Preached at First Presbyterian Church, Baldwin, NY on March 23rd, 2014
A printable PDF file can be found here
Certain passages of Scripture invite us to take a look at our lives and question our motives, our prejudices, our actions, our decisions and a whole lot more. Such passages may make us feel like the comedian who said “I just took a reality check. It bounced.”
Last week we were bounced by Nicodemus and were told to be born again and give our hearts to Jesus. This week we have been taken into the desert by Moses and revealed to be people of little faith who grumble and complain against God at the slightest change in our fortunes. Now Jesus takes us to encounter a person convention said He should have nothing to do with.
Please don’t underestimate how scandalous this passage must have appeared to it’s first century readers. Rabbinical teachers like Jesus were not meant to hang around wells with unaccompanied women, let alone beg drinks from them and engage in conversation.
Samaritans and Jews were separated by intense prejudices of both culture and religion. They hated each other. They spoke of each other as feared and despised enemies with whom the least contact would result in them being contaminated and having to seek some form of ritual cleansing.
In Luke's gospel we are given a parable about a ‘Good Samaritan’, a phrase which to Jewish ears must have sounded like an oxymoron. Johns gospel takes this scandalous encounter even further by opening up the Good News not just to one solitary Samaritan woman but to the whole Samaritan community.
Underlying this situation is a statement about the difference between false religion and true religion. Samaritans and Jews were divided about both the right way and the right geographical place to worship God. They had both received a great heritage, they could both lay claim to the intervention of God in their past and they were both a people who could point to evidence of God’s blessing.
Jesus cuts through all of that with a simple statement. 'True worshipers worship God in spirit and truth'. Religion was a matter of the heart, not outward convention. It was a real connection with God that truly affected the way decisions are made and life is lived. It is a matter, as he told Nicodemus, of re-birthing your life in the values and priorities of the Kingdom.
Real worship takes place when we bring our true selves to God. That was a discovery that the Samaritan woman made in her encounter with Jesus at the well. There were things about her life that she tried to hide. She tells Jesus that she hasn’t got a husband. That wasn’t the whole truth. The reality was that she had had five husbands and the man she was living with was wasn’t her husband.
Of greater consequence is simply that, as a woman, in her culture at that time, she was a person with little significance. A woman's worth was measured by her relationship to a man. A woman with no husband or male to relate to couldn’t survive. That’s why in the New Testament letters there are many injunctions for the early church to care for the single women and the widows... to grant to them an independent status and value that the world denied.
Which is exactly what Jesus does for this woman by the well. Her value in God’s eyes is not her relationship to any male, not her gender, nor her ethnic identity, but her ability to be a worshiper in spirit and truth. If you read further in the chapter you see the disciples returning from their downtown shopping trip and being totally astonished that Jesus was granting such rights to a woman.
The heat of this passage goes deeper than just gender prejudice, it is a no holds barred attack on all forms of prejudice, a caution to never prejudge any person or situation on the grounds of rumor or reputation.
Sadly it’s something we all do. Like the people Moses led through the desert, we thank God when all is rosy but complain when our immediate needs aren’t met. Our physical thirst is often a stronger driving force than our spiritual one. To often judgments are made on the basis of outward appearance.
I remember being in school and hating Richard Perry. Richard Perry was born with more muscles than I could ever develop. Richard Perry’s hair was a different color to mine and was always immaculately dressed. Even though we had school uniforms, his made him look good, mine just made me look awkward. Richard Perry was good at sports, good at maths, good at science, good at everything. He never studied for a test but always passed. He never got picked on by the bullies.
Girls loved Richard Perry. He was a babe magnet. Teachers loved Richard Perry. Parents loved Richard Perry. He was rich, he was handsome. In fact everybody loved Richard Perry. Everybody except me. Because secretly... I wanted to be Richard Perry!
How stupid we can be to measure ourselves by other people. The beautiful thing about each of us is that we are all different. We all have unique gifts and talents that we should treasure rather than envying others. For some people, if only they could let go of their desire to be somebody that they’re not and start making the most of who they are, then their lives would be so much happier.
Jesus treats the Samaritan woman as a full human being. He doesn’t talk down to her. He doesn’t treat her as any less of a full person because her circumstances weren’t ideal. He doesn’t treat her differently because she was of a different religion and a different race.
He treats her as a unique and worthy recipient of the grace of God, as He does each of us. If we can but recognize ourselves accepted and loved by God how much freer we are to be individuals that don’t have to live up to anybodies expectations except that of being the person God wants us to be.
The dilemma isn’t just self acceptance. We’ve already seen the hatred that existed between Jews and Samaritans. The problem is the human preoccupation with creating fences and protecting boundaries, our limitless capacity to divide people into 'In-Crowds' and 'Out-Crowds' ; 'The Chosen people' and the 'Rejected people'.
The New International Bible Commentary points out:- “Throughout human history, people and nations have defined themselves over against other groups. The history of race relations in the United States, the notion of racial purity that was at the ideological heart of Hitler’s Germany, the ethnic wars that wax and wane across the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Europe all have their roots in the same fears that divided Jews from Samaritans: the fear of contamination, the fear of sharing one’s gift and privileged call with others.”
This passage calls us to turn the heat on our own heart, to dig deep and root out any prejudices that may be there. If we have a prejudice then let it be a passionate prejudice AGAINST all forms of prejudice. If we find our self being judgmental then pass judgment AGAINST being judgmental. If we have a bias then let it be a bias AGAINST showing a bias. If we have a preference than let it be a preference AGAINST showing a preference.
This is not rocket science. Treat others as we would like them treat us. Accept others as we would like to be accepted by them. Take down fences, not build stronger ones. Welcome strangers, for as Scripture says, by doing so some have entertained angels.
Jesus meets a supposed enemy, and accepts her. We are called to respect all people, not because they share our values, or our ethnic group, or speak our language, or belong to the same social class, not because they are ‘our sort of people’ or ‘people with the right connections’.... we are called to respect all peoples because every person is a women, man or child that Jesus Christ hung on a cross and died for as He prayed “Forgive them Father for they don’t know what they are doing”.
In the heat of the afternoon sun, Jesus meets a person whom the society of the day regarded as unimportant and insignificant. He engages her in conversation, He refuses to judge her, He welcomes her presence, He lets her know how deeply loved she was by God. He grants to her life a significance her world denied. This passage functions on so many different levels.
- It invites us to know ourselves loved of God and so love others.
- It encourages us to take a reality check on our own life, and if it bounces, make the right adjustments.
- It beckons us to come before God in spirit and truth and seek for His love to be born from above in each of our hearts.
The Reverend Adrian J. Pratt B.D.
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