THE THING SHE LEFT
Scripture Reading: John 4:1-30
The political circus came to town the last couple weeks, and I hope you enjoyed it like I did. The restaurant was abuzz early last week with opinions rattling around like coffee cups. I was innocently eating my oatmeal, reading the paper, and eavesdropping. Sometimes it’s nice to just listen - listen to the way people talk, kidding with their friends, bantering with the waitress - and to do it anonymously, from the sidelines. An occupational hazard for clergy: as soon as folks know what you are, they instantly clean up their act. In fact, they often shut it down entirely!
So it was nice, Tuesday morning last, to just listen. A man walked up to the guy sitting one booth down, loudly announcing, “I’m gonna mess it up for the Democrats. I’m gonna vote for Hillary!” The man sitting in the booth asked, “Why not Obama?” The other guy said, “I ain’t gonna vote for no – “Then he said that word. You know which one I mean.
When I was growing up, I was taught that the real profanities were not the four letter words, the swear words. The real profanities were words that denigrated people, their race, their gender, their ethnicity, their sexual orientation. When I heard that word, loud and proud and right in public, I could suddenly feel my face burning. My ears turned red. And it wasn’t anger. It was shame. Isn’t it strange how somebody else can say or do something shameful, and yet you feel ashamed? It took a while for my brain to start working again, to cut through the shock and the shame.
“Hey – I don’t like
that word.”
“Excuse me, sir, but
that wasn’t appropriate.”
“You should be ashamed
of yourself for saying that!”
Those were some of the responses that were coming to mind but I struggled to stand up, and walk over to the man, and actually say one of them. Finally, I settled on something less outraged and more clever: “Thank you so much, sir. I had been wondering which is worse in this country – sexism or racism – and now I’ve got your vote.” Of course, I thought of this ten minutes after the guy was gone.
Sexism and racism. It’s still out there, isn’t it, even here in Appleton? And I bring it up this morning not just to comment on our political scene but because both of these things – sexism and racism – are at work in our Gospel Reading this morning. Jesus talks with a Samaritan woman at the well and ends up scandalizing her and then, later on, his disciples. According to the customs of that time and place, he shouldn’t be talking with a woman – there’s your sexism. And according to the disciples and self-righteous Judaism of the time, he shouldn’t have anything to do with a Samaritan – there’s your racism, or at least an arrogant ethnocentrism that judged Samaritans as accursed and unclean.
So in the eyes of the disciples and many others, that
unnamed Samaritan woman was doubly shameful and outcast. In fact, she’s triply shamed – John
tells us that it was about
But it didn’t matter to Jesus. He just strikes up a conversation with her, his easy manner casually casting aside all three levels of barriers that stood between them. “Give me a drink,” he says. And that’s how he begins the longest conversation between him and another person in the whole of the Gospel record. Not between Jesus and Pilate. Not between Jesus and Peter. Not between Jesus and Herod or Judas or Nicodemus or anyone else. Between Jesus and a Samaritan woman coming alone in the hottest part of the day to fill up her water-jar, a woman whose name we aren’t even told. That’s the person he has the longest conversation with. Isn’t that amazing?
It begins with small talk about water and the well but soon draws us into the deep end of the theological pool with talk of living water and eternal life. And then it takes this personal turn:
“Go call your
husband.”
“I don’t have a
husband.”
“You’re right - you’ve
been married five times and the man you’re with is not your husband.”
n Okay, here’s the traditional interpretation of those words: the Samaritan woman is a harlot, a prostitute, a promiscuous, husband-hopping woman whose personal sins are seen and exposed by Jesus’ words.
n But that isn’t the only conclusion that can be drawn. Perhaps this woman is simply a victim of circumstances. She’s outlived four husbands remarried each time because she has no other options in that world – she has to have a husband in order to live economically. And the man she’s with now is not a husband because her heart isn’t in it – it’s a loveless relationship. She’s a victim of a sinfully sexist economic structure
n Or maybe that woman is the victim of the sinful choices of others. In a time when only men could divorce and could do so for little or no reason, she’s been divorced four times by men who considered her unlovely, unlovable, disposable.
I’m not sure which of these interpretations is true, but what is true is that Jesus speaks with her. Jesus knows her. And whichever of those is true, Jesus accepts her. And maybe it doesn’t even matter whether she’s a victim of her own sin, of the sinful choices of others, or a sinful culture – Jesus knows her and accepts her, cutting through all and any sin that separates them.
