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Today I preached my first parish sermon...as opposed to sermons delivered to a small knot of seminarians. The text was John 4:5-42. Anyone who has attended any amount of Sunday school, or spent any time in a Bible study, ought to recognize the word "Samaritan." Even if you're not sure just who they were or where they lived, you probably know that they were in the general vicinity of the Holy Land. A quick and dirty history lesson tells us that the Samaritans were neighbours to Judea, cultural relatives living in the remnants of the northern kingdom of Israel. They sacrificed to the Hebrew God, but they did so not in Jerusalem but on mountain tops, which the Old Testament calls "the high places." Samaritans obeyed the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) but did not accept the prophets, who were very important to the Judeans. Still, the two groups practiced a remarkably similar religion. Think Baptist vs. Roman Catholic, and you're halfway there. But back to Sunday school - you almost certainly know that Jesus told a parable about a Good Samaritan, who helped a wounded Jewish man when others would not. You probably know that such an act, a Samaritan helping a Jew, touching a Jew, was scandalous to the ears of Jesus' audience. Samaritans were outside the promise; they were other. If the parable that Jesus told was a scandal, just telling that story, then imagine the reaction when news got around that he'd actually spoken with a Samaritan! And not just any Samaritan, a Samaritan woman! Men speaking to strange women, out in public like that, it just wasn't done - not in proper society, at least. Women were less than men; they were other. And the outrage doesn't stop there. This woman was a pariah even in her own community. Notice in the gospel how we are told what time of day it was - noon. That�s not common in gospel stories, and it�s an important detail. The traditional time for visiting a well in the Middle East was in the morning, when the women went to fetch water for the day�s work. It made good sense - not only do you start the day with a full bucket, you also avoid dragging it home in the hot noonday sun. So all the women from all around came to the well every morning. It might have been the only time they saw one another all day, so you can imagine the scene. It's social hour, where news and gossip are exchanged and friends could visit before the day's work. Imagine the neighbourhood Tim Horton's or a barber shop or even coffee hour after church - it was like that. Like the water cooler in an office, the well was the heart and soul of the community. But the woman in our story wasn�t at the well in the morning - she was there at noon. To be at the well at noon means that she was outside of that circle of socialization. She wasn't welcome in the conversation, not a part of the community. Even in her own home, among her own people, she was other. Why? Perhaps it was her multiple marriages that had made her an object of scorn among her neighbours. Perhaps she was the one they all gossiped about. Did you hear what she's done now? She's divorced and remarried. She's shameless; she's other. So there she was at the well, a divorced and remarried Samaritan woman - the last person to whom a Jewish rabbi ought to speak. But speak to her he did. And while Jesus did make mention of her marital history, he didn't pass judgement. Nor did he avoid her because she was a woman. Or a Samaritan. No, Jesus very naturally and freely entered into a conversation with her, the sort of conversation that she was denied in her own community. And he did this even though she was completely other. I wonder if we would do the same? By the way, it's worth noting that the Samaritan woman also overcame fear of the other - Jesus was as other to her as she was to him, and yet she spoke with him. The conversation that follows is one of the great gospel stories of revelation. Like so many of John's stories, it starts with a misunderstanding - Jesus offers living water, and the poor Samaritan woman is left wondering where the stream can be found. Living water, you see, was a term for fresh, flowing streams, much prized in an arid region. Echoing the Exodus story of water from the rock, Jesus offers fresh and abundant water to God's people. But this is water to refresh not a dry land, but a dry spirit; and this gift is no one-time drink. The living water of Christ "will become in them a spring of water, gushing up to eternal life." It is perhaps the most beautiful description of the holy sacrament of baptism in all the Bible - a spring of water, within each of us, gushing up to eternal life. The woman's reaction to this description is one of my favourite lines in all the Bible, because it's such a typical human response - "Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water!" She knows that Jesus has offered her something good - she's gotten that far. But she's still so focused on her present reality, the reality of this world, that all she can think of is a way to ease her workload. She hears the good news of eternal life, and thinks that it's indoor plumbing. It's here that Our Lord, sensing that this woman needs a jolt to grab her attention, tells her about her own marital situation. Many