How to Miss a Resurrection

Reading: John 11.1-45 (The Raising of Lazarus)

Lent has a way of sneaking up on us. One minute we are bravely giving up chocolate, or gin, or doom-scrolling the news, and the next minute the lectionary calmly drops a story about a dead man walking out of a tomb. Which escalates things rather quickly. You think Lent is about self-improvement. Jesus seems to think it is about resurrection.

And the strange thing about the Lazarus story is that almost nobody in it understands what is going on. Not the disciples. Not the sisters. Not the mourners. Not the religious authorities. Everyone is confident about something. But almost everyone is confident about the wrong thing.

Take the disciples first. When Jesus says they are going back to Judea, they immediately start talking about danger. “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you.” In other words: this seems like a very bad career move. Their instinct is self-preservation. Which is understandable. The mind set on the flesh, as Paul might say, is mostly concerned with survival. Keep your head down. Avoid trouble. Don’t get killed.

Thomas, bless him, has already worked out how this is going to end. The others are still vaguely optimistic. Thomas has moved straight to the funeral arrangements. “Let us also go,” he says, “that we may die with him.” Thomas is the patron saint of people who assume the worst but turn up anyway.

Then we meet Martha and Mary, the grieving sisters.

Both say the same line to Jesus: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Which is one of the most painfully honest sentences in the Bible. And also one of the most trusting. It is the sentence spoken by anyone who has ever prayed and then watched things fall apart anyway.

And Jesus does not give them an explanation. Notice that. He does not offer a tidy theological lecture about the mysterious purposes of God. He does not say, “Well actually, suffering builds character.” He does something far more unsettling.

He weeps.

The shortest verse in the Bible is also one of the most revealing. The Son of God stands outside a tomb and cries. Which means that whatever Christianity is, it is not a religion of polite emotional distance. God is not the calm manager of a cosmic spreadsheet. God grieves.

And for a moment, nothing happens. The tomb is still closed. Lazarus is still dead. The mourners are still standing there wondering why Jesus arrived four days too late.

And then Jesus does something extraordinary: he calls Lazarus out of the tomb. And Lazarus comes out, still wrapped in burial cloths like someone who has accidentally arrived at the wrong party.

But the really interesting reaction is not from Lazarus. The interesting reaction is from the religious authorities – in the verses just after those we’ve heard this morning. Instead of saying, “Good heavens, a man has been raised from the dead,” they say something like, “This is getting out of hand.”

They call a meeting. Possibly with an agenda. Because when God raises the dead, the first thing religion likes to do… is form a committee. And, if possible, appoint a sub-committee to look into it. A resurrection has just happened, and the official response is to form a board of inquiry.

“What are we to do?” they ask. “This man is performing many signs.” Which is the bureaucratic way of saying, “Something extraordinary is happening and it is extremely inconvenient.”

And the conclusion of the meeting is not “Let us reconsider our understanding of God.” The conclusion is “We had better kill him.”

This is one of the great ironies of the Gospel. The people who are absolutely certain they understand God are the very people who cannot recognise God when he is standing in front of them raising the dead. Which should make us just slightly nervous.

Because religious certainty is a very seductive thing. It feels solid. It feels righteous. It feels like finally being the person in the room who knows what God thinks.

But in the Gospels, the people who are most certain about God are very often the people who miss the miracle entirely. They are so busy defending their idea of God that they cannot see what God is actually doing.

This is where Paul’s words to the Romans suddenly start to make sense. “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” The mind set on the flesh is not just about bodily appetites. It is about control. Certainty. The need to keep reality tidy and predictable. The mind set on the flesh says: everything must make sense within my system. And I need to become deeply preoccupied with the behaviour of other people.

But the Spirit of God has a deeply irritating habit of refusing to fit inside our systems. God keeps turning up in places where we were quite sure he wouldn’t. Among the grieving. Among the confused. Among people who say things like “Lord, if you had been here…” and are not quite sure what they believe anymore.

And the Spirit does something even more disturbing. It brings life where we have already decided there can only be death.

Jesus stands outside the tomb and shouts one sentence: “Lazarus, come out!”

Which is not just a command to one man two thousand years ago. It echoes into every locked-up corner of human life. Into despair. Into grief. Into the places where we have quietly concluded that nothing new can happen.

