Lent 3 3.15.20

Let us pray.

Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves, but keep us both outwardly in our bodies, and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever.

Amen.

A reading from the book of Exodus.

From the wilderness of Sin, the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages as the Lord commanded.

They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink.

The people quarreled with Moses and said, Give us water to drink.

Moses said to them, Why do you quarrel with me?

Why do you test the Lord?

But the people thirsted there for water, and the people complained against Moses and said, Why did you bring us out of Egypt to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?

So Moses cried out to the Lord, What shall I do with this people?

They are almost ready to stone me.

The Lord said to Moses, Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you.

Take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go.

I will be standing there in front of you of the rock on the on the rock at Horeb.

Strike the rock, and the water will come out of it, so the people may drink.

Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel.

He called the place Masa and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among us or not?

The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

The psalm appointed for the day is Psalm ninety-five.

Come, let us sing to the Lord, let us shout for joy to the rock of our salvation.

Let us come before God's presence with thanksgiving and raise a loud shout to God with psalms.

For the Lord is a great God, and a great king above all gods, and God's hand are the caverns of the earth, and the heights of the hills are God's also.

The sea is God's, for God made it, and God's hands have moulded the dry land.

Come, let us bow down and bend the knee, and kneel before the Lord our Maker.

For the Lord is our God, we are the people of God's pasture and the sheep of God's own hand.

Oh that today you would hearken to God's voice.

Harden not your hearts as your forebears did in the wilderness, at Meribah, and on that day at Masa when they tempted me.

They put me to the test, though they had seen my works.

Forty years long I detested that generation and said, This people are wayward in their hearts.

They do not know my ways.

So I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter into my rest.

A reading from Paul's Epistle to the Romans.

Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.

And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.

And hope does not disappoint us because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.

Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die.

But God proves God's love for us, and that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.

Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God?

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of the Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.

But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

The word of the Lord, thanks be to God.

The holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to John.

Glory be to thee, Lord Christ.

Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sikar, 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, Do 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 worshiped 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 true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship.

God is spirit, and those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth.

The woman said to him, I know the Messiah is coming, who is called the 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 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 the one who sent me and to complete God's work.

Do not do you not say, Four months more than 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 the sower and reaper may rejoice together.

But here the saying holds true One sows and another reaps.

I sent you to reap for 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've ever done.

So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with him, and he stayed there 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.

The gospel of the Lord praise to you, Lord Christ.

Today we get to hear maybe an all-too familiar scene of Jesus speaking with the woman at the well, and um in order to reconsider it, maybe it's helpful to hear a few words of context first, Samaritans.

Despised by Jewish people, actually the two lived in enmity since 722 BC.

That's when the Assyrian Empire came down from Mesopotamia and absolutely, utterly destroyed the ten northern tribes called Israel.

And um when the Assyrians conquered these tribes, they ended up uh doing this interesting policy of trying to make peace.

And the Assyrian way of peacemaking and conquered territories was to create, to force not a cultural stew, but a cultural slurry.

So they took people from the ten tribes of Israel and deported them in very, very small numbers outside of immediate family groups to places like Syria, modern-day Syria, modern-day Turkey, modern-day Mesopotamia, and they took Syrians and Mesopotamians and Turks that they had conquered and resettled them in Israel so that the people were completely without a common language, without common food culture, without common religion.

The Assyrian policy believed that doing this was going to make uprisings less likely.

So the Jewish perspective, which is written from the surviving kingdom of Judah, is that the Samaritans represent sort of not only a cultural mushmash, but a religious one as well.

So Samaritans have been looked down as on upon as sort of watering down the faith.

Not idolatry per se, but really as mixing Jewish religion with other other cultures, other customs.

So, for example, we hear in the text today that Samaritans worship at Mount Gerizim and Jewish people worship at Jerusalem.

Of course, Samaritans couldn't worship at Jerusalem because that was outside of the region of Samaria.

So they essentially had to go to a different country in order to worship where the Southerners told them to go.

So there's this really deep enmity.

And, you know, we hear this even in the parable of the Good Samaritan, which would have been a really big surprise in Luke.

There were no Good Samaritans.

They were all considered half-breeds with watered-down religion and watered-down blood lineage.

So as a result, Jewish people went out of their way to avoid Samaria.

That is to say that if you were going from Galilee to Jerusalem, there's a pretty straight shot through Samaria.

But your average Jewish person at the time of Jesus would have gone an additional two or three days journey out of their way to avoid going through Samaritan territory.

In fact, the belief was that if you touched a Samaritan person, you could become ritually unclean and have to go outside the camp for several days.

Jesus isn't just in Samaria, he's now also talking to a woman.

