Sermon for March 12, 2023
John 4:5-42
About a month ago, as part of our annual
retreat, your Vestry members went to church somewhere else. We went to St. James United Methodist on Paseo
and worshiped with the people with whom we’ve been partnering on wonderful
outreach projects over the past year and a half. It was great to be with them on Super Bowl Sunday,
most of us from St. Andrew’s with different colored skin than the people at St.
James but everyone there dressed in our Chiefs red.
Later, the Vestry members reflected on the
experience. The service had definitely been
different from what we do here. Worship
began with us all singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the Black national
anthem – and just that is cause for rich theological reflection, a dozen White
people singing in a Black church about “the blood of the slaughtered” ancestors,
whose experience in this country wasn’t about writing constitutions and worshiping
in box pews.
But the differences didn’t stop there. At St. James, there was a praise band, and
screens on the wall, and no Communion, and a sermon about the preacher’s
grandmother’s hands, given while the preacher sat in a recliner in the middle
of the stage. It was so different … and yet so welcoming. And, I would argue, it was also very familiar.
After all, the Methodists began as a
revival movement within the Church of England, and its founder, John Wesley, was
an Anglican priest all his life. We share
common history and common theological DNA with our siblings at St. James.
This relationship with St. James is growing
from good soil – springing from a clear awareness of difference alongside a
desire to heal division. Our work
together is rooted in personal relationship: If Janet Kelley’s three golfing
friends didn’t go to St. James, all this never would have happened. The volunteering began with St. Andrew’s
people serving at St. James’ food pantry. It grew with seasonal Connecting Community
events. It kept growing as our Outreach
leaders learned from St. James’ outreach leaders how to strengthen this kind of
ministry at St. Andrew’s. It kept
growing as St. James and St. Andrew’s partnered on the Free Store in January. And now, it’s still growing as we’ve begun monthly
Loads of Love at Carol’s Coin Laundry across the street from St. James.
We’re just beginning to get to know our
neighbors to the east. But we already know
some backstory that both unites and divides us. We probably wouldn’t think of the east side as
a place where you’d find many Episcopalians. Yet one of our oldest congregations, St. Augustine’s,
the historically Black Episcopal church at 28th and Benton, has been
an east-side presence since 1882. And, in
fact, there used to be other Episcopal congregations in east Kansas City,
including St. Mark’s at 7th and Prospect and St. George’s in the old
Southeast, near Linwood and Paseo. But
as Black residents were pushed farther south and east by restrictive covenants,
redlining, “urban renewal,” and White flight, our Episcopal presence in east
Kansas City shrank to be St. Aug’s alone. Still, ours is not a Black city and a White
city but a shared Kansas City; and St. Andrew’s and St. James are only six
minutes apart. So, in our incremental,
sacramental way, we’re trying to see what it looks like to walk alongside each
other, following Jesus as he serves and loves and heals people in need.
Healing – that’s not a bad way to capture
what Jesus was up to. And it’s exactly
what we see in today’s Gospel reading. To
make sense of it, we need a little backstory about the Jews and the Samaritans
and their history. A thousand years before
Jesus’ time, Israel had been united as a kingdom under David and Solomon. After Solomon’s death, the kingdom split into
a larger northern area that continued to be called Israel, while Judah in the
south broke away, with its capital of Jerusalem. Fast-forward a few more centuries, and the northern
kingdom of Israel was overrun by the Assyrians, and many of its people were taken
into exile – but not all. A remnant of
Israel remained as Jews in Samaria. Meanwhile,
the southern kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Babylonians a century later,
with most of its Jewish people taken into exile.
When they were liberated and returned to Judah
50 years later, their top priority was rebuilding Jerusalem and its temple, as
the Good Book Club has been reading in the book of Ezra. Meanwhile, the Samarians continued their own religious
practice, and eventually, under Alexander the Great, a temple to Yahweh was built
on Mt. Gerizim in Samaria. This was
utterly offensive to the Jews in Judah, for whom Jerusalem and its temple were
God’s one earthly dwelling place.
Then, fast-forward another 200 years, and
we come to a brief time of independence for Judah, the time of the Maccabees,
when their king conquered Samaria, destroying the temple on Mt. Gerizim and
their holy city, Shechem. By Jesus’ time
a century later, this religious and political divide had hardened into historic
hatred.
