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February 24, 2008
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Exodus 17:1-7, Diane Neu’s A
Blessing of Hands, John 4:5-42
“Waterworks:
Wells and Other Deep Subject”
Waterworks. Water works for us all the time. Water works for us in the
snowfalls – thanks a lot, water! If you’ve been following the 40-Day Lenten
Calendar based on how precious a gift water is to us, you know the average North
American consumes 1800 gallons a day personally and through agriculture and
industry -- and wastes a lot in the process! Most people in developing
countries use less than 12 gallons a day -- and much of it is not suitable for
drinking, cooking, or bathing. Only 0.8% of all water on earth is fresh –
“living water!”
We take for granted the quiet, continuous miracle of water carried by heat of
the sun from ocean and plant life up to the sky – where precipitation by rain
and snow sends fresh water back to the ground. “Handiworks” are just as
precious and unpretentious as waterworks. The “works of our hands” celebrated
in Diane Neu’s prayer (below) and in Patsy Gehr’s “paper quilt” inspired by
Rebecca Brune’s photographs go on all the time all over the world to create the
conditions that make for our lives.
And wells are very deep subjects. So are we! Like some kind of spiritual
sleuth, Jesus “gets to the bottom of us” – revealing to us – as to this woman he
meets today -- the manifold mysteries of our own lives. Jesus is willing and
able to go so deep – and to take us with him! Even in spite of ourselves. How
deep does Jesus go? He always begins with what might be called “skin-deep”
conditions – the things that can be readily seen or learned about us –
conditions of color, nationality, gender, class, size, age, appearance,
language, faith tradition, sexual orientation, ability of mind and body, etc.
But Jesus always moves, and moves us, from “skin-deep” to “sin-deep” conditions
– things that lies most deeply within us, however they get there – things that
often keep us from being the fully and freely human persons we want and need and
long and seek to be.
This story further illustrates just how open, how accepting and how responsive,
Jesus is to all experience and to each one of us. Whether we come to him as
Satan in the wilderness, or as Nicodemus in the middle of the night, or as this
woman at mid-day -- Jesus is here, where we are, ready and waiting for us. He
does not need to protect or defend himself from or against us in any way. In
the image that Gandhi uses, Jesus “experiments with truth” in every
relationship. There are other ways to get from Judea to Galilee. Jesus chooses
to go through Samaria. Jesus chooses to live on the edge, on the boundaries and
borders of his existence, among the “outsiders,” the marginalized and
disenfranchised.
The fact that this is Jacob’s well connects Jesus with tradition. We know that
whatever follows from this reference is meant to illuminate things of the past
brought forward in living ways to reveal the ongoing presence and power of God
which cannot be stuck in “the way things always have been!” Jacob’s well brings
directly to mind the encounters in Genesis 24 and 29 -- of Isaac with Rebecca
and of Jacob with Rachel – wherein the man meets the woman at the well, the
woman goes home to tell her family about the man, the man is invited home to
marry the woman!
In the course of their conversation, this woman goes from seeing Jesus as “a
better man than our ancestor Joseph” – who represents the best of patriarchal
tradition – to seeing him as “a prophet” – who knows and accepts the woman
better than she does herself – to seeing him as “the Messiah” – who makes
present a time when what we call ourselves, where we worship do not matter –
only who we are and the way we live! How we are simply ourselves before God!
Then she gets to her ultimate proclamation of Jesus as “the Savior of the
world!” A title held only by the Roman Emperor – whose status of lording over
all others Jesus clearly has come to confront and subvert – for which he gives
his own life.
Is it possible that only such an “outsider” as this woman could come to see
Jesus for who he is? May it likewise require “outsiders” to help those of us
who take tradition for granted today to come to see Jesus for who he is in our
time and place? How do we follow Jesus, do what Jesus would do, to identify
with outsiders? To risk finding something new? Jesus initiates this
conversation at noon. By the way, his time of thirsting in this story is also
the time he thirsts from the cross! Jesus is always right on the edge of
destruction. He initiates what becomes pretty intimate contact here between a
Jew and a Samaritan – whose people historically hate one another. It seems we
are reminded of the virulence of historical hate in every day’s news. With whom
or what would we have to initiate such difficult, even dangerous contact to go
to the edge of our own lives?
It also is contact between man and woman – not supposed to be talking together
in public – even between a “religious professional,” a rabbi, and a laywoman.
It would be much more comfortable and collegial with other women for this woman
to make her daily trip to the well early in the morning. Even today in many
parts of the world the well is a significant meeting and community-building
place among women. Now maybe this woman just seeks spiritual solitude. But
chances are she is in such disrepute among her peers that she chooses the
hottest and most abandoned time of the day – time when she’s most assured to
have the well to herself. What a surprise and intrusion Jesus so often is!
