Bitter Waters

God is young
And maybe we’re the ones
Who grow old

John Mark McMillan

You set a table
I need to taste again
Savor and tremble
Take me to where you are
Burn in me!
Burn in me!

King’s Kaleidoscope

When they came to Beersheba in Judah, Elijah left his servant there. Then Elijah walked for a whole day into the desert. He sat down under a bush and asked to die. “I have had enough, Lord,” he prayed. “Let me die. I am no better than my ancestors.” Then he lay down under the tree and slept.

Suddenly an angel came to him and touched him. “Get up and eat,” the angel said. Elijah saw near his head a loaf baked over coals and a jar of water, so he ate and drank.

1 Kings 19:4–6

Scales

Whenever I pick up a hobby, I tend to place my entire weight behind it. My hobby this past fall was making espresso. Humans were never intended to make espresso at home. It just doesn’t make sense. Espresso is such a sensitive process that you have to calibrate your entire setup almost every time you make it. It’s impossible to make a single shot of espresso; you first have to throw away two or three calibration shots. There are days where it will take me thirty to forty minutes before I actually make my first drinkable shot. Note that I now need caffeine to make me feel normal, so sometimes I’ll drink an energy drink while I try to make espresso, because it takes so long. Hey! Stop laughing!

Its expensive too: 300 dollars is considered extremely cheap for an espresso machine. Oh, and you need to buy a grinder and they can be even more expensive. Every other week, my roommates would notice yet another coffee-related machine or widget in the kitchen. One afternoon, I tore apart my espresso machine so I could install a custom temperature sensor and control unit.

It’s absolutely ridiculous, especially if you consider the fact that even after all this investment, it’s still really hard for me to make something that is more satisfying than what I can make in 4 minutes with my Aeropress, which is a 20 dollar piece of plastic.

Maintenance is also required. When you boil water, anything that’s dissolved in the water gets left behind. It’ll just start depositing up on the metal surface. These are called scales. This is especially a problem when you live in a place with really hard water.

Over time, scale will cause issues with your machine. It might form a surface between the metal and the water and act as an insulator, disrupting the heating process. It may even cause corrosion. Mainly, the hot water that’s coming infusing with the coffee grounds slowly becomes bitter, making your coffee taste horrible.

The same thing can happen to my faith. The sweetness I experience turns bitter over time. It can happen so slowly that I can’t even notice it.

Naive, Zealous

Being a new Christian was like being Olaf from Frozen. Every sermon, every large group, every bible study was an opportunity for my entire world to be recreated. Taking communion was a sweet privilege. I never sang in public before. I loved the community of saints. I remember praying on thanksgiving for how thankful I was to have the Church. The Church! Of all things! I was absolutely experiencing the sweetness of the Lord.

Eventually I noticed it didn’t seem like everyone was feeling it as much as I was. Why was all of this… so normal to most people? Why was going to church a chore? Why weren’t people growing, or interested in growing? Why wasn’t this insane gospel impacting their life? Where was the passion? Were they just too timid to show it? What was wrong with everyone?

Then I noticed the bitterness. When people did mention religious things, it was usually to cut down. I disagreed with this. I didn’t like that. They should have emphasized X. This was unbiblical. Faith felt like a chore. The Bible felt like a threat. I remember trying to encourage someone to do a year long Bible reading plan with me. We would chat weekly and start by summarizing what we read. Every week, his tone became more and more irritated as he told me about what he was reading. Finally, I asked him what was going on. He said he was trying to work through some things in his faith and he wanted to take a break. I never talked to him again. The word of the Lord wasn’t sweet to him. It turned to bitterness in his mouth.

I really, genuinely, could not understand. And I came up with a lot of reasons in my head why this was happening to people. Maybe they aren’t really saved. They’re just nominal Christians. Maybe they never got it. Maybe it’s because they’re just too enamored with earthly pleasures to focus on God. Maybe it’s because they’ve failed to give their anxieties to the Lord. Maybe it’s because they’re giving themselves over to sin (I thought, as a hypocrite). Maybe they’re not courageous enough to be in opposition with the world.

