Sermons

Encountering Jesus: A Samaritan Woman

John Wilkinson                               Third Presbyterian Church  February 27, 2005                              John 4:41-30, 39-42

Global Christianity is in the news these days. Many of you read the recent article in Time magazine, an account of the 25 most influential evangelical Christians in the United States.

One needs to work hard to find a news story that somehow does not link the political and the religious, whether it be the manner in which a life ends, as is happening in Florida, or the role of religious fundamentalism, in this case Islamic, in the formation of governments in the Middle East.

Even in the past day or so, religious items have seized the headlines. The first was a troubling move in the worldwide Anglican movement, whereby the American and Canadian versions, in our case, the Episcopal Church, have been removed from participation in a global organization because of their stands on human sexuality and the office of bishop.

The second story, of course, focuses on the health of Pope John Paul II. We do not have bishops or popes in our theological understanding of the church, so we watch these things with a kind of detached fascination. Stories of recent days have focused on topics of concern to all of us, health and aging and the place of suffering in life as it leads to human death.

And more than that, this papacy has been an important one, even for we non-Roman Catholics. This pope has sought to apply, on his terms, a consistent ethic. Communism, capitalism, war and peace, choice, women. Not that it is any of my business, except that we believe ourselves connected to our Catholic sisters and brothers in the body of Christ, but I have been very grateful for some of his ethical positions and less so for others. I suppose I could say the same thing for my own tradition at the moment.

That will not be the point today, however, which you will discover in a moment, except to say that we are called to be in prayer for the worldwide Anglican Church and we are called to be in prayer for John Paul II, and for all those in need.

Churches and theological traditions make ethical decisions all the time, on every manner of issue. Some would have to do with broadly defined topics and are familiar to us. Stem cell research or whether the Ten Commandments can appear on a public building are two current examples.

For the most part, however, the ethical decisions you and I face are not so broad-sweeping. They have to do with every-day life. How we “treat,” if that’s the word, a toll-worker on the Thruway or how we spend our so-called “disposable” income or what TV programs we choose to watch. Big issues, little issues, but no unimportant issues, because ethics matters, giving our own spirits integrity and giving the patterns of our life together with others integrity as well.

That’s why a conversation about what Rochester city schools remain open or closed is an important ethical issue to all of us, whether we have children or not and whether our children attend city schools or not.

The integrity of our theological and ethical commitments binds us together, so it is not meddling at all when we bring what we believe to the political and ethical table. How we do that is not always clear, and usually never easy, particularly as an issue becomes more complex and contemporary. And the landscape is changing and shifting all the time.

Different theological heritages use the resources of faith differently as ethical decisions are made. Some will rely more heavily on what is called “tradition.” What have past councils of the church decided? Others rely, so they say, on the “plain sense” of scripture. The Bible says it, that’s good enough for me. Others use human reason, or at least seek to do so more openly than others. Common sense.

What do Presbyterians believe? We have relied on one or two, and consider number three, are more wary of it. Tradition matters to us, and it matters a great deal. And yet tradition is never set in stone. Remember ecclesia reformanda, semper reformata – the church reformed and always to be reformed. We make up our minds on things, but we also change our minds, carefully over time. And we do so primarily because we believe that God has, from time to time, something new to say to the church, and that God primarily would do that by the working of the Holy Spirit through the voice of scripture in community. So tradition matters, as does our ability to reason and make sense.

But all of that only matters as we take the Bible very, very seriously, perhaps as seriously as any tradition does. We would not use the term “Bible-believing” in the same way that other traditions do – look in the Yellow Pages for examples. We do believe that as we read the Bible we need a roadmap, a guide. That’s how theology functions for us, but only as it serves to interpret scripture.

So that the quotation on the cover of this morning’s bulletin is as good of a definition as any for a Presbyterian approach to the Bible. You will need to read it a time or two, because it has that distinctly “seminary faculty” feel to it. “The integral interpretation of any biblical text is the process of engaging it in such a way that it can function as locus and mediator of transformative encounter with the living God.” Allow me to repeat: “The integral interpretation of any biblical text is the process of engaging it in such a way that it can function as locus and mediator of transformative encounter with the living God.” (Written That You May Believe, page 148)

That is to say, we are called to interpret the Bible – to digest and be nourished rather than to regurgitate. And the Bible is locus and mediator; that is to say that we meet the living God in the pages and words of the Bible, the locus, but the pages and words of the Bible also mediate a transformative encounter with that same living God through and beyond the particular words and pages.

