3 LENT, YEAR A
SERMON PREACHED AT CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NORWAY, MAINE
THE REV. ANNE STANLEY
24 FEBRUARY 2008
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Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 95; Romans 5;1-11; John 4:5-42
What an usual story, this saga of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. Unusual, and with several unique features.
The story contains the longest single conversation recorded between Jesus and another person. Although this particular story occurs only in John’s gospel, there are many other well stories in the Bible, scenes always where romance begins: where Isaac met Rebekkah and Jacob met Rachel, where Moses met the daughters of Jethro and one of them became his wife. This story it isn’t about romantic love, though. This story is about the deep exchange of brand-new faith.
There are some odd details, too. The Samaritan woman ventured forth in the heat of the day, at high Noon, not in the cooler morning or late afternoon hours. And she came alone. Why was that? And why would Jesus, a good Jew, deign to talk to AND drink water from a Samaritan, a half-breed enemy of the Jews? Even the vessel containing the water would be polluted. And not only a Samaritan, but a woman! There’s the old saying: Children should be seen but not heard. In Jesus’ time, Jewish women were to be neither seen OR heard publically. And women worshiped apart from men, whose prayers included the thanksgiving “Thank God I am not a woman.” Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us that “one group of pious men was known as ‘the bruised and bleeding Pharisees’ because they closed their eyes when they saw a woman coming down the street, even if it meant walking into a wall and breaking their noses.” (Xn Century 2/12/08).
You get the picture….
People have made many assumptions about this unique story: that the Samaritan woman is a fallen woman, because she came out at noon, alone, not daring to mix with the other women. And immoral because she had had husband after husband, five of them. It’s entirely possible, of course, that she had been widowed again and again, or that, because divorce was so easy then, that the husbands had gotten sick of her or even had abused her. The story doesn’t tell us about the woman’s background. And it doesn’t judge her--nor does Jesus.
For me, though, the most astonishing details have to do with the boundary-crossing, the risk-taking by both the woman and by Jesus. The crossing over they did into each other’s worlds even for a brief moment in time. Two strangers, they were, two strangers joined in trust. Two strangers, who were willing to drop all pretenses, albeit after some dancing around with questions and sparring. They dared to push aside the barriers that separated them in an effort to get onto each other’s wavelength.
This past week I’ve been pouring over pictures of our reunion at Katherine’s and Adrian’s wedding in Costa Rica. Two families, Katherine’s and Adrian’s, coming together for the first time. After gazing at them for awhile, I noticed something. In one, here was a group of some of Adrian’s relatives, standing together in the park just after the ceremony, and over there, a distance apart, some of Katherine’s friends and family. Although Katherine and many of her family and friends are fluent in Spanish, still the two little clumps of people represented two different languages, two different cultures. They didn’t know each other, but suddenly there they were, together in the corner of a park on a Saturday afternoon. Three hours and lots of music and good food later, the two groups merged into one. And there are photos to show it. When I told this story at a nursing home last Wednesday, a woman called out to me, “It was the arms of Jesus, stretched out to welcome everyone all at once, that brought all of you together, you know!”
And then there are three pictures in a row of little Jacob, my grand-nephew from England, not yet two, and a tiny girl about his own age, from San Jose, Costa Rica, a tiny girl in a pink dress, he and she total strangers, toddlers, and in the first picture they are sizing each other up. What can they say to each other, since they can barely talk in their own languages, let alone each other’s? The second picture shows them beginning to overcome whatever boundaries separate them. In the last picture, Jacob and his new friend are locked in a tight embrace, their arms holding each other tight.
Jacob and the girl in pink overcame what separated them and turned into fast friends, if even for a moment. The Stanleys and the Obandos became the Stanley/Obando family by stepping over into each others’ worlds.
When boundaries protect us, as in locking our doors at night, they are helpful and necessary. But when boundaries block and inhibit healthy, life giving relationships, or even worse, serve to reject people and cast them out into the margins, those boundaries are hurtful. When it comes to our relationship with Jesus, NO boundary is good. Jesus took a huge risk in order to reach over society’s barriers to that woman, that stranger living in an alien land. The woman took a risk, too, by talking to Jesus. Their defenses down, each was revealed to the other. The water of life flows freely only when the conduits are open and unobstructed. Jesus helped the Samaritan woman discover that for herself.
Lent helps us, when we let it, to discover that for ourselves, too.