St. Christopher's Episcopal Church: Sermons

Last Sunday | Two weeks | Archives | Home page

A Sermon Preached at St. Christopher's Episcopal Church, Oak Park, IL
on the Third Sunday in Lent, February 24, 2008 (Year A, RCL)
by the Rev. Paris Coffey

"The time is coming - 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. - John 4:23

Several years ago parishioner Linda Hillman asked me what my favorite Bible verse was, and I had to admit that I didn't really have one. "I do have a favorite story, though," I assured her, relating the narrative of the woman at the well from today's Gospel. Asking why she wanted to know, Linda replied, "No Reason." But some months later, when Michael and I were at the Hillman home for dinner, the subject arose again. This time Linda admitted that she had wanted to make a wall-hanging for me using a verse of scripture. For those of you who may not know, Linda is a potter who makes not only beautiful pots but ceramic wall-hangings that weave words into her design. The one Linda had designed for me, though, had an imperfection in it - or so she said - and needed to be redone.

"May I see it?" I asked, and reluctantly she agreed. "You can see the imperfection," she said pointing out a hairline crack that had occurred when the piece had been fired. To my eyes, though, it was perfect just the way it was. In fact, as I read the verse she had chosen from today's Gospel, taken from a modern translation of The Bible called The Message, I realized that I did indeed have a favorite verse of Scripture and this was it. It read, "The time is coming - 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."

What a powerful promise, or more accurately, what a powerful revelation, for what Jesus says to the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well is that in him - in the coming of the Son of God - this radical inclusion is fulfilled. Jesus' words are not just words but truth embodied in his scandalous encounter with the Samaritan woman. This encounter may have lost its sense of scandal for modern readers, but John's readers would not have missed Jesus' challenge to the status quo. They would have felt his violation of social conventions, his bursting of boundaries between male and female, between chosen and rejected people.

Certainly the Samaritan woman felt it. Coming to the well at noon, in the heat of the day when other women had gone home, the Samaritan woman encounters Jesus. He asks her for a drink and she is shocked - shocked that a Jewish man is initiating conversation with an unknown woman, which just wasn't done - but doubly shocked that a Jew is speaking to a Samaritan. Samaritans were considered ritually unclean by Jews, despite the fact that they had blood in common. Jacob was ancestor to both, but Samaritans - born of exiled Israelites who had intermarried with pagan nations - were looked down on by the Jews.

Jewish law prohibited contact with these mixed-race Samaritans, and so it is scandalous when Jesus plops himself down at Jacob's well and asks a Samaritan woman for a drink. It may have been the first "sit-in" in an eventual long line of protests against rules rooted in prejudice. At the very least, though, it is the first time in John's Gospel that Jesus reveals his identity as the Messiah. And this is no small thing, for he reveals it not to Jewish leaders, nor even to the Jews, but to a Samaritan woman who is assumed by many to be of questionable character.

"Go call your husband, and come back," Jesus says to the Samaritan woman, to which she responds, "I have no husband." Jesus says, "You're right. You've had five husbands and the one you have now is not your husband." He doesn't say it with judgment, for unlike those of us who immediately judge her to be a sinner - and a notorious one at that - Jesus isn't concerned with the woman's marital history. He's not concerned with imperfections, but rather reveals an intimate knowledge of her words and life that moves her profoundly.

It's amazing the power that "being known" can have over us; not the kind of knowing that comes from being in a bar, or even a church for that matter, "where everyone knows your name and they're always glad you came." It's not even the kind of knowing defined by good parents who love their children no matter what, although that's close. Rather it's a knowing that sees into the heart and treasures what is seen with knowledge described once by a spiritual director of mine as "love where you don't have to protect the other from the truth about yourself."

This description of God was shared with me by priest and author Martin Smith, when I lamented on retreat that I had only three months to finish a thesis that I'd had a year to complete and hadn't started! "What does God say when you pray about it?" Martin asked, to which I confessed sheepishly that I hadn't prayed. Martin laughed. "What are you afraid of?" he joked. "Are you afraid God will say, 'Look, you've had a whole year to finish this thing; don't come sniveling to me now1?'" It was, of course, exactly what I was afraid of, but as Martin pointed out, the God from whom no secrets are hid already knew me through and through.

This is the kind of knowing Jesus reveals in today's Gospel, prompting the Samaritan woman to say, "Sir, I see that you are a prophet." It's the kind of knowing that - unlike timid disciples who keep silent in the face of questions - gives this woman courage to engage more deeply with Jesus, risking a question that has plagued her all her life. "What is the right place, the right way, the right God to worship?" she asks, and Jesus takes her question seriously, answering, "(Neither, for) the time is coming - 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."

The woman hears his words, but only in the future tense. "I know that," she says, longing for something she has longed for all her life but cannot name. "I know some day my prince will come; someday the Messiah will appear and we'll get the whole story; someday life will be different." What Jesus says to her, though, is, "I am he, the one who is speaking to you." And she believes him; . . . believes that salvation does not depend on the color of her skin, or which side of the tracks she's from, or how many husbands she has had; . . . believes that what's in her heart matters more to God than the imperfections of her past or her people's past; . . . believes the truth that she is known and loved for who she is. In short, the Samaritan woman believes that Jesus is the Messiah, for who else could know her so intimately and touch her so deeply that she leaves what she is doing - leaves her water jar - and heads off for the city to share her excitement with others.

What she shares, though, may not be what we expect, for it sets her witness in a deeply personal context. "Come and see," the Samaritan woman says to the people of her city, using the same words Jesus used to call his disciples in the opening chapter of John. "Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?" It's not exactly textbook salesmanship, but more like a timid Girl Scout who says, "You don't want to buy any cookies from me do you?"

Oddly enough, though, her approach works, for it respects the experience of the other while testifying to the power of her own. There's no prejudice in this woman's witness; no judgment that if you don't see things my way, you're an idiot; no arrogant claim that "I found it!" or that "God said it. I read it. That settles it." Rather the Samaritan woman's witness invites curiosity, openness and wonderment. And it works, for although some believed simply on the basis of her words alone, many more believed because they saw and heard Jesus for themselves.

It is, in fact, the only real way to believe, and so this morning John invites us also to hear and absorb the words of this woman who says to us, "Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done. Come and see a man who knows me and my imperfections. Come and see a man who loves me as I am. Come and see a man who calls me beyond myself. He cannot be the Messiah, can he?"

Her question lingers in the air for us to answer. Come and see. Come and question. Come and be known, and then decide for yourself if this is the Savior of the world/the love of our life who satisfies our thirst, using even our hairline cracks to witness in the world to God's love.

Amen.