La Samaritana

Sermon-3Lent-March 27, 2011 John 4:5-42 So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." The woman said to him, "Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?" Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water." Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come back." The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, 'I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!" The woman said to him, "Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem." Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming" (who is called Christ). "When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us." Jesus said to her, "I am he, the one who is speaking to you." Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, "What do you want?" or, "Why are you speaking with her?" Then the woman left her water-jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, "Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?" They left the city and were on their way to him. Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, "Rabbi, eat something." But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you do not know about." So the disciples said to one another, "Surely no one has brought him something to eat?" Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, 'Four months more, then comes the harvest'? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, 'One sows and another reaps.' I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor." Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I have ever done." So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there for two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world." Grant to me, O Lord, an eloquence most gentle and wise, that for Thy good gifts I may not be puffed up and extolled above my brothers. Place in my mouth, I beseech Thee, through Thy Holy Spirit, words of consolation, edification, and exhortation, that I may encourage the good to better things, and by word and example bring back to the threshold of Thy righteousness those who walk apart from Thee. May the words which Thou dost give to Thy servant be as keen darts and as burning arrows to penetrate the minds of those that hear, and inflame them with fear and love of Thee. Amen. Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) In 2004 Frank Warren started a temporary community art project called PostSecret.com. It was a blog where people were invited to mail in postcards that had one of their secrets written on it. You simply sent in a postcard with your secret on it-no name, no return address. Every week Warren would choose 10-20 of the postcards sent in and publish them, anonymously, on his blog. In the original message Warren wrote: “your secret can be regret, fear, betrayal, desire, confession, or childhood humiliation. Reveal anything-as long as it’s true, and you have never shared it with anyone ever before.” 2 rules: it must be true, and you have never shared it with anyone ever before. In high school I was so desperate for a boyfriend I dated a guy who went to Star Wars Conventions . . . and he dumped me. I suffer from an eating disorder and I fear my mother's suffering. I can't stand my stepmother. I was 7 years old the first time I attempted suicide. When things go well for me I have to wreck my life all over again. I watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in a mental hospital. Imagine the woman at the well. How many postcards would she have needed to send? Women went to the well at noon for one reason-to avoid meeting anyone else! Everyone went to the well early in the morning at the cool of the day. There were expectations. The Samaritan woman went there at noon-when no one else would be there. John the gospel writer tells us details, always, to make a point. Point two, Unrelated men and women never ever talked to each other. It wasn’t done in 1st century Israel. “Rabbis forbade rabbis to greet any woman in public, even a wife or a sister. There were, in those days, Pharisees who shut their eyes when they saw any woman on the street. With their eyes shut, they walked into so many walls and tripped over so many cracks in the street that they were called the "bruised and bleeding Pharisees." There were expectations. Point three, Jews and Samaritans never ever talked with each other. It would be the same of Israelis and Palestinians today. You don’t talk to outsiders. There were certain expectations. And yet Jesus, a Jewish man, talks to the Samaritan woman. At noon at Jacob’s well. Last week John tells the story of Nicodemus, a Jewish man of great importance, coming to Jesus by night to find out from Jesus “who are you!” This week, Jesus is in an encounter with a non Jewish woman, at midday, in a strange city. Every story this Lent that we hear will show us a different layer of life, a different secret, a different rule being broken. Every week this Lent, we will hear a story that when opened up we might say, “yes, that is my secret, too, that is me, that could be my postcard.” Nicodemus was confused, uncertain. He wasn’t sure who Jesus was, and he was afraid how Jesus might change his life. The woman at the well, the notorious woman at the well, a woman of shame and guilt. Confusion. Doubt . Shame. Guilt. Embarrassment. Humiliation. Any of these fit somewhere in your journey in faith? Every week John tells us a story about one person’s encounter with Jesus. And in that story we are to see our own stories. In southern Mexico, La Samaritana (the Samaritan woman) is remembered on the fourth Friday in Lent, when water flavored with chilacoyota, tamarindo, jamaice and horchata is given to commemorate her gift of water to Jesus. It is a sweet mixture, and people are supposed