The Rock’s Cooking

Exchanging self-confidence for Christ-confidence

03/12/2023

Jn 4:5-42 Jesus came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there. Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well. It was about noon. A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” His disciples had gone into the town to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” —For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.— Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink, ‘ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you do not even have a bucket and the cistern is deep; where then can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this cistern and drank from it himself with his children and his flocks?” Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” Jesus said to her, “Go call your husband and come back.” The woman answered and said to him, “I do not have a husband.” Jesus answered her, “You are right in saying, ‘I do not have a husband.’ For you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true.”

One of my closest priest-friends is Fr. Jason Sharbaugh. Now, the reason he is one of my closest friends is because he thinks that I look like Dwayne Johnson, the muscle-bound actor who is called The Rock. If someone thought you looked as handsome as the Rock, wouldn’t he be your best friend, too? I can even raise one eyebrow like Dwayne Johnson can.

Before Johnson became the highest-paid actor in Hollywood, he was a professional wrestler with the name The Rock. After making a dramatic entrance into the fighting ring, with flashing lights and thunderous music, Johnson would take the microphone and ask the crowd rhetorically: “Can you smell what the Rock’s been cooking?” It was his signature catch-phrase line, and that one line signified all his strength and self-confidence. In other words, what the Rock was cooking was self-confidence.

Before I came to I.C. in December 2013, I took three months to live with the Carmelites in Dallas, Texas. I was thinking about becoming a Carmelite monk, believe it or not. As a monk-in-training, I was not supposed to communicate very much with the outside world. So, I decided one day to send my good friend, Fr. Sharbaugh, a brief note to let him know I was doing well. On a blank piece of paper I only wrote one line: “Can you smell what the Rock’s been cooking?” and nothing else. Fr. Sharbaugh got a good laugh out of that one-line letter and he’s kept it ever since.

What I hoped my one-line letter conveyed was that I was well and also feeling very confident in the monastery. But the Rock of my strength was not my bulging muscles, or my intimidating eyebrow, or my shoulder-sleeve tattoo. Rather, the Rock of my strength was and is Jesus Christ. And as a Carmelite monk I could smell what that Rock (Christ) was cooking like never before. I could smell the gourmet meal of the Holy Eucharist that Jesus Christ, the Rock alone can cook. Dwayne Johnson asks, “Can you smell what the Rock’s been cooking?” And I could answer “Yes, I can” in my little Carmelite cloister away from the world.

The first reading today from Exodus 17 also speaks about a rock. And like Dwayne Johnson, the wrestler rock, this miraculous rock also does some cooking, that is, it provides water in the desert. God commanded Moses, “Strike the rock, and the water will flow from it for the people to drink.” Interestingly, Moses was told only to strike the rock once, and afterwards, he only had to speak to the rock for the water to flow. That rock actually followed the Israelite around for their 40 years and became the source of their strength and confidence that God was with them.

In the gospel today from John 4, the Samaritan woman is also thirsty, like Israelite people in the desert. But she is not dealing with a symbolic rock at Mt. Sinai, but rather with the real Rock, Jesus Christ himself. That is why Jesus replies to her comment about drinking water at Jacob’s well, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

In other words, what the rock at Mt. Horeb only symbolized, giving people water in the desert, Jesus came to fulfill as the reality of that Rock that gives “living water.” By the end of the gospel passage, Jesus could ask the Samaritan woman, “Can you smell what the Rock’s been cooking?” And she could answer “Yes, I can” because Jesus had become the source of her strength and her confidence and not her five husbands.

My friends, in a sense, Lent is the season in which we ask ourselves spiritually, “Can you smell what the Rock’s been cooking?” That is, we should ask ourselves: what is the source of my strength, my self-confidence, my peace of mind, the axis around which my world revolves, the rock on which I stand? Some of us may think of our possession as our strength and what gives us peace of mind.

Others may rely on their intelligence and expertise as their sure foundation. Still others may feel their family and their friendships are their greatest strengths. But during Lent we voluntarily detach ourselves from these earthly goods, kind of like I did when I lived in a Carmelite monastery. Why? So we can attach ourselves more completely to Christ the real Rock.

When we have been wandering in the desert (like the Israelites) we really appreciate the living water (Jesus). When we have lost at love five times (like the Samaritan woman), we are truly grateful when we find true love (Jesus). So, too, through our Lenten sacrifices we stop trusting in our brains and our braun, our bulging muscles and our bulging bank accounts, and put all our trust in Jesus, the Rock, who alone saves us and gives us strength.

So let me ask you, as a Dwayne Johnson look-alike: “Can you smell what the Rock’s been cooking?”

Praised be Jesus Christ!