Sixteenth Century Kabalistic Jewish Teaching of Tikkun Olam

In the beginning of time, when the Divine Holy One sent primordial light into the world, the vessels meant to hold it were too fragile. They shattered, exploding into countless shards, scattering holy sparks across the darkness of our universe.

Those sparks fell everywhere. They are trapped inside darkness, hidden within the mundane, and buried beneath the brokenness of our social order.

Humanity was created for this very reason: to gather up those sparks, to complete the task of Tikkun Olam, healing of the world.

No single person is expected to finish the work, but neither are we free to desist from it. Every time we show up for justice, every time we speak a word of peace, and every time we extend a hand in genuine kindness, we rescue a hidden spark. We lift it up, glue a piece of the world back together, and bring creation closer to the ultimate harmony for which it was made.

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We heard Mike read about the story of the woman at the well.  Wells were a romantic symbol for people of Jewish descent including Samaritans. We find a lot of talk about wells in the Old Testament. They often include finding women getting water for the animals.  Way back in Genesis 24,  Abraham’s servant travels to a distant well and finds Rebekah as a wife for Abraham’s son, Isaac. Just five chapters later, in Genesis 29, Jacob travels to Haran (later called Samaria) and meets Rachel while Rachel is watering her sheep at a well.  He instantly fell in love with her. Jacob loved Rachel and worked seven years for her hand in marriage, only to be tricked into marrying Rachel’s older sister Leah.  A week later, Jacob also married Rachel, but he had to work for a second time for seven more years.  This special well held meaning to those around it.

In the next book of the Bible, Exodus, Moses meets his wife Zipporah at a well.

So these wells were in many ways meaningful to women in the Middle East during Jesus’ time. Especially Jacob’s well.  That was where Jacob had met his true love.  Who doesn’t want a true love?  The Samaritan woman who sat on Jacob’s well was looking for completeness, trying to find it through companionship.  She was searching for romantic love.  She was thirsty for something she didn’t understand.  There are, of course, more kinds and sources of love than romantic love, but tell that to the radio stations. I am in charge of music for the Friendsgiving, which I am looking forward to.  But I have to come up with mellow music for us to listen to while we are eating.  SO I’m looking at top 40 tunes from each of the past thirty years.  They all seem to be about co-dependent love and getting over love.  This want for something more in life is in all our media, including music and the movies.

Does everybody remember the scene from the 1996 movie Jerry McGuire?  In the movie the athlete he represents tells him what is important to him.  What did he say and have Jerry McGuire repeat?  “Show me the money.”

So the athlete wins and Jerry McGuire can show him the money.  But Jerry McGuire did not feel adequate and set out on a mission to find his wife.  Do you remember his words to her once he found her and got her attention?  “You complete me.”

It’s romantic notion but it is a ghost that has been chased for centuries upon centuries, the myth that someone can complete someone else. 

The woman at Jacob’s well was looking for someone to complete her.  She had tried.  She had been married five times and was living with another person, and coming to that romantic well, hoping that she would meet a man that would keep her from feeling incomplete. She sat on this special well where Jacob found the love of his life. She was  thirsty as the kids call it.  She felt lacking.

Jesus sat down by her and addressed her as he would any person and asked to drink water from her vessel like he would anyone.  He didn’t do this because she was a Samaritan woman and he was trying to make a point.  She was equal to all others, men and women, not because he felt sorry for her or was doing anything great for her because she was Samaritan.  He saw a person in need of something substantial in life. He saw her and treated her as an equal, because she was equal.  That is how we should treat all people. He never felt that she was less than he was or couldn’t know the feeling of completeness that he felt and offered.

Sure, the Jewish laws said that he wasn’t to talk to a Samaritan woman, especially not use a jug her hands had been on and never sit where she had been sitting.  Samaritan women were considered unclean by the Jewish people, including the dishes these women touched and anywhere they slept or sat.  Samaritan women were to be treated as if they were leaving body fluids behind.  Men were not supposed to sit with them at all. 

To Jesus, rules that are not equal for all people, Samaritan or Jew, man or woman, don’t need to be followed.  At least he was not going to abide by them.  Jesus pushed all the rules to the side and addressed this thirsty woman as a needy sister because that is what she was.  He sat down on the well and not to elevate her to an equal status to him.  He already knew that she was equally as clean as he was if she just followed love, equally worthy as he was, because all people are equal and worthy.  He didn’t mind sitting down with her and offering to use her jug. He saw her like he sees all of us, someone who is a little incomplete and in need of knowing that God loves us and that we can love others just the same as we are loved by God.  We are to be filled with the living water, the love of Spirit. 

Feeling incomplete is not wrong; it is part of the human condition.  It motivates us to be social.  It helps us feel protected and to have hormones shift when we are alone with others or in groups.  It helps us live in families. It helps us to appreciate what we have in relationships.  It keeps us from doing things that are not okay with the culture around us or that are selfish or unkind. We all want to fit in and belong. Just a little neediness is innate for all normal human beings. 

But we shouldn’t allow society to tell us that if we have more, we are worth more, and that the feeling of lack of completeness is something to be squelched with money or things that money can buy. We have seen it with billionaires and the government positions in the last two years. Scientists who are top in their fields have been replaced with people who only know how to make money. It’s a myth that money can replace anything.  Money can’t complete us or our society. Only love can do that.

Neither does being of the right culture and the right race complete us or make us more whole.  Our justice system tries to teach us that we are not equal over and over again, but it isn’t true.  We are created equally with the same need for justice and protection as anyone of any color, ethnic group, or orientation, or walk of life.

This feeling of inequality and internalized oppression is what society had taught the Samaritan woman too.  She had married and married to the maximum number of husbands, and now she was living with a man to whom she was not married.  She was looking for romantic love to help her feel complete.

She had it right. Love makes you feel complete. But it’s not the romantic kind of love. When we go out and love an enemy, we help them to feel more complete, and the more complete they feel, the less like an enemy they become.  We are the wells of love for all who are seeking. We can attempt to love this world back into feeling whole, one person, one thing in nature, one family, or business or neighborhood at a time.  Just lead with love and then you will be spreading this living water that dwells in the hearts of everyone and everything quenching the thirst that we all feel because we need each other.

The story of Tikkun Olam that Jeanette read tells us that we are all part of God, shattered and scattered across the universe.  In that story, love is how we heal the world. Love is the light in each shard and the glue that pulls things that seem irredeemable together into a whole.

This world is the well on which we sit and it is sacred.  Nothing can take that sacredness away.  Nor can anything take our equality away.  But we have to learn to live in ways that help people feel whole, feel loved.  We have to be springs of living water. We to help the world to recognize the sacredness in everything in the universe.

We all have had a time when we felt excluded.  Sometimes you might have been excluded because of a mistake you made or something you said you shouldn’t have.  Maybe I’m the only one.

We live in a racially divided world.  How can we treat people equally and sacred?  Because in the eyes of Christ we are all beautiful sacred creatures made to love and give love and receive love back and forth tying our society — this human society — together.

• When have you ever felt excluded because of mistakes you have made?
• When have you felt excluded because of your heritage or culture?
• What difference does it make that we are all equal in God’s eyes?