Sermons

Back to the Well

John Wilkinson	Third Presbyterian Church
February 24, 2008	John 4:1-42

    
We seem to be running in two parallel seasons – one called Lent and one called capital campaign. And in both cases, there is much happening. You’ve heard already invitations for our continuing Lenten series – I do hope you will participate as you are able.

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Who would it be for you? Who would that one person, or handful of persons, be?

You no doubt have played the imaginary game whereby you identify that one person who, if you could, you would have dinner with. Who would it be for you?

Mine are several. Lincoln, of course. The original framers of our American political system, to see if what we are doing now has any resemblance to what they intended.

I would want to visit with Jackie Robinson, asking him to reflect on what he went through and learn his thoughts on the current state of baseball.

I would want to have dinner with John Calvin, or a committee meeting with Calvin and John Knox, the founders of Presbyterianism: how have we done with the theology and vision of the church that they’ve bequeathed to us.

An English magazine recently interviewed 1000 Britons – here are their responses.

10 – Elizabeth I; 9 – Isaac Newton; 8 – Nelson Mandela; 7 – Princess Diana; 6 – Mahatma Gandhi; 5 – Martin Luther King; 4 – Marilyn Monroe; 3 – Albert Einstein;

2 – Elvis Presley; 1 – Winston Churchill.

It may be an occupational hazard, but I am saying what I am about to say not to earn extra credit points.

I would want to meet Jesus. I would have a whole series of questions. Some would be personal, about who I am, my faults and attributes, my own vocation and life choices.

Some would be theological – what on earth did he mean when he said this or that. Some would be about the church. What are we doing right and what are we doing wrong. I suppose the answer to the second part of the question would take much longer.

I would want to ask him questions about current ethical and moral matters – a real live “What Would Jesus Do?” War. Sex. Environment. Poverty. Money.

I would hope that his answers would still continue to confound us – not liberal, not conservative, but something much more than that.

It may sound like a cliché, but I hope it not to be an empty one, that we do in fact have the opportunity to meet Jesus, to encounter Jesus.

We will take that opportunity in unique ways over the next several weeks of Lent as we engage the gospel of John.

John offers us long episodes, interactions, starting today with a woman at the well. We have heard the story and we know it well. Returning to his home, Jesus is thirsty and stops at a well to drink.

The location matters – Sychar, in Samaria, is home to a racially and religiously diverse group of people, decidedly non-Jewish, as the parable of the Good Samaritan reminds us. But Jesus was thirsty, and he seemed to have a deeper agenda in mind.

A woman shows up – Jesus asks her for a drink. This is scandalous behavior to the max…a Jewish man communicating with a non-Jewish woman. The conversation quickly moves beyond physical thirst to living water – the woman’s need and Jesus’ offer.

The conversation continues. Much is made of its ethical implications, and the woman’s personal history. I believe that to be a sidebar.

The conversation is interrupted by the disciples, who are curious, at least, concerned, even mortified. They debate the significance while the woman returns to her people and tells them what has happened.

So many facets. So many entry points. We could focus on Jesus in this story. We could focus on the disciples, because, in many ways, their reticence is our reticence. We could focus on the community to whom the woman reports, and their willingness to believe because of her testimony.

Clearly, the evangelical themes in this passage are strong.

But that woman, that unnamed, unknown woman – who in meeting Jesus experiences transformation – she is the one we are called to pay attention to.

New Testament scholar Sandra Schneiders writes that this story has two functions, at least. It presents to us an understanding of who Jesus is, but more so, it presents to us an understanding of what Jesus does. (Written That You May Believe, pp. 126-148)

This is a missionary story, Schneiders writes, as Jesus reaches out, a woman is converted and transformed, and she in turn shares her good news with her community.

The tradition of biblical interpretation has attached many qualities to this woman, trivializing and marginalizing her. Read the story closely. There is no ethical condemnation. What there is is a deeply religious, theological, even, conversation between Jesus and this stranger that travels from point to point to point, from the nature of who the Messiah is to what the religious response of the faith community should be.

Schneiders writes that “the entire dialogue…is the (invitation) of Samaria to full covenant fidelity in the new Israel by Jesus…it has nothing to do with the woman’s private moral life but with the covenant life of community.” (page 141)

One of my responsibilities in Chicago was to oversee a tutoring program. 500 children from Cabrini-Green matched with 500 volunteer tutors. We bussed them to the church three evenings a week. We provided reading materials and math worksheets so that the tutor-student pair could work on basic learning goals, which were so difficult to achieve in the Chicago Public Schools.

And what I witnessed there, time after time after time, is what I have witnessed here, time after time after time, in our volunteer-driven programs of education and hunger and housing, and what I have experienced in my own life as I have traveled to places like Northern Ireland and the Gaza Strip and Nicaragua.

That is to say, that when a tutor sits down with a student, lessons are learned. Words are read. Numbers are calculated. But what happens goes much deeper than that, and it travels in both directions. We give, yes, but we receive even more so.

We are not Jesus, but look what Jesus receives in this story: a sense of calling and purpose and accomplishment, being fed spiritually so much so that he does not need the food that the disciples offer.

And those to whom we reach out, with whom we reach out, are not precisely the Samaritan women.

But discern the dynamic that is happening here. When we teach, we are taught. When we feed, we are fed. When we provide shelter, our own spirits are given a home.

We discussed yesterday a very ambitious outreach component to our capital campaign. And it should be ambitious, not only because we have the resources to make a difference, but because our own hunger and thirst is so great.

We go to Africa to share what we have, and offer what we can – resources, experiences, expertise. But we receive so much more. We learn about the deep faith of our Kenyan sisters and brothers, growing faith wrought in a difficult economic and political climate.

We go to New Orleans, as a team will do next week, to make a difference. We go to bring hammers and drywall and to share hope. But how much more hope will we receive and bring back, and lessons about persistence and perseverance and growing faith wrought in the face of devastating hardship.

It happens when we tutor a child, hammer a nail, prepare a Saturday morning meal, travel to someplace that takes us beyond our comfort zone.

In the process of transformation, we are transformed.

This morning’s is a missionary story, but one whose dynamics the tradition has often missed. Jesus does not, literally, scare the “hell” out of this fallen woman through ethical condemnation. Rather, he invites her into a relationship with living water, so that her soul’s thirst is quenched. And she in turn travels back to her community, as we have done and will do, to share the good news of this transforming encounter.

Frances Taylor Gench, who visited Third Church several years ago, reminds us of the mixed history of interpretation around this story, including that of imperialism. (Back to the Well, pp. 109-135) That may be.

Gench reminds us that this story is one that invites us in to ask the very important questions that we carry with us – who Jesus is, who we are, what we are called to do, what kind of church are we to be.

Those are not private questions, but communal ones.

Mary Zimmer writes that “the Samaritan woman has been judged as a cantankerous and stubborn person, but her persistent, even sarcastic questions bring her to the realization that she is known by this man at the well. She finds her Messiah through her questions.” (Quoted in Resources for Preaching and Worship, Year A, page 100)

May it be so for us. May we find a place to ask our questions. May we find a place to take our thirst. May we, in our serving, be served, in our sharing, have living water shared with us. May we be met by Jesus, and be transformed. Amen.