I had these callous thoughts until I tasted it too.

It happened, ironically, during my first year at my dream job, a time when I thought had no right to be upset. I had moved far away from all my community. I couldn’t find a Church where I felt like I belonged. I was a workaholic. I was weak in my personal devotion. I felt lukewarm. Any attempt at pursing God felt like a burden. And it didn’t feel like he was pursuing me.

My friend invited me to take Perspectives (a missions equipping class) with him. The speaker the week I visited emphasized how the whole point of Christianity was to experience God’s presence, everything else was secondary. At a time when I felt so spiritually dry that it was like there was no saliva in my mouth, when I couldn’t feel God’s nearness no matter what I did, I hated hearing that. It did not feel convicting or encouraging. It just felt like I was being kicked while I was on the floor. How could I, just, experience his presence? There was no actionable way to just do that. I was infuriated.

Like the Israelites at Marah (Exodus 15), I knew where the water was. But whenever I tried to drink it found that it was bitter.

Call Me Mara

Maybe I had hardened the water somehow. It was contaminated by the earth and the impurity had built scales in the chambers of my heart.

Maybe the set up I had was just too complicated. I had introduced too many elements, trading abiding for activity. I needed to return to a simple faith, a simple gospel.

When Jesus sends out the twelve, he instructs them that “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet.” (Matthew 10:14).

As they sojourn in Israel, as they minister, as they see the message rejected, could you imagine the bitterness that piles up, as they witness the hard hearts of the people of God? Jesus instructs them to literally shake it off. Yet, when they arrive to the upper room (John 13), Jesus begins by washing the disciples’ feet.

Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.”

Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.”

Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!”

Jesus said to him, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean.”

Maybe it’s inevitable, if one is truly walking with Jesus, for our feet to become calloused and dirty. We could only avoid the dust if we were to separate ourselves completely from the world. Rather, we seek to have our feet washed, to be returned to a childlike faith, for our hearts to be made tender again.

Sometimes God gives us something sweet to restore us. Naomi returns to Bethlehem having lost all joy in life. She has lost all sight of God’s goodness. But God gives her Ruth, whose name literally means “friendship”, to restore her faith and identity. Sometimes all we need is a loyal friend. And Ruth loves Naomi not by preaching, but by encouraging her through service. But most of all Ruth refuses to leave her, even when Naomi asks her.

But sometimes God gives us something sour instead. The sharp acidity of pruning forces us to lean on God, and in doing so, allows us to remember his love and provision. After David’s sin, the child born out of his transgression becomes afflicted. David fasts and mourns for a week. When he finally finds out that his son is dead, he changes out of his mourning clothes and begins to worship God. God drags us through pain into restoration.

Wormwood

In Chinese there is a saying: Eat bitter, taste sweet. The idea that to live life to the fullest, one must be willing to endure difficult seasons.

In the Passover, Jews are required to eat bitter herbs with the sacrificial lamb. We cannot taste the lamb without also eating bitter.

Sometimes I think the western Church culture promotes the ideal christian as someone who is clean, pretty, and happy. But in the scriptures, the people who are the most exasperated, exhausted, and distressed are the prophets.

Moses, Elijah, and Jeremiah all come to the end of themselves, even asking God for death due the burden of their calling. Each of these faced extreme persecution, not from the enemies of Israel but from Israel itself. In their lament, they also are acutely aware of their own sinfulness.

Where am I to get meat to give to all this people? For they weep before me and say, ‘Give us meat, that we may eat.’ I am not able to carry all this people alone; the burden is too heavy for me. If you will treat me like this, kill me at once, if I find favor in your sight, that I may not see my wretchedness.

Numbers 11:13–15

Samuel anoints David as king, but it takes years for him to sit on the throne in Jerusalem. He spends years being hunted down by his own subjects. As he is on the run, he begins to build an upside down kingdom made up of those who have been rejected. Specifically, in 1 Samuel 22 that “everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was bitter in soul, gathered to him”. What if tasting the bitterness is a path toward closer relationship to Jesus?

