that she had ever done,” but she is what Jesus is telling . . . and doing. John 1:3, “All things were made through him,” which is also translated “all things are done through him.”
It’s really just this simple: “You didn’t create yourself . . . ever; you are the creation of Love.”
So, one day you will have to wake from your illusions and meet Jesus at your own well with your own can of ashes — your own ashes — and have a conversation. Sounds terrifying. And yet, that is when and where Easter happens . . . to you.
And yet, it seems to already be happening in Samaria to Samaritans.
About an hour after God revealed to me that everything that I had done was a failure to love and so opened my fountain of tears, He also revealed that He had been and always would be everywhere and everywhen loving me and my fountain of tears, turned into a fountain of worship. I saw that wherever and whenever I had loved, I didn’t make that love, Love was making me. Love had loved through me. Apart from Him, I can do nothing.
Peter Hiett is the incarnation of Love. And Peter Hiett is a vain illusion. And there is no Peter Hiett in between. And so, although I can’t sort him out, there is no Peter Hiett to protect (One is imperishable; the other is an illusion), no Peter Hiett to defend, to compete, to be carefully guarded in a paint can. I can’t judge him, but I’m more than happy to let God judge him and set me free.
I am Thing #1 breathed into Thing #2, creating Thing #3 who hides in Thing #4 from the Judgment of Love, when the Judgment of Love is Thing #5, the Kingdom of God and Body of Christ, which was already manifesting in some form in a little village in Samaria. And yet, they would still be thirsty.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” said Jesus (Who is our righteousness).
“I thirst” He cried. Then He delivered up His spirit. The Roman Centurion who pounded the nails began to worship. And John quotes Zechariah 12, “On that day… they will look on me” says Yahweh, “on him whom they have pierced… On that day a fountain will be opened.” Then and there we become who it is that we actually are: The incarnation of Love, drinking and forever drunk by Love.
But here in dust and ashes, Easter happens. You are your own failure and God’s absolute and eternal success. Only humility can bear the weight of Divinity. Thank God for your dust and ashes. And now, ask Him for a drink.