March 27, 2011: Lent III

Lent III (a)
Jn 4.1-26
March 27, 2011
Fr. Dow Sanderson

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When most of us think about the events in the life of Jesus, the chronology of things that is stuck in our head is the way things are outlined in the first three Gospels.  With slight variations, Matthew, Mark and Luke (the synoptic Gospels) give us much of the same information, and pretty much in the same order.

Not so with the Gospel of John.  John begins famously with the wonderful prologue, reminding us that Jesus, the God/man  was indeed the Word of God before all things were made.  He is the Word-made-flesh, at whose word spoken only, our souls shall be healed.

Then, Jesus gets about the business of calling his disciples.  He goes to a wedding feast in Cana where he arranges for 180 gallons of tap water to become wine. 

Having enjoyed himself at a party, he goes for a little family vacation (verse twelve tells us that it is only for a few days), and then immediately, it is the Passover, and we find Jesus overturning the Tables of the money changers and cleansing the Temple (an event that the rest of the Gospel writers put towards the end of his ministry).  He incites a near riot by saying Destroy this Temple, and it three days, I will raise it up again.  And having caused trouble in Jerusalem, he heads out of town, after a night-time prayer meeting with Nicodemus (as we heard last Sunday)...

...Which brings us very quickly to chapter Four, and today's Gospel, and the story of the Samaritan woman at the well.

I have to tell you that I love this story.  It is one of my absolute favorites because it is so rich.  It is profound.  It is tragic.  It is humorous.  And it is very, very true....  It is true because it gives us a crystal clear picture of who we human beings are.... And it gives us a vivid description of who Jesus is as Messiah, Savior, and Son of God.

So let's set the stage...

Jesus has traveled no short distance.  He has not only left Jerusalem, he has, as they say, left the country... His destination is Galilee, but he has to pass through a little foreign outpost to get there, the town of Sychar, in Samaria.

It is the middle of the day.  The Sixth hour.  High noon.  And he is hot, tired, and thirsty.  The logical place to go is the town well, but he finds no bucket to draw water, and no one in sight.  And so he simply sits down beside the well and waits.  Perhaps in a little place of shade.

The fact that it is high noon is no small detail.  You really wouldn't expect anyone to draw buckets of heavy water, to carry potentially great distances during the hottest part of the day.  This was a deed done normally in early morning or in the cool of the day at evening.

But lo and behold, here comes a woman. A woman who chooses to come out at such an hour, because she hopes that she will not encounter another soul.  For as we shall see, she has a well-deserved reputation about town, and she would just as soon not be sneered at by the respectable folk who surely looked down their righteous noses upon her.

So being alone was the desired goal.  But there was Jesus.  And strangely, he did not sneer.  And he was a Jew.  And he was a man.  And all together, it was just too much to comprehend.  Every taboo and social convention that this woman had ever known was being torn down before her very eyes.

She was treated with respect...by a person whose gender, religion and ethnicity made that all but impossible...

But more about that later.

First, I'd like to focus on what the Samaritan woman represents for all of us in this story.

Because you have read ahead, you know that she has not been the poster child for the convent.  We learn that she has been married five times, and the man with whom she is living is not her husband.  I suppose today, we would give her a "Star" on the Hollywood Walk of Fame... but these were different times...

We know two things for sure about this woman.  She felt shame about her life.  And people around her were more than happy to facilitate those feelings.

Which brings me to one of my eternal and favorite topics:  The True Gospel of Jesus Christ... and the False Gospel of Moralism.

Just a few very quick descriptions:

If we were to place ourselves in this story, would we, upon encountering this tragic woman, think to our selves, Wow! What a floozy! (you know that we would have other words to say than "floozy", but this is a "G "rated Sermon, so that is all I am allowed to call her).  Five husbands!  Can you imagine such a thing!

Well, if we were to indulge our righteous indignation in such a way, then truthfully, we would be moralists.  And we could only get away with it for one of two reasons.  First, we would have convinced ourselves that this woman's sins were worse than ours (in which case we would be delusional)... OR... we would know ourselves to be sinners, but happily, we were confident that our sins were not so well-known (in which case we would be hypocrites).  In either case, the effect is the same.  We sneer.  She is made to feel very small.  Our lives are not spiritually improved.  Neither is hers.  It is a deadly impasse.  And it is all too common.  In fact, most people call it "religion"... but they are full of the same bull that they are preaching.

Next, if we were to insert ourselves into the story and, perhaps in a manner superior to the moralists, actually felt some empathy for this woman, we might begin to make excuses.  We might try to find justification.  No one,  we would think to ourselves,  has ever walked a mile in her shoes.  We don't know the hardships she has faced. Who are we to judge?  Live and let live, I say.  Who is to say what is right and wrong anymore.  These are confusing times.  What's right for me might not be right for everyone.

Well, as I say, this is clearly an improvement over the "preachy-ness" of our first group.  Thank God for a little compassion and human kindness! But does lowering the standard in such a way that leaves us all tragically wounded and wallowing in the same mire actually help anyone?  No, the "Rodney King Response" isn't the Gospel either (but it IS, I believe, the way that most contemporary people "do" ethics and morality these days.  It is the attitude that we would likely find on every college campus in the nation.  But it is not the Christian Gospel.

So then, how else might we approach our Samaritan friend?

In a conversation I had with Bishop Lawrence earlier this week about a complicated pastoral situation in the Diocese, he said to me and to another priest,  You know, you Southerners don't do shame very well.   Having never lived anywhere but the South in my whole life, I don't know if he is right about that.  I think that probably nobody "does" shame very well.

But we do know about it in the South.  We have been taught to put our best face forward.  To keep up the family honor.  And the way that we do that sometimes is to hide behind the mask of what we think people expect of us.  And we dare not tell any secrets of our soul, because, after all, what would people think!

And in the midst of that mindset, we are forced, almost by peer pressure, to adopt the philosophy of the moralist, the hypocrite, or the deluded... and to do it in the name of religion.

But what if, upon encountering the kind of brokenness of the Samaritan woman, we were to approach those failures, not as HER disease... but as the family disease common to us all?

Then, I would say, that we would be called Saints.

For it is the Publican who is too humble to even look at heaven but who cries out for mercy... it is HE and not the self-Righteous Pharisee who goes away justified.

Which brings us back to Jacob's Well at Sychar...

Jesus says to the Samaritan woman,  If you knew who it is that you are talking with, you would ask for living water.

I have always chuckled at that line.  If the woman knew who Jesus really was, she would have let fly an oath!  Or fallen backwards into the well!  Or would have, at the very least, had to change clothes.

She thought she was addressing a stranger.  And there was some relief in that.  At least he didn't know about her past, she must have thought.  At least for a small moment... I have dignity.  I don't have to be afraid.

The irony, of course, is that this stranger knew her better than she knew herself.

And when he gave her just a hint of that... shocking her with the truth that, in fact, he knew exactly who he was addressing, she replies, Sir, I perceive  that you are a prophet!

We began this mass this morning with that old, familiar collect:

Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid...

The Stranger at the well is in our midst this morning.  He could tell us a thing or two about our lives that we thought were hidden from view.

But miraculously, we are not put in the mood to feel shame or fear...

For his all-knowing eyes assure us that we have already been loved, that we have already been washed in that life-giving water, that we have already been clothed in his righteousness.

Sir, Give us this water always.

+++Amen