From the Jews’ perspective, the Samaritans
were the worst kind of enemy: someone very much like you, who shares your history,
who basically shares your values, but who disagrees with you on how to be true
to those values. Think Northerners and Southerners
in American history. Think Protestants
and Catholics. Think Republicans and
Democrats today, it seems. The Samaritans
focused on following the law of Moses and the teachings of the prophets; and the
Jews focused on the practice of sacrifice in the temple at Jerusalem. Of course, we hear all this today, and
we’re struck by the faith they share. But,
you know, we humans love to keep up a good family feud.
In this context, Jesus goes back home from
Judah to Galilee – a Jewish area with roots in the old northern kingdom of
Israel – and he decides to take the most direct route, passing through the land
of the detested Samaritans, rather than taking the long way around to avoid
them. And in a village there, he stops
for a drink of water.
Now, like any biblical story, this one can
be read on multiple levels. But the
scholars will tell you there’s good reason to think the Gospel writer is using the
Samaritan woman to represent not just the individual healing we can find by
following Jesus but the healing of the deepest rifts between us, especially rifts
between groups who have so much in common.1
So, if you read the story this way, the
woman represents all the Samaritans, people who worship the right God the wrong
way. In that day, an observant Jewish
man wouldn’t have interacted with a Samaritan, much less have risked ritual defilement
by drinking from a Samaritan’s bucket. You
can also see the Samaritan woman representing divisions of gender and class. A good Jewish man would not have interacted
with a woman in public if her husband or father wasn’t around, and he certainly
wouldn’t have engaged her in deep conversation.
So, this woman is about as “other” as anyone could have been to Jesus.
And that’s what makes the story
astonishing. Jesus doesn’t just share
her water bucket; he talks with her about what gives life its deepest meaning. And she seizes the opportunity, especially
when Jesus makes it clear he’s not just a Jewish traveler but a prophet at
least – someone who can see into people’s hearts and histories. She comes to the well just wishing she didn’t
have to lug water home every day – water that kept her alive but left her
thirsty again, a symbol of the Samaritan people’s incomplete religion, from
Jesus’ point of view. She wants to hear
more about his living water that satisfies her thirst forever. So, Jesus offers what she didn’t know she
could have: the living water of relationship with God, a “spring of water gushing
up to eternal life” (John 4:14). For the
woman herself, that offer changes her life. But the fact that Jesus offers it to his tribe’s
worst enemies – that changes the world around him.
What’s the right way to worship? What’s the right way to organize a church? What’s the right way to raise people out of
poverty? What’s the right way to take on
the forces that threaten us? We look at
the conflict between the Samaritans and the Jews, and we say, “Deep down, you’re
siblings. Come on, work it out.” Jesus would say the same thing to us. In fact, Jesus would come among us, just as he
came among them, offering himself as an outward and visible sign of God’s desire
for us – as our marriage rite puts it, “that unity may overcome estrangement, forgiveness
heal guilt, and joy conquer despair” (BCP 429). That’s why we’re pursuing this partnership
with St. James. Serving the people of
our city, our common neighbors, is the best way to learn about one another, to
honor our differences, to see what we share, to grow in humble understanding,
and, as Jesus commanded us, to become one, “as I and the Father are one” (John
10:30; 17:11).
Having the right goal doesn’t mean your journey
won’t be hard. We’ve made mistakes along
the way in our work with St. James, saying things we didn’t realize would push
buttons for our friends there. I guarantee
you we’ll make more mistakes. Living as reconcilers
is not an easy path. We could avoid it,
after all. Just as Jesus could have
taken the road around the Samaritans and never left the security of his fellow
Jews, we could choose to live within the echo chambers of our own experience
and our own points of view. But the holy
road, the route of reconciliation, the highway of healing – it’s the road Jesus
takes first and asks us to follow.
And it’s deep within our DNA. After all, the mission of the Church, from our
Episcopal perspective, is to “restore all people to unity with God and each
other in Christ” (BCP 855). Our own
mission here at St. Andrew’s is to “seek God’s healing love and share that love
with all by growing in relationship with God, each other, and our neighbors.” Bridging divides and building relationships –
that’s what we’re all about.
Of course, doing that work doesn’t just heal God’s world. It also heals our hearts. When we live as God’s instruments of reconciliation, we find ourselves reconciled with God and the people around us. And that comes in the most unlikely moments, God’s healing grace poured into us when we’re not looking. Like the Samaritan woman, we come to the well just seeking water to get us through another day, and instead Jesus gives us “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (John 4:14). Who knew that we’d find that living water swirling around the machines at Carol’s Coin Laundry?
1.
Sloyan,
Gerard. John. A volume of Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for
Teaching and Preaching. Atlanta: John Knox, 1988. 50-60.
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