March 27, 2011
Third Sunday in Lent, Year A
Exodus 17:1-7
Psalm 95
John 4:5-4
"It is not the strongest of
the species that survives,
nor the most intelligent.
It is the one that is most
adaptable or responsive
to change."
~ Charles Darwin
Probably it is a little surprising to read a quote on the top of the bulletin for today from British naturalist Charles Darwin. But you are an open-minded group, and I think you will see the wisdom in Darwin’s statement about survival. Ever since he first set forth his theory of the Origin of Species, published in1859, poor Darwin has been getting a bad rap by some “religious folks.” Forty-three years after Darwin died, the famous Scopes trial took place, a result of religious fundamentalist rigidity and fanaticism attempting to prove that Darwin’s theory was blasphemous.1 I find it interesting that now, in our day, most theologians accept that belief in God as Creator of the universe and all that is and belief in evolutionary change and adaptation are NOT mutually exclusive. One can be a person of faith and embrace both positions. For example, my favorite ecological-environmental theologian, Sallie McFague, refers to the Big Bang Theory and evolution as the “commonly accepted Creation story.” So Darwin had a point when he wrote these words: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, or the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable or responsive to change.”2 It’s that point I want to reflect on today: survival and adaptability - or responsiveness - to change.
In the story of the Exodus from Egypt back to the Promised Land, Moses had his share of problems with the Israelite people. They were grumblers and complainers and at times, unbelievers. In the passage for today [Exodus 17:107] we find them quarreling with Moses again, this time because where they are camped, at a place called Rephidim, there is no water to drink, and they are thirsty. The text is careful to say, “no water to drink” - which makes me wonder if there were water, just not clean or good water. Anyway, they are thirsty. And they blame Moses, accusing him of bringing them out of Egypt into the wilderness to kill them and their children and livestock with thirst. Such gratitude!
So Moses asks the LORD what to do, and we have the story of Moses striking a rock with his staff and drinking water coming out of the rock. Moses named the place Massah, meaning testing, and Meribah, meaning quarreling – because that is what the Israelite people did in that place. They had forgotten that their God had led them there in the first place. They were not willing - or able - to respond or adapt to their situation, nor to accept in faith that God would see them through it. Nope. They just grumbled and quarreled with Moses and tested their God saying, “Is the LORD among us or not?” The Israelite people were not even sure they would survive; much less did they carry the remote thought that they could even thrive. They had not yet heard the saying, “BLOOM WHERE YOU ARE PLANTED!” They certainly were not blooming in that desert wilderness. They were wilting. They were unwilling - or unable - to open their minds and hearts to their God and respond to God’s many blessings already bestowed upon them. They could not or would not respond to their less fortunate circumstances as they journeyed on to what they believed would be a land of “milk and honey.” And did they ever have a surprise ahead of them when they reached that land! But that’s another story for another time.
A few weeks ago, Allan spoke on the Gospel story for today – quite by accident because he looked up the texts for the day by looking at lessons from Year A in the past by date, forgetting that in this particular year, the Season of Epiphany had 8 Sundays. So Allan landed on the Third Sunday in Lent. I’m glad he did, actually, because he had an excellent message on Matthew’s account of the encounter between the Samaritan woman and Jesus at Jacob’s well. He spoke of the importance of “meeting” – meeting other people or circumstances, and how such a meeting can totally change a person’s life, as it did the life of the Samaritan woman when she met Jesus and then chose to go back to the village and proclaim to all the people that she had met the Messiah and they should come and see for themselves. They did, and they believed in Jesus. And their lives, like the woman’s, were forever changed. I would suggest that they became Thrivers instead of just Survivors. I say that, having run across a quote this week in an advertisement for a study called Thrive, part of the Imagine No Malaria campaign. The ad said: “When you thrive the world around you is more alive.” Hear that again: “When you thrive the world around you is more alive.”
