You Cannot Put Running Water in a Bucket
For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel—and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power. For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
1 Corinthians 1:17–18
One of my favorite theologians, Alan Watts, inspired by his study of Zen Buddhism, once wrote, “You cannot put running water in a bucket.” He came to this conclusion based on the Zen belief that nothing is permanent. That when we try to hold onto something for dear life, we end up losing it. It’s like trying to hold sand in your fist. The harder you squeeze, the more sand falls away. So we must live in the moment, appreciating its wonder and grace…and not expecting the world to understand or appreciate what good we may accomplish.
Paul presents this message to the divided Corinthian Church to help them understand the confusing nature of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It may not always come to us in eloquent words. We may not always experience the moving of the Holy Spirit in a way that even we completely understand. My understanding of the God’s presence in my life is one that I may not understand myself completely. So I can’t expect others to understand either.
Think of how people must have reacted to Paul’s telling of his experience on the road to Damascus and all that followed. That experience anchored Paul’s ministry for the rest of his life, but that doesn’t mean that he had a perfect understanding of it. Yet it was sufficient to carry him through decades of triumph and disappointment. Paul was not trying to get people to follow him and his way. He was trying get the Corinthian Christians to follow Christ and God’s way.
There is a story of a sinful drunkard who one day became so lost and disoriented in his inebriation that he accidentally fell down a well. He didn’t know how to swim so his anxiety level was off the charts. He tried to get a hold on the walls of the well but they were too slippery. There didn’t seem to be any hope of rescue whatsoever. He finally called out in desperation, “God, please help this worthless sinner. Save me!” Almost immediately, his flailing hands felt a rope fall from above. He grabbed hold and was able to pull himself up. Now being completely sober, he ran to the nearest church, threw himself down before the altar and dedicated himself to Christ.
As he settled into his new life as a “born again” Christian, he pondered what gifts he had and how they might help him serve Christ in this world. He decided that God was calling him into a ministry of evangelism. Without any formal training, he came upon an idea that he believed would bring others to Christ. So he waited outside his favorite bar and when someone exited that was drunk as a skunk, he would grab them by the scruff of the neck and throw them down that well.
The well that Paul had found himself at the bottom of was quite unique in its nature. One that hardly anyone could have related to. So Paul was trying to tell the Corinthians that the Holy Spirit speaks to us and moves within us in ways that are not only varied but also may not make sense to us as we experience them…and may not make much sense to others either. My path may seem to others as foolish as the reformed drunkard’s odd version of evangelism.
Paul’s path was, I believed, often overshadowed by his celebrity and powerful presence. We don’t really know what path Apollos took to his ministry, we just know that once he got it working, he was a force for the Kingdom to be reckoned with. Peter’s journey was well documented and the greatness of his path would have also been difficult to repeat. Christians in Corinth were trying to leach off the glory of these three men instead of allowing the Spirit to lead them to serve Christ’s Church in their own unique journeys. As we see from Paul’s letters, such things only lead to disaster and destruction.
Over the centuries, Christians have faced the challenge of how to bear witness to the Love and Grace of God to a world that seems to value neither of these gifts. We have been bold in this task but we have also been rash. We have been creative as well as stubbornly stuck in ruts. But through those same centuries, one thing stands clear, the Church and its churches advance the mission of the Kingdom of God only through our love, our inclusion and our humility. When we link arms together in these three spirits, there is nothing we cannot achieve for Christ. Humility is a slippery thing…the moment we think we have it, we have lost it. You cannot put running water in a bucket.
My prayer for us, my dearest of friends, as we walk together in mission, is for us to learn the value of each one of us and celebrate it. That we commit our all to serve under the banner of God’s Kingdom rather than our own flags. Love. Inclusion. Humility. These are only mastered by truly loving one another, extending our reach of tour Love to hold every person dear, and by recognizing that it is only by humbly following the lead of the Spirit that we find a heavenly home for us all.
Amen and amen,
Rev Dr Jim McGrath