So this is somebody who is doubly unclean at the time of Jesus, a woman and a Samaritan.

And there's this really interesting thing that happens, which is Jesus goes to a well, and this is sort of a type scene.

You know, in Star Wars, when you hear dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, you know Darth Waybader is going to show up.

Well, in the Hebrew Bible, and here as well, when a man meets a woman at the well, normally you hear wedding bells.

So uh Jacob meets his wife, well, both of his wives, Leah and Rachel, at a well.

Um, Abraham's servant finds for Isaac a wife at a well.

Moses meets his wife at a well.

They meet these women, and then uh the story unfolds and they end up getting married.

So um John is perhaps playing on this image a little bit, and if you'll put up with just a little bit of playfulness here, the best scholarship I've read on this suggests that um Jesus might be doing a little bit of flirting here, uh, unconventionally.

This is sort of how the story begins in all of the occasions, is the man tells the woman or asks the woman for water.

And you know it's going to be a good match if the woman says something like, Yes, I'll get you some water and let me take care of your animals too.

Well, here um we've got that type scene, a man at a well asking for water, and then it goes completely backward.

The woman says, How are you asking me for water?

You don't have anything to do with my people.

In general, you look down on us.

And um she seems to be confused.

Is he giving an order because he perceives himself to be superior?

Is this guy just confused?

I mean, what's going on here?

Beyond that, there's something really, really interesting, which is that Jesus is doing this at about noon.

This would be the heat of the day, and in general, people would not be at the well in the heat of the day.

The time for drawing water is in the cool of the morning or the cool of the evening.

So why this woman is there about noon, um, nobody really knows.

Most scholars would tell you it's probably because she is socially alienated from her village.

And we're going to find out why as we continue to read the text, but um, most scholars consider she's a bit of an outcast in her own village, and that's why she's having to get water in the heat of the day.

So here she is sweaty, carrying a five, ten, maybe even twenty-gallon water jar, immensely heavy, um, in the middle of the day to go get water for her household, and here's this Jewish man asking her for a drink.

Jesus replies with something really strange, which is, hey, uh, some kind of comment about water that she doesn't really get.

Her reply, though, is very practical.

Look, you don't have a bucket.

And beyond that, if you want some living water, like if you've got that, then why do you need me to get you anything?

Just enjoy your own living water.

She says, possibly sarcastically, this is one of the tough things about the Bible.

We don't have tone when we read it, we just have words.

So you we could imagine this scene happening a bunch of different ways, but she sort of says, Oh, give me the water you have so I don't have to keep coming to the well.

Oh, and by the way, why do you need this water?

Jesus interrupts the scene.

Go get your husband, and this is where the story really starts to unfold.

She has no husband, and Jesus knows, and uh you may not have to be all-knowing in order to figure this out that she's had five husbands.

It's very possible that on his way into town this woman was identified because, again, she's going to the well way too late.

Um, possibly her story has been revealed.

Now, normally, um, I should say the the way I've heard this story is that this woman is an adulteress, but actually, I think it's really worth considering the story from a completely different angle.

At the time of Jesus, it's really not clear whether women could divorce their husbands or not.

In general, it seems like not.

So it's very, very possible that this woman has been the wife of five different people.

And uh, Moses gave this ability to people that they could be divorced for any reason, which means you in order to get married, you had to pay a dowry or a bride price at the time of Jesus.

So the woman didn't pay the man, the man paid for the woman and paid directly to her father because, in a sense, her father owned her.

Women were treated like chattels.

So, very possibly what's happened in our story is that a man has bought this woman, and then down the road maybe he prospered, or maybe he didn't like her cooking, or maybe he found out that um she had more wrinkles than he wanted.

There's no reason given.

What we do know is if she had committed adultery, she probably would have been stoned or burned alive, not just divorced.

Um, for some reason, her first husband divorced her, which meant she no longer had anybody to take care of her.

Her first husband uh may have traded her in for a better-looking model, so to speak.

And when we're talking about property, that is certainly one way to think about property instead of human beings.

Um, her second husband decided to marry her, had to pay her father for her, but probably bought her for pennies on the dollar because she was a used model and not a new one.

It's a horrific way to think, but this is very, very likely what's happened.

And for some reason, maybe because he bought her so cheaply, he was able to discard her so easily.

And this has happened one, two, three, four, five times.

You see, for a woman who is divorced, either her father had to continue to pay to take care of her, or else she was going to have to become a beggar or a prostitute because women couldn't exactly own businesses or earn their own wages either.

The man that she's living with now has not even married her, so it's very possible she's living with a man simply so that she can have something to eat.