“Come out.”

But notice one final detail. Lazarus walks out of the tomb, but he is still wrapped in burial cloths. And Jesus says to the crowd, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

Resurrection, it turns out, is not a solo performance. The community has work to do. Someone has to unwrap the bandages.

Which might be the most practical thing the Church is ever asked to do. Not to explain resurrection. Not to manage resurrection. Simply to help people step out of the things that still bind them.

And that is where Lent quietly leads us. Not toward spiritual heroics or moral perfection, but toward the unsettling possibility that God is still calling people out of tombs.

Sometimes the tombs are grief. Sometimes they are fear. Sometimes they are the small, suffocating certainties we have built around ourselves.

And sometimes the voice we hear in the darkness is the same voice that called Lazarus.

“Come out.”

Which is wonderful news. And slightly alarming. Because if God is still raising the dead, then none of us are nearly as finished as we thought we were.

Amen.

How to Miss a Miracle

How to Miss a Miracle (or, The Danger of People Who Are Absolutely Sure About God)

Readings: Micah 7.7-9 and John 9

There is a particular kind of religious person who is absolutely certain about everything.

You know the type. They have charts. They have position papers. They have committees whose sole purpose in life is to decide who is in and who is out. They have statements of orthodoxy with footnotes and appendices and occasionally a small flowchart explaining how you can tell if someone is definitely going to hell. And if you ever meet one of these people, you will notice something fascinating about them.

They are never in any doubt. Not about doctrine. Not about morality. Certainly not about what God thinks on any subject. Correct forms of liturgy, the correct place of women in the church, the correct attitude towards people of unusual sexuality. They have, as it were, a direct line to the Almighty, who seems to agree with them in remarkable detail. Which brings us to today’s Gospel from the Gospel of John.

Because John chapter 9 contains one of the great comic reversals in the New Testament. It begins with a man who has been blind from birth. He lives on the margins of society. He has no status, no authority, no theological education, and—until a few minutes ago—no eyesight.

Jesus, however, has healed him. And you might imagine that everyone would be delighted.

But no…

Because the healing has taken place on the Sabbath. Which means that a committee must be convened. A theological investigation must be undertaken. Forms must be filled in. Witnesses must be called. Before you know it the whole thing has turned into something resembling a church tribunal with slightly worse biscuits. The neighbours are interrogated. The parents are interrogated. And eventually the man himself is interrogated repeatedly by the religious authorities.

Now here is the delicious irony. The only person in the entire story who can see clearly what has happened is the man who was blind. Everyone else—particularly the professional religious experts—is completely incapable of seeing what is right in front of them.

They know the rules. They know the regulations. They know what God is allowed to do and what God is not allowed to do. And therefore they know with complete certainty that whatever has just happened cannot possibly be from God. You can almost hear the tone of voice:

“God would never do a miracle in a way that contradicts our policy framework.”

Which leads to one of the funniest lines in the whole passage.

The formerly blind man says to them, with the gentle sarcasm of someone who has begun to enjoy the situation slightly too much:

“Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes.”

Translation: “You are supposed to be the experts.”

The conversation goes downhill rapidly from there. Eventually the authorities lose patience and say to him:

“You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they throw him out. It is a wonderful moment. The man who has just received his sight is expelled by the people who are absolutely certain that they can already see perfectly well. Which brings us to the punchline.

Jesus later finds the man and says: “I came into this world so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” Some Pharisees nearby hear this and ask nervously, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” And Jesus replies—rather devastatingly—

“If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.” In other words: the real problem is not ignorance. The real problem is certainty. And if you think about it, that problem has never entirely gone away.

Throughout the history of the church there have always been groups who are completely confident that they alone have grasped the Truth in its pure and undiluted form. They know exactly what God thinks about everything. They know exactly how the church should behave. They know exactly who counts as faithful and who has clearly wandered into grievous error. And if the rest of the church would simply listen to them, the whole thing would be sorted out very quickly. It is a marvellous level of confidence. One cannot help admiring it. Though one does occasionally wonder how they managed to get hold of God’s private briefing notes.

The difficulty, of course, is that the Gospel seems rather suspicious of people who are entirely certain that they can see. Because again and again in the New Testament the people who recognise Jesus most clearly are not the religious professionals. They are the ones who know what it is like to be in the dark. People who are uncertain. People who are searching. People who are prepared to admit that they might not yet have understood everything.

