John 4:5-42 "We All Thirst For Something"

You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute it properly!

         The parents of a young boy, who was maybe five or six years old, had just put him to bed one evening.  All the nighttime rituals had been dutifully done.  Prayers had been said.  The closet had been double checked for possible monsters hiding amongst the dirty laundry, and final drinks of water had been offered and received. Mom and Dad had just settled down for a quiet evening. 

         However, five minutes later, the following conversation began from the bedroom;

         "Da-ad...."

         "What?"

         "I’m thirsty. Can you bring me a drink of water?"

         "No. You had your drink of water. Now it’s lights out."

         Five minutes later: "Da-aaaad....."

         "WHAT?"

         "I’m THIRSTY. Can I pleeeease have a drink of water??"

         This exchange went on for quite some time until the father spouted:

         "I told you NO! Now, if you ask again, I’ll have to spank you!!"

         The little boy was persistent.  Five minutes later......"Daaaa-aaaad....."

         "WHAT!"

         "When you come in to spank me, can you bring me a drink of water?"

         We all thirst for something.  And it was no different for Jesus and the Samaritan woman he met at the well in Sychar in Samaria. 

         Now, it is important to understand that, if at all possible, Jews bypassed the country of Samaria, feeling it was better – purer – to travel around the outcast nation and its marginalized population rather than pass through it – even if it meant extra days on the road.

         You see, a longstanding – about 800 years actually – and deep rift existed between Jews and Samaritans.  Its basis was pretty simple.  The Jews believed that God has chosen them and, therefore, had summarily rejected the people of Samaria.  Samaritans, however, did not think it was quite that cut-and-dry.

         The source of the disagreement was two-fold.  First, the two ethnic groups disagreed on exactly where the One True God they both worshipped actually lived – on the Temple Mount as the Jews believed or on Mount Gezerim as was the Samaritan tradition.          Second, Jews considered Samaritans to be traitors because the latter had assimilated themselves into Assyrian culture during a period of exile through intermarriage with their conquerors.  It was a question of purity.  In short, from the Jewish perspective, hanging out with Samaritans was a social and religious taboo, and that is the historical context for our story today.

         Maybe it was because the Pharisees were stirring up the pot too much for comfort as they made their case against Jesus, or maybe it was because Jesus did not take religious and social taboos all that seriously.  We do not know for sure, but we do know that Jesus decided to leave Judea and return to Galilee, and he did not need a GPS to know that the most direct route was right through Samaria.

         So here we find Jesus, sitting by the deep well where his forbears, Jacob’s family, had once drawn water an eon before. A bright noonday sun was beating down on our rabbi.  It was hot, and he was thirsty. 

         Not only that; his feet were sore from walking.  His sweat formed little rivulets through the dust on his neck and his arms. At the moment, he was alone because his disciples had gone to the market to buy provisions – goat cheese, peasant bread, and a jug of wine – for a good old-fashioned and well-deserved picnic lunch. 

         The well where he sat was deep, and Jesus had a problem.  He had no water pot, no cup, no way of reaching the cool clear refreshing stream that ran beneath the earth and bubbled up here in this ancient well.  Jesus needed someone to help him – which, in most villages, would have been pretty unlikely because no one would have been caught out in the noontime sun.  Women filled their jugs and water pots in the cool of the morning or evening.  Noon was the time to seek shelter in the shade.

         However, in this village, someone did come to the well at noon, an unnamed woman marginalized by her own community.  She was unwelcome at the well in the cooler hours of the day, and yet it was this woman who ended up having the longest recorded conversation with Jesus in all of the Gospels. 

         It was this woman who, in this particular Gospel of John, was the first one to proclaim – albeit as a question - that Jesus was the Messiah. In short, she was the first evangelist, the first bearer of the Good News that the Anointed One was here – at Jacob’s well – in the little backwater town of Sychar – in Samaria, no less.

         Maybe Jesus’ thirst was really getting to him – or maybe, again, he just did not take religious and social taboos all that seriously, but he asked the woman for a drink of water and, in doing so, broke all the rules of polite convention: First, Jews did not speak to Samaritans.  Second, men did not speak to women in public without their husbands present.  And third, an upstanding young rabbi building a reputation did not speak to a woman of such questionable background. 

         In a nutshell, the unnamed woman at the well hailed from the wrong place; she was the wrong gender, and, at first glance, at least, she had lived the wrong life. One would think that in three strikes she would be out, but instead….