Gall

Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will feed this people with bitter food, and give them poisonous water to drink.

Jeremiah 9:15

As for you, son of man, groan; with breaking heart and bitter grief, groan before their eyes.

Ezekiel 21:6

They put gall in my food
and gave me vinegar for my thirst.

Psalm 69:21

“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said to them. “Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?”

“We can,” they answered.

Matthew 20:22

Bitter faith is something that I am trying to figure out how to define, but I think what causes it is rejection, betrayal, and abandonment. I think that’s what lies at the root of all of these experiences.

Job is the figure in the Bible who is described most often as having a bitter soul. What feeds Job’s bitterness is not just the loss and affliction he endures, but the accusations of his friends and ultimately, the thought that God has made Job his adversary.

In Numbers, a very strange ritual is described where a woman accused of adultery can be condemned or justified by drinking bitter water. I think the bitter water is supposed to represent the feeling of being betrayed by one’s spouse.

A sense of exile, alienation, and ultimately betrayal is underneath any bitter experience. Feeling not just like the Church has failed you, but that it doesn’t even care or think that it’s wrong. Feeling like God has forsaken you. Being excluded of something you created. Recognizing that in the end, those who you thought were loyal were just paying lip service to you.

Jesus washes the disciples feet, not just to provide an example and command to his followers, but so that the scriptures may be fulfilled. “He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.” He served to the fullest so that when he was abandoned by every disciple, he was betrayed to the fullest. He was left utterly alone in the garden, left facing the cup he had to drink.

In Exodus, it is the tree thrown into the water that makes the water sweet. In the Gospels, it is the tree that Jesus is hung on.

How could Jesus wash his disciples’ feet and make them clean? Because he was going to absorb the callousness and filth of the entire world into his body. On the cross, all betrayal and rejection in the entire universe would be focused on his flesh. He experienced the bitter rejection of his betrothed. And while Job spoke of God making him his enemy, Jesus actually became that on the cross. God’s hostility toward sin rested on as son as his son became sin.

He tore him in his wrath. He cast him into the wicked. He lifted him as his target, to receive bitter words like arrows. “Save yourself!” they said. He spilled his gall on the ground. He broke him with breach upon breach.

Myrrh

“Take the finest spices: of liquid myrrh 500 shekels, and of sweet-smelling cinnamon half as much, that is, 250, and 250 of aromatic cane, and 500 of cassia, according to the shekel of the sanctuary, and a hin of olive oil. And you shall make of these a sacred anointing oil blended as by the perfumer; it shall be a holy anointing oil.

Exodus 30:23–25

As far as I know, there are three substances known to be bitter in the Bible: Wormwood, Gall, and Myrrh. Myrrh tastes bitter but is sweet smelling. And Myrrh is a required ingredient for the anointing oil. To be anointed is to be appointed by God for his purposes.

If Jesus is really asking us to follow his example when he washes the disciples feet, then he is asking us to make ourselves vulnerable to being betrayed in the deepest way possible. To do this we must become innocent, and to put away our bitterness, because callous people can’t really experience betrayal. And, I think, this is actually how we take bitterness away from others, by washing their feet.

This has been an interesting season for me. I have never been more aware of church hurt, of sheep becoming wolves, of christian compromise, of ugliness within the assembly than now. But I’ve also never felt more called to involve myself more in the life of the Church. I applied to seminary last month.

In a weird way, it just makes me feel more sure of the direction I’m headed. If there’s wrath, anger, slander, malice in the Church. If there’s bitterness, that’s kind of where I want to be. Because that’s where Jesus was.

You’ve been loving, you’ve been praying
So take a breath and don’t forget you’re by my side
My side

Oh it’s gonna be okay with a little bit of faith
Oh it’s gonna be okay with a little bit of fate
Oh it’s gonna be okay with a little bit of grace
Oh it’s gonna be okay with a little bit of praise

King’s Kaleidoscope