Deeper Wells
A Sermon offered by Rev. Kathleen Rolenz
Sunday, September 14, 2008
West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church
Rocky River, OH
Sermon – Part 1
Usually young men don’t just hang
around the rotunda after church, but this one
did. It was about 1:00 on a Sunday
afternoon, and I was tidying up and trying to
get home for lunch, when I saw him
lingering over the book stand. He was thin,
blond with rock star good looks. He
introduced himself and then said “Can we
talk?” he said. “I’m church shopping,” he
explained. He was looking for something—
but he wasn’t sure what. He wasn’t even
sure he’d find it in a church, but he knew he
had to start somewhere.
We sat down in the Rotunda lounge
and he told me the abbreviated version of
the last seven years of his life. “There was a
time in my life when I just sat in my
basement, drank beer and watched TV all
day” he said. “I want something—I don’t
know what, but I’m not going to find it
sitting alone in my basement. I think I’m
looking for something spiritual.”
I invited him to come back to church
for many Sundays to experience the
diversity of our worship services. I offered
to meet with him again to talk about this
spiritual longing he had identified. I told
him he was beloved—an important and
precious child of the universe and I hoped he
would consider making West Shore his
church home. We thanked me and left. I
have never heard from him again.
I feel so incredibly blessed to be able
to have those kinds of conversations with
people at the odd, squeezed in-between
moments of life, because I think that
sometimes those chance encounters with a
total stranger reveals a larger truth about
why we’re here—what our purpose is in life
and how we as human beings, are driven by
the same desires. This morning I want to
talk about one of our most basic physical
need which we all have—that of thirst—and
of our spiritual thirst for a life that is lived
and experienced in the deepest places of our
being. It’s the title of this morning’s sermon
and the song that you heard earlier, “Deeper
Wells.”
You know, it’s a tough topic to talk
about on the one hand, because there is no
book or bestseller you can reference as a
springboard; there is not text or manual that
you can follow to say “here’s what I mean
when I talk about drawing the meaning of
our life from deeper wells.” Instead, we
have to rely on poetry, on stories, on
metaphor.
It’s what Howard Thurman
would call engaging with the depth
dimension of our lives; what poet Gerard
Manley Hopkins refers to as that aspect of
our being which is the “dearest, freshest,
deep down things.” The opposite of the
depth dimension of our life is shallow-living
on the surface of things—being fascinated,
obsessed and absorbed with the trivial and
the unimportant—it’s what Socrates called
“the unexamined life.”
I believe that all
the hustle and bustle and business that is part
and parcel of the life of this church is a byproduct of the real reason why we exist and
why we come here—to drink freely from an
ancient spring—springs that satisfy our
spiritual thirst for intellectual stimulation,
intentional community, social action and
justice, and spiritual practice. In the second
part of this sermon, I want to examine how
we drink of those things here at West Shore,
and how, hopefully, your spiritual thirst will
be satisfied.
But what is this phrase—spiritual
thirst, really mean? I am forever grateful for
the rationalists and skeptics in our
congregation, because they always push for
a more precise meaning of words—and ask
that their ministers don’t use words like
spiritual or grace or holy without
explanation. So, I define spiritual thirst
similar to what you heard from Carl Jung’s
letter to Bill Wilson. Jung was writing
specifically about alcoholism, but he said
“his craving…was the equivalent, on a low
level, of the spiritual thirst of our being for
wholeness, expressed in medieval language:
the union with God.” Jung’s letter goes
beyond this particular reflection on Roland
H, and points to that which why I think we
come to church. The non-theist may choose
to use Jung’s secular language of having a
thirst for wholeness; the theist may say
“union with God,” and both and others are
an acceptable way of saying the same thing
in this church.
The truth that runs
underground and connects all of us is the
fact that everybody thirsts—both physically,
emotionally, and spiritually.
How to name this thirst? It’s easiest
to understand our physical thirst, composed
as it is of pure science. If the water volume
of the body falls below a certain threshold,
or the osmolite concentration becomes too
high, the brain signals thirst. Although there
are such things as extra-cellular and
intracellular thirst, the craving for water is
generated from central processing in the
brain, no matter how it is detected in the
cells. Common wisdom says that it is better
to drink enough water to stave off the
feeling of being thirsty, because being
thirsty is a sign that you are too dehydrated,
and you’ve got some catching up to do.
That young man who visited West Shore
about a month ago, came to West Shores
well, interesting, the Rotunda, which is
shaped like an inverted well, because I
believe he was thirsty, and wondered if we
had that which would satisfy—so he was
driven by that need, just as, I suspect, many
of us are.