So what happens in this contact? How would we follow Jesus in it? There is
such an immediate presence and power to him. He is so available, so accessible
as to transcend all the usual limits of time and space. There is such an
aliveness to him (that quality of “eternal life” Jesus told Nicodemus about last
week!) – such awareness, alertness, attentiveness! Jesus brings this urgent
“spirit of truth” that comes with the Messiah. It bears irresistibly upon,
challenges, often changes all accepted interpretation of every established
tradition in each life and life together.
Jesus recognizes in this lonesome woman – as he does in other outsiders – a
quality of freedom as so little left to lose – so much that has been lost to
them already. It gives outsiders an openness and commitment to truth no matter
how hard – born of her unrelenting search for a God in whom they can fully and
freely trust. Moreover, this woman may seek such another person – and
especially a “patriarchal” man! – in whom she can trust to find God revealed
kindly to her.
Jesus holds nothing of her past against her, and Jesus waits for her, through
all the questions and comments, to find a safe way to reach him for herself.
Sisters and even brothers, are we not likewise searching for a God who is really
full and set free enough – unguarded, unprotected, undefended enough – to risk
being all things to all people? A God who cannot be trapped in any tradition or
time? Are we not much like this woman? We are so accustomed to diminish, even
dismiss this woman’s stature – even as we do our own capacities to articulate
our theologies and faith issues. After all, we hear she has gone through five
husbands and is living with another man now!
But Jesus does not dismiss her (or us!) at all. Rather, Jesus embraces the
whole of who she is. Jesus engages her in deepest theological discussion. He
treats her as a spokesperson for her whole people – even as he speaks for his!
By the way, commentators observe that the “five husbands” may be a figure of
speech for five different occupations of Israel by other empires with whom there
was much inter-marriage – while the empire Israel lives with now, the Roman
empire, they are refusing to marry! The bottom line is, Jesus empowers this
woman to act boldly upon who she is, on what she has seen in him for herself!
We may say of these Lenten gospel stories -- Jesus encounters us where and when
we least expect him. Jesus embraces us freely and fully just as we are. Jesus
engages us in searching the deepest places within us, bringing them to light.
Jesus endures all the time we take making our way to him – even enjoys the
uniqueness of every approach. And Jesus empowers us to act upon bravely,
publicly upon what we never dreamt lay within us waiting to get out and about!
This is what it means for Jesus to love us so much – as God loves the world so
much – not to condemn but to save us! To give God’s very own life for us!
The woman promptly drops her bucket of burden, her bucket of bondage, and leaves
it behind her forever! Remember how our theme of “Follow the Leader” is one of
call and response, leave and follow – leave boats, leave nets, leave parents,
leave tax-collection booths, leave water buckets – and follow! Her “chance
encounter” with Jesus has made this woman the preacher and organizer of his
movement of spirit and truth, of justice and peace, among the Samaritans.
Talk about becoming such a “deep subject” herself – such a working of God’s own
hands! No more is she only object, only “subject” to everyone else! No more is
she the fantasy or the reflection of anyone else’s expectations. No longer does
any person, any tradition hold power over her. Rather, she has taken power
herself – to share as “good news” with every last person she meets! Does she
care that others may come to take credit themselves for seeing what she has
proclaimed to them? I don’t think so!
All this woman cares about is to keep liberation alive! And the loves that
leads to liberation. Revolutionary love! All this woman cares about is that
God keeps parting the “living waters” leading us out of bondage to wilderness
and, someday, to promised land! We are coming to the end of that fortieth year
since we lost Dr. King in the flesh and the new revelation of God he envisioned
as “Beloved Community” and “World House.”
Please mark the dates now: April 4-6 we are bringing Rev. Phil Lawson here, a
preacher and organizer much in the tradition of this liberated woman, to help us
reflect on local issues in light of Dr. King’s question: Where do we go from
here: Chaos or community? Wilderness or promised land? As God does for Moses
here, when the people, as usual, would choose to turn back from hardship to
slaveship again – God still today is bringing forth “living waters” from us
rocks – reshaping our doubts and our fears!
Brothers and sisters, only water wears away stone – is that right? Only water –
stubbornly flowing, cleansing, nurturing water – may change the substance and
shape of all those hard and stony parts and places deep in ourselves -- and all
around and between and among us. As the prophet Ezekiel says, our God will take
away hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh! So let us this morning open
our hearts -- our heads, our hands, our hopes -- to the living waters of God to
reshape every doubt and fear that would keep us from following this woman into
the liberation of our own lives and loves --in the name of Christ Jesus our
Liberator and our Leader! Amen.
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