         “Give me a drink of water,” Jesus asked, thereby initiating a conversation.

         Her response was flip.  “You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan. Don’t play with me.  How can you ask me for a drink?”

         “Oh, if you only knew – knew about God,” he replied, “knew about the message that I preach, knew about the life-giving water that offers hope to dry souls and love to arid, burned out hearts.”

         Taking it all in, she chose to continue to banter with him.  “You don’t have a bucket.  How could you possibly get that special water?”

         “The water in this well will run dry some day, you know,” he reminded her.  “But the water of God will be like a clear, refreshing shower as it will wash over you always.”

         Perhaps it was the image of a dry soul or an arid burned out heart or even the thought of a clear refreshing shower. Who knows?  But the woman at the well got it (in a way, by the by, that Nicodemus, whom we heard about last week, never seemed to). “Oh!  Sir!” she cried.  “Give me that water, so I will never be thirsty again.”

         You know, the story might have ended there.  After all, a point has been made, and a good one at that – all about Jesus and that living water.  However, the Gospel writer chooses to continue the narrative.

         And so a delightful dialogue follows about an array of husbands and a confession that the woman’s relationship with her current partner is more the common law type than anything legally binding.  And I must say that traditionally we have made some pretty heady presumptions about the woman at the well here.  Five husbands?  Living with a sixth?  Obviously a case of loose morals!

         But, have you ever thought that maybe she had a different history?  Maybe she was just old and had outlived her five husbands. Or – “maybe her five husbands had found her lacking, unsuitable, unlovely, unfit for their desires, and they simply rid themselves of responsibility and relationship.”  After all, the divorce laws certainly favored men, as one would expect in a patriarchal culture. (Linda McKinnish Bridges)  It is interesting to be aware of the assumptions we make and the boundaries we create because of those assumptions.

         At any rate, what follows is, first, a conversation about the origins of the rift between Jews and Samaritans and then more theology - and then even more theology when the disciples return with the picnic food to find – horror of horrors – what does he think he is doing:  to find their rabbi in the midst of spirited and spirit-filled conversation with a female outcast.         

         And in the midst of the disciples’ disapproval and Jesus’ theological explanation for his astounding behavior, the unnamed but now transformed woman at the well runs off, declaring what no one else in this Gospel at least has had the wherewithal, the courage, or the gumption to declare – albeit she does it in the form of a question:  “This man couldn’t be the Messiah, could he?” And we – thanks to twenty/twenty hindsight – can say confidently and affirmatively:  “Of course he is.”

         What a wonderful story!  And it all happened because Jesus asked a woman who was forced to be out and about in the noonday heat, in a foreign country where he was unwelcome, for a drink of water. 

         We all thirst for something.  And so the quite obvious question for us today is this:  What that YOU are thirsting for on this your Lenten journey?

         Do you thirst for the dismantling of the boundaries that separate us one from another, for the tearing down of walls between us?  Do you thirst for courage enough to put aside social and perhaps religious taboos as Jesus and the unnamed woman did? 

Like the Samaritan woman at the well who found that Jews were not as bad as she had thought they were, do you thirst for the clarity of conscience to finally see beyond rich and poor, gay and straight, man and woman even - and envision instead a wonderfully diverse humanity, all of us made in God’s image, all of us beloved sons and daughters of the Holy One?  Is that what you thirst for?

         Or do you thirst for the assurance that you are accepted in spite of who you are and what your past might have been?  Like the Samaritan woman at the well, do you thirst to experience what it feels like not to be an outcast, not to be marginalized, not to be thought of first off as stupid or fat or bald or old, but rather to be understood as someone with unique gifts to share with a family or a church community?  Is that what you thirst for?

         Or do you thirst for some sort of redemption, for a hidden strength to turn aside from the old wells in your life that have long since gone dry, leaving you cracked and broken and desolate?  Wells of addiction…Wells of failed marriages…Wells of busyness and not having enough time…Wells of living in the past or the future but never in the present moment? 

Like the Samaritan woman at the well, do you thirst to taste the Living Water of which Jesus spoke, and, perhaps more importantly, do you thirst for the humility to ask for it, pray for it?  Is that what you thirst for?

         Or do you thirst to recognize in a way you never really have before that Jesus is the Messiah, the long awaited one to put you right with God? Like the Samaritan woman at the well, do you thirst for the wherewithal, the courage, and the gumption to proclaim – even if it is in the form of a question as she did - that Jesus is the one who embodies all that God wants humans like you and me to be?  Is that what you thirst for?

