Can These Bones Live?

Rev. Debbie Cato
John 11:1-45 | Ezekiel 37:1-14
Fairfield Community Church
March 26 , 2023 

Creator God, Why is bad news so loud? In the midst of gun violence, stretched budgets, Covid, and everyday life stress and anxiety, it often feels like suffering has a microphone. How do we hear you? How do we find you? How do we know that these bones can live? Today we bring our raw selves into this space asking that once more you would rush through this room like a mighty wind. Remind us that these bones can live. Speak to us in your still, small voice and let it be loud enough to speak to the sorrow of the day. We know that good news rests in you, and we know that you are here. So help us listen, not to the bad news of the day alone, but to the hope that you breathe into every word. With open hearts we pray, amen.

 

Can These Bones Live?

 

When you find yourself in a valley of dry bones, when all hope seems lost, when death and grief surround you, with desperation you might cry out, “Can these bones live?” In Ezekiel’s vision, God asks this question of us. Do we believe new life can come after death? Can we find hope when things are bleak? Can we really trust in God’s resurrection? While we look to God to carry us through the valley, God looks to us to embody hope for others.[1]

The first time I heard a sermon preached on this text in Ezekiel, or at least the first time I remember, was when my pastor, and very close friend, had just been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. 

It was the fall of 1992 and Sheryl had given birth to her baby daughter in February.  She also had a 3-year-old son. Sheryl was a dynamic woman, and a beloved pastor. It was a devastating diagnosis. She was told her MS was in her brain stem and the disease would be swift.  Sheryl and her husband received this diagnosis on a Thursday and on Sunday she preached a sermon on Ezekiel and the Valley of the Dry Bones.  Can we find hope when things are bleak?

Rev. Danielle Shroyer says, “If we are honest, very few things feel more ridiculous than hope these days. We’re facing a world of climate emergency, war, a growing immigration crisis, a terrifying surge in gun violence, rising global tensions, technological overload, and, in case we forget, an ongoing pandemic. If fear were an energy source, we could all power our homes and cars for a year. What kind of insanity is a Christian, who stands before all of this and says: “God is love. Peace is the way. Justice will arrive.””[2]

Do you ever feel this way?  That you are all dried up, with nothing more to give, nothing left, all your energy, your life is gone and the love and peace and hope that scripture promises are empty?

In our passage in Ezekiel, God’s people have lost their most cherished religious realities: their land, their temple, and their monarchy. They find themselves in a religious crisis. The anchors for their relationship with God have been upended. Their traditional understanding of God — based on God’s covenants with Moses and David, are failing. Zion is no longer the home for God and God’s people. This new experience of exile calls for a new understanding  of God and God’s relationship with his people.

How could God allow such a disaster to occur? Where is God during this devastation and loss?  Has God forgotten his promises?  Has God deserted his people?

Ezekiel is God’s prophet to the people.  God’s voice.  God’s Spirit leads Ezekiel into this valley that is filled with dried bones.  God has a question for Ezekiel: “Can these bones live?” God doesn’t ask if it’s likely, or if the forecast looks promising. And, perhaps best of all, God doesn’t say, “Do you know how you’re going to get out of this?” Because God knows Ezekiel feels just as overwhelmed by that question as we do. Instead, God asks this question:  “Can these bones live?”

What God wants to know is: “Can you see past the rubbish, the damage, the crisis, the violence, the signs of decay… and can you imagine that life still lingers there? Do you dare to believe—and even trust—that the power of life does not ever go underground in such a way that God cannot revive it in glory?”[3]  Do you believe that life for my people will be resurrected? Do you believe there is hope?

God breathes into the bones, he covers them with skin, and places flesh on them. God revives them, and they become alive again.

 The vision serves as a promise to God’s people that they will be restored. God will take the dry bones and create a new future—a future with God’s spirit within, a future in the land of Israel.  God’s promises will be resurrected.

