"Pilgrim’s Calling: Foolish or Faithful?"

I Corinthians 1:18-31

January 30, 2011 + Annual Meeting Sunday

Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ

400 Glenwood Drive

Chattanooga, Tennessee 37404

A colleague of mine shared a very helpful book with me (“Owning Your Own Shadow,” Robert A. Johnson, Harper San Francisco, 1993, pp. vii-viii) which says that Dr. Carl Jung, the pioneer psychoanalyst, had a favorite story which went something like this: “The water of life wishing to make itself known on the face of the earth, bubbled up in an artesian well and flowed without effort or limit. People came to drink of the magic water and were nourished by it, since it was so clean and pure and invigorating. But humankind was not content to leave things in this state of paradise on earth. Gradually they began to fence the well, charge admission, claim ownership of the property around the well, and make elaborate laws as to who could come to the well, put locks on the gates. Soon the well was the property of the powerful and the elite. The water was angry and offended; it stopped flowing and began to bubble up in another place. But the people who owned the property around the first well were so engrossed in their power systems and ownership that they did not notice that the water had vanished. They continued selling the nonexistent water, and few people noticed that the true power was gone. But some dis-satisfied people searched with great courage and found the new artesian well. But, sadly, that new well came under the control of the property owners, and the same fate overtook it. The spring took itself to yet another place – and this has been going on throughout human history.”

This story is a parable of human life. Dr. Jung was particularly touched by it since, in looking at human history, he saw how a basic truth, a new faith, a better way of human life can be misused or distorted by our human selfishness and willful ignorance. We can see this everywhere: in science, in art, in education, in government, and, perhaps most tragically, in religion. A new understanding of the meaning of life and how we should live with one another gets covered over with stale custom and mindless traditionalism. What at its beginning was a fresh source of renewal, of reform, even revolution is corrupted and controlled by the rich and the powerful. The vitality, the inspiration, the enthusiasm which should be present drains away and all that is left is rigid conformity.

I believe this story of the well of living water is particularly relevant with regard to religious faith. How often in human history has some great prophetic teacher shared a new vision of God and what God wants for us as human beings? Of course, that faithful vision is not really new. It is the same water of life bubbling up again in another place. Sadly, that new vision of faith and life is so powerful and so threatening of the way things are and the way we have always thought and believed and acted that our human impulse is to try to limit and control it.

When I was a boy my father took me to visit the hydroelectric dam where he had worked during the Great Depression. The water of the Kalamazoo River driving the turbines created an enormous amount of electrical power. The inside of the power house hummed and throbbed. It was both impressive and frightening. My father pointed out that the vast power of the generators was tamed and transformed so that we could have usable power in our home. In my childish way I remember asking my father what would happen if the river stopped flowing. “Then,” he said, “Very soon the power would stop flowing,” The water must continue flowing if we are to have the life-giving power it provides.

I am sure some of you noticed the hopeful ending of Dr. Jung’s story. Though the well of living water might be silted and stifled in one place because of human selfishness and stupidity, it could not be stopped altogether. The water broke through the surface of human control and custom and tradition and bubbled up in another place. Thank God for that! But does this parable mean that once the flow of living water has been stopped in one place it can never re-appear there again?

I don’t think so. I take great comfort in an obscure story in the book of Genesis tells how that Isaac came back to the part of the Holy Land where his father Abraham had lived many years before. Over the years the wells that were so critical to the life of these nomadic herdsmen had been stopped up by sand and dirt and debris. Once that had been cleared away the water flowed again. As Genesis (26:18A) puts it: “Isaac dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of his father Abraham.”

I know I risk improperly allegorizing this story to mean something more than it says. Clearly what we have here is a snipped of ancient history, no more and no less. But I take some comfort that others have found in this passage a deeper level of meaning, a metaphor of human life if you will. Like an artesian well, the living water is still there in the places we found it before. Though we may have stopped up that well with our human bungling it can still be re-discovered if we are willing to dig down and uncover it again.

Now let’s get to the point. You have been very patient as I spun out these stories and allegories. What do I think they mean to us here at Pilgrim Church in the dawn of twenty-first century? I believe they mean for us the same thing the Apostle Paul was sharing with the Corinthian Church in the first century. The church at Corinth was called to be an island of difference in a sea of conformity. The pagan world of the Roman Empire was relentless in its division of people into the powerful and the powerless, the rich and the poor, the educated and the uneducated, the free and the slaves, women and men. Into this divided world came Paul and the other Christian evangelists proclaiming a new way of life. The Christian Church would be the place where the living water of God would be available for all people without distinction. Sadly, only a few years after it’s founding, the Corinthian Church had already begun to imitate the world around it in the hope of becoming acceptable and successful. I am sure many Corinthians were saying to one another that the vision of full and complete and total inclusiveness which Paul was preaching was both foolish and futile. How could the Christian Church survive if it opened its doors to everyone?

Friends, the same question is asked today in many churches, perhaps, even by some in our own church. How can we survive in an increasingly secular world if we don’t beat the world at its own game? Successful churches are known as much for those they exclude as for those they include. 11 o’clock on Sunday morning is not only still the most segregated hour of the week but also the hour most divided by economic and social status, by educational and cultural background, yes, and most of all by sexual orientation. I know I risk being unkind when I say this but one American denomination today says that it is a place of open doors. Not really and not fully. Openly gay and lesbian people are really not fully welcomed there nor are those who may hold different religious or political opinions. Sadly, even we here at Pilgrim have not yet found ways to open our doors wide enough so that all people will feel welcomed here. But I tell you this: if we don’t continue pushing to keep our doors open to all people without exception, then the living water we have found here over the years will stop flowing. Oh, our membership and finances may grow but what difference would that make? We are here to live out God’s foolish, faithful vision of extravagant welcome for all people. If we do that the water will never cease to flow. That is our vision, that is our calling, that is our mission. And all God’s people said, Amen!