". . . the woman left her water-jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, ‘Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he'?"
The Gospel story that marks our morning began a few verses earlier. Jesus is moving into his ‘Occupy Samaria’ stance. He doesn’t head to their financial district. Rather he stops dead in his tracks at the water works.
" . . .Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well, Jacob’s well. . . A Samaritan woman came to draw water. . ."
John 4:27
Any Jew/Samaritan encounter holds all sorts of political, ethnic and religious implications. The Samaritans were an odd kind of clan, without much clout, of suspect origins, of dubious morals thought the respectable folk, of eccentric practices in matters of ritual. The Jews despised them, but nobody liked them very much. Most everyone could have done without this 1%.
Yet, at the well in Samaria, a most unusual boy meets girl encounter is taking place.
Give me a drink, he says.
You’re a Jew, says the woman of Samaria.
I have living water to give you he says. Water that will quench your real thirst, water that gushes up to eternal life.
You’re a prophet, she says, and I am not your type.
It no longer matter that we come from different worlds, he says.
The Messiah, the Christ is coming, she says, and he will make an honest woman of me.
I am he, he says.
Jesus’ disciples return at this point – surprised, annoyed, dismayed, at their friend’s apparent ease with an unacceptable person – foreign, female, and of questionable virtue. Jesus appears to be unclear on the concept and seems to change the subject.
"Jesus said to them, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting.'"
So now, I think Jesus is moving into his ‘Occupy St. James’ stance. And we need to pay attention.
"'For here the saying holds true, “One sows and another reaps.”I sent you to reap that for which you did not labour. Others have laboured, and you have entered into their labour.’"
Occupy St. James?
The phrase doesn’t carry the same freight as it does on Wall Street, or London or Oakland or Chicago, or any of those other cities where folk are gathering in financial districts to protest about lots of issues around wealth and how it is used and who controls it.
But I think it captures for me something of how I have experienced life in this congregation throughout 2011.
The Bishop held out a vision of the Commons – Cathedral, Church Center, Plaza – as a way to be a presence for the City, the Diocese, the neighborhood. Great location – lots of deferred maintenance and upgrading to accomplish. The Bishop is working hard to raise the funds to get it done. The bulldozers and jackhammers arrived this Spring to get it started.
And we have had to ‘occupy’ St. James in a new way, literally and metaphorically – our space, our place, our finances, our ways of doing ministry, our understanding of ourselves as a people who are about God’s mission now.
Other than offices for the staff, (and that area is in its own chaos of noise and dislocation) everything else we do is located within the bounds of the Cathedral itself, the Nave, the Narthex, the Undercroft, the Music room.
- It is crowded and often inconvenient.
- We can’t really cook.
- We bump up against each other all the time;
- We can’t find things.
- You can’t get there from here.
Nothing is easy or simple these days.
- Meetings of cathedral groups and diocesan groups now compete for space in our space.
- How we schedule rooms and provide entry and security is a constantly shifting phenomenon.
- How we fit people and ministries into limited areas is a constant challenge.
- It is hard to do planning for new events and ongoing projects.
- What will it mean to do Summer in the City somewhere else this summer? If we have no kitchen, no Plaza, no larger gathering place like Burrill Hall?
- How do we continue to cope without access for the disabled – or bathrooms or classrooms for folk who can’t do stairs?
The Bishop is eloquent about what it will mean, what it all will make possible for ministry and mission when the construction is complete sometime next year. He is right.
But my attention and energies now are about what it means for ministry and mission, for us all, in this sometimes gritty meantime.
Occupy St. James.
We are making more happen here than in the years before.
For those who lived through a seemingly endless proposed development project not too many years ago, we may remember how so much seemed to halt in the face of what was planned. That project did not happen, and we were left to start over again in many ways.
This time, clergy and leadership were committed to keep it all going – to maintain the justice ministries and the formation work and the worship life and the hospitality that fuels our mission and makes us know that what we do matters – to each other, to those beyond our doors, to God.
To forge ahead with new work and new hopes despite the constraints of space and amenities.
From our kids in the Sunday School to strangers off the street, we are offering more of ourselves, our passions and our presence.
Occupy St. James.
We are connecting with each other in new ways, and mostly we like it.
There is happy chaos, mostly, in the undercroft on Sunday mornings, as choir and clergy, acolytes and vergers, parents, teachers, kids, sextons collide with each other and really see each other as we get on with the work we are given to do. It feels like life in a congregation.