So what’s your need? What are you
thirsty for? I know for me, much of my
young adult life was driven by a thirst for
depth. I resonated with the famous quote by
Henry David Thoreau, who said: “I wanted
to live deep and suck out all the marrow of
life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to
put to rout all that was not life, to reduce it
to its lowest terms, and, if proved to be
mean, why then to get the whole and
genuine meanness of it, and publish its
meanness to the world." I had two lists in
my head back then—deep and not deep;
films by Ron Howard—not deep. Films by
David
Lynch—deep.
Paintings
by
Bouguereau—not deep.
Paintings by
Francis Bacon—deep. Before I became
involved in a Unitarian Universalist
Church—most
churches—not
deep;
hypocritical; pure philosophy of the mind—
deep. What I was trying to look for by
labeling things deep or not deep—is actually
what I believe the Buddhist call
“enlightenment,” or the state of Samadhi.
It’s awareness of not just things—but the
meaning of things. Not just a trip to the
grocery store to get food, but a profound
awareness of all has led up to that moment.
Not just a visit to a relative in a nursing
home, but holding the memory of his or her
vitality close—not in a sentimental way, but
as an acknowledgement of the depth and
breadth of the life we live.
This
understanding of the deeper wells of our life
is what I hope this church can provide for
you.
Later in life, I came to understand
that dividing the world into things that are
sacred—“deep” and things that are shallow
as profane is a false dichotomy. There is the
possibility of spiritual depth in everything,
and it is our task as religious and spiritual
human beings, to uncover it, to live with it,
to find the meaning in it and to share it with
others. Ideally, if that young man had
encountered one of you instead of me, you
would have been able to sit down with him,
just as I did, and share your story with him,
and tell him how this faith tradition has
encouraged your own spiritual depth—has
enhanced your understanding of your union
with God; or your quest for wholeness.
There are many good stories from
the world’s religious traditions that talk
about this thirst we have for wholeness—for
union with God—for, as one of our hymns
go, the life of the larger liberty, but the one
that speaks to me most plainly and
provocatively is the one in the book of John,
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when Jesus meets a woman at a well. In
order to tell this story, or in theological
parlance, exegete this story—I have to set it
up for you, because it’s not just a random
encounter between a Samaritan woman and
a traveling Jew. The story is set in Samaria,
which is about 35 miles north of Jerusalem.
Samarians were a mixed-race people; born
of the intermarriage between Jews,
Assyrians and Babylonians. Jews viewed
their religion as corrupted Judaism—unpure,
and many more orthodox Jews would go out
of their way to avoid traveling in Samaria,
but Jesus is interested in visiting Jacob’s
well—a place that has both real and
symbolic value. Jacobs well was the deepest
one in the area—maybe a hundred feet deep
some archeologist speculate. It is mid day—
it is hot—he is thirsty--and he is alone. He
has no bucket, no cup, no access to water. A
woman comes to the well and they start to
talk. That in and of itself is strange because
townswomen would come to the well first
thing in the morning, and in a group. Why
was this woman coming by herself in the
middle of the day? He asks for a drink of
water and she asks him, incredulously, how
is it that you—a Jew—ask me, a woman and
a Samaritan, for something to drink? (For
Jews have nothing in common with
Samaritans) So, Jesus isn’t supposed to be
there in the first place; secondly, he’s talking
to a woman who is alone, which is unheard
of in a segregated and patriarchal society,
and now, he’s asking her for a drink which
means that he would share the same
drinking gourd with her.
Jesus now talks to her not as a
Samaritan—not as a woman who, in that day
and age, was deemed not smart enough o
have an intellectual conversation-- answers
her “if you had known this gift…and who it
is who said you…give me water to drink,
you would have asked him and he would
have given you living water.” She doesn’t
back
down—she
doesn’t
become
subservient or flirtatious, she says “Sir, you
have no bucket and the well is deep; where
then do you get this living water? 12 Surely
you’re not greater than our father Jacob, are
you? For he gave us this well and drank
from it himself, along with his sons and his
livestock.” Jesus takes her seriously, and
says: Jesus replied, “Everyone who drinks
some of this water will be thirsty again. 14
But whoever drinks some of the water that I
will give him will never be thirsty again, but
the water that I will give him will become in
him a fountain of water springing up to
eternal life.” The woman at the well say Sir,
give me this water, so that I will not be
thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
Most often this story is interpreted to
support the belief that Jesus himself is the
only
living
water,
but
Unitarian
Universalists often interpret scripture
liberally instead of literally, and I think what
Jesus is saying to this woman is simply this
“there is a deep well inside of you—and
inside that well is all of your life experience,
your hopes, dreams, fears, shames,
unfulfilled desires, and that it is important to
have thirst for that which truly satisfies. She
does not say to Jesus well give me a glass of
wine, or a coca-cola or a Gatorade or a
Kool-aid or a fizzy pop or a glass of milk or
a shot of wheat grass or a bottle of beer—
she just says: give me some of that water.