So here's this woman who, for reasons unknown to us, has been frankly monopolized and taken advantage of, likely, by one, two, three, four, five, six people, and then is now the fundamental suspicion of the village is probably that there's something wrong with her.

Because good women keep the affections of their husbands.

Good women are perfect cooks and purple perfect child rearers, good women, and maybe this is her case.

Maybe she didn't have children, maybe she was infertile, maybe that's why they discarded her.

So what's interesting is that instead of people saying that the system is really bad, and how can you treat women this way?

Um people embrace the system, and here is this woman having to go to the well in the heat of the day and live with a man without any kind of security just so she can eat a hand to mouth.

And Jesus comes kind of flirting with this woman.

And um, what's interesting to think about from that angle is here is somebody who has been absolutely destroyed by the convention of marriage at her time, and Jesus is offering to her um really a different kind of marriage, one in which she's cared for and known and appreciated.

He offers her uh in a little bit of confusing language, this is the Gospel of John after all, that um that God cares for her, that um God shows up for people who worship God, that actually we don't have to get all of the um idiosyncrasies right about where to go uh to worship and how to read our Bibles.

The Samaritans had a different Bible from the um from the Jewish people.

In general, they only read the first five books, and Jesus would have read books like the prophets and the Psalms.

And Jesus seems to say, That's alright.

We worship in spirit and in truth, and he takes time to speak with this woman who nobody else has bothered to make time for.

And maybe it's interesting, she says, Come see a man who's told me everything I've ever done, and really perhaps what Jesus has done is told her everything that's been done to her.

And that is perhaps the role of the Messiah.

And I think it's an interesting way that we're invited to consider ministry not just to this wim, not just to this woman in the Bible in this one story, but to one another.

There's a difference between telling others everything they've done and observing everything that's been done to them.

This story is just so rife in my mind, in my religious experience, from a story that's used against this woman instead of a story that cultivates compassion for some lady who has been discarded like a used Kleenex or an outdated car model or even last year's smartphone, and again has been picked up for pennies on the dollar, and we don't know what kind of treatment she's received from her husbands, but we do know that when she was discarded by these men, the rest of the village has ostracized her to the point that she's coming to the well in the afternoon.

What's interesting is when Jesus offers to this kind of just listening, and maybe that's an interesting bit, or maybe not even listening, he has a conversation with her.

I wonder when.

The last time a stranger had a conversation with this particular woman that wasn't interested in buying her up as a commodity.

When Jesus gives a moment to this woman, she finds herself really drawn to him and starts to wonder whether or not he's been anointed by God, whether or not he's the Messiah.

Because when somebody takes the time to listen to us or even converse with us, almost always there's this beckoning towards God's presence to something greater than ourselves.

And she goes back and tells people who have made her to go to the well in the afternoon, hey, he told me everything I've done, and then as a result, they go to see him.

And who knows what he says to them.

We don't know.

But we do know, curiously, that somebody who was formerly an outcast becomes an agent of grace, and um particularly because God and through Jesus takes the time to invest in that person.

And I I wonder if that isn't a corrective for us.

Is there there are people that we don't make time for that God would be so grateful to partner with as agents of grace if we would just give them a moment.

Last week was uh International Women's Day, and so this story seems really, really important coming on the heels of that to really consider how we how we treat people who um, you know, throughout time have enjoyed fewer rights and fewer protections, and that continues for women internationally today.

So uh there's a bit of uh historicity to this story, but there's also a bit of truth that women around the world still um suffer treatment like this woman has.

And so part of the gospel story I think compels us not only to be aware of that and think about how we can diminish that, but also consider whether or not we don't still sow those seeds in our community and in our children.

And this is gonna sound a little bit crazy probably, but you know, um little girls who have strong ideas get called bossy, little boys with strong ideas get called leaders, little girls who come to church get called pretty, and little boys who come to church get called things like curious or energetic or artful, and so I wonder, I wonder, um what the effect of our language is on our developing children, and again, whether or not we haven't completely dealt with issues like women's equality in our own country.

Um, what does that have to do with the other readings?

I think that's a that's probably the turning point here.

You know, in Exodus, the people are in the wilderness, and the wilderness is really a desert.

If you've ever been to San Diego, California, you have a really good idea of what Israel looks like.

Mostly scrubby bushes.

It's pretty hot, and the ground, uh, there's a lot of topographical variation, a lot of limestone, and not a lot of water.

And so the story is really interesting because the people are complaining to Moses because they're in a desert and they're thirsty.

And for doing that, they get considered unfaithful.

Although I think again, it's really helpful to us to do like Jesus did with the woman and just listen for a minute.

If you were in a desert, somewhere you'd never been, you didn't have a map or a compass, you've been released from some bad circumstances, but you don't have water.