         We all thirst for something.  What is it that YOU thirst for on this your Lenten journey?

         When I returned from the Southwest last fall, I read a book entitled House of Rain.  It was about the constantly migrating Native American tribes in that part of the country. The amazing thing about these clans and families was that not only, for seemingly no reason, would they pick up and move, leaving everything behind in their cliff dwellings, but two or three hundred years later, a civilization would be built again on the same site. 

         The author, Craig Childs, speculated that the tribes moved to find water.  And the way they knew that they needed to migrate was because their healers and shamans would go deep, deep, deep into the recesses of the cliff dwellings where they resided to a place where only the most holy among them could go, and there in the dark they would monitor the drip, drip, drip of the groundwater.  When the dripping slowed to a certain point, though the surface water may have looked no different, they knew it was time to leave their home.

         We are in the middle of our Lenten journey now.  We are deep, deep, deep into our own wildernesses.  We are in the dark, and we are in search of the source of that Living Water of which Jesus spoke, water that has the potential to transform our lives even as it changes our perspectives.

         Perhaps like the woman at the well, we will meet Jesus in the noonday heat, and we will have a spirit-filled conversation, and we will thirst no more.  But don’t count on that scenario. 

         More likely, we will need to go deep to find water – like the healers and shamans in the Southwest. We will need to go deep into the dark, into ourselves, into our hearts (that most holy of all places in our body), there to discover – by the grace of God – the drip, drip, drip of Living Water. 

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church, United Church of Christ

         

John 3:1-17 "Strange, Wonderful, Illuminating Darkness"

         Some people think that Nicodemus came to find Jesus after dark because Nicodemus feared that his fellow Pharisees might discover him “consorting with the enemy,” so to speak.  Daylight would have been way too obvious, those scholars maintain – and far too great a risk for a Temple hotshot like him.  Some people think that the scenario was as Lutheran pastor Edward Markquart describes: 

         “About midnight, Nicodemus came to Jesus’ house and rapped on the door. (Knock, knock, knock).

         Jesus came to the door and said, ‘Yes?’

         ‘I know it is late, but my name is Nicodemus. I am a professor of religious law down at the temple, and I would like to speak with you a minute.’

         Jesus said, ‘OK. Shall we go out for a walk?’

         Nicodemus replied, ’O no. No, no, no, no, no. We don’t want to be seen outside. Do you mind if I would come in?’’

         However, I do not think that it was such fear that caused the Pharisee to seek out Jesus in the darkness.   You see, Nicodemus was no slouch when it came to his chosen occupation of keeper and interpreter of Jewish law.  It would take a lot to irreparably tarnish the reputation of a man such as Nicodemus, he who was one of the 71 Pharisees appointed to the Sanhedrin, the council of Jewish sages who were the de facto Supreme Court and legislative body in Judea during the Roman occupation when Jesus lived.  It would take far more than a chance meeting with a young, still wet-behind-the ears preacher to bring Nicodemus down.

         No, I do not think it was fear that motivated Nicodemus that night.  I think it was that he intuitively knew that strange and sometimes wonderful and oftentimes illuminating things happen in the darkness.   After all, the Pharisees traditionally studied the Torah – the ancient Holy Scriptures – at night.  It was when darkness fell that they had their deepest and most satisfying theological discussions – so many “ah ha” moments did they experience in the evening hours. 

         It is like when you close you eyes at night, and you are so confused with a million thoughts and scenarios playing in your head, and yet you wake up to the sunrise the next morning with a clear path forward.  Strange and sometimes wonderful and oftentimes illuminating things happen in the darkness. 

It is in the darkness that we are most apt to think outside the box and come to new understandings. 

         And so Nicodemus came to Jesus in the dead of night, moving silently through the streets and alleyways, his cloak pulled tight around him to protect him from the wind that blew in gusts every which way and perhaps to conceal himself as well from the prying eyes that might wonder for a moment what a member of the Sanhedrin was doing out and about in the moonlight. Nicodemus limped a bit down the dusty avenue because the arthritis in his left knee always acted up at night.        

         You see, Nicodemus was no spring chicken.  I picture him as late middle aged – or maybe recently eligible for Social Security – graying hair, sad and knowing eyes.  Nicodemus had been around the block a few times, especially when it came to religion.  After all, how many years of his life had he devoted to studying the Scriptures?  Surely he was one who could quote most any part of them, chapter and verse.  Yet, for too many days and too many nights, Nicodemus had experienced that niggling and rather negative and downright uncomfortable feeling that he was only going through the motions.  Was this all that there was?

