St. Paul’s United
Church Sunday, February 24, 2008
Grace
at the Well of Life – Rev. David Mundy
Exodus 17:1-7 John 4:5-42
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During the past few days we have received disturbing
information about yet another trial in this country for a serial killer who
preyed on women who were once called prostitutes but are now referred to as
sex-trade