3rd Sunday of Lent

A man was flying his private plane and was forced to make a crash landing out in the middle of the Sahara desert. Although he was able to parachute to safety, he found himself without any means of communication or provisions. His only option was to walk to civilization. He walked for hours, and after awhile he was unable to even stand on his feet. So he started to crawl across the desolate terrain. Then he ran into a necktie salesman. The salesman said to him, “Good morning! Would you like to buy one of my beautiful new neckties?” The man said, “Are you out of your mind? I’m dying here of thirst; I don’t need a necktie!” So the salesman shrugged his shoulders and went away. The man continued to crawl across the ground knowing that if he did not find something to drink soon, he would die. As he crawled to the top of the hill he saw an unbelievable sight. There down below him was a posh martini club, in the middle of nowhere, with neon signs and a big parking lot filled with cars. Quickly he crawled up to the doorman and said, “Please, I’m dying of thirst. I need something to drink” “Sorry, sir,” the doorman said, “gentlemen are not admitted without a necktie.”

I’m sure that many have come across Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is pictured in the pyramid above. The theory argues the needs at the base of the pyramid – physiological needs like the need for food and shelter - need to be met first before a person can move on to seeking to meet the needs that are higher up the pyramid like the need for human love, affection and for dignity. The story above is an illustration of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, in that this man in the desert is not interested being well-dressed because he has more pressing needs to attend to. Looking presentable and smart is not a priority for him, his initial priority is ensuring he gets a drink of water. But the story also illustrates, albeit somewhat inanely, that sometimes it is important for us to pay attention to the needs that lie at the top of the pyramid in order to be able to efficiently fulfil needs that lie at the bottom of the pyramid. Had the man bothered to buy the necktie, he would have been admitted to the exclusive club and been able to get the drink of water he needed for his survival.

We all know that this story is rather ridiculous, and even though it purports to invert the pyramid of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, real life does not actually function in this way. Most people do not need to be well-dressed in order to be able to feed themselves and get water to drink. But even if we admit that an inversion of the pyramid does not sound right, we perhaps need to admit that the pyramid should be flattened out.

This flattening out of the pyramid of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs was made most apparent to me when I was recently posted to a parish in Johannesburg for a short stint of pastoral ministry. This parish hosted a weekly Monday night soup kitchen that would attract about 250 homeless and poor people who would come seeking a warm meal. A number of years ago, the SVP group wanted to extend the services that they offered the people who came to the soup kitchen. But they did not want to propose a service to them that wouldn’t really need. So they decided to do a survey and ask the people themselves what services they would most appreciate. They were expecting the people to ask for something practical like help with getting their Ids processed that would help them get up onto the next rung of social mobility and assure themselves greater financial and social security. Instead the answer that the survey came back with took the parish completely by surprise. What these homeless, hungry, poor people wanted more than anything else was for the parish to organize a bible study for them! During the six weeks that I spent at Holy Trinity Braamfontein in downtown Johannesburg, I had the privilege of attending this bible study. It was the most amazing thing to witness.

Every Monday night, promptly at 5:30pm the parish hall would fill up with people down and out on their luck, carrying sacks and bags with all their worldly possessions. They would lay them down on the floor in the parish hall and pick up their bibles and avidly read and comment on the Word of God that spoke to them, each in different ways. Unlike any other bible study I’ve seen in the parishes I’ve ministered in, this bible study would be packed every Monday with over 80 people. There was no condition that people would have to come to the bible study in order to get a hot meal, as is evidenced by the fact that 170 other people got a meal who didn’t come to the bible study. These 80 homeless people gave the lie to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs by showing that it is possible for people to seek out needs higher up the pyramid well before the needs at the base of the pyramid are assured and catered for. These homeless people were a living example of Jesus’ exhortation to “seek first the Kingdom of God and all these other things will be given unto you.”

When we find that which nourishes our souls, we can make do without a lot of other things in life. If we don’t have that which nourishes our souls, no matter how many other things we try, we will not be satisfied. This is why during Lent we strip away the luxuries in our lives and get back to the essentials to remind ourselves that when we have the essentials we can do away with a lot of the non-essentials. This was the lesson that the woman in today’s gospel needed to learn.

When Jesus meets this woman, he can see that she has been looking for love in all the wrong places, but is lacking the one essential thing that will fulfil her. She has been through five husbands and is now onto her sixth man – she is searching for the perfect man. But her search is in vain, because the hole inside of her is a God-shaped hole that no man can fill. “If you but knew the gift of God,” it is this gift that Jesus wants her to receive, living water welling up for eternal life – water that will quench your thirst forever, water that will truly fulfil your longing and fundamental loneliness. No other story in the bible, I think, better illustrates the truth expressed in St. Augustine’s oft-quoted adage: “you have made us for yourself oh Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Jesus is inviting this woman to recognize her pathological restlessness and realize that the gift she searches for, this living water is actually within her. As St. Augustine has it: “Late have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new, Lo, you were within, but I outside seeking there for you.”

Jesus says to this woman, and he says to us today “if you but knew the gift of God and the person who was offering it to you.” Jesus doesn’t offer this woman counselling, Jesus doesn’t try and do the post-mortem with her of her five failed marriages. Instead he turns her attention away from all that is going wrong in her life and puts the attention on himself – on this encounter right now. Do you know who you are speaking with right now? This woman is completely transformed by this encounter with Jesus – without any of the material circumstances of her life changing. This story should give us immense hope – because this woman is able to encounter the salvation of the Lord amidst the mess of five failed marriages and a current relationship that is probably not going much better. God comes to us right where we are. We don’t need to be perfect in order for our lives to be transformed by the Lord’s salvation. When this woman realizes that Jesus is the promised one of God – she goes back to the village and tells everyone “I have met the Messiah.” We will know that we have truly found the living water welling up into eternal life when we are filled with a desire to tell others about it.

In my own life, I knew that I had found living water there at the Bible study with the homeless people. It was the highlight of my week, and I always looked forward to it. I’ve told everyone I’ve met about it – because there in the presence of those homeless people as we sat together in circles and broke the Word of God together, I knew I was stepping on Holy Ground. In the midst of lacking so much in their lives, they knew the gift of God, they knew of the living water, and were thirsty for it and came to hear the Lord’s Word. Being in the presence of people who for all intents and purposes should have so many more urgent and pressing things to do than study the bible was truly inspiring.

Sometimes we can think that we are far too busy to dedicate time to prayer and we need to get on and accomplish things in life. The problem is that if we pass up this opportunity to we will not have our necktie when we need to get into the posh club. Spending time with God in prayer can seem like a luxury we don’t have time for. Spending time in prayer can seem like a necktie we don’t need when we are crawling in the middle of a desert and longing for a drink of water. But the reality is that it is at the times that we are most busy and stressed that we most need to dedicate time to prayer. Cultivating a relationship with God shouldn’t be the something we do when we’ve got the rest of our lives working well. It shouldn’t be something at the top of our pyramids. Cultivating a relationship with the Lord should be our top priority, it should be the gateway to all the other things on our pyramid. “Seek first the Kingdom of God, and all these other things will be added unto you.”

Questions for reflection

1. What is the greatest need I experience in my life? What do I truly long for?

2. What does my own hierarchy of needs look like?

3. What are the foods that nourish my soul?