Cracked Cisterns

"For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water." Jeremiah 2:13

Nabatean cistern north of Makhtesh Ramon, southern Israel. Photo by Wilson44691

For those not familiar with water collection in the desert, a cistern gathers rain water so that it can be stored and used later. This water, because it is stored, is stagnate and prone to becoming polluted, which is not to say that the water wouldn't do the job of keeping someone alive, but there is better water to be had. A cistern also requires a great deal of work to maintain. In the arid climate of the middle east, cisterns are dug into the ground, created through many hours of intense and costly labor. Once the rain water is collected, people have to travel to the cistern and draw water from it, often having to carry the water for miles.

Portuguese cistern El Jadida in Morocco.
This image was originally posted to Flickr by Axel Rouvin

Cisterns are/were such an essential part of living in the desert that in some places, cisterns were built in extravagant fashion.









Cisterns are difficult to build, hard to maintain, prone to failure, contain stagnate water, but are necessary to the survival in the desert. Living water, on the other hand, is water that is mobile, flowing, free. Living water is also less likely to contain pollution as the water moves any contamination further downstream. There is no cost of labor or goods to capture flowing water, but it is quite rare in the desert. This contrast points us to the absurdity of the people to whom God is speaking in Jeremiah. Given the choice between a cistern and a source of living water, the choice should be living water every time. But the accusation that God levies against the people is that they have chosen a cracked cistern, a broken cistern, one that cannot hold water, cannot sustain life and will always run dry, over the guarantee of free flowing water.

It sounds like a stupid thing to do, but we do it quite often, maybe without even realizing it. This passage from Jeremiah connects back with a saying in v.5 "Thus says the Lord: What wrong did your ancestors find in me, and went after nothing, and became nothing themselves?" The temptation when interpreting this passage is to make a claim similar to "you are what you eat." If that were the case then the temptation to go after "nothing" or things that are "worthless" would be fairly easy to avoid. Anybody who has played facebook games knows this pattern resides in our hearts. We spend hours toiling over, and worrying about, empty promises, worthless actions and fruitless farming. What makes these actions of nothing so contagious is their promise of something more at every go. They are a moving target, something that continually draws us out for more, but never fills us up.

My wife has gotten into watching the seemingly unending number of shows about the paranormal on TV. They're interesting shows if you enjoy hearing the occasional ghost story, but we noticed a trend with many of the shows. For so many of the people who claim to be afflicted with paranormal activity, their experiences seem to stem from their own troubles or inability to relinquish their anxieties and fears about the world. There was one episode where a mother and daughter claimed to have had a traumatic ghost experience. For a while they had come to believe that they were being haunted. One night their paranormal activity escalated when they were awoken in the middle of the night by a loud banging noise and footsteps on the floor above them. They were so terrified by the sounds that they cowered in their beds, unable to move for the fear of the paranormal. The next morning, as the daylight flooded their windows, they walked upstairs to investigate. What they found was a broken window, their stuff flung all over the room and several items missing. They presented this story as an encounter with ghosts that were trying to scare them out of their home. The host of the show then worked to "rid" the house of the spirits, through some ritual and prayer.
What this mother/daughter team experienced looked a lot less like "ghosts" and a lot more like a break in. The problem was that they were so caught up in looking for something that wasn't there to explain their pain, that when something really did happen, they had no meaningful way of dealing with it. They had been trying to draw water from a cracked cistern, so that every bump in the night became a ghost, which only reinforced the "presence" of ghosts in their lives.

I have a friend who is an alcoholic. They have been sober for many years now, but when they were drinking, they would go to AA meetings and leave after a few minutes, frustrated that something didn't immediately happen to them. When they got frustrated, they would drink. When they drank, they would get frustrated with their drinking. The whole time they knew that drinking wouldn't solve their drunkenness, but they also did not know what else to do about it. Every time they reached for a bottle, they reached for a cracked cistern, frustrated that the water it contained was polluted, but they were also blinded by the pollution so that they couldn't see the living water that was always readily available for them.

When we, as people of faith, turn to cracked cisterns we neither worship a real God, nor worship with our real selves.1 We worship nothingness, our frustration, our anxiety, the holes that are missing in our lives. When we worship the nothingness we think that one more click, one more bump, one more drink might prove to be real, thirst quenching, life. This text from Jeremiah is God calling us out, out of our nothingness into something meaningful, into worship of the living God, from whom flows living water, even, most surprisingly, amid the deserts and the wildernesses of our lives.



Skinner, Prophecy & Religion, p.71

Building What?

Hebrews 11:1-3

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.

This week I've been thinking a lot about buildings. Over the weekend Mallory and I went on a free architecture tour of some of the downtown skyscrapers in Detroit. I've driven or walked past many of those buildings before, been in a few of them, but many of the little details I've never noticed before and the history I barely knew. It is so hard to hear of all of the grand ideals that led to the construction of many buildings, the hope that by planting another skyscraper business would boom and people would come pouring in, knowing the painful truth that the ideal never made it to reality.
I've caught myself thinking back to some of the earlier posts I've written, especially this post from the summer of 2010, and all of the pieces of wood I've laid down, all of the nails hammered, all of the shingles put in place, all of the electrical work and all of the concrete that's been poured.

All of this has got me thinking: What is it that makes a place meaningful to us?
Is it the brick and mortar?
Is it the business that is conducted inside?
Is it how well worn the building is? or how well maintained?
Is it the history of a place? How long its been around?

There was an exercise that we did with the groups who came in for Motown Mission when I worked there in 2010. We made this big puzzle out of blank pieces of paper that when they were all assembled would make a house. On each piece of paper we asked our groups to write prayers they had at the end of their week.

Some folks would write how they were thankful to meet someone new. Others wrote about the new experiences they had shared. One person wrote this prayer:

"Lord, a house is broken, a house is in disrepair, a house is ugly. Your love, Your servants changed a house that's fixed, a house repaired, a house that is beautiful. Your love changed our hearts, your love changed the hearts of those with the house, Your love made a garden grow without weeds, your love made people happy and gave them hope."

In the opening verse of Hebrews chapter 11, the author of Hebrews says that "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen." The words "not seen" do not necessarily connote a lack of vision, but rather a vision that has yet to be realized. There is some debate in biblical scholarship as to whether or not the "assurance" that is talked about is objective or subjective, whether the assurance is something immediately tangible or something felt by the individual. Alan Mitchell suggests that it is both, in that the assurance of things hoped for is not something we can produce, it exists as something that transcends the individual.1 

This is true as well for the work we do with our hands. 

Buildings are not simply a collection of things, assembled by the will of one person, but the result of a collective vision built in the hope that that vision may one day be realized.

In our faith life we continually strive toward a vision of what the world could be. We have biblical text, a history of faithful people, and the Holy Spirit to guide us in our endeavor. All of those resources point to one unifying factor: community.

A biblical text formed over thousands of years by many hands.

A history of faithful people, trying to live into their relationship with God.

The Holy Spirit, a member of the community of the Trinity, God as three in one, whose mission is giving life to the body of Christ.

Community is what makes a house a home, a building a reality, a vision not yet realized faith.

We need one another, a body, working together in the hope that the Kingdom of God would be made on earth as it is in heaven.

I enjoy the prayer I shared here so much because that prayer acknowledges that it is not the work of one person, or the vision of an individual by which the Kingdom comes, but through the power of God, driving the community to live into the new creation.

Community is what makes a place real, what transforms a building into something more, time spent here on earth into life, and broken people into the people of God.

1. Alan Mitchell, Sacra Pagina: Hebrews