Many years later, Mary and Martha must answer this question in the face of two contradictory realities: their belief in Jesus, and a brother who has been dead for four days. They understand enough to know that Jesus brings life. But now this question asks more of them: “Do you have faith that life is possible, always?”[4]

Debi Thomas says this, “I’ll be honest: the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead is a hard one for me.  At many levels, I don’t understand it.  I don’t under-stand why Jesus dawdles when he first receives word of Lazarus’s illness.  I don’t understand why he allows his friends to suffer for the sake of “God’s glory.”  I don’t understand why he tells his disciples that Lazarus is “asleep” rather than dead.  I don’t understand why he sidesteps Martha’s tortured accusation: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  I don’t understand why Jesus raises just one man, leaving countless others in their graves. And I don’t understand why Lazarus virtually disappears from the Gospel narrative once his grave clothes fall off.  Why is he never heard from again?”[5]

This passage leaves me with lots of questions too.  What about you?  But maybe the questions are O.K.  Maybe they don’t need answers.  Because what I really need to hear, what I really need to know, is that Jesus wept.  Thank God – Jesus wept.  Grief takes hold of God and breaks him down. That Jesus — the divine — stands at the grave of his friend and cries is powerful.[6]

When Jesus weeps, he legitimizes human grief.  His brokenness in the face of Mary and Martha’s sorrow removes all forms of Christian triumphalism that leaves no room for lament.  Yes, resurrection is around the corner, but in this story, the promise of joy doesn’t cancel out the essential work of grief.  When Jesus cries, he assures Mary and Martha, not only that their beloved brother is worth crying for, but also that they are worth crying with.  Through his tears, Jesus calls all of us into the holy vocation of empathy, co-suffering, and lamentation.[7]  

When Jesus weeps, he honors Martha’s deep resentment and anger at his delay, and in the next breath, he voices her trust in his power.  He honor’s the blame Mary puts on Jesus for Lazarus’s death, yet doing so on her knees, in a posture of belief and submission.  Jesus’s face is wet with tears when he prays to God and resurrects his friend. This is what real faith looks like; it embraces rather than vilifies the full spectrum of human feelings.

Notice that Jesus does not go into Lazarus’s tomb. He does not touch Lazarus.  He does not physically drag him out of his tomb.  Rather, Jesus stood outside the tomb and cried out in a loud voice, Lazarus, come out.” Lazarus had to choose whether he would take that first step that would lead him out of his grave.[8]

We have the same choice.  Will we step toward Jesus or stay captive to whatever is squeezing the life out of us?  Will we believe that our dried bones can live again?  Will we believe there is hope? Can we work for transformation in our places of devastation?  What breaks or hearts?  What splits us open in sorrow?  Can it lead us to new life?  What kind of resurrection do  you need in your life?

As we prepare to enter Holy Week, we remember how Jesus began his final journey toward resurrection: by returning to Judea after the death of his dear friend, Lazarus. As we walk through the valley of dry bones that leads us to Calvary Hill, let us seek out the hope that will stir in us and sustain us. 

 

Let us pray: 

God, I lament where there once was life, and now is death.
I grieve what has died in my nation, and in the world,
where greed and fear have killed and destroyed.
I don’t know what can live and what cannot, where justice can be revived.
But your grace is at work. Show me where life may rise, God.  Point me to what can live again, so that even in this valley of dry bones, I may have hope.  Amen.

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[1] Sanctified Art.  Theme Connections.  Fifth Sunday of Lent.  Rev. Lisle Gwynn Garrity.
[2] Sanctified Art.  Commentary on John 11:1-45 & Ezekiel 37:1-14.  Fifth Sunday of Lent.  Rev. Danielle Shroyer.
[3] Sanctified Art.  Commentary on John 11:1-45 & Ezekiel 37:1-14.  Fifth Sunday of Lent.  Rev. Danielle Shroyer.
[4]  Sanctified Art.  Commentary on John 11:1-45 & Ezekiel 37:1-14.  Fifth Sunday of Lent.  Rev. Danielle Shroyer.
[5] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=3547. Debi Thomas. When Jesus Wept. March 22, 2020.
[6] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=3547  Debi Thomas. When Jesus Wept. March 2, 2020.
[7] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=3547  Debi Thomas. When Jesus Wept. March 2, 2020.
[8] Jan Richardson

