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Unity Church of Castro Valley

Sunday Message for July 30, 2006

Tapping the Source

As you all know – we are starting a new group Monday.  It’s called “Let’s Lighten Up.”  It is a spiritual support group for people who want to release weight and attain their health goals.  I feel like my body has gotten totally out of shape, so I got my doctor's permission to join a fitness club and start exercising.  I decided to take an aerobics class for seniors.  I bent, twisted, gyrated, jumped up and down, and perspired for an hour.  But, by the time I got my leotards on, the class was over.

So for all of you who would like to ‘lighten up’ inside and out, please join us – it may change your life.

I have always been intrigued with the notion that a simple, everyday incident can change a person’s entire life.  Jesus once had an apparently insignificant conversation with a seemingly undistinguished person in what was considered an unimportant locale, but which probably unveiled one of the most enlightening, yet overlooked, spiritual revelations in the Bible  The unpretentious incident dramatized a major overview of Jesus’ teachings – the idea that God is Spirit.  This is the foundation concept of Unity’s interpretation of Jesus’ teaching: that God is the universal Father of creation, whose infinite presence or “kingdom” as Jesus said, is always “at hand,” within.

Rev Diana sent me this wonderful story that I would like to pass on you:  A woman was at work when she received a phone call that her daughter was very sick with a fever.  She left her work and stopped by the pharmacy to get some medication.  She got back to her car and found that she had locked her keys in the car.
She didn't know what to do, so she called home and told the baby sitter what had happened.  The baby sitter told her that the fever was getting worse.  She said, "You might find a coat hanger and use that to open the door."

The woman looked around and found an old rusty coat hanger that had been left on the ground, possibly by someone else who at some time had locked their keys in
their car.  She looked at the hanger and said, "I don't know how to use this."
She bowed her head and asked God to send her help.  Within five minutes a beat up old motorcycle pulled up, with a dirty, greasy, bearded man who was wearing an old biker skull rag on his head.
The woman thought, "This is what you sent to help me?"  But, she was desperate, so she was also very thankful.
The man got off of his cycle and asked if he could help.  She said, "Yes, my daughter is very sick.  I stopped to get her some medication and I locked my keys in my car.  I must get home to her.  Please, can you use this hanger to unlock my car?"
He said, "Sure."  He walked over to the car, and in less than a minute the car was opened.  She hugged the man and through her tears she said, "Thank You So Much!  You are a very nice man."
The man replied, "Lady, I am not a nice man. I just got out of prison today. I was in prison for car theft and have only been out for about an hour."
The woman hugged the man again and with sobbing tears cried out loud, "Oh, Thank you God! You even sent me a Professional."

Isn’t that a great story?!?!  This week we are going to take a deeper look at the omnipresent reservoir of God’s tremendous spiritual resources that reside within each of us, by joining Jesus at the Samaritan well – a story told in the Gospel of John.  Jesus had begun his ministry in and around Jerusalem, the center of the Jewish religion.  From the conversation Jesus had with Nicodemus, we learned that the people of Jerusalem were too proud and too bound to tradition to accept anything new.  So Jesus made a decision to take His ministry north to Galilee, where the people were less educated and sophisticated but were more receptive and teachable.

SAMARIA

Jesus left Jerusalem and set out for Galilee.  Between Jerusalem and Galilee was Samaria.  A very revealing line in the story says: (John 4:4) “Jesus had to go through Samaria.”  The Jews of Judea considered themselves the spiritual aristocracy and they despised the Samaritans, whom they considered a mixed breed.  No self-respecting Jew would set foot in Samaria.  Therefore, Jesus’ arrival in Samaria is, in itself, an important teaching. And there, as He stopped for a drink of water at a well, He met the woman.  The seemingly incidental conversation between Jesus and the woman is truly one of the most important stories in the Bible.

THE WOMAN AT THE WELL

It was the sixth hour, which meant noon in that day.  This reveals much about the life and the problems of this woman.  The significance of the time is that she is getting her daily supply of water at the hottest time of the day.  Why?  It was probably to avoid all the other women of the village.  She was an outcast, a so-called “sinful” woman with a “past.”  After having asked for a drink of literal water, Jesus almost immediately introduced the subject of spiritual water – a “living water” from which one need never thirst again.  Then, from this exalted scale of meaning, He descended into what seems to be a very commonplace moral criticism of the woman by pointing out to her that she has had five husbands and isn’t even married to her present companion.  Actually, Jesus had a very tender regard for women and was always respectful and sympathetic to them.  But, as He often did, Jesus used this fact as a stepping-stone to something higher.  In Bible symbology, “women” represent our emotions, or our feeling nature.  (Men represent the intellect.)  In this story, the “five husbands” represent the avenues of knowledge and awareness of our five senses.  The “woman at the well” represents the deep emotional longings we all have for something in our lives that will truly satisfy the spiritual needs of our souls.  The various relationships she had had with different men refer to the diverging inner unions that can take place between our thoughts and feelings.