         And so he sought out Jesus, the young upstart rabbi that the Temple elite was quickly coming to despise but who seemed to have a message that was resonating with the hearts of the poor, the outcasts, and the marginalized.  Not that such an audience should ever have concerned someone like Nicodemus - unless, of course, they became unruly and threatened the fragile peace that the Pharisees had been able to establish over the years with the Roman authorities. 

         But there was something about that Jesus – and the bits and pieces of that message that he had overheard – that caused Nicodemus to come out in the dead of night to find the rabbi – and maybe – just maybe – in finding the rabbi – to finally find himself.  After all, strange and sometimes wonderful and oftentimes illuminating things happen in the darkness. 

         As one should expect from the writer of this Gospel of John, the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus was filled with puns and abstract symbols and double entrendres. As smart as he was and as well-versed as he was in the religious arts, Nicodemus found himself scratching his head, totally confused as Jesus spins a theology that our Pharisee insists upon taking literally (and that at least some of us have taken literally as well). 

         But Jesus is speaking figuratively.  However, that nuance is so far removed from Nicodemus’ frame of reference that finally the Gospel writer puts the words in Jesus’ mouth that lays it all out as simply as possible:  “God so loved the world” - that God would do anything – anything – to make it right, to make it a place like the very Garden of Eden itself, to make it the Kingdom of Heaven. “God so loved the world…”

         But to get to that point, Jesus and Nicodemus have a spirited and downright humorous conversation about birth and rebirth, spirit and the wind that blows. Jesus twists and turns Nicodemus’ perspective with wordplays and repeated phrases until the old Pharisee does not know if he is coming or going. As Lutheran pastor Janet Hunt notes, “Poor Nicodemus is standing precariously on the edge of mystery and Jesus seems to push him right in.  Because this is not intellectual parsing that is called for now.” 

         It all begins because Jesus uses one of those words that in Greek (the language of the Gospel though not the tongue that Jesus himself spoke) has more than a single meaning.  Jesus talks about being born – and Nicodemus is confused.  Jesus talks about being born “from above,” and Nicodemus thinks he is talking about being born “again.”  “From above” and “again”: same word in Greek.  It is kind of a mean trick to play on Nicodemus – he who in all his time as a Pharisee had been taught to look only at the literal meaning of the text.  After all, it was that mindset that was his original spiritual birthing.

         What Nicodemus hears is this:  Jesus says “Take it from me: Unless a person is born again, it’s not possible to see what I’m pointing to—to God’s kingdom.”

         “How can anyone,” queries Nicodemus, “be born again who has already been born and grown up? You can’t re-enter your mother’s womb and be born again. What are you saying with this ‘born again’ talk?”

         Ask any six year-old.  That is a crazy interpretation that Nicodemus is insisting upon. 

He is definitely having trouble, as New Testament scholar Charles Cousar notes, grasping “the strange ways of God, who persists in making all things new." How much more sense it makes to say:  “Take it from me: Unless a person is born from above, it’s not possible to see what I’m pointing to—to God’s kingdom.”

         And then Jesus goes on to talk about this elusive and fickle Spirit that we will encounter if we allow ourselves to be born from above, that perhaps even causes the second birth, that rebirth, to happen.  Jesus says that the Spirit is like that wind blowing outside, the one that even now as the two men talked periodically rattled the window frames or tossed up little dust vortexes in the fields on a whim.  We do not know when or why or how they will happen, Jesus declares. 

         Again, because the Greek word for “spirit” is the same as the Greek word for “wind,” Nicodemus just does not get it.  He responds with another scratch of the head.  “Huh? How can these things be?” he asks.

         And Jesus replies, “And you’re supposed to be a teacher?” 

         And Nicodemus shakes his head and says, “I just do not get it.  I better head home now.  Thanks for the wine.” 

         And Jesus called out to our Pharisee as the darkness enveloped him, “God so loved the world, Nicodemus, God so loved the world….”

         And so Nicodemus walked out into the nighttime gloom, shaking his head even as the wind played with the hem of his cloak and kicked up a dust vortex or two on the road before him. 

         It sure does not seem that he was any better off after his conversation with Jesus than he was before.  Was Nicodemus’ spiritual malaise in any way cured?  Well, if nothing else, at least he tried.  At least he ventured out into the darkness. 