And maybe that’s why Jesus spends so much time with her: because she’s a stand-in for you and me, for all of us shamed by our own sin, or shamed by the sinful choices of others, or shamed because we feel caught in a world that has taken away our choices and our dignity. And whichever one of those is true for you, perhaps it doesn’t matter – Jesus knows you and accepts you and cuts through any and all sin that separates you from God.
And that knowing and that acceptance have an effect on that
woman. Her face stops burning with
shame. Her heart stops clenching in
despair. Her eyes widen and her mind opens
to a new possibility – “You must be a
prophet,” she tells him. And now
their conversation opens up and begins to soar, talking about worship, about
God and possibility, about Spirit and truth… and then the most astounding thing
happens! You may not have even noticed
it when we read the passage. We may have
thought it was just a minor detail when, in fact, it’s the most astounding
thing: the woman puts down her water-jar!
She puts down her
water-jar.
When this encounter began she came with modest hopes:
- to have a little peace;
- to have a little privacy;
- to fill up her little water-jar.
As this encounter ends, her hopes have raised and roared and soared to overflowing! She began having a vessel, a jar to hold water. By the end, she puts down her water-jar, because she has become a vessel, a vessel of hope, a vessel of gospel, a vessel of living water.
I wonder if we came to worship this morning, each one of us, carrying our little water-jars. Some of us showed up early and some a little bit late. Some of us feel like outcasts. Some of feel like victims. Some of us came with faces burning in shame. And we came clutching our little water-jars hoping, praying God will fill them up with a little bit of water, a little bit of money, kind words, good thoughts, good grades, good advice, good stuff.
But when we worship in spirit and truth something amazing happens; in fact, the most astounding thing: we put down our water-jars. God calls us daughter, God calls us son, and God offers to fill US up, fill us up to overflowing with love, with acceptance, with hope, with Jesus, with gospel.
And once we’ve put down our water-jars, once we’re filled, once we’re filled to overflowing, then we’ll just naturally go rushing out like that nameless Samaritan woman went rushing out, just gushing with gospel, sharing her testimony.
“He told me everything
that ever happened to me!”
That’s her testimony.
She doesn’t recite the Apostle’s Creed.
She doesn’t hand out somebody else’s religious tract or mouth her
Pastor’s words. She simply speaks from
her experience: this is what Jesus did for me, this is what happened, this is how I
felt.
And the conclusion of her little sermon, her little piece of testimony is this: “Could this be the Christ?” She ends it with a question, not with an altar call; with the honest fragments of faith, not the kind of iron-clad certainty that pretends to answer every question and squash every doubt. And as the disciples look on with disapproval, she shares the gospel and invites folks into a new relationship with God. And it is her, not the disciples, who does this. And in all the four Gospels, it is this woman who brings more people to the gospel than all of the disciples combined.
She’s an evangelist, but how different she is from the puffed up, blow-dried, blowhards we have often associated with the word:
n They give you certainty in their answers. She gives you faith in a question.
n They threaten you with hell and judgment until your face burns with shame. She speaks simply of the love and acceptance she found in Jesus’ presence and how her heart was filled with joy.
n They tell you to lift high your water-jars so that they’ll be filled with prosperity. She tells you to put down your water-jars and let God fill you.
And that’s how the story ends. In this longest conversation with Jesus, John introduces us to a real disciple. Not the so-called evangelists of modern times that preach prosperity in their multi-media campaigns. And not those seeming slack-jawed disciples in the story who have been out trying to find some bread and arrive just in time to be scandalized that Jesus would talk with the doubly damned, thrice cursed Samaritan woman at the well. A real disciple:
- a woman who has been delivered from shame;
- a woman who has been carried past sin and despair;
- a woman who has been lifted up
and filled up with hope, with joy, with
gospel, with living water;
- a woman who
has put down her water-jar and taken up the task of
spreading that joy, sharing that living water
with others.
She is a person just like you and me who, too, can be real disciples, our faces no longer burning in shame but now flushed with joy, hearts filled with hope, lives gushing with gospel; people who come to worship God in spirit and truth, who have been called and emboldened to put down our water-jars and become a vessel of living water for others. Amen.
Sermon preached by Reverend Steve Savides at First Congregational United Church of Christ, Appleton, Wisconsin on February 24, 2008.