This long and complex story from the fourth Gospel is a timely bridge between February when we celebrate Black History Month and March when we celebrate the gifts of women. The story highlights the way social convention can legitimize prejudice. Prejudice, of course, is alive and well.
Friday night a PBS television program dealt in part with the town of Harrison, Arkansas, where more than a hundred years ago African-Americans were run out of town, forced to leave behind their homes and possessions. Recently when a descendent of those African-Americans went to the town and asked about returning the confiscated property to surviving heirs, he was told that the residents of the town prefer to keep it all-white and that people of color would not be welcome there. "It's not a matter of prejudice," one resident said. "It's just that we want to keep things the way they are."
Yesterday's New York Times reported that the alleged murderer of a California teenager will be charged with a hate crime. The fifteen-year-old victim had recently come out openly as being gay. Oxnard, California, like most places in America, is not far from churches that decry homosexuality as sinful. I felt relieved that a Presbyterian minister spoke at the victim's memorial service two days ago and called him a masterpiece created by God.
Against that background we hear a story about Jesus in which he defies convention and acts to break down walls of separation. The two main arenas of Jesus' ministry were Judaea and Galilee. Judaea included Jerusalem and Bethany, and Galilee included Capernaum and Nazareth. Between Judaea and Galilee lay Samaria, which had been part of Israel until it was captured by the Assyrians in 721 BCE. To get from Judaea to Galilee travelers could take either a direct route, which went through Samaria, or take a longer route, which went around Samaria. Jesus and his entourage took the direct route.
To many of Jesus' contemporaries Samaria had lost its ethnic purity. As the Gospel writer puts it, "Jews have nothing to do with Samaritans." Samaritans were considered unclean. The argument about where authentic worship of God should take place was central to the contempt felt and expressed by both the Jews and the Samaritans.
In the Gospel narrative Jesus sat down to rest beside a well that had a long and storied history spanning almost two thousand years. He sent his disciples to a nearby town to buy supplies for the rest of their journey. While he was sitting there under the hot noonday sun, a woman approached to draw water from the well. She was a Samaritan. Jesus asked her for a drink of water.
The woman could have simply given him some water, conforming to the Near Eastern tradition of hospitality. But she dared to engage a Jewish man in a dialogue, acknowledging the unconventionality of his addressing her.
Jesus' request for water leads to a conversation with the woman that is rich in theological significance. Jesus identifies himself as a source of lasting satisfaction, the one who can provide living water, a term with double meaning-running water as opposed to water from a cistern, and life-sustaining water. In the course of the dialogue, the woman, un-named in the story, uses the term Messiah, which signified for Samaritans a teacher who would usher in a new age. Jesus identifies himself with the term.
The Samaritan woman's question about the right place for worshiping God, the issue at the heart of the Jewish-Samaritan enmity, leads to Jesus' ground-breaking statement that the place where worship takes place is unimportant. More to the point is the spiritual disposition of those who would worship the God Jesus calls Father (We could add Mother), the God Jesus says is Spirit. What about us? Do we come to worship with an openness to spiritual realities, with a hunger for a connection with God?
The Gospel writer shows us a Samaritan woman who has a significant encounter with a Jewish teacher that has a positive impact on her. Leaving her water jug at the well, she goes to her village and tells her neighbors about her experience. Her neighbors are so moved by what the woman tells them that they go to meet Jesus and experience him for themselves. They ask him to stay with them, and he does so for two days. Whatever happened in the two days, the villagers come to the conclusion that Jesus is the savior of the world—not the Messiah of the Jews, but the savior of the world.
A lot of theological points, and a lot of good people in the Church get excited about them. But there's something else in the fourth chapter of John's Gospel that excites me even more this morning.
At one point in the narrative Jesus asked the woman to go get her husband and come back. The woman said she had no husband. Jesus confirmed what she said and added that she has had five husbands and the one she had then was not her husband. Almost always in sermons or commentaries the woman has been depicted as a woman of weak character or loose morals. But it's possible she had been in a marriage (a "levirate" marriage, Deuteronomy 25:5-10 and Luke 20:27-33), lost her husband to death before they had children, married a brother of her deceased husband, and the same thing happened four more times. The last surviving brother chose not to marry her but let her live with him anyway.
I confess until this week I judged the woman the way so many other people have judged her. But I read a commentary written by a female scholar (Gail R. O'Day in The New Interpreter's Bible, Vol. IX, 563-573, Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1995) who pointed out the possibility of the kind of marriages I just mentioned. She made the further point that Jesus spoke not one word of judgment against the woman. How easy it is to miss the non-judgmental nature of Jesus' relationships with people who are pushed aside, ostracized, or deemed sinful by the religious establishment. Jesus got angry with people who were judgmental, but he was unfailingly gracious with people who were beaten up or beaten down by life.
I believe Jesus shows us how God keeps acting in new ways to make love a reality, to bring justice to the poor, to lift up the weak and fallen, and to establish peace where there has been alienation. God even does new things in the Church.
A few nights ago a talk show host interviewed Tony Campolo, a Baptist minister with connections to Eastern University outside of Philadelphia. He has had his own ministry for decades and has been popular on the evangelical circuit as a guest speaker. In the interview he made the point that he considers himself evangelical but not conservative. He does not support the Bush administration and their agenda; he has a significant ministry with the poor in Haiti, and he works for the inclusion of gay and lesbian Christians in the life of the Church. Tony Campolo's message is more about love and compassion than about guilt and judgment. God is doing new things in the world and in the Church.
In this morning's New York Times Magazine there is a fascinating article about Anita Renfroe. You may have seen her on Good Morning America. She is what she calls a Christian comedian on the Christian women's circuit. According to the Times article she is selling out large auditoriums months in advance. She says she grew up being given a long list of things Christians couldn't or shouldn't do. She and her friends knew the Bible thoroughly, but they weren't happy about it. Even small children were considered steeped in sin and in need of saving. She says, "Although I always had this party going on in my head, I never knew it was okay to let it out." She now sees her faith as a source of joy and meaning. I can't decide which blows me away more, Anita Renfroe's recasting of her Baptist faith or the New York Times Magazine's giving six pages to her story. God is doing new things in the world and in the Church.
As I read the article about a modern woman who is serious about her faith but unwilling to live in a box with rigid rules and regulations, I thought about the way Jesus recognized the full humanity of the Samaritan woman in our Gospel lesson. She found her voice and talked with her neighbors about her experience of being affirmed.
May the women and men who stood before us today for ordination and/or installation to church office, and may all of us as part of Rutgers Presbyterian Church, continue to tell the good news of God's unconditional, accepting love, and may we work to remove hatred and prejudice from our community, our nation, and the world.
Thanks be to God.