A Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent, 2020
By The Rev. Scott Allen Seefeldt, ‘07
When people become anxious, we act in fairly predictable ways. We become reactive, acting on impulse, as opposed to being responsive and acting on higher levels of thinking. Reactive behaviors include things like blaming or not taking responsibility for one’s own actions and feelings. When we are anxious we often overly bind ourselves to other individuals or groups. This has been called the “herd instinct” or “mob mentality.” Or we do the opposite. We cut ourselves off from others—distancing ourselves from those we associate with or blame for our feelings. Overly connecting and cutting off are two sides of the same anxious coin. One is not more mature than the other. One of the things that people do most when we are anxious is what has been called “triangulation”—the roping in of a third party in order to quell tension. (1)
One twentieth-century social scientist observed that the dyad—two people—formed the most basic social unit; but much like a two-legged stool, it is fundamentally unstable in anything but the calmest of times. (2) This is in part why so many relationship systems more often than not include a third party. A young couple produces a baby, forming a triangle. Empty-nesters end up with a dog, forming a triangle. When I was young, one of the triangles in my family was that of my mother, and my grandmother, and me. Whenever my mother said something to me that I did not want to hear, she would look to Gram and say, “Isn’t that right?”, to which Grandma would invariably respond, “Ja.” (She was German.) That is a benign example of when a relational triangle, which is not bad on its own, is used to triangulate.
“There is a reason why ‘triangulation’ rhymes with ‘strangulation’” because, in its less-benign forms, triangulation can be used to coerce, or to shame, or bully. (3) It is a well-worn anecdote in my line of work, when somebody in the parish—not this one, of course—gets anxious about something or does not agree with a decision that has been made, he goes to the rector and instead of taking responsibility for his own feelings, says something like this instead: “Father, people have been saying…”. In order to reduce his own anxiety and validate his point, the person who is upset with the rector “triangles” in “other people.” A dean of a nearby seminary, a few deans back, was an elderly Southern gentleman who had been a highly successful diocesan bishop. When students came to his office with what “other people” were saying, he was known to respond, with a twinkle in his eye as he reached for the phone: “Well now who told you that? Let’s call him in here right now and get this sorted out”—which is not what the person who came to complain expected or indeed wanted to hear. The dean, however, was not about to play ball. He was not willing to get roped into someone else’s emotional triangulation. Far from trivial, if the anxiety is high enough, people can even turn violent. None of these behaviors, when we are most anxious, and despite their predictability, are obvious to us in the moment. When we are acting on instinct, perspective is usually the first thing to go. Creativity is second, but that is a different sermon. (4)
All of this human behavior is on full display in today’s reading from Exodus chapter seventeen. The Israelites are in the desert and have been for some time. They are cut off, “socially distanced” if you like, from the lives they knew, however enslaved, in Egypt, while not yet possessing the Land promised to them and for which they hoped. As days turned into weeks, and weeks into months, and so on, and as provisions ran low, anxiety ran high. It was only two chapters earlier in the Book of Exodus that the Israelites threw the party of the century in celebration for all that God had done for them in leading them out of Egypt. One commentator said that “Moses and the people celebrated in song the majesty and power of the Lord. The narrative even switches from prose to poetry; because the exalted language of poetry better conveys the thoughts and feelings of the Israelites as they worshiped the one who had taken pity upon them and rescued them from the tyrant’s power….” (5) And still, the simple yet profound power of appetite is all that it took for them to fall back on instinctive behaviors: grumbling, blaming, triangulating, and threatening. In chapter sixteen they were hungry, and God miraculously provided manna. Today in chapter seventeen they were thirsty. One would think, even in the desert, especially in the desert, that if one was starving and saw food literally fall out of the sky and cover the ground, enough for every day, one would shut one’s mouth and discover an attitude of gratitude! That would be the less anxious response. But when one is thirsty, one is just thirsty. So, they did it all over again, but this time they pulled out the triangles.
The Israelites knew that it was God who freed them from Egypt. Their prior celebrations demonstrated that, as well as pillars of cloud by day and pillars of fire by night. But instead of recalling God’s past favor; instead of beseeching God directly for their hunger and thirst; in their thirst, they blamed Moses for their unwetted tongues. “Why did you, Moses, bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?!” And Moses, made just as anxious, knocked on God’s office door and said, “Uh, God, people have been saying…” In fact, Moses told God that the people were mad enough to stone him to death. “Nevertheless,” the same commentator said, “God remained committed to his people.” (6) In yet another display of power and provision, God took the very stone the Israelites would have hurled against their leader, and caused water to flow from it—the water that would both quench their thirst and save their souls. What the people meant for injury, God used for the people’s good. That seems to be a Biblical theme.
This whole pattern of thirst, anxiety, and triangulation is repeated in today’s Gospel lesson from Saint John. The context is different, but it is all there. Jesus is tired. He has been on a journey of his own. The woman is suspect. She is a Samaritan who has had too many husbands and came to the well at an uncustomary hour. And the disciples were embarrassed by their leader’s equally uncustomary, unclean, and uncouth choice to talk to her. Indeed, they would have pulled Jesus away from sharing the very thing that both the Samaritans and they themselves most needed, and in equal measure—this time not water from the well, but living water from the Spring of eternal life. What God meant for the disciples’ good, the disciples in their anxiety failed to see and would have rejected, because they were focused on other things and lacked perspective. As with the Israelites, they were also focused on their appetite. That seems to be another Biblical theme.
These are also anxious times. I went to Piggly Wiggly yesterday, and it looked like a war zone. Everything was picked over. All I left with was a bag of frozen fruit, three bell peppers, and a jug of Liquid Plumb’r. So I guess we’ll be ok. Notwithstanding the virility of the Coronavirus itself, which appears to be robust, the 24/7 media cycle we have created for ourselves guarantees our societal fear. The question for Christians is whether we will react or whether we will respond; whether we will be guided by impulse or by understanding; whether we will blame or whether we will take responsibility. The question is not whether we will be thirsty. Thirst is just part of being human. Whether we will have eyes to see the deeper, spiritual longing to which our physical thirst points is a matter of perspective. Actual water quenches physical thirst, not existential fear. And in all these cases—the Israelites in the desert, the disciples in Samaria, the Christians in Oconomowoc, as in every case—God provided and provides the very thing we require, body and soul. “Those who drink of the water that I will give them,” Jesus said, “will never be thirsty. The water that I give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
To paraphrase Psalm 33, Liquid Plumb’r is a vain hope for deliverance... but the eye of the Lord is upon those who fear him. May we, who are this day reminded that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves, be defended, both outwardly in our bodies from all adversities, and inwardly in our souls from every evil thought, by the only One who does.
The Rev. Scott A. Seefeldt (’07) serves as Vicar of Zion Episcopal Church in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. He and his wife Stephanie, who serves as Organist and Music Director at Zion, are heavily invested in ministry to others, and they credit both InterVarsity Ministries and Nashotah House for giving them a spiritual foundation that still serves them today.
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(1) Peter Steinke, How Your Church Family Works, Herndon, VA: The Alban Institute, 2006, 52.
(2) Murray Bowen, Family Therapy in Clinical Practice, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2004, 478.
(3) David Lee Jones, “Triangles vs. Triangulation—The Importance of Knowing the Difference,” The Presbyterian Outlook, pres-outlook.org, February 4, 2020.
(4) Steinke, 21. Steinke’s language is “objectivity” and “imagination.”
(5) G.J. Wenham, J.A. Motyer, D.A. Carson, R.T. France, eds., New Bible Commentary, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994, 105.
(6) Ibid.