Sometimes… we just don’t get it
In this weeks Gospel Jesus has a unique encounter with a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. In this brief story he divulges to her that he can offer living water to any who ask, knows her whole life story, offers her forgiveness and acceptance into the Kingdom of Heaven, and she, in turn, says she is waiting for the Messiah and when she realizes that Jesus is the one she has been waiting for, she runs to tell everyone she knows.
And the disciples big takeaway was…. You shouldn’t be talking to that woman. You must be delirious. Here, have some food.
Sometimes…we just don’t get it.
We are so fixated on doing the right thing, the safe thing, the correct thing, that we miss the BIG THING that God is doing.
This week, many of our minds at Memorial are on questions of scarcity. Will we have enough. Do we have enough. Can we be enough. It is not unlike the disciples who rush off to find food for Jesus only to come back and find out that he has his own food! They are too busy being frustrated to turn and ask him for this bread of life. Fears of scarcity are completely rational. Normal and part of our human condition.
But we worship a God of Abundance. A God who provided food and water in the desert - even as God’s people complained! A God who sent his son to redeem the world. A God who even now offers us blessing after blessing after blessing even as we turn away, ignore or claim God’s blessings as being of our own design.
Even as you are fretting about your own budgets and accounts and burdens, God is right there, providing exactly what you need.
Sometimes… we just don’t get it.
Fortunately, God gets us. God loves us. And God provides for us.
I have no doubt that as tenuous as our 2023 budget looks - Memorial will be just fine. Not because I have a secret answer to budget woes and falling stock markets, but because I believe in a God who is always right on time. Sometimes we just have to get out of God’s way and prayerfully consider what God would have us do in the moment.
The Vestry and staff will be guided by a very basic principle as we navigate this current budget crisis — does this work we are considering bring us closer to God? And if the answer is yes, then we can move forward; if not, we should take a step back, and ask ourselves how we can better use our resources to the glory of God here in Baltimore.
And if we do that? No matter what the balance sheet says we will be just fine in the end.