Who Sinned - And Other Bad Questions

Rev. Debbie Cato
John 9:1-41
Fairfield Community Church
March 19 , 2023 

God of Good news, there is reading your Word, there is hearing your Word, and then there is tunneling ourselves into your Word— harvesting your Word, building a home in your Word, wrapping ourselves in your Word, knowing your Word like the back of our hand, and planting ourselves like a garden in your Word. God, we could listen to scripture like we listen to the news, or we could cocoon ourselves in your Word and it could change us entirely. So bundle us up. Give us the latter. We want to know you. With hopeful hearts we pray,  Amen

 

Who Sinned – and Other Bad Questions

 

There is no such thing as a dumb question.  How many times have you heard that?  I’ve said it myself many, many times.  Whenever I’m teaching or leading a Bible study.  There’s no such thing as a dumb question.  And that’s true.  I hold fast to that.  When you are learning, everything is open for questioning, for asking, for seeking.  How will you know if you don’t ask?  But as we learn in today’s scripture passage, there can be bad questions. 

When it comes to faith, questions that are formed by assumptions, questions that lead us to judgment or isolation, are bad questions. When Jesus and the disciples encounter a blind man along the way, the disciples immediately ask, “Teacher, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" They ask a bad question. Their question assumes that illness and disability are the result of sin; who sinned, the man himself or his parents?  Their question assumes that the man deserved to be born blind; it assumes that physical blindness is a form of failure.[1]

This scripture passage challenges us to see the world as God does, rather than from a normal human perspective. To see things as God does is an essential part of being God's people in the world. This sounds well and good, but to see as God does encounters the two dangers of audacity and futility. Who in their right mind would be so rash as to claim to share God's perspective? And on the other hand, who isn't aware of how many ways our perspectives are shaped, limited, and compromised? To see like God does requires radical vision correction, for God doesn't look at the world like we do.[2] And thank goodness for that!

1 Samuel 16:7 says, “… for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”  God sees the humanity, not just a single thing about a person.

This passage in John tells of the healing of a beggar who was born blind. Jesus spits on the ground and with his spit he makes mud, smears it on the man’s eyes and tells him to go to the pool and wash the mud off.  When he does, the man can see.  He is no longer blind.  What a miracle! 

But the details of the miracle itself are only about a third of the narrative. Most of the story revolves around the disputes that the miracle provokes, and how different people draw different conclusions even though they all see the same thing.

Dan Clendenin, a scholar says, “There are so many fascinating details in this story that merit attention: precise descriptions about spit, mud, and the interrogation of parents that characterize an eyewitness account; the disinterest about Jesus on the part of the blind man who received the miracle; the inexcusably cruel insinuation by the disciples that the beggar's blindness was an act of divine punishment; the inherent skepticism and suspicion surrounding the plausibility of a genuine miracle; the complex factors that can prevent a true miracle from eliciting genuine faith; and the interactions among the characters in the larger drama — Jesus, his disciples, the blind beggar, his parents, the religious elite, and even the larger community.”[3]

You see, the professional clergy make all the wrong moves in this story. They refuse to believe eye-witness accounts of the miracle. They are more concerned at maintaining ritual morality about Sabbath-keeping than to love another human being and rejoice in his wholeness. They blabber pious cliches. They scapegoat the victim and "hurl insults" at him. They condescendingly claim a spiritual exclusiveness that intentionally humiliates the beggar. They demonize him as a "sinner." They throw him out of the synagogue. All their actions and words confirm their own tragic blindness.  We learn that it was their spiritual blindness, and not the physical blindness of the beggar, that is really the central plot of the story.[4] This.  This is what we are supposed to learn.  How are we spiritually blind?  H0w and where and when do we need our eyes opened?

The passage today uses physical affliction as a tool to point out how we always want to be so sure and secure about the world and that rather than really seeing – seeing as God see, we rationalize. The crowd is certain that there must be a cause and effect at play in the man’s blindness - God’s judgment caused this man’s blindness; he or his parents sinned.  So when a miracle occurs and the blindness is cured, they refuse to believe and give what Jesus did the credit.[5]

You see, too often, we want to believe, but only on our terms.