people have read in this a condemnation of her behaviour, but look again. There is no judgement given, no shame brought to bear. That's not Jesus' game. He has something more important to offer than reproach. The effect of his pronouncement is immediate - the woman now knows that she is dealing with a prophetic voice. It's telling that the first thing she thinks to ask is "what's the right way to worship?" I suspect we'd ask much the same thing if we found ourselves face to face with Jesus - "Are we doing it right? Organs music, stained glass, vestments? Is this what you meant?" Our Lord's answer is to change the entire context of the question. Mountain top or Temple, these things don't matter. What matters is faith and trust and love. What matters is that we worship honestly, fully, in participation with the very spirit of God. And this is more than a call to renewed faith. Our Lord is addressing not only the spiritual posture of every heart, but also of the revolutionary revelation that is Christ himself. To worship in the spirit of God is to be united to God and to one another, and as Christians we do this as members of the Body of Christ. To worship God in spirit and truth is to abandon those things that divide us, to cross the boundaries of other and to engage in conversation with Jesus. But acknowledging the other is not always easy. Maybe it's human nature; we always seem to have an other, someone to despise. In the 1930's in Germany it was the Jews and the Gypsies. In the United States in the 1960's white parishioners stood as human blockades in front of their churches, keeping African Americans out, trying to deny access to God. Here in Canada the peoples of the First Nations were pushed into corners, their children taken to schools where their otherness might be erased. Genocide, bigotry, racism, xenophobia, all in reaction to the other. We don't seem happy unless we have someone to exclude. So who is it for us? Who is our Samaritan woman? Whom would we exclude? Is it the homeless panhandler on the corner? Is it the shopkeeper who doesn't speak our language? Is it the gay couple we see holding hands, or the co-worker in the wheelchair? It may be any of these. Or maybe we're in for the biggest surprise of all. Maybe this time the other is us. This past week church leaders from around the Anglican Communion asked that the American Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada remove themselves from the Anglican Consultative Council, one of the key symbols (ironically enough) of unity in the Communion. It's not the end of the Anglican Communion, not by a long shot. But it is a sign that our disagreement on human sexuality has grown too deep to ignore. It seems that, in the eyes of many Anglicans, the Canadian and American churches have been embracing too much other. It seems that we are now the Samaritan woman. So here we are, the shamed churches, excluded from some facet of the conversation. In this separation it can be very tempting to make those with whom we disagree, on either side, both in the world and in our own parish, into others. We have been excluded, and I know that I'm sometimes tempted to return the favour. They have excluded us, so we're not going to care about them any more. They are other. But obviously that isn't going to solve anything, and it's not what Our Lord would have us do. So what now? Where do we go from here? Where I hope we go is to that well. I hope and trust that the church, in her wisdom, both here in Canada and across the world, will seek the living water of the gospel to quench our thirst for unity. And what gospel will we hear? What might Jesus tell us, when we meet him at the well? What if we, like the Samaritan woman, ask him the "right" way to worship? What if we ask Our Lord to settle the contentious issues that threaten to tear asunder the church, to divide the very Body of Christ. Are we to worship on the mountaintop or in Jerusalem? Most likely Our Lord would answer us in much the same way as he answered the Samaritan woman. He would probably tell us that the issues which consume us, the things that divide us and distract us, all the politics and hierarchies, the systems and symbols, the entire human construction that permeates and separates the church, none of it will matter and none of it will ultimately stand in the way of God. When the Samaritan woman finally realized that she had been conversing with the Messiah, the Holy one of God, she responded with action. She didn't ask for special favours, she didn't demand proof. Rather she dropped her water jar, no longer useful for this kind of living water, and ran to tell her people what she had seen. She ran to the very people who had shunned her, shamed her, and told them about her encounter with Christ. And the people came, the harvest which Jesus describes is the harvest of the faithful, gathering to hear his word, to participate in conversation. How will we react, when we find Jesus at the well? Will we accept the gift of living water? Will we ask for insight? Will we run to tell the world? Can we see beyond the mountain top and the Temple? Can we accept the other, can we transcend the other, and worship in the spirit of God? The least we can do is go to the well of living water, and join the conversation. |