Chapter members continue their visits to members of the congregation; and both visitors and the visited are gaining new appreciation for how to know and be known in a faith community.
We are baptizing more, marrying more, couples gay and straight, burying more. Because that is what we are here for. And a way to forge new relationships and strengthen existing ones.
Occupy St. James.
We are getting closer to assuming real financial responsibility for our common life.
Our endowment assets have always made some aspects of our life together more comfortable. If we are the Bishop’s church, maybe we didn’t have to be a real congregation in other ways.
What we are learning is that we cannot be an effective and faithful Cathedral, until we know how to be a vital and self-aware congregation. And that means understanding how our financial resources are involved – our corporate resources and our personal ones.
Three years ago, the Chapter made a risky investment in our future, in our growth, both material and spiritual. For a time, we would use more than the traditional 5% of our investments to fund a budget driven by a vision of growth. Mostly it underwrites the strategic skills of staff people.
Kevin, Jackie, Bruce and the choir, in the office, Lucia and her amazing financial and management talents, and now Michelle as administrative support.
They don’t do the ministries for us – they help create the structures, the tools, the organization, that evoke ministry in and by us all.
We have turned a corner this year – we are just beginning to close the gap between our capacity to support a mission out of our own generosity and giving, and a dependence upon assets that have been the gifts of others.
In a turbulent economy, the strategy is even scarier. And we all know that it is not a limitless tactic.
Yet, it appears that we will break the $400,000 mark in pledged income in 2012. A remarkable achievement. And a clear indication of how we are stepping up to our own hopes and dreams and commitments.
Alan Gunn will be quick to remind us that we need to break the $500,000 barrier to achieve the kind of mission support we need to sustain our work and witness. That seems more possible now.
Occupy St. James.
We are learning that giving more – not just our money, but time, energy, and skills, -- connects us to each other, to a mission that matters and to God.
And that our capacity to connect increases as we get to know each other, to care about each other, to hear the stories that have shaped our souls and drive our passions.
We still have some bad habits about letting others become ‘lone rangers’ instead of figuring out how to create real teams and acquire real partners in essential ministries. But ‘critique’ not ‘blame’ is a more operative process in our midst these days, as we strive to become more effective in our life together.
Occupy St. James.
It is clear that one of our great gifts as a community is the capacity to embrace our spirituality, our appreciation of the arts, our passions for justice, our commitment to strong conversations and hospitality, and then incarnate them in something beautiful and moving. Like the Keiskamma Altarpiece, the 9/11 requiem, the installation remembering our fallen soldiers, and most recently the Michael Nye photo exhibit on Hunger and Resilience, punctuated by the Beatitudes Mass performed by our Choir.
What that genius will look like in 2012 is still in the works. Let’s talk about it.
Occupy St. James.
The fields, as Jesus reminds us, are still ripe for harvesting.
In the year of our Lord, 2012, it is up to us to enter into the labors of those who have gone before.
For me, ‘Occupy St. James’ means that we are living more fully into an identity as both a vital growing congregation and as a Cathedral Church in the 3rd largest city in the nation.
The folk who gather here, all of us, are seeking God and more -- companions on a journey, meaning for our lives, work and witness that serve others and that will change the world.
The Samaritan woman makes a witness that somehow resonates with how I experience our own, as Episcopalians, as the congregation of this feisty, urban cathedral with its checkered history and passionate yearnings and perhaps uncertain future.
She is a somewhat unlikely witness, perhaps not even a fully convinced witness. Maybe like many of us.
He cannot be the Messiah, can he?
Even so, (says the great teacher of preaching, Fred Craddock) her witness is enough: (so maybe our own can be) it is invitational (come and see) , not judgmental; it is within the range permitted by her experience; it is honest with its own uncertainty; it is for everyone who will hear. How refreshing. Her witness avoids triumphalism, hawking someone else’s conclusions, packaged answers to unasked questions, thinly veiled ultimatums and threats of hell, and assumptions of certainty on theological matters. (Who knew she was an Episcopalian?)
She does convey, however, her willingness to let her hearers arrive at their own affirmations about Jesus, and they do:
"This is indeed the Savior of the world."
I love being part of a community like this one.
I delight in the kind of Samaritan woman witness that we are making.
I am grateful for all who ‘occupy’ this place with me, for all that we have accomplished together in 2011, and for the challenges that 2012 holds out now.