We want to believe that people should be held accountable for their circumstances, and generally speaking this is not a terrible thing for society, but in this case, we are talking about a human’s personhood and the assumptions made about the person. The disciples' first reaction is to debate the blindness and not deal at all with the human. Intellectualizing and theologizing outside of seeing the human being, created in God’s image, right in front of them led them to ask bad questions. Rather than ask, “How can we heal and help?” they ask, “Whose fault is it?”[6]

We do the same thing today when suffering, pain, and affliction are revealed right before us. Empathetic inquiry is set aside and we rush to judge before we even know the nature and depth of the problem we are trying to address . . . or if it is a problem at all. We rush to judge before we know anything about their story; their circumstances.  We too easily view one another through a one-dimensional lens so that all we can do is start down a path toward misplaced questions and actions based on mistaken assumptions:[7]

 We turn genuine struggles of the human condition into a warped idea that if something bad is happening to us, it is because God has determined that we deserve it. And then, rather than give God credit for the healing and new life that does come about,  we rationalize it. 

v “We know people are poor because…”

  “We know people are in prison because…”

   “We know people are sick because…”

Or worse yet,

v “She deserves to be poor or homeless because…”

v “He deserves to be in prison because…”

v “She deserves to be sick because…”

The truth is, we don't know. We assume we know.  We put people in boxes and we rationalize to make ourselves feel better.  But the hope is that we could know more if only we would take the time to ask better questions and see the way God sees.

 

This passage concludes with a punch line that is disturbing: Jesus says, "For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind." When some Pharisees asked if they were blind, Jesus responded, "If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains."[8]

 

But Jesus flips the script and moves from the literal to the spiritual — the claim to see is far more tragic, for it masks a blindness to our need for corrective vision.[9]

 

One of the most dangerous spiritual places that we can live is in the

deluded notion that we are fully-sighted, spiritually-speaking. On the other hand, the healthiest place to live is not only to acknowledge our spiritual blindness, but also to embrace that as an acceptable place to live.[10]

 Jesus saw the person; the man.  Jesus saw the whole man and decided to heal him so he could see.  Praise God.  Jesus sees us whole too.  He doesn’t see us as the broken human beings that we are.  He loves us just as we are.  He doesn’t judge.  He doesn’t question.  He loves. 

He knows better than anyone that there is pain and suffering in the world.  Jesus was fully human as much as he was fully divine.  He experienced hunger and thirst.  He experienced sickness and the death of dear friends.  He mourned and he suffered fierce opposition, persecution, pain, and suffering.  He died for us.  Jesus understands us.

Let‘s pay attention to the questions we ask. Let’s be aware of our own blindness. 

Today’s questions to take away might include:  What assumptions do we carry? What is our intent? When seeking clarity or understanding, what are better questions we can ask?  Where am I spiritually blind?  Where do my eyes need to be opened?  Amen.

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[1] Sanctified Art.com The Fourth Sunday in Lent. Seeking: Who Sinned?  Theme Connections.
[2] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=3545.  A Man Was Born Blind.  By Dan Clendenin. Posted 12 March 2023.
[3] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=3545.  A Man Was Born Blind.  By Dan Clendenin. Posted 12 March 2023.
[4] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=3545.  A Man Was Born Blind.  By Dan Clendenin. Posted 12 March 2023.
[5] Sanctified Art.com The Fourth Sunday in Lent. Seeking: Who Sinned?  Commentary.  Bruce Reyes-Chow
[6] Sanctified Art.com The Fourth Sunday in Lent. Seeking: Who Sinned?  Commentary.  Bruce Reyes-Chow
[7] Sanctified Art.com The Fourth Sunday in Lent. Seeking: Who Sinned?  Commentary.  Bruce Reyes-Chow
[8] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=3545.  A Man Was Born Blind.  By Dan Clendenin. Posted 12 March 2023.
[9]https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=3545.  A Man Was Born Blind.  By Dan Clendenin. Posted 12 March 2023. 
[10] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=3545.  A Man Was Born Blind.  By Dan Clendenin. Posted 12 March 2023.

 

Will You Give Me A Drink?