Which is where the prophet in our first reading from the Book of Micah becomes unexpectedly relevant. Micah looks around at a society that has descended into corruption and mistrust. The political system is failing. Justice is collapsing. Neighbours can no longer trust each other. Sound familiar?

It is not, in other words, the sort of moment when cheerful optimism comes naturally. And yet Micah says something quietly defiant:

“As for me, I will look to the Lord…
though I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me.”

Notice what he does there. He does not claim that he can already see everything clearly. He admits that he is sitting in the dark. But he trusts that God is still capable of bringing light. Which, in the end, may be the most faithful posture of all. Not the loud certainty that declares, “We see everything perfectly.” But the quieter faith that says, “We are still learning to see.”

Because when we become too certain—too convinced that we alone possess the full and final version of Truth—we run the risk of becoming exactly like the people in John’s story. Very religious. Very confident. And completely unable to recognise God when he turns up and does something unexpected.

So perhaps the invitation of the Gospel today is wonderfully simple: remain curious. Remain humble. Remain slightly suspicious of anyone who claims to have the whole of God neatly mapped out. And if you ever find yourself sitting in the dark, unsure what God is doing, remember the words of Micah:

“Though I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me.”

Because sometimes the people who see that light most clearly are the ones who are honest enough to admit that they are still learning how to see.

Amen.

Mothering Sunday - dangerous work!

Mothering Sunday is a dangerous day for preachers. I say that quite deliberately. There are some Sundays when the sermon writes itself. Christmas is straightforward: baby, manger, angels, job done. Easter: empty tomb, joy, hallelujah. But Mothering Sunday sits there in the calendar like a theological obstacle course, daring the preacher to put one foot wrong.

And the reason is simple. Every preacher knows that the moment you start speaking about motherhood, you are stepping into territory that is deeply personal for almost everyone in the room. Some will be mothers and grandmothers. Some will be celebrating joyful family relationships. Others will be remembering mothers they have lost. Some will carry the quiet ache of never having had children, or the deep ache of having lost a child. Some will have complicated stories that Hallmark cards have never yet managed to capture.

Which means that if you are a preacher – and particularly if you are a man – there is always the slight sense that you are walking into a room full of experts.

I once heard of a clergyman who began his Mothering Sunday sermon by saying, “I approach this subject with some trepidation.” A voice from the third pew said, “Quite right too.”

Now, the slightly awkward truth is that Mothering Sunday was not originally about mothers at all. Historically, this day in the midst of Lent was the day when people were encouraged to return to their mother church – the church where they had been baptised, or the cathedral of the diocese. In the Middle Ages, apprentices and domestic servants who had been sent away to work were sometimes given the day off to travel home. They would go back to their parish church, and often see their families on the way. And because Lent was a fairly austere season, this became a rare day of reunion and celebration.

Over time, of course, the family visit gradually became the main event. Flowers appeared. Simnel cakes appeared. Mothers were thanked. And eventually, especially in the last century, the whole thing merged rather confusingly with the American “Mother’s Day”, which is a completely separate invention driven largely by the greeting-card industry and the restaurant trade.

Which means that what we celebrate today is really a curious mixture of several things at once: the church as a mother, the family as a place of nurture, and the gratitude we feel towards those who cared for us as we grew up.

And that complexity is actually rather appropriate, because the Bible itself refuses to treat motherhood in sentimental ways.

Take the (mercifully short!) Gospel reading we have just heard (Luke 2.33-35). Mary and Joseph bring the baby Jesus to the temple. Simeon looks at the child, speaks those extraordinary words about salvation and light and glory… and then he turns to Mary and says, quite calmly, “A sword will pierce your own soul too.”

That is not the sort of thing that appears on a Mothering Sunday card.

But it is honest.

Because love — real love — always carries risk. Anyone who has ever loved a child knows that mixture of fierce joy and quiet fear that comes with it. The joy of watching someone grow, learn, flourish. And the constant awareness that the world can be a difficult and painful place.

Simeon is telling Mary, right at the beginning of Jesus’s life, that love will cost her something. One day she will stand at the foot of a cross.