This is a very good Presbyterian definition of the Bible’s role and our use of it. We all take the words seriously, though interpretations may take us to different places. That is what I think 60 or so of you discovered two weekends ago with Frances Taylor Gench, as you opened the pages of the gospels and interpreted them together, by the Spirit, in community.

That this very Presbyterian definition is made by a Roman Catholic nun of the order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Sandra Schneiders, teaching at a Jesuit seminary, of all places, is all the more wonderful and, I would say, providential. And that she offers this definition in light of this morning’s gospel lesson, the second of our encounters with Jesus from the gospel of John, this extraordinary episode between Jesus and an unnamed Samaritan woman, is truly a gift.

We have heard this lengthy story. The encounter itself is provocative. A man and a woman. A Jewish man and a Samaritan woman. At this very point, gender and ethnic stereotypes are out the window, met instead by the giving and receiving of human compassion in the form of a drink of water.

That is transformative enough. But it goes deeper than that, no pun intended, as the water offered and received becomes something more. Living water. Eternal life. A brief encounter about sexual behavior (though that interpretation is up for grabs), which could be telescoped, I would submit, into an examination of all of our ethical behavior. Then a true and clear vision of a life, and an invitation to a life transformed. The woman goes away, the disciples are shocked and disappointed and confused, typically, I would add. The woman becomes a kind of cross-cultural, inter-religious evangelist.

There are many ways and places to enter this account. That is the point, I believe. Nicodemus came to Jesus under cover of night. This woman met Jesus in broad daylight, but searching no less. And rather than condemn, as religious seems to do so well these days, Jesus reveals. And he first reveals by asking for something – a drink. How off-putting.

As we pondered what questions we would ask Jesus in the cover of night, today we wonder what we might offer to Jesus in the light of day, and what he would reveal about us in the giving and receiving.

Sandra Schneiders rightly asserts that the Bible has been used as a tool to legitimate the oppression of women over centuries, and, I would add, other groups that somehow represented the “other” to those in power. And yet in this passage, she affirms, we discover a story with “liberating potential” that raises women to a place of visibility. (Page 132 and ff.)

One of my New Testament seminary professors commented once in a way that I will not forget that though all is not sweetness and light for women in the earliest Christian community, they are there, in the community of Jesus, if one looks hard enough and carefully enough and prunes away the layers of the tradition that would say otherwise.

This woman is symbolic, Schneiders and others assert, not only of the Samaritan community, the others, but of all who come to Jesus and discover who he is and therefore come to believe in him as Messiah.

Schneiders finally invites us into a new, or very old, reading of this story, and into an interpretation of it that paints a picture of a world that “characterized by an astonishing, even shocking inclusiveness.” (Page 147) No one is excluded, no one can be excluded, and in case the point is still lost on us, the story is told trough the words and gracious actions of a foreign woman who has something to offer to Jesus, and who like the most faithful and effective disciples, invites people into this Jesus experience that has so transformed her life.

The disciples don’t get it, and they are hesitant. But we do, or at least, we may, as the Spirit opens us to the possibility of this encounter.

Gail O’Day (The New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume IX, Luke-John) writes that from beginning to end, this morning’s text “transforms conventional expectations and challenges the status quo.” (Page 571) Jesus challenges and breaks open two boundaries: 1) who is chosen and who is rejected – Jew and Samaritan – and 2) the boundary between men and women.

O’Day comments that the woman is never judged as a sinner, but rather she is portrayed as a model of growing faith. And, if the woman can serve, as she apparently does, as a successful evangelist, then I would argue that her inclusion calls us, and the church, to think again about all who we have traditionally said may not serve as leaders in the church.

And we may even serve as Jesus in this story. We are drawn in because we, too, are thirsty. Thirsty for the transformation that Jesus provides, but thirsty also for the true human encounter that is made so real and powerful by those whom we would consider the “other.”

I do not know who that would be for you. For me at the moment, it includes people whose skin color is different than my own, and people whose theological perspective is different form mine. I only know that I can be transformed by encounters with them, and perhaps they with me.

I further know that each of us carries around a bit of the “other” within us – that part of our self that is not our true and best self. This encounter between Jesus and an unnamed Samaritan woman brings us ever closer to transformation of our own spirits, even as we are called to such transformation in the church and in our communities.
Good news comes at unexpected times and in unexpected places, and the Spirit is always waiting to transform us and call us into discipleship and community. Who knows – the well, overflowing with living waters, may be here, now, simply waiting for us to show up and ask for a drink. May it be so. Amen.