Rev. Debbie Cato
John 4:5-42 | Exodus 17:1-7
Fairfield Community Church
March 12 , 2023

God of conversation, We come to you today thirsty— thirsty for hope,  thirsty for good news, thirsty for a glimpse of you.  So today we pray, that you would move in these words like a current. Give us the courage to wade into your story with open eyes & open hearts. Give us the courage to drink this moment in. We are listening. We are grateful. Amen.

 

Will You Give Me A Drink?

 

“You may be dehydrated right now but not know it.” Bradley P. Holt begins his book Thirsty for God: A Brief History of Christian Spirituality with these words, explaining that the first signals our body gives us that we need water are not immediate and strong. We might feel uneasy or tired and head to the refrigerator for a snack when what we really need is a tall glass of water.[1]

 

The same is true of our spiritual thirst, Holt continues. We may feel restless, anxious or depressed and try to satisfy our needs with retail therapy, a chocolate fix, or unhealthy intimate relationships when what we really need is to know that we are loved, that we belong, that we are not wandering the wilderness of our lives alone and without resources, that God is with us.[2]

 

The lectionary passages of this third Sunday in Lent are characterized by people who are thirsty. In Exodus 17, the wilderness wandering Israelites have camped in Rephidim, only to discover there is no water. “Is the Lord among us or not?” they ask. In John 4, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at the well whose thirst for love and belonging was so intense she responds to Jesus’ offer of living water with an emphatic, “Sir, give me this water.”

These stories present us with opportunities to give voice to our deepest fears: “Is Yahweh among us or not?[3]  Will God quench my thirst?  What am I really thirsty for?

The Israelite people seem to continue to doubt and misunderstand who has brought them out of Egypt and who is in charge.  They continue to identify with Moses and think it was he who brought them out of Egypt and Moses who is in charge.  Easy to understand.  He’s the one in front of them.  He’s the one they are physically following.  But, they have yet to figure out that it is Yahweh – God himself who brought them out of slavery; God himself who is keeping them safe and cared for as they travel through the wilderness. They haven’t realized that it is God who is in charge and Moses is just his human spokesperson.  They haven’t figured out that God chose them.  That God loves them unconditionally.  That they are God’s chosen people. That God will always be among them.  He will never abandon them.

When we have a problem, it is much easier to blame someone than to think through the problem carefully and spiritually. In this situation Israel could have thought, “We are in a desert; it’s not surprising there isn’t much water here. We need to look to God to meet this need.” Instead they blame Moses and do nothing to help with the problem.[4]

“Give us a drink,” the Israelites ask. God hears them, readily responds, and calls Moses to bring forth water from a rock. But do the people know what they really thirst for? In the seasons of our lives, we all have felt frustrated and lost in the wilderness. During these times, our fear gets the better of us. Survival mode reigns. Sometimes our focus on survival is so loud we miss the cry underneath: “God, have you abandoned me?”

What would it have looked like, I wonder, if the Israelites had instead cried out for God’s assurance? “Show us you’re still with us, God,” they could have prayed with open hearts. “We feel alone and unanchored.” Where could the water have come from, if the question had come from a softer place than the rock of our human defenses? [5]

God chooses to bring water — and the life it symbolizes - out of something that appears to be lifeless, a rock. The dry rock flows with water. God brings water — and with it, life — to the arid wilderness.  Out of Egypt and out of the wilderness, God will find ways to make life flow in unexpected ways. But it will require a certain amount of trust from the people, from us, a willingness to put faith in a God who seems not to do things in the typical way.[6]

Many years later, Jesus asks this same question of a Samaritan woman at a well. He risks everything by speaking with her—crossing cultural, religious, and social lines—demonstrating his willingness to be vulnerable. When he asks for what he needs, a drink of water - he shows that even he cannot make it alone. What a risk for the Son of God to be so openly human. And yet, it is this question—and his willingness to ask —that leads to this woman’s transformation.

So Jesus is headed back to Galilee and to get there goes through Samaria. He doesn’t have to.  There is another route.  But going through Samaria is shorter and going through Samaria doesn’t bother Jesus – although it certainly would  other Jews.  There were religious differences between the Samaritans and other Jews as well as cultural and social differences.  Jews and Samaritans did not interact, and they certainly did not socialize; they hated each other.  Once again, Jesus breaks rules and boundaries by stopping in Samaria at the well and speaking to the woman.  And then, just to make a point, he stays for two days and eats and talks with the townspeople.   