Which is why the Church has always honoured Mary not simply because she gave birth to Jesus, but because she lived a life of courageous, faithful love.

And that brings us to the other reading this morning. In his second letter to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 1.3-7) Paul describes God as “the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction.”

In other words, the love we receive becomes the love we give. We are comforted, and then we learn how to comfort others. We are cared for, and then we learn how to care.

That pattern lies at the heart of Christian life. And it lies, too, at the heart of family life.

The hymn we sang earlier describes Mary giving her body “for God’s shrine” and her heart “to piercing pain”. That is not a sentimental description of motherhood. It is a description of love that gives itself.

And the remarkable thing is that this kind of love appears everywhere.

Of course we see it in good mothers. But we also see it in fathers, grandparents, teachers, carers, neighbours, and friends. We see it in people who cook meals for those who are unwell, who sit beside hospital beds, who patiently guide children through homework, who quietly hold families together when life becomes complicated.

The world survives because ordinary people practise that kind of love every day.

And the Church — when it is being faithful to its calling — tries to become a community where that kind of love is nurtured and strengthened.

Which means that Mothering Sunday is not really about idealised families, or idealised mothers.

It is about recognising the networks of care that hold human life together. It is about gratitude for those who nurtured us. It is about compassion for those whose stories are painful or unfinished. And it is about remembering that the love we experience in human relationships is always, ultimately, a reflection of something deeper.

Because behind all these small acts of care stands the God whom Paul calls the “God of all consolation”. This is the God who gathers people together with the tenderness of a parent; the God who, as our Eucharistic prayer puts it so beautifully, embraces his people “as a mother tenderly gathers her children.”

And the Church itself — the “mother church” from which this day originally takes its name — is meant to be a place where that love becomes visible.

Not perfect.

Not always tidy.

“Faithful, not finished”, as the motto of St Faithful’s Havnot says it.

But real.

A community where people learn, slowly and imperfectly, how to console one another, forgive one another, and care for one another.

Which means that Mothering Sunday is not simply about celebrating motherhood: it is about celebrating the courage of love itself.

And it is about giving thanks for all those people whose quiet acts of care have shaped our lives more than we will ever fully know.

Amen.

When Churches Argue (Listening for God in a divided church)

There is a particular kind of argument that happens in families. You will recognise it instantly. It usually begins with a sentence that sounds perfectly calm and reasonable. The sentence is this: “I’m not arguing…but”. Which is normally a reliable indicator that an argument has already begun.

The remarkable thing about family arguments is that everyone involved is absolutely convinced that they are the one person in the room who is being perfectly reasonable. Everyone else, obviously, has gone quite mad.

If you have ever sat through a PCC meeting, you will recognise the phenomenon immediately. One person is explaining the obvious solution, another person is explaining why that solution will destroy the parish forever, and a third person is quietly wondering whether this might be the moment to put the kettle on.

The Gospel this morning begins with an argument. Jesus has just cast a demon out of someone. Which you might think would be the sort of thing everyone could agree is good news. A person is healed. A life is restored. A burden is lifted.

But instead it triggers a theological dispute. Some people say, “This must be the work of God.” Others say, “No, clearly he’s in league with the devil.” And a few stand at the back asking for another miracle, just to be absolutely certain.

At which point Jesus says the rather famous line: “Every kingdom divided against itself becomes a desert, and house falls on house.” In another Gospel account of the same story, he says: “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

It is one of those sentences that sounds very clear… until you start applying it to real life. Because if unity were easy, the Church would have managed it by now.

Christians sometimes talk as though division is a modern tragedy. But if you read the New Testament carefully, you discover that Christians have been disagreeing with each other since about half past Easter. Paul argues with Peter. Churches argue about circumcision. Entire congregations fall out over food, worship, and leadership. If there had been parish magazines in the first century, the letters page would have been unprintable.

By the time John writes his Gospel, he remembers Jesus praying, “that they may all be one.” Which is a beautiful prayer. But the fact that Jesus prayed it, and especially that John included it around 70 years later, suggests something important: unity was already fragile.

Human beings are extraordinarily good at disagreement.

Which brings us to Jeremiah. Jeremiah is speaking to people who are very sure they know what God wants. They have the Temple. They have the traditions. They have the religious system. Everything is tidy and well organised. And then Jeremiah, annoying, interfering, meddling Jeremiah, stands up and says something deeply inconvenient.

