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Parade of Characters: Woman of Samaria John 4:5 – 42; Exodus 17:1 – 7 More than 100 years after the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) began ordaining women, I was in the seminary student placement office seeking my first call to a congregation. The Director of the program called the chair of a search committee while I was in the office. “I have a candidate for pastor of your congregation,” he said. “HER name is…she IS a woman.” Prior to that I had been rejected from a midwest medical school, because they had filled their ‘quota’ of women students. Of course, this is ancient history to some…still, something many of us have experienced here in the United States in the last century. We know it continues to happen blatantly around the world but much more subtlely here, now. The majority of us in this sanctuary have no idea what it is like to live in a culture where we are marked as the ‘other’ because of our skin tone, or facial and hair features. Spending two weeks in Africa is the closest I have ever been to experiencing myself as minority. That was a fleeting experience — which counts for naught — because there was an exit strategy and the entrance was by choice. This ‘otherness’ is not just about rivalry — based on which state celebrated our birth…or which college we attended…or which major league team we support. The otherness about which I am referring carries with it a general disdain and unworthiness. Although we may have studied this phenomenon, ached over it, worked against it, many of us have no personal ability to know its constant pain. All of us, however, can name the ways in which we have compromised ourselves. With a bit of reflection we can remember our bad decisions, our mean behavior, our short temperedness, our lust, greed, and laziness. Give us a pad of paper and vow of secrecy, we would be able to list our major and minor faults, broken promises and resolutions, breaches of integrity, sorrowful mistakes, and inconsistent pettiness. Much of that list, we believe others do not know — we like to forget it ourselves — and we even pretend that God isn’t all that interested. Surely God has much more to do than to be aware of our minutia. Our Gospel writer, John, has provided us a fairly incredible story — his longest narrative — in which Jesus encounters someone and seems to just ‘flip over’ the realities of her gender, her ‘otherness’ and her indiscretions. In order for us to understand this story, we have to place it in the cultural context of that day:
So there they were – at the well – talking! This is why the disciples were so amazed upon their return. The woman was rather audacious. Although she questioned Jesus on his initiating the conversation, she certainly held her own throughout it. What we don’t know for sure — only through reading between the lines — is the situation of her morality. The fact she had five husbands and was living with a man who was not her husband helps us surmise that something was askew. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, she could have been widowed that many times. But then why was she at the well at noon. Bottom line…Jesus didn’t care! He didn’t care that he had crossed the line and had spoken to a woman. He didn’t care that he — a good Jew — had spoken to a Samaritan. He didn’t care about how many husbands she had or that she was living with a man who wasn’t her husband. Or, if he did care, none of it was going to stop him from offering her a great gift of life. The woman didn’t appear to have anything to lose. Jesus confronted her at her greatest vulnerability — pretty much without scruples — because he knew he could get to her at that depth. She danced around it, as we all do, trying to engage him at an intellectual level with questions about worshipping on the mountain versus worshipping in the Temple but Jesus wouldn’t let her go. Anne Lamott is an author who grew up outside the church. A coke addict and alcoholic, she was pretty much ruining her life and not getting much writing done. One especially horrific night, she realized someone was in her bedroom. In fact, she turned on the light to see and, of course, no one was there. She writes: “I knew beyond any doubt that it was Jesus…And I was appalled. I thought about my life and my brilliant progressive friends. I thought about what everyone would think of me if I became a Christian, and it seemed an utterly impossible thing that simply could not be allowed to happen. I turned to the wall and said out loud, “I would rather die.” I felt him just sitting there on his haunches in the corner of my sleeping loft, watching me with patience and love, and I squinched my eyes shut, but that didn’t help because that’s not what I was seeing him with. “This experience spooked me badly, but I thought it was just an apparition, born of fear and self-loathing and booze…. But then everywhere I went, I had the feeling that a little cat was following me, wanting me to reach down and pick it up, wanting me to open the door and let it in. But I knew what would happen: you let a cat in one time, give it a little milk, and then it stays forever. So I tried to keep one step ahead of it.” (p. 50 Traveling Mercies. New York: Anchor Books, 1999.) Shortly thereafter, Anne Lamott went to church (leaving in tears before the benediction), raced home — with that ‘cat’ following her — she slammed her door, hung her head and exclaimed ‘all right, I quit. You can come in.’ Then began her life of faith. Jesus Christ will go to great lengths to find us and to offer us the gift of living water — the gift of life that will change us forever. Many of us don’t believe that. We put up the shields and barriers that we have learned from our society and families. We don’t deserve it because we are a woman, or have a poor education, or come from a dysfunctional family, or because we are the ‘other’ in society, or because we have a past of which we are not proud and a present we continue to hide — we have so many daily inconsistencies we need to repair before we could ever be acceptable in the sight of the divine. All of which matters to Jesus Christ — because it keeps us from receiving what he offers. None of which matters to Jesus Christ — because he offers his gift to all who would receive. Are we willing for the encounter to happen? On this journey through Lent, it could occur at any moment. Once we have allowed the encounter — such as the one at the well that hot noon day — we will be ready to be the church…the body of Jesus Christ here in St. Louis in 2005. For then we will be offering the gift of precious living water
Then we will be the church of Jesus Christ…offering living water to a thirsty people. Jesus would not let go of that woman at the well. According to John’s Gospel, she became the first evangelist. She was the first one to preach to others — to bring others to know Jesus as the Christ (a woman…a Samaritan…one who undoubtedly had major issues with relationships). She discovered her need of the gift. May we be so bold as to know our need for living water. • SW |
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