We actually don’t know if Jesus ever gets his drink of water.  He was thirsty from traveling.  But the woman who came for water that day, got more than she hoped for.  She was spiritually thirsty – alth0ugh she may not have known that.  Jesus knew all about her.  He didn’t judge her. He just stated the facts.  She had been married five times before and was currently living with a man she was not married to.  Had all her previous husbands died?  We don’t know.  Had they divorced her? Remember that men could divorce their wives, but wives could not divorce their husbands.  We don’t know that either.  It doesn’t matter.  She had been married five times and currently lived with a man she was not married to. We get the impression she wanted to be loved.  She wanted to belong. Jesus knew all this about her, although he had just met her.  She must have been stunned.

Jesus offers her something new.  Something eternal. Something that will satisfy her thirst not for an hour, or a day, or a week.  Something that will satisfy her thirst forever.  He offers himself.  “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”  I am the Christ.  I am the Messiah.  You are loved.  You belong. I can imagine the woman thinking,  “It wasn’t the water he came for, it was me.”  For me.

 

Do you feel like God is traveling with you, or do you feel as if He has abandoned you?  Do you believe that God can and will quench your thirst?  Jesus is here for each of us. He knows all about you. What are you thirsty for?  Perhaps you are thirsty for healing; maybe your heart is thirsty for hope. Maybe you thirst for relief from the stress of your job.  Maybe you are swallowed up by grief from the loss of a loved one.  Maybe you are numb to the hurt of a broken or damaged marriage. Maybe  you are thirsty for rest from being a working mom. Maybe your drinking has gotten out of control. Maybe the thirst for alcohol disguises the reasons you turned to drink in the first place.  Thirsty for a miracle or just a sign that God is showing up in your life.   The consequences of our lives often leave us thirsty, questioning whether God is real — and if God’s promises include us.  What are you thirsty for?

 

You won’t find the word “Lent” in the Bible. This 40-day season that we are in the midst of has been marked by the church to encourage Christians to focus on our life of faith and honestly assess our relationship with God.

 

Many Lenten rituals can and should be practiced alone — prayer, confession, and meditating on Scripture. These solitary practices are necessary to help us identify our true thirsts and how we seek to satisfy them with things that are not from God. Then, each Sunday of Lent, we are invited to a break from our solitary wilderness wandering to come to church – a sort of resurrection gathering, reminding us that we are not alone. We rub shoulders with people in the pews who understand how thirsty our lives can leave us. Gathered in Christ’s name, we also rub shoulders with the One who suffered as we suffer, the One who meets us at the well. In this communion, we are offered Christ’s living water. In this community, we are offered the hope that we are not alone. We are not wandering this wilderness of life without thirst-quenching resources.[7]

I think the woman at the well was amazed that a Jewish man would stop and speak to her.  Amazed that he knew all about her.  Amazed he was so kind.  Amazed at his words.  What he said to her and how he said it completely  transformed her.  She was never the same again.  She left her water jar and went back to the city and told all the people what she had learned.  And because of her, we are told that “many Samaritans believed in Jesus.” Jesus stayed two more days in Samaria and even more believed.  She wasn’t the only one who was thirsty.           “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world,” they said.

The question for us this Lent is not only whether we would extend a drink; it’s whether we will be brave enough to ask God for one when we need it.  What are you thirsty for?  Amen.

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[1]https://pres-outlook.org/2023/02/third-sunday-of-lent-march-12-2023/ Teri McDowell-Ott
[2] https://pres-outlook.org/2023/02/third-sunday-of-lent-march-12-2023/ Teri McDowell-Ott
[3] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-26/commentary-on-exodus-171-7-2
[4] https://enduringword.com/bible-commentary/exodus-17/
[5] Rev. Danielle Shroyer.  Sanctified Art 2023
[6] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-26/commentary-on-exodus-171-7-2
[7] https://pres-outlook.org/2023/02/third-sunday-of-lent-march-12-2023/ Teri McDowell-Ott