“Listen up,” says Jeremiah. “God says this: listen to my voice.”

Not my archive.

Not my carefully preserved system of dusty writings.

My voice.

And that is interesting, because a voice is something living. A voice moves. A voice interrupts you halfway through explaining why you are right. A voice sometimes calls you into places you had no intention of going.

Jeremiah says the people refused to listen. Instead, he says, they “went backward and not forward.” Which is a wonderfully human description of religious life.

Because the great temptation in religion is not wickedness. It is certainty: the comforting belief that we already know everything God is ever going to say — about everything, to every society, and in every new situation humanity encounters.

The Gospel story pushes that even further. Jesus tells a strange little parable about a strong man guarding his house. Everything is secure. Everything is locked down. The system works perfectly. Until someone stronger turns up and rearranges the furniture.

The Kingdom of God, it seems, has a habit of doing that: just when we think the house is tidy, God moves the chairs.

Now Christians today disagree about many things. Some of those disagreements are currently very visible in the Anglican world. At the moment, there are people in different parts of our Communion trying to decide what faithfulness looks like — and in some cases even building new structures in order to guard what they believe is the truth.

And it would be very easy — and very satisfying — to stand here and declare that our side has understood God perfectly while everyone else has tragically missed the point. But history makes that rather difficult.

Because Christians have been absolutely certain before. The Church was once absolutely certain about slavery. Absolutely certain about the role of women. Absolutely certain about many things which, over time, the Church slowly — and sometimes painfully — reconsidered. That does not mean truth changes with fashion. But it might mean that God’s voice is sometimes still speaking.

And sometimes — rather inconveniently — that voice sounds like someone we disagree with.

So perhaps the deeper question behind today’s Gospel is not simply “Who is right?” Perhaps the question is: where do we see the work of God bringing life?

Because Jesus says something very interesting in the middle of the argument. “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.”

In other words: look at the fruit. Look at the healing. Look at the freedom. Look at the life appearing where there used to be fear. And then ask yourself: could God be at work here?

Let me finish with a small parable.

Imagine a large, old house. The sort of house that has been lived in for centuries. Every generation has added something: a room here, a staircase there, a slightly puzzling cupboard that nobody quite remembers building.

Now imagine the family living in that house. They love it deeply. They know every corner of it. They have strong opinions about how the furniture should be arranged. And every so often, someone says, “I think the house needs to change a little.”

At which point half the family say, “Yes, because the house must keep growing.” And the other half say, “Absolutely not, because the house must be preserved.”

And the interesting thing is this. Both groups love the same house. Both believe they are protecting it. The real danger comes when they decide the other half are not family anymore. Because once that happens, the house stops being a home.

Jesus does not promise us a Church without disagreement. But he does keep reminding us that the Kingdom of God is bigger than our arguments.

And if God still has a voice, then none of us has the final paragraph yet. Which may be slightly unsettling. But it is also hopeful. Because the God who keeps speaking is also the God who keeps gathering people together — even people who occasionally argue like family.

And if the Kingdom of God can survive two thousand years of bishops and people arguing (and the occasional PCC meeting)…

…it may yet survive us Anglicans. Amen.

The problem with buckets

Reading:  John 4 - The Samaritan woman at the well.

There are some conversations you expect to have in life, and some you really don’t.

You expect to talk to the person behind the checkout. You expect to talk to the neighbour over the fence.  You expect, occasionally, to talk to someone who wants to tell you at length about their new knee.  Every congregation contains at least eight people with a knee story. Sometimes they travel in threes and compare them.

But there are also conversations that catch you completely off guard.  And the Gospel this morning begins with one of those.

Jesus is tired. That’s how the story begins. Not preaching. Not walking on water. Not performing miracles. Just tired. Sitting down by a well in the heat of the day.  Which is already encouraging for those of us who occasionally arrive at church feeling slightly underpowered.  If you’ve ever sat down in a pew thinking, Honestly Lord, I’m running on about forty per cent this morning, take comfort: our Lord once began a significant moment of evangelism by sitting down because he needed a rest.

Then a woman arrives to draw water.  Now to us that may sound fairly ordinary. People meeting at wells, chatting about hydration. But in the social world of the time this was about as awkward as it gets. 

