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February 24, 2008
Come In
John 4:27-42
Apparently a cake decorator was asked by a bride to inscribe the words from the First Letter of John 4:18 on a wedding cake: "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear." Unfortunately, the decorator didn't know the Bible very well. So, instead of putting the words from the requested verse on the cake, the Biblical novice turned to words from the Gospel of John 4:18. On the wedding day, in beautiful sugary butter cream letters, surrounded by red and pink roses, it read like this: "You have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband."
I am not sure whether that is a true story or not, but one has to sympathize with the cake decorator. Even someone with a good Sunday School education in the bible would not have supposed that any character remembered in the Gospels would have had quite the checkered past as this young woman at the well.
The question we have been asking this Lenten Season is “Where are you going?” The disciples may very well have asked it with some urgency as Jesus headed his party south toward Jerusalem and decided to take the direct route through the territory of the Samaritan's instead of following the well trod highway that by passed the land of these supposed heretics whose families had intermarried with the Assyrians centuries ago to pollute their origins as the northern tribes of Israel. Samaritans were outcast in therefore untouchable in the mind of the Pharisees and in the common practice of anyone seeking to be a faithful Jew in the 1 st Century. “Where are you going, Jesus?” Clearly, once again, he is heading into the heart of the places where people are hurting…
A more contemporary young woman recalls, "After a while, as I lay there, I became aware of someone with me, hunkered down in the corner, … The feeling was so strong that I actually turned on the light for a moment to make sure no one was there; of course, there wasn't. But after a while, in the dark again, I knew beyond any doubt that it was Jesus. I felt him as surely as I feel my dog lying nearby as I write this…”
And I was appalled . . . 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."
Many of you have read some of the work of Anne Lamont, the essayist and writer from San Francisco. She is an unlikely apostle, she loves five letter words, is a recovering substance abuser, is an iconoclast in every way...but also a devoted mother of Sam, and, it turns out, has become an active member of the small, inter-racial St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Marin County, California. It was that church, it's minister and its choir and the combination of soulful music of the African American tradition and more traditional main-line hymns and anthems which caused her to drop in from time to time to see what was going on.
It was after one such visit that she woke in the night with the feeling of not being alone..."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," she later wrote about it in her book called Traveling Mercies . 1She says, "I thought it was just an apparition, born of fear and self -loathing and booze and loss of blood. 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….”
Where are you going? This time the question seems to be coming from Jesus himself to this young woman who had hit rock bottom. “Where are you going? I am right there with you…”
It was a strange time of day for a woman to be at the well...women were only out in public early in the day...this woman came at high noon. The woman did not seek Jesus out...Jesus sought her. He spoke first, which is astounding for the cultural context, and therefore is a detail which must have some significance. This is also the longest dialogue that Jesus has with anyone recorded in the Gospels. Their discourse may sound a bit like a series of riddles: "...where is this living water that I may have some of it?" But the real gift Jesus gives her is the ability to know herself...to look at herself...even to accept herself. "Come and see" she says with great excitement as she heads back into her village, "Come and see the man who told me everything I ever was..."
This woman's life was a result of circumstances...of men...of poverty...of a judgmental culture....all these things. Most of all, a result of choices she had made. She came to the well at mid-day, the hottest time because, we can assume, she was not welcome during the coolness of the dawn when all the other women made their daily trips to the well. She was clearly marginalized because of her ways. When Jesus asked about the woman's husband, she answered truthfully but not honestly. Her words were the truth; she had no husband; what she didn't say was that she had been married many times, and was now living with a man to whom she wasn't married. The rabbis had set a limit of three marriages at most for any one person. This woman went far beyond that limit, and there must have been many people who saw her as beyond hope.