Just water. Know what it is you thirst for,
and know what are the essentials of your
life—without which you would whither as
surely as Jesus did under that hot noon-day
desert sun.
Sermon—Part II
This week someone told me a story
about a minister is driving down to New
York when he was stopped for speeding.
The state trooper smells alcohol on his
breath and then he sees an empty wine bottle
on the floor, and he says, "Sir, have you
been drinking?" And the minister says, "Just
water." The sheriff says, "Then why do I
smell wine?" And the minister looks down
at the bottle and says, "Good Lord, He's
done it again!"
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We don’t turn water into wine here
at West Shore, but we do hope that in the
course of your time here, you may discover
your thirst is not for that metaphorical wine,
but for water—pure, simple, singular and
essential. Religious liberals generally don’t
thirst for biblical literalism, or being asked
to swallow a story or theory or belief as
truth that cannot be validated through
science or through personal experience.
Religious liberals generally don’t thirst for
absolute certainty in their religious
identities; being more comfortable with
ambiguity, uncertainty, and a certain amount
of paradox. I keep thinking back to that
young man, hanging around the Rotunda,
looking for water from a deeper well than
his life had provided thus far. And if I could
have, without seeming like a salesperson, I
would have shown him all the ways in
which we program around thirst here at
West Shore—the ways we attempt to lead
you all to what we hope will be life-giving
water. It’s not about leading you all to the
same well; it’s about all of us tapping into
the groundwater of this particular faith
tradition, as well as acknowledging how
other faiths and other religious traditions
have influenced our own.
What is it that we thirst for? In my
years as a Unitairan Universlaist, I have seen
at least four things that many who come to a
UU church are seeking.
They are:
knowledge
or
wisdom;
intentional
community; social justice and action and
spiritual practice. Let’s look at four and
how you can find them here.
Many people come to Unitarian
Universalist through their minds first. They
have rejected a more literal or dogmatic
approach. So the programs we offer here,
such as the Fall Lecture Series, the
Humanist, Atheist, Free-Thinkers and
Agnostic groups provide a number of
opportunities to engage the mind with other
individuals—other thinkers—who enjoy the
free and unfettered approach to asking
religious questions. We seek knowledge not
as an end in and of itself, but as a means to
the deeper wells of wisdom; of thoughtful
discernment; of—in Buddhist language—
right speech and right action.
Other times, people come thirst for
intentional community; and that word
“intentional” is important. Most of us have
relationships with others outside of this
church; communities of school, work and
family networks; some of which is
intentional and other times, we are there as a
matter of circumstance. What we seek is the
opportunity
for
conversations
of
substance—to give and receive to one
another some of that living water—some of
the conversations which satisfy.
Our
connection circles program is one way of
helping you to connect more deeply, in
small circles of people, who covenant to
listen to one another and to be present to one
another.
We thirst for social action and we
thirst for justice. Just as there is a thirst for
living a deeper life—a life of meaning and
purpose, so I believe there is a part of us that
yearns for what some theologians call “The
Beloved Community,” or “the Peaceable
Kingdom.” It is a place where everyone has
enough food—and everyone has enough
access to water—because having food and
water is a basic human need, not a privilege
to be granted. We thirst for justice when we
see hatred and bigotry flung against our
human brothers and sisters; we crave for a
world where no one is exploited, abused, or
violated.
We thirst for justice-seeking
policies and procedures that would protect
our fragile planet. The orders of service are
filled with opportunities to feed the hungry,
to house the homeless, to counter oppression
and racism whenever and wherever it exists.
Finally, we thirst for spiritual
practice. We talk a lot about it here—some
of you have one; some of you don’t; some of
you want one; some of you could care less.
But when I say spiritual practice, I mean to
find that or those which you love to do, and
that connects you with your God, your
Higher Power, or in the poets words, the
dearest, freshest, deep down things,”, and do
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it—every day. Make it as regular a part of
your life as brushing your teeth. There are
opportunities to engage with spiritual
practice right here—whether it be Zen
Buddhist meditation, or Christian prayer, or
the discipline of singing in the choir. All of
these things can provide life-giving water
for which we thirst and can be satisfied.
My colleague, the Reverend Rob
Eller-Isaacs suggests that there are only
three requirements for spiritual growth in a
Unitarian Universalist church setting—and
he frames it in terms of promises. First, he
says, promise to find and keep your balance
through personal spiritual practice. Then,
promise to learn to be intimate in small
groups, so that you are able to go deep
quickly with strangers. And when, by
personal practice and deep conversation
your heart is broken open, when compassion
takes root in you-- then promise you will
find a way to bless the world. The blessing
that you bestow on the world, will be the
life-giving water the world so desperately
needs. Find that water from your deepest
well, and don’t be afraid to share it with
others. May it be so. Amen
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