First problem: Jesus is a Jew. She is a Samaritan. And Jews and Samaritans did not get along.  Second problem: she is a woman, and men didn’t normally strike up conversations with women they didn’t know.  Third problem: she has, shall we say, a complicated reputation.

So when Jesus opens with “Give me a drink,” the woman is basically saying what everyone listening to the story is already thinking. “Hang on… why are you talking to me?”  And Jesus replies with something mysterious.

“If you knew the gift of God… you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”  And the woman replies with what must surely be one of the most gloriously practical lines in the whole of scripture:

“Sir… you have no bucket.”  It’s magnificent.  Jesus is speaking in sweeping spiritual poetry about eternal life.  And she’s essentially saying, “Yes, dear, lovely idea — but logistically you appear extremely under-equipped.  You have no bucket. The well is deep.”

Which is the Bible’s gentle reminder that whenever God starts talking about eternal life, at least one human being will immediately start worrying about the exact equipment required.  Church history is basically the story of that continuing.

God speaks about life. We start worrying about buckets. And to be fair, churches have always been quite good at buckets. Committees for buckets. Policies about buckets. Possibly even a subcommittee for the appropriate storage of buckets.

Somewhere in every church cupboard there is a mysterious bucket whose purpose nobody remembers but nobody dares throw away. You know the cupboard I mean. Three flower vases, half a banner pole, something left over from a harvest display in 1998, and a plastic bucket that looks faintly reproachful.

Nobody knows what it’s for. But nobody throws it away either. Because the moment you do someone, usually called Sandra, will say, “That was for Maundy Thursday. You idiot”

But Jesus isn’t talking about equipment.  He’s talking about thirst.  The deep human thirst that sits inside all of us.  The thirst for meaning.  The thirst for forgiveness. The thirst to be known and not rejected.

And here is the astonishing thing.  Jesus offers this living water not to the respectable religious insiders. He offers it to someone on the edge. A Samaritan. A woman. Someone with a complicated story.

In other words — exactly the sort of person religion sometimes quietly hopes will slip in at the back and leave before the notices; preferably without messing up our nice tidy liturgy. 

But this woman becomes the first evangelist in the story. She runs back to the town and says, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!”  Which, when you think about it, is quite a risky marketing strategy.  Most of us would prefer that Jesus remain politely unaware of several chapters of our life.

If Jesus stood up after coffee and said, “Right then — shall we just have a quick review of everybody’s search history?” the congregation would empty faster than the biscuit plate at a committee meeting.

But the woman has experienced something extraordinary. She has been fully seen… and still welcomed. Fully known… and still loved. And that changes everything.

Because the problem in this story isn’t really the bucket. The problem is the container.  Jesus says the water he gives will become “a spring… gushing up to eternal life.” It doesn’t stay politely in the bucket.  The woman is thinking about drawing water. Jesus is talking about becoming a source of life. God offers living water. And we say, “Yes, but will it fit in the bucket I brought with me?”

Will it fit into my preconceptions, my traditions, the things I’m quite sure about even without evidence.  And the answer, of course, is no. 

Because buckets hold a fixed amount.  The life of God does not. It flows.  Which, if we are honest, is both wonderful and slightly alarming.  Because we rather like containers in church life. We like things organised. Contained. Predictable. Preferably with a rota.  But the life of God has a habit of spilling over the edges. And perhaps that is why this story ends the way it does. 

The woman speaks.  The townspeople come. They listen. And they say, “We know that this is truly the Saviour of the world.” And it all began with a tired man sitting by a well and asking for a drink.

Which tells us something important about the way God works. Not always through grand speeches. Not always through dramatic miracles. Very often through ordinary conversations.  Conversations at wells, or in our case, around urns and washing up bowls.  Through moments of honesty. Through people discovering that they are known — completely — and still loved.  And perhaps that is the invitation of Lent. To recognise our own thirst. Because the truth is we all carry buckets.  Buckets of worry. Buckets of regret. Buckets of trying to prove that we are good enough.

And Jesus says, very gently, “You don’t have to keep hauling those forever.”  There is another kind of water. A deeper life. A spring that does not run dry. And it very often begins exactly where this story began. With an unexpected conversation at the well.

Amen.