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John 4:4-7
4 Now [Jesus] had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. 7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?”
You probably want to get more things done than you do. Our brains are always buzzing trying to interpret a multitude of signals and navigate the turbulence of technology, globalization, and information.
Newsweek’s recent edition headlined the information overload as reaching a point of “brain-freeze” where we become so saturated with incoming data that our neurological circuits freeze up.
Journalist Sharon Begley summarizes our dilemma, “The ‘Twitter-ization’ of our culture has revolutionized our lives, but with an unintended consequence: our overloaded brains freeze when we have to make decisions.”[i]
Somehow we are supposed to get it all done and keep our little corner of the world spinning in equilibrium.
But, inevitably, the computer will crash, the brakes will quit, the market will turn, the dog get sick, the basement will flood, the doctor will call, you’ll run out of shampoo, you’ll miss the bus, you’ll forget to shave, the creditors will call, the neighbors will yell, emotions run high, patience runs thin, your life collapses...
"I'll never get it all done!" "Everyone wants a piece of me!" ... and the morning coffee hasn’t even finished brewing yet.
In “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” Gordon Greco confesses to his Wall Street protégée, “Money is not the prime asset in life. Time is.” And, W. Edwards Deming, a statistician and business consultant best known for his work in the 1980’s in Japan, observed that “The average American worker has fifty interruptions a day.” [ii] In the course of our eighteen waking hours, that’s over three interruptions an hour.
That’s the world we live in.
Jesus’ life story was full of interruptions: his mother’s demand for more wine at the wedding at Cana, Nicodemus in the night, that funny little tax collector, Zachaias, up in his tree, Peter’s impetuous interjections, Herod’s infanticide in Bethlehem that forced Jesus and his parents to Egypt and, yes, the encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob. Only this time, it is not Jesus being interrupted, but Jesus doing the interrupting.
I see two gems of wisdom from the encounter Jesus had with her: 1) Accept the interruptions ... so, 2) You don’t miss Jesus.
The woman at the well doesn’t seem to be a person who needed extra interruptions. First, we can reasonably assume that he life was stressed by her social position. She was not first class.
I like to fly Southwest because everybody’s in coach. I don’t have to walk through the first class cabin on the way to my seat in back of the plane, and face first-class passenger glances that I tell me I really don’t belong here among the privileged people.
So it was as a Samaritan. You were not legitiment descendent of Abraham and Isaac, but sort of half-Jewish relative who descended from Abraham’s other son birthed from his wife’s maidservant Hagar. As such, we might reasonably assume, sociologically, that her life was difficult and filled with a sense of inferiority.
Also, we can reasonably assume that she lived in failed relationships with men. Reading further along in the story, in John 4:18 we discover that she had had five husbands, and that to the man she was now living with, she was not married. She couldn’t keep her man.
As such, we could be reasonably assumed that psychologically, her life was a struggle with dysfunctional personalities, failed relationships and sense of insecurity. She had a difficult life that didn’t need extra interruptions.
But Jesus ...(something like a “but God” instance we spoke of last week) But Jesus ... interrupts her anyways. If she lived in 2011, she could have managed the interruption by, .. say,...
1. Putting her cell phone on silent.
2. Turning off the porch lights and not answering the door.
- Clicking “delete” on her email before she read it.
- Staying home from work.
- Not checking Twitter.
- Resigning and collecting unemployment
... sort of “Turn-on, Tune-in and Drop-out” with Timothy Leary.[iii]
But, the woman at the well was operating more like a TIVO recorder here, where, when the phone rings, the email “dings,” the neighbors call, the Twitter tweets, she is of a mind to pause her life, listen to the situation, and then, when all is said and done, receive the grace that has been presented to her.
The issue may be less trying to eliminate interruptions, than knowing how to accept them.
She engages, she listens, she waits, and what she might have missed in a tirade of fury, became the gateway of grace.
It happens all the time between people... for those who are willing to listen...
Betty Smith, recovering in the grief from the lost of her husband only three month earlier, received one of those irritating telemarketing phone calls right when you’re ready to head out shopping.
Most of us are irritated with these interruptions, but Betty, in her ever-present patience, struck up a conversation. “I’m really not interested in a time-share in Texas, but thank you for calling. How are you doing?”
And with a pregnant pause on the other line ended with a deep breath, the telemarketer sighed, “Well, my husband passed on about a week ago and I’m just trying to get back to work. Thanks for asking.” And against all quota criteria of the marketing department, Mary, on the other end, started talking with Betty.
After five minutes, Betty asked if it would be permissible for her to call Mary later in the day at a number that would not interfere with her work.
Numbers were exchanged, and over the phone, an interruption that would have infuriated most of us, emerged as the opportunity for the much needed friendship and compassion that desperately need to carry us through the dark corridors of grief.
What might have missed in a tirade of fury, became the gateway of grace.
It happens all the time in prayer... for those who are willing to listen.
We often see prayer as talking to God. We have words, we have prayer books, we have liturgies,we have the Lord’s Prayer, but in our cranial need to have a constantly active pre-frontal lobe, we may have forgotten that prayer is a conversation – one that we cannot have if we do all the talking.
Listening to God -- though frustratingly slow -- if we give ourselves space between the words, to pause and listen, be silent and pay attention to God,
is invites us to be interrupted by God with thoughts that otherwise might not have crossed our mind. [iv]
What might we have missed in a diatribe of prayerful demands, can, when we listen for the voice of God in the space between the words, become the gateway of grace.
Whether between people or in conversation with God, it involves surrendering our agenda, opening our hearts, and listening to what God is doing around us in through us.
Eckhart Tolle, Buddhist teacher and philosopher, calls it the “Power of Now;” living in a mindfulness of the carnival happening around us and realizing we our part of it. [v] (But Jesus was already there.)
Maybe we need to take a lesson from the Samaritan woman whose life was interrupted by Jesus sitting on the edge of Jacob’s well asking her to pause from her own chaotic carnival of life and help him get a drink, and learn that our responsibility is less to create a safe bubble of comfort and ease, than about being humble, open, willing, and flexible; to see that the God-interruptions aren’t meant to drag me down, annoy me, teach me a lesson I should have already known...
... but they are opportunities to touch and taste and see and hear and participate in the Kingdom of God here and now; a chance to intersect with other people’s real lives, a chance to intersect my own spiritual formation with the rich formation of others, a chance to intersect with God himself.
Was this not exactly what the writer of the letter to the Hebrews said in Hebrews 13:2?
“Be not forgetful to entertain strangers:
for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”
[i] Sharon Begley, “I Can’t Think,” Newsweek, February 27, 2011
[ii] W. Edwards Deming, quoted in http://www.time-management-success.com/managing-interruptions.html
[iii] Dr. Timothy Leary, PhD., “Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out,” Original release: Mercury 21131 (mono)/61131 (stereo), US 1967, Executive producer: Henry Saperstein, Associate producer: Richard Krown, Guide/Narrator: Timothy Leary, Voyager/Narrator: Ralph Metzner, Divine Connection: Rosemary Woodruff; Original psychedelic music by Maryvonne Giercarz (veena), Lars Eric (guitar), Richard Bond (tabla)
[iv] Sister Ann Marie Wainwright, St. Scholastica Monastery, 1001 Kenwood Avenue Duluth MN
[v] Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, New World Library, Novato, CA
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