to offer it, especially to strangers, on the 4th Friday. It is to remind everyone of this woman. The Orthodox Church knows her as St. Photini, or Svetlana in Russian. Her name means "equal to the apostles," and she is honored as an apostle and martyr. (from sermon by Patricia Farris Unlikely Messenger) What do you struggle with your faith? Doubt, confusion, anger, mistrust, shame? Listen, the woman at the well has long been portrayed as a person of humiliation. She had 5 former husbands, she went out of her way to avoid even her own people. She felt as if she was worthless, and her past made any possible future bleak. She had committed too many sins to ever be redeemed. And yet Jesus talked with her, chose her, listened to her. B.B.Taylor writes: “Jesus talks longer to the woman at the well than he does to anyone else in all the Gospels-longer than he talks to any of his disciples, longer than he talks to any of his accusers, longer than he talks to any of his own family. She is the first person he reveals himself to in the Gospel of John. She is the first outsider to guess who he is and tell others. She is the first evangelist, John tells us, and her testimony brings many (the whole village) to faith. The Messiah is the one who shows you who you are by showing you who he is.” It is as if Jesus reads her postcards, all of them, reads OUR postcards, ALL of them, and says, yup, I understand. You’ve made mistakes. But your life isn’t over. There is still time. There is still hope. It doesn’t matter what has gone before, you can begin again. There were rules back then that kept people in their place. And Jesus swept them all away. Jesus talks to the woman at the well, and helps her understand that she is not worthless, not condemned, not insignificant. Last week Jesus talked to Nicodemus and helped him see that new life was possible. Every week in Lent Jesus will help someone see who they can be. And he does this by listening, understanding, helping them change, begin a new life in him. This is from an old sermon by Kate Huey:“Here a different translation of Jesus' answer, from Eugene Peterson's The Message, is helpful: "…the time is coming," Jesus says, "it has, in fact, come – when what you're called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter. It's who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That's the kind of people God is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before God in their worship. God is sheer being itself – Spirit. Those who worship God must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration." Whether we are at the well, thirsty and tired, doing our daily tasks, or in the marketplace or the mall, talking politics and religion, or engaged in the countless other pursuits of our lives, we are thirsty for more than water. We thirst for the living water of God's grace, God's voice still speaking words of healing, acceptance, and unconditional love, even if we don't have or understand all the answers. All of us have known, at one time or another, what it means to be alone, or afraid, or discouraged, or rejected. We know what it means to be "the other." And we know that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Nevertheless. Nevertheless, we turn to God and lift up our faces and feel the living water wash over us, we drink in the cool, clear water of God's grace and God's acceptance, this God who knows us to our very core, the truth of who we are, in spirit and in light. Just accept that God accepts you, and loves you, and calls you, of all people, just like the Samaritan woman, to share this good news wherever you go.” The Brazilian Paulo Coelho's books have sold 100 million copies, been translated into 70 languages, and sold in 150 countries. But life was not always so sweet for Coelho. When he followed his childhood dream of being a writer, his parents twice committed him to a mental institution….. He dropped out of law school, traveled, joined the drug culture, dabbled in journalism and theater, and became a political agitator. After being kidnapped and tortured, he wanted a more "normal" life, and later enjoyed success as a song writer and music executive. Jesus and the woman at the well, 4th century Roman catacomb. But Coelho's soul remained restless. In 1986 he had a vision of a stranger, which stranger he met two months later in a cafe in Amsterdam. The stranger advised him to reconnect with his Catholic roots, and to make the 500-mile medieval pilgrimage to Compostela in Northern Spain (where legend says the bones of Saint James, Santiago, are buried). The pilgrimage convinced Coelho that he was living "only for bread and water." Two years later, he published The Alchemist, a simple fable about a shepherd boy named Santiago. Like the author himself, Santiago vows not to live like his sheep and even his own father, both of whom lived "only for bread and water." Every week in Lent, Jesus will meet another person on a journey. The person will be in a struggle for their soul-and most won’t even know it. Jesus will be their guide at a pivotal point in that journey. He will see so deeply into them that no secret will be concealed, no part of them will be hidden from him. And he will help them see themselves, accept themselves and begin their new life in relationship to him. In today’s story of La Samaritana, a woman who is carrying so many burdens, Jesus offers her living water, a drink that can release her from so much. We hear this story, because we, also, are invited to come to the well. It doesn’t matter what our “regret, fear, betrayal, desire, confession, or childhood humiliation” is. We are known, and set free. Today we are asked to see ourselves at the well, at noon. And we are challenged to come and drink. Amen.