Hope you find this helpful.
3 Lent A
Transcribed from a
sermon given at
St. Barnabas
Episcopal Church
March 20, 2011
By Rev. Valerie Hart
I love this part of the Gospel of
John about the Samaritan woman. It is an amazing piece of literature, this
dialogue between the Samaritan woman and Jesus. It is an incredibly deep
theological conversation, with a woman! From Samaria! Remember gospel reading
for last week last week, which is just before this one John’s Gospel? It is the
story of Nicodemus and how Nicodemus, who is a teacher in Israel and in the Sanhedrin,
snuck at night to go and talk to Jesus, and Jesus spoke to him about being born
again. Nicodemus was totally confused and had no idea what Jesus was getting
at. Then right after that we have Jesus talking to a Samaritan woman, a person
who wasn’t even Jewish, a person who was a woman who had no education who had
no claim to know anything, and yet they have this wonderful, deep theological
discussion. And she is able to keep up with Jesus as he talked about worship
and living water and all kinds of really profound things. At the end she
recognizes him as being the Messiah.
This would be like if Jesus came
again and he was walking around in the Five Cities Area. He was preaching and
teaching and some people were impressed. So there was a pastor of a church, it
could be from the Lutheran church or a non-denominational church or even the
Episcopal Church, who has had a seminary education and thinks they understand
theology. They hear that this guy is impressing people but they don’t want
their congregation to know they are going to talk to him because nobody knows
where he came from and it might not look good. So they go over at night when
nobody is around and talk to him and ask him questions and have no idea what he
is talking about. And then the next day Jesus would go down to People’s Kitchen
and be sitting outside and say to one of the Hispanic women coming out “could I
have some of the food off of your plate” and she would say, “You want food off
of my plate?” That’s what it was like to ask for water from a Samaritan. Then
she sits down and they have a profound theological discussion. She recognizes
that this is Jesus walking around again and tells other people.
That’s the contrast, that’s who
this woman in Samaria is, and it is a wonderful story. When I think of how to
preach on this story there are so many ways that you can go with it. You can talk
about the nature of worship. You can talk about what is the living water. We
could discuss all kinds of things. We could even talk about evangelism. But I
want to ask a question. What was it that touched that woman so that she
recognized that Jesus was the Messiah? What was it? Could it have been just
that he knew she had had several husbands before? That might have been common
knowledge in the town. Was that a reason to believe he was the Messiah? A
prophet perhaps, but the Messiah?
I think the answer to that question
has to do with a rather enigmatic thing from reading from Paul. The readings
from Paul’s letters recently have been talking about faith, justification by
faith and not works, and the nature of grace. I think that that can help us
understand how the Samaritan woman might have felt.
But let me take a step backwards
a few days in my life. And how I came to where I am in interpreting this
Gospel. You see it is Lent and Lent is a very busy time for pastors. There are
classes to teach, there are promotional things to get out, there is planning
for services and it always seems that there are lots of pastoral needs. We have
had people dying, we’ve had people who are sick, and we’ve had all kinds of
things going on. And wonderful things have been happening at the church, senior
luncheons and Sunday School and planning VBS, and on and on. This has been one
of those times when I started to feel overwhelmed. You know those days when you
go in and you have 50 emails and you spend a couple of hours going through your
emails and then you check and now you’ve got 60, and the pile on the desk just
gets higher, higher and higher. I discovered that some things were falling
through the cracks. I wasn’t getting back in touch with people I needed to be
in touch with. There were people who needed to be visited that weren’t getting
visited. Now that’s all well and good and just part of Lent but what I found
myself doing was an old habit pattern of judging myself for that, of thinking
that I was inadequate because I wasn’t living up to the expectations that I had
for myself. And I struggled with it this week. I had a conversation with my
spiritual direct who said “well maybe that’s the voice of your mother that you
have internalized.” Well you know that helps, but it really is my voice. And
then as I began working on this sermon and contemplating the woman at the well
I realized that that is a voice inside of me that has not yet been redeemed.
That’s the voice that has not yet fully accepted grace.
If you look at the woman at the
well when she met Jesus he not only told her that she had been married 5 times,
but he looked at her with love. He knew everything that she ever did. Somehow
she knew that he not only knew about the husbands, but he knew about all the
secret things inside of her. The thoughts she couldn’t share with anybody else
and he knew it, he knew it all. And he loved her. He treated her with respect.
He loved her, even though he knew everything. And that’s what grace is.
Grace is the fact that Christ
loves us and knows everything we’ve ever done or thought and all those dark
little secrets that we’ve never told anybody, and loves us. He accepts us. And
that is the point that Paul is trying to make when he says that Jesus died
while we were still sinners. You might die for someone who is good but he died
for us knowing that we all have stuff inside that we are not very proud of, yet
he offered himself for us. He did this to let us know that even all that creepy
stuff inside of us can’t keep us from the love of God. That there is a
relationship and that Christ reaches out in that relationship and cares about
us, and loves us. Those of you who have been through a twelve-step program know
that there comes a time when you are expected to tell someone else your
shortcomings. And that is a powerful thing. Some of you may have taken
advantage of the opportunity for what we call the service of reconciliation,
which is a confession in which you have an opportunity to tell a priest
whatever it is you don’t want to tell anybody. There is something incredibly
freeing about speaking that to someone else and having them not go away. Having
them not hate you for it. Having them not judge you for it, but to be there,
and to love you, and to care for you. That’s what grace is. Grace is the fact
that our deepest, darkest secrets are brought out into the light, and they don’t
keep us from the love of God.
I know that I’m not perfect. This
week the problem was not that I wasn’t doing all the things that I might have
done. The problem was the self judgment, which then gets in the way of being
able to receive God’s grace. And then to do whatever it is I can.
Whatever the secrets are that you
hold, whatever the doubts and the questions that you hold, offer them to God.
Jesus knows them already. Just like he knew the Samaritan woman. And he loves
you. And it is okay. And that is the grace. And that is the Good News. And that
experience is how the Samaritan woman knew that this was the Messiah.
Amen
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