Question: What would life be like if we never had to
look back?
A Reflection for Lent III given on April 5th
at Outer Banks Presbyterian, Kill Devil Hills, NC April 5, 2017 Thomas
E. Wilson Guest Preacher
Walking
With Jesus Behind Me – The Samaritan Woman
Major League Baseball season opened a couple days
ago, and today I want to call to mind Leroy Robert Paige, also known as “Satchel”
Paige, who Joe DiMaggio called the “best and fastest pitcher I ever faced.” Paige would have turned 102 in July, but he
died in 1982. He grew up during the time of institutional and legal racism in
the South. He made his living playing baseball, a young man’s game, in the
Negro Leagues during the season and in the Caribbean leagues in the winter. He
was not allowed to play in the white Major Leagues until after Jackie Robinson
was able to break the color barrier when Paige was 42 years old. His best days were
behind him, but he kept showing up and blazing that ball over the plate because
he believed as he said: "You win a few, you lose a few. Some get rained
out. But you got to dress for all of them." At age 60, he pitched for the
last time in a Major League game for three shutout innings. Of the past, he
said, "Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you."
This is the third of a series of five reflections
and poems I wrote for 2017 Lent called Walking With Jesus. Jesus walking with
me: in my strength, in my weakness, behind me, in front of me, and within me.
However, I was going to be out of town for the 19th of March, so I
filed my poem in the bulletin and put off giving this reflection until today.
What would life be like if we did not have to look
back because God is already redeeming the past, preparing the future, and
watering the present? The lessons for today are about the answering that
question. In the Hebrew Testament Lesson from Exodus, the people carry the old
heritage of the past when they were slaves in Egypt and they had little hope,
and in despair, they want to give up the meager hope they have. But God is with
them, and water flows out of a rock in the desert to give them all they need
for the present to continue the journey into the future. They are free from the
past, but the Bible tells their story of a pattern of returning to enslavement over
the next twelve hundreds of years. They choose leaders who encourage them to
hate the poor and the outsider, to oppress the vulnerable, to fear the neighbor,
and to cherish an economy which benefits only the rich. They tolerate an unjust system that makes
slavery in Egypt look almost benign.
Jesus, the incarnate creative energy of God, walks
among the people. In this lesson he comes to the so-called enemy of his people,
the Samaritans. The Samaritans were one of the groups that Jesus’ people were told
to fear and oppress. It is the middle of a hot day and Jesus comes to the well
in Sychar, the site of Jacob’s well.
I remember the day a quarter of a century ago when
Pat and I were studying in Jerusalem, and I went with part of the class to the
Palestinian West Bank to Nabulus and Pat went with another group to Gaza. Just outside of Nabulus in the Orthodox
monastery at Jacob’s well, we descended down to the well and water was pulled
up for us. My teacher suggested that we pass on the offer of actually drinking
the water since the purpose of the story was not about the physical water but
the water of eternal life. The Greek word is aionios meaning “perpetual”, which is where time does not exist and
the past and present collapse, fold in on themselves, into a liberated “now”. My definition of Eternal Life is not that I
won’t die, we are all going to die, but it is a life lived abundantly without
the shackles of the past and without fear of the future. It is a life lived
fully in this world and the next.
The woman in the story is only able to go to the
well in the middle of the day because all the other women of the town shun her
because of her past. When she goes out to the well, the little old biddies,
good church folk - male and female of all ages - are looking out of their
houses and snickering about this loose woman, and they spit on the ground in
contempt. She slinks out there and meets Jesus, who understands her past but is
only interested that she lives into a new present. Walking With Jesus, she will
never forget the past, but she will look at it in a new way as she finds that
the past is redeemed, it no longer shadows or stings. It is just what it was - the journey to today.
Walking with Jesus behind me means that the past is
like we see death in the light of Easter, not the end but a gateway to
something greater. I have made more mistakes than Carter has pills, I have
disappointed myself and people who loved and trusted me as I have violated by
thought, word, or deed every commandment, yet the past I no longer have to
carry around like the garbage of shame. Luther said in Latin, “simul justus et peccator”
or
“simultaneously justified and sinful at the same
time,” Or as Satchel Paige used to say: "You win a few, you lose a
few. Some get rained out. But you got to dress for all of them."
Jesus forgives the
past; that is a gift freely given. The Samaritan woman accepted the gift, and
she went through the town giving the same gift to others - all those little old
biddies- and she invites them into a new
life. So; how about you? Is there someone in the past you need to forgive? It
doesn’t mean that they have to admit they were wrong. It means that you lay
down the burdens of the past and begin living now.
This next week is Holy
Week when we walk with Jesus through the Way of the Cross; are you ready to
leave the past behind so that you can follow where Jesus leads the way?
Jesus Behind Me – The Samaritan
Woman
In the full light of the day, shadows that are cast
seemed darker with a withering heat of no mercy
stirring male and female old biddies' controversy
over whom to slather representations of the past.
Worst biddies live within confines of our mind
haunted by the mistakes causing body to shudder
with the remembrances of the follies that clutter
the yesterdays with a shame that will soul grind.
Lover longs to be invited to revisit, walk through
again, but now with a compassionate loving eye
seeing the facts but banishing shame with a sigh
that it took much too long to heal and bid adieu.
Walking behind us the Lover was already there
forgiving before we noticed and started a prayer.
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