         And because he did so, I like to think that maybe – just maybe - the embers of his heart, at the very least, were warmed.  Maybe – just maybe - a strange and perhaps wonderful and possibly even illuminating thing happened there in the darkness.  After all, the Gospel writer of John tells us that later, when Jesus is dead, Nicodemus tagged along with Joseph of Arimathea to the gravesite, there to pay his last respects to the rabbi who had once talked to him over a glass of wine in the nighttime gloom.  

        It seemed as though, when he came to Jesus, as UCC pastor Josh Blakesley wrote, “Nicodemus saw the world, himself, and God as existing inside a small box. His perspective was limited and therefore, it was easier for him to think that he knew things. But, as Jesus pointed out, once you let your perspective of the world, yourself, and God outside of the box—you realize you don’t know much at all. When perspective is small and rigid, it’s easy to say, ‘I know this or that’ with certainty. But once your perspective expands to be bigger and freer, you tend to say: ‘I don’t know everything and therefore, I’m open to new possibilities.’”

         New possibilities:  That is the essence of the work of the Spirit.  That was what Jesus was talking about in his conversation with Nicodemus.  When the Spirit touches us, we are transformed, maybe becoming even a bit incomprehensible.  When the Spirit touches us, we cannot help but trust our life to the God who brought us into this world.  When the Spirit touches us, we can only affirm and even embrace the mystery of God and celebrate the fact that we do not have the final word when it comes to the workings of the Holy One. When the Spirit touches us, we cannot help but live our lives as if we were in fact born to love as God has loved. Like the Spirit herself, we no longer rely on what we think we are and what we think we know.

         To be born from above, to be born in the Spirit, is to realize that there is more to life than meets the eye.  There is more than the trappings of religion that we are all so used to.  There is more than the rituals that we practice year after year. There is more than the intellectual structure and knowledge of the Gospel message.  There is more than going through the motions.

         To be born from above, to be born of the Spirit, is to break free of the shackles of a life of scarcity and enter joyfully a life of abundance.  It is to break free of the old established patterns and fearlessly try out new ways of strengthening a relationship with God. 

         To be born from above, to be born of the Spirit, is to seize with great abandon the fact that God can – and will – flit through our lives, shaping and molding us into more than we ever thought we could be.

         To be born from above is to continue to walk boldly into our Lenten journey.  It is to embrace the darkness we will undoubtedly encounter – if not along the way then surely when we stand at the foot of the cross – embrace that darkness knowing that strange and sometimes wonderful and oftentimes illuminating things can – and will - happen there.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C., Raymond, Maine

        

Matthew 16:21-26 "The Meaning of the Cross"

         When I was growing up, I was a competitive swimmer and spent most Saturday evenings in a red, white, and blue striped Speedo swimsuit, baggy sweatpants, and a team jacket, all ready to report for most any backstroke or freestyle event.  When not actually swimming a race, my teammates and I generally gathered at the end of the pool to cheer for our friends or simply to watch the other races. 

         I remember one girl – younger than I – who was both an excellent swimmer – and a church-going Catholic.  I knew she was an excellent swimmer by the times she posted after every race, and I knew her religious background because every time she got on the starting block, she performed a ritual of crossing herself over and over again, faster and faster, dozens of times before the starter finally raised his gun and declared “Swimmers, take your marks.”

The cross:  It is the most significant and widely known symbol of Christianity.

         It was carried as a standard on flags and shields during the Crusades and in a variety of other religious wars.  In the Middle Ages, for a church or cathedral to have a piece of the true cross (that is, a certified piece of the cross Jesus was nailed to) was a precious relic.  In fact, over time, those chips of wood venerated in churches throughout Europe, if laid together, would have fabricated a cross too high and too wide to even imagine – so many were little bits of the so-called true cross.  

         Growing up, all my Catholic friends made the sign of the cross over their chests at various and sundry times – both in and out of church – for various and sundry reasons, I suppose.  It was somewhat of a mystery to me because we Protestants were not quite that public about our faith.  However, I suppose some of us wore necklaces – a thin chain with a small gold cross dangling from it.

         I also remember in the film “The Exorcist” the young priest standing at the bottom of the staircase thrusting a metal cross upward at whatever demons were leaving their mark in the upstairs foyer.          Most recently, last Wednesday to be exact, many of us who attended our Ash Wednesday service had our hand or forehead marked with a cross in ashes, ashes traditionally created from the burning of last year’s palms from Palm Sunday.