Are you likely to just proceed quietly with peace and faith or to get agitated?

I mean, this is part of the deal that we're in right now, I think, with this particular virus.

There's no map for what's going on, and people are extremely wound up.

And what we do is um often we complain or we become very reactive.

And so what's great is that we could read God as being really bitter that the people have complained, or we could read the story as God saying, Yeah, look, Moses, um, don't take this personally.

The people aren't quarreling with you.

They're concerned for their survival, so don't worry, I got it.

I'm gonna show up and open a rock and they're gonna get water.

And I I guess that's another way that we could hear the story about this woman is uh how dare she complain about her lot in life.

Maybe she earned it.

Another way to hear the story is uh she has no map.

She's in a desert and has no resources.

Really, what is she supposed to do?

And the question is whether or not we, we or someone will open up for her a well so that she can drink, so she can experience life in the middle of her anxiety and her dryness.

Romans only drives that point deeper, I think, which is um, hey, Jesus didn't wait for this woman to obey social conventions and get a sixth husband.

She didn't he didn't wait for her to do any kind of repentance.

The the truth is he met her where she was, which is a hot day at a well.

And not only did he come giving, he came asking, hey, you may not realize it, but you have resources to offer.

I'm thirsty.

Would you share some of your water with me?

And in return, he offers her living water.

And this is, I think, what Romans offers us, which is that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

This is what we get to hear over and over again.

Sorry to be a dead horse, but um, from Desmond Tutu, from Brene Brown, um, among others, which is there's nothing we can do to make God love us anymore, and there's nothing we can do to make God love us any less.

Or put another way, God doesn't love us in spite of our flaws.

God loves us because of them.

And God didn't wait for us to turn that around.

God doesn't wait for us to turn that around.

Uh, God would open for us rocks so that we can be refreshed in the water.

And most assuredly, God would like us to do some opening of rocks.

Again, I I um we have this opportunity through International Women's Day to think about women throughout the world, and again, how we contribute to and enjoy, frankly, some of the misogyny that continues to happen, but we also have this opportunity right now, um, even today, we're not gathered in church because of our concern uh for being in an uncharted wilderness with a with no real clear source of water here with this particular virus.

Uh, we have opportunities to think how will we respond?

And um who will we open ways of living water for?

And um, you know, I I wish I had a bullet point of do this, do that, but but I do know that uh while the particulars differ, the things that we're asked to do while um being thoroughly prepared uh and knowledgeable are to not resort um to shrewdness, but to resort to wisdom, that we're asked to pray for our neighbor when we're inconvenienced, and I think this is fair to say for most of us, uh we are much more able, most of us, to bear the inconvenience than say, rodeo vendors who have now lost their income.

Um when we are uh you know feeling agitated because of too much data or too little data or too many suggestions or not enough suggestions, we have this opportunity, I think, instead of to wander in a desert full of dryness, um, to really do some stillness and looking for moments of peace.

I think we have this opportunity to really dial down in moments of anxiety and frustration to say, you know, what do we ultimately trust in?

Uh and I don't mean that God is going to make every aspect of our lives great and beautiful and wonderful, but frankly, whether or not we trust that God has uh is with us and God would spend time with us.

And then I think we have that opportunity to do that with one another.

So um I've had a lot of people ask me, what do we do for people who really rely on church community and we're not going to see them?

Is there any way that we can sort of offer time or FaceTime with people who really need a community presence?

And you know, the safest thing to do, I suppose, is to give them a phone call.

Uh, because even though places like The Crossing or hospitals have been closed down, the phones sure are open.

And um, maybe this is our opportunity during the next week when we can't go to church because we're um trying to really, really slow down the spread of this uh virus, not stop it, it's it doesn't seem like it's gonna be stoppable, but to slow down the spread, um, take that church time and call a few people at church and say, hey, you know, I can't see you, and uh there's this really long sermon on SoundCloud, there'll probably be another one that I may or may not even want to listen to, but um instead of going to St.

Thomas, um can we just talk a little bit?

Tell me about your faith story.

How are you doing?

And maybe to ask even some deeper questions than that.

Like, what does faith even mean to you?

And would you be willing to tell me a short story about your faith turning point?

I I wonder if we couldn't make time for one another like that.

Sick or not, aged or young, um, infirm or healthy.

I wonder if we couldn't do that, if we wouldn't, in fact, have opportunities now to open up some living water in the wilderness.

Prayers for your peace, prayers for your safety, and prayers especially that in a um media saturated time um full of uncharted territory, that you will find God's rest, that you'll find living water, our scriptures assure us God would give it to us.

Um, here if I can serve you in any way in prayers for you this week.