This story is about the kind of union that takes place in our thoughts and feelings when our emotions and our deep spiritual longings are dominated by the limited intellectual understanding that comes from our five senses alone.  This union is always a spiritually unfulfilling and unsuccessful “marriage” of the inner life.  These five husbands are all wrong unions in which our emotions and basic drives receive inadequate support and fail to get the true understanding.

The sixth outright unmarried relationship means no union at all with truth – a complete rejection of anything about our spiritual nature.

The well in the story is a beautiful symbol of deep prayer and meditation.  Jesus is telling us about learning to draw from the spiritual side of our nature – to add the spiritual increase to our five-senses-understanding through inspiration and intuition.  He is introducing us to a “living water,” a living spiritual influence that can quicken our latent resources, make us more alive from within ourselves, and lead us into soul growth and higher development.  The story teaches us that the foundation of life is the omnipresent Spirit of God in us, and it reveals the truth about how we can inaugurate changes from the higher realms within ourselves and enter into larger life.  The dramatic change in the Samaritan woman reveals an aliveness that draws directly from the inner fount of those riches of God by which our spiritual nature comes into its own and truly satisfies all the longings of our thirsty souls.  These are the everlasting qualities that endure long after the treasures of the world rust, tarnish, fade, and are gone with the wind – leaving us to thirst again.

The whole story of the Samaritan well is about a special kind of truth that concerns the possibility of our individual change and growth from the power of the latent spirit with us.  Jesus is telling us through the woman at the well that we can’t draw the qualities of eternal life out of the old cisterns of our strictly human selves.  We can’t invent or image a new being for ourselves out of what we know or can receive from our five senses alone.  But, if we knew the gift of God – the power of His nature and potential in us – we could then open ourselves to the flow of the living water of God’s life, love, intelligence, and substance that flows from the Source – the indwelling Fountainhead, God.  Jesus is saying, if we will ask the Source for any real or good thing, we will get it.

MYRTLE’S DREAM

As a girl, Myrtle Fillmore had a dream that she later remembered in connection with her life-changing healing that gave birth to the Unity movement.  This dream was a beautiful vision about the fount of the living spirit within.  I quote from Thomas E. Witherspoon’s book, Myrtle Fillmore: Mother of Unity:

“There was a bed of a stream that must have been active at some time.  It was beautiful, with white, sandy bottom, but all the water it held was in a few bowls of white rock – apparently a dried-up stream.  Stopping to investigate, I could find no source.  A very high ledge of rock crossed its bed at the south, and looking to the north I could see only a continuous bed of like character as that before me.  In my astonishment, I voiced the question, ‘From whence the source of this stream?’ And for answer there came a sudden voice, more of waters than anything else, ‘I will show you.’ And over the ledge of rock came pouring a regular Niagara. I had to get back further into the woods, away from the spray.  It ceased when the bed was filled.  As I stood looking at the clear water of the stream, beautiful flowers sprang up.  This is one of my many dreams, the meaning of which was to be made plain afterwards, although at the time Scripture verses came to me about the rock of salvation and the waters of life.  When my life stream was low, and I was about to lose it, and then there came pouring into me this truth, I saw more clearly the meaning of the dream.  I remembered the source of my life (where the source of my life was and how it came over the rock that was higher than I).  Where there had seemed to be lack and low pressure of life, there was now free-flowing more abundant Christ life, made fruitful unto good works through His power, wisdom, and love.”

THE CHRIST

As we return to the Bible story, we find Jesus telling the woman about worshiping in spirit and truth.  She then tells him that, as do the Jews, she believes in the Messiah.  And with this, for the first time to anyone, Jesus told her straight out: (John 4:26) “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” She was so overcome and transformed that years of shame, bitterness, and feelings of unworthiness were instantly washed away by this living water.  She ran through the streets shouting to everyone, (John 4:29) “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Christ can he?" Many of the Samaritans believed and wanted Him to stay; but in a few days, He had to move on.

Worship means worth-ship; to value, to esteem, to identify, to experience personally.  A seeming chance encounter with Christ spiritually impelled almost a whole town into a glorious new consciousness.

Think of the miraculous change in this one woman who, up to this time, only wanted to draw some literal water from the town well without having to face anyone in her shame.  She soared from the ridiculous to the sublime, from the mundane to the universal.  Think also of her fellow Samaritans, whose greatest asset may have been their lack of religious and cultural bonds, and who, therefore, could readily recognize and eagerly respond to the Christ and become radiantly alive!

Each of us now lives only a fraction of that larger life that we can call forth from the well of Spirit in our own being.  Jesus’ message is the message of Unity – there is but one Source of being.  This Source is the omnipresent, living fountain – all good – be it life, love, wisdom, or power.  This Source and you are connected every moment of your existence.  You have the ability to draw on this Source for all the good you will ever need or ever be capable of desiring.  Only the expression of those everlasting qualities of your own spiritual nature will ever satisfy you.

REFERENCES: Great Dramas of the Bible William Earle Cameron

SCRIPTURE:  John 4:1-42

Last updated July 29, 2006