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| From Gustav Dore's Illustrations of Coleridge |
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s most famous poem - well, maybe next to Kubla Khan - is The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. It’s one of those things where you’ve heard a lot of phrases from it even if you don’t know that’s where they came from. In one part, Coleridge describes an old sailing ship completely becalmed. No wind, no wave, no motion for days. The provisions have given out, and the sailors are slowly dying of thirst. Here are a few verses:
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
Which most of us misquote as “water water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.”
The point here being that drinking saltwater makes you more thirsty, more dehydrated, and quickly kills you. So it’s a powerful image, dying of thirst surrounded by water that looks like salvation but is, in reality, death. They say that someone dying of thirst will often give in to madness, and drink deep of the saltwater even knowing that it won’t work.
To live in modernity is to be adrift in an ocean of spiritual saltwater. We thirst for happiness, and in every direction, everywhere we turn, there’s something promising to quench that thirst. Pressing upon us, competing for our attention. And to the thirsty soul it looks so refreshing, so appealing.
I catch myself giving in on a regular basis. Not long ago some beautiful wealthy celebrity was complaining about something or other, and maybe you'll recognize my reaction: “Oh, poor you, having to suffer through being rich and famous and attractive. Cry me a river.” Right? The implication being, that someone who’s rich and famous has no excuse to be unhappy. Well, that’s crazy. I know that money and fame and looks don’t bring happiness. So why would I sneer when a rich famous beautiful person isn’t made happy by being rich and famous and beautiful? I have to conclude that somewhere inside me, there’s a part that still thinks that having those things should make someone satisfied.
Saltwater. The more you drink, the thirstier you get. We’ve all got our salty drink of choice. For some people, it’s applause. Applause is a pretty powerful drug. I don't know what's the most people I've ever had clapping for me; it wasn't many, relatively speaking, but it felt great. Great at the moment but ultimately not satisfying. How could it be, when some people get applauded by 100,000 in a stadium? But they aren’t satisfied either. Any performer will tell you, if you do it for the applause, it’s never enough. And the more you get, the more you need. Saltwater.
Popularity. I like being liked. Everybody does, even the people who try to pretend they don’t. And getting along with our neighbors is a good thing. But popularity is saltwater... it’s never enough. Look at the lives of famous people and you’ll see: no fact of science has ever been proven by such an overwhelming weight of evidence as this - fame and popularity do not satisfy. Saltwater.
Money. You all know this, we all say that we know it doesn’t bring happiness, but then why does part of us sneer when a rich person is unsatisfied? Take it from the people who ought to know. It’s never enough. The logic is always the same: This is supposed to make me happy. I’m not happy. Therefore, I must not have enough of it. You can fill in the blank with anything.
Being attractive should make me happy. I’m not happy. Therefore I am not attractive enough.
Having money should make me happy. I’m not happy. Therefore I need more money.
Having people like me should make me happy. I’m not happy. Therefore, I need to try harder to make people like me.
Saltwater.
This brings us to the woman at the well. She’s had five husbands and is now doing what we politely call “cohabitation.” John gives us no backstory on this at all, but you know, any woman with five ex-husbands has a lot of backstory. There’s no suggestion that it’s all her fault, or that she’s some kind of especially terrible sinner. Just this one biographical fact, telling us that whatever is in her past, it wasn’t simple and it wasn’t easy and it certainly wasn’t satisfying.
In any case, we know that their conversation changes her life. They talk about water, about thirst, about satisfaction. All the unsatisfaction of her life comes to the surface and she has to face it, admit it. And he promises something that sounds impossible: water that satisfies, a drink that quenches thirst not just for a moment but finally and forever.
This woman, we don’t know a lot about her, but we know she’s ‘been around the block,’ so to speak. And if there’s one thing she’s heard before, it’s big promises from men. She’s no gullible innocent who’s going to fall easily for something like that, especially not from some strange Jewish guy who shouldn’t even be speaking to her if he was a “respectable” person.
But something about him, something about him made her convinced. She must have been really, really surprised to realize that she was convinced: “God help me, I think I actually believe him.” Next thing you know she’s left her old bucket behind and is off to tell everybody she knows about Jesus.
Let’s not imagine it’s going to be easy for her. She’s well along her path through life, and she’s developed certain approaches to things. She has become accustomed to seeking comfort and happiness in certain ways, ways that are deeply ingrained. John lets us know, in a beautiful detail, that she has cast them aside when he tells us that “she left her bucket at the well and followed Him.” But you have to wonder, in the days and months and years that followed, if she didn’t feel a very strong pull back toward that bucket. I mean back toward all the old ways of life that brought her so much misery. You may know from experience that Jesus calls us to leave things behind sometimes, and that he can give us the strength to do it, but that the pull back towards that thing can surprise you someday.
So, point is, her story isn’t over. She’s got all of Christian life ahead of her. She’ll probably sin and repent some more. She’ll probably have days when that remarkable man at the well seems a distant memory, and she’ll feel like “I’m really hurting and this is really hard, and where is he now?” But He is with her, always, and those moments of testing will pass.
Everybody is looking for happiness. It’s one thing we all have in common and there just aren’t any exceptions. We want to be happy. One of the most important lessons a priest learns in the confessional is that all the crazy, stupid, sinful, misguided and bizarre things people do, they’re just trying to find happiness. That’s been true ever since Adam and Eve reached for what was forbidden. But they weren’t looking for happiness in the one place it can be found, they weren’t looking for satisfaction in God. The Catechism says in paragraph 397 that sin entered the world when man let trust in his Creator die in his heart. They didn’t trust that God’s way would bring happiness. They went after it somewhere else. They drank the saltwater.
This isn’t some complicated theological idea, it’s the simplest of ideas. Jesus Christ satisfies, nothing else does. Since we’re in church, let’s apply this to religion. Catholicism has lots of appealing aspects, smells and bells and art and tradition and nostalgia. It gets my vote for the most beautiful system of life and thought and art to ever have existed. But that stuff is only any good if it’s all about Jesus. If it’s grounded in Him, then it’s good. It’s more than good, it’s sacramental! But if we’re attached to all those peripheral things, and we don’t have a relationship with Jesus Christ at the heart of it, then it all falls down in a big splash of saltwater. Catholicism is a relationship with Jesus of Nazareth. Take that away, and all the stuff that remains, however nostalgic and attached to it we may be, is dead.
If it’s about Jesus Christ, if He really is the reason we’re here, it’s alive and life-giving. Living water, as he called it, welling up to eternal life. We can have the same charmed experience that the woman at the well had, of being won over by Him. It’s the experience, the indispensable experience, of really and truly meeting Him, of hearing the incredible things He has to say, and of being willing to take a leap of trust and cast aside whatever old bucket has been leaving us so thirsty.
Thank you for this reminder. It seems that no matter how many times I have heard the "same thing", the Lord tells me again through a unique way, to touch my heart again.
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