Children in countries where Malaria still exists in epidemic proportions are fortunate if they survive. One statistic states that in Africa, every 45 seconds a child dies from Malaria.3 If you do the math, that's 1,920 children a day. Our United Methodist Church has made their survival a top priority so that they and the world around them can begin to live and to thrive. A special program called Imagine No Malaria is an attempt to provide mosquito netting for children in Malaria-ridden countries. The sickness and death rate drops dramatically when infants and children are protected by netting over their beds while they sleep to keep them safe from the biting mosquitoes that carry the Malaria parasite, plasmodium. A life-saving mosquito net costs $10.00. If you visit the church website and click on the “Imagine No Malaria” in the lower left-hand corner, you can learn more about this dreaded disease and the initiative to get rid of it. If you click on the logo above the URL, you can sign up to receive daily Lenten devotionals based on the Imagine No Malaria initiative. They are wonderfully written and inspiring devotionals.
Meanwhile, along the lines of Allan’s thoughts from a few weeks ago, I’d like to tell you about a “meeting” I had this week that has had an effect on my own life. I‘ve been interested in the “Imagine No Malaria” program, and I noticed on their site a link to sign up for a Lenten daily devotional based on this initiative. So I signed up and received my first emailed devotional. I was so impressed and moved by it that I emailed the unnamed contact person to ask if we could somehow put a link to the daily devotional on our church website. I signed it with my name and title as Pastor of the West Danville United Methodist Church. An almost immediate response came back telling me how we could link to their Lenten devotional. And then a personal note that said:
“On a side-note, believe it or not my father is actually from West Danville! We still have a house on Joes Pond right on Clubhouse Drive that we come to every summer. I will be back up there in July, in fact. I about fell out of my chair when I saw your email earlier today! Thank you for supporting this ministry. Blessings, Margo Jacobs, Associate Executive Director, Imagine No Malaria”
I emailed Margo back, asking if she were related to Marge Jacobs and describing how I knew Marge and her granddaughter Jennifer and about our Holy Land trip in 2001. She replied:
“How fantastic - Marge Jacobs is my grandmother and Jen is my cousin! I am Dan’s daughter – you may also know his sister/my aunt Sukie Benoit…..I remember when Gram went to the Holy Land – she had a wonderful time, and Jennifer too! I believe Gram’s last summer in Vermont was in 2007 or 2008, when it just got to be too hard to travel. Jen is now her caretaker down in Tampa. Gram does not have much short-term memory left, but she gets very misty-eyed when we talk about Joe’s Pond. I will absolutely have to swing in this summer when we are up there – I believe we will be coming through the week after the Fourth of July, from July 10-17.”
And then she invited me to be part of a team of representatives from churches in the New England Conference that were interested in Imagine No Malaria. I plan to go to the groups’ first meeting on April 5th in Lawrence, Massachusetts, at the New England Conference office.
How cool is that? – to email an unnamed person at the General Board of Discipleship of the United Methodist Church and have the recipient be a summer visitor to Joes Pond and granddaughter of a former faithful worshiper and supporter of this church. What an awesome “meeting” through cyberspace!
It might seem like I have wandered a bit from the theme I put in the bulletin for my Reflections today about Surviving and Thriving. But perhaps not, for it seems to me that real thriving happens when we make connections with others. The woman at the well connected with Jesus and she began, then, to do more than just survive. She began to thrive – to find real life – to have her metaphorical thirst quenched by the Living Water that is Jesus Christ, our Lord. And, in keeping with Darwin’s quote, she, who was a Samaritan, an enemy of Jews, let go of that old way of being. She was adaptable – responsive – to the change to which Jesus was calling her. She was willing to put her own self aside to speak to this Jewish man who asked her for a drink of water. And the things which were once important to her, like her daily work of drawing a jar of water, and the things which frightened her or intimidated her, like the citizens of the city who knew her history and judged her by it - those things no longer mattered. They no longer held her captive. She was free. Already the Living Water had begun to flow through her as she headed back into her hometown to tell others about Jesus. [Just an aside – did you notice that according to the gospel story, she never did give Jesus a drink of water?]
I will close with that Imagine No Malaria quote one more time: “When you thrive the world around you is more alive.”
So let’s not just survive.
Let’s thrive!
1 See this website for information on Darwin and his work: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/darwin.htm
3 http://www.imaginenomalaria.org/2011/03/24/a-letter-from-the-lamoine-river-district-rev-randy-robinson-district-superintendent/ [This article is available on the www.westdanvilleumc.org website if you click on the URL for Imagine No Malaria]
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© Carol J. Borland, Pastor Emeritus, Interim Pastor, West Danville United Methodist Church, West Danville, Vermont