Where are you going, Jesus? I think in our mind's eye, he is always going off to church somewhere, blessing the children and providing words of homey wisdom. The culture has taught us to think of Jesus this way, as a Messiah who is perfect, calling to us to be perfect too. Perfection of course, if you think about it, is unattainable – so we either worship Jesus in ways that don't encourage thinking – just lots of singing and smiling and saying amen - or we find ourselves on a divergent road and think ourselves right out of church and religion as anything with more than sentimental meaning in our lives. Of course there are hundreds of places in between these two extremes – and that's why we need to keep asking, “Where are you going?”
Through the eyes of the Sister Helen Prejean, who lived the true story which became a book and a movie called, Dead Man Walking 2, we become acquainted with Matt (named used in the movie) on death row and the reality of his childhood in poverty, his tattoos and his ranting against blacks and Jews. We experience his salesmanship as he charms Sister Helen and convinces her, at first, that he is not guilty of the crimes for which he is charged. The climax of the story comes as the clock ticks away the minutes before his execution. Matthew realizes that his bluster and bravado, his claims of innocence have put him into the same kind of "victim role" that he so much resents seeing in others – the people who are always pointing out how they have been wronged and have a million excuses to let them off the hook when its time to take responsibility for their lives. At that point he comes to know himself. His defenses fall like scales from his eyes, and he sees his life as it truly has been.
He told me everything I had ever done, says the woman at the well. Suddenly she is able to understand herself. Matt is able at last, to see himself and admit his guilt and take responsibility for his crimes. In accepting culpability...he is also at last able to ask for forgiveness...from the parents of his victims who have come to witness his execution and from God. He dies a guilty man....but he also dies as one who has understood the magnitude of God's grace. He has gazed fully into the face of his own sin, by acknowledging his crimes, and found there the "face of love."
The anonymous, yet well remembered Samaritan woman, had a thirst that she could not quench. She too had believed the worst about herself...in this moment of acceptance she learns that she is yet deserving of being loved...she learns of the grace of God. It is that Grace, that love to the loveless shown, which allows her to live her life in a new way.
“Where are you going?” In our journey through life we too walk these same paths. We too must thirst and seek until we find that which will quench our thirst. Knowing what we need, yet not really knowing. Asking ourselves the question and in fear and trembling looking into the face of our own doubts or guilt…the dark places where no one goes…only to find there, that we are not alone.
Anne Lamont, finishes her narrative in this way: ...when I went back to church, it was as if the people were singing in between the notes, weeping and joyful at the same time, and I felt like their voices or something was rocking me in its bosom, holding me like a scared kid, and I opened up to that feeling - and it washed over me. I began to cry and left before the benediction, and I raced home and felt the little cat running along at my heels, and I walked down the dock past dozens of potted flowers, under a sky as blue as one of God's own dreams, and I opened the door to my houseboat, and I stood there a minute, and then I hung my head and said, . . . "I quit." I took a long, deep breath and said out loud, "All right. You can come in."
“The Messiah is the one in whose presence you know who you really are – the good and bad of it, the all of it, the hope in it,” says author, Barbara Brown Taylor. “Where are you going?” “The Messiah is the one who … crosses all boundaries, breaks all rules, drops all disguises – speaking to you like someone you have known all your life, bubbling up in your life like a well that needs no dipper….” 3
The one who asked the anonymous Samaritan Woman for a drink, is the one who initiates the same kind of inquiries with each of us...at times in our lives, more often than not, when we don't anticipate it or at first even welcome the questioner or clearly recognize the voice. That's how we know God is there, because in the midst of our search for one thing, we will find another, we will be apprehended.
My prayer and my hope, for myself and for us all, is that through all the sounds, and alarms of these days, through the noise and the demands, the joy and the tension of work and family...we will hear that voice...whispering, “Where are you going?” and then offering refreshment, offering welcome, offering forgiveness and grace filled love...living water. May we have the presence to reply – “Come in, Come into my life.” Amen
1 Anne Lamont, Traveling Mercies [Knopf Publishing Group, 2000 Go Back
2 Helen Prejean, C.S.J., Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States, Random House, New York 1993 Go Back
3 Barbara Brown Taylor, “Reflections on the Lectionary” Christian Century , 2/12/2008 – p19 Go Back
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