The cross:  It is first and foremost a symbol of our relationship with Jesus

         We all know, of course, that Jesus was executed and died as a result of crucifixion.  He was nailed to a cross, one of thousands of people that Pilate, the Provincial governor at the time, condemned to this tortuous and ignoble form of the death penalty.  Pilate was a brutal and ruthless man. 

         Crucifixion was reserved for the worst crimes against the Roman Empire.  Historically then, Jesus was crucified for sedition, for his treasonous actions of showing up the oppressive domination economic and social system of Rome and for preaching an alternative system whereby the rich would not always get rich at the expense of the poor. 

         As Theologian Marcus Borg wrote, “They killed him because, in the name of the Kingdom of God, he challenged how they had put the world together – and he was beginning to attract a following. His mode of execution is unambiguous testimony to that: crucifixion was a Roman form of capital punishment reserved for those who systematically defied imperial authority.”

         Down through the ages, of course, the cross has become a focus for Christians during Lent because it is in these six weeks prior to Easter that we prepare to face Jesus in his last agonizing hours on the cross and be witnesses to his death and its special meaning.

The Cross:  Its particular meaning for us

         Throughout history, the cross has served people as everything from a good luck charm to a tool for exorcism.  However, the bottom line is that, for us as Christians, the most important event in history was what happened on the cross where Jesus Christ was executed.

         What exactly occurred on the cross is a matter of theology, nurtured in each one of us by a combination of profound personal reflection and what we are told in Sunday School or church.  Some of us would say that Jesus’ sole purpose in life was to die for our sins, that his death was payment for all the wrongs we have done or are capable of doing in the future.   Jesus paid our debt for us. 

         Others of us would focus more on the relationship between Jesus’ death and his resurrection.  They would look to the ancient (and perhaps basic to humanity) notion of dying and rising. 

         The Apostle Paul speaks about it in several of his letters to early churches.  We die to our old selves and are born into a new life in Christ, he says.  That is, through our relationship with Jesus, we are transformed – and so we continue on our spiritual journey, living and walking both in  light of Easter and in the Way of the Gospel Message with its emphasis on doing justice and loving kindness.  Whichever theology you have made your own, be assured that in both views, the cross is central to a changed heart.

         The cross may also symbolize our commitment to follow in Jesus’ footsteps.  As our Scripture this morning said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” – follow him in the ways of justice, reconciliation, and love. 

         The cross can be a powerful reminder as well to depend on God in even the worst moments, in times of inexplicable tragedy – not because God will have answers, not because God will take away the suffering or change the course of history, but because God will not abandon us.  We will not face whatever we need to face alone.

         Finally, the cross can be a sign of our gathering into a faith community.  Greek Orthodox scholar Michael Bressem puts it this way:  “The most common architectural shape for a church building is that of a cross (cruciform). Churches have crosses on the apex of their roofs, on top of their steeples, or crowning their domes. There is a cross on the wall of the sanctuary, on the altar, or hanging from the ceiling.

         The cross is central to the Church not because it merely symbolizes the Christian faith, but because all churches stand at the ‘crossroads.’ The church is the meeting place where people learn about the ‘old paths, where the good way is,’ are instructed how to ‘walk in it,’ and ‘find rest for [their] souls.’ In other words, the church-and the cross is where we determine the course of our lives and are reminded of the commitments we've already made.”

         I do not know what the cross means to you.  I do not know if it means sacrifice or service or transformation or simply the gathering of community.  I do not know if the cross is a sign of strength or a symbol of weakness for you. 

        But I do know that during the season of Lent, the cross becomes more and more central to our worship – in our songs, our images, our prayers.  And I do know that the cross has something absolutely essential to do with our relationship with God. 

         It is less important what, in your heart of hearts, you believe about the cross and more important that you believe something – and that that “something” lies at the foundation of your faith.

         Each of you will have a chance to express the meaning of the cross that you claim for your own in a hands-on way.  We are going to create an altar cloth together that we will use during Lent.  I will invite you to come forward to paint a cross on the fabric Lynn has so graciously put together for us.  The cross can be big or little, thick or thin – or some combination thereof.  But it will be your cross with your meaning for it and for the Lenten season. 

         As you paint your cross, let these words shine through your artwork:

The strongest pattern of all

Is one of the simplest –

Two intersecting lines.

One moving up from the ground,

The other stretching from east to wet.

Where they cross,

The tensile strength is such

That it will bear

Not just the weight of a man,

But that of a world sagging in its brokenness.

         Come, for the altar is ready.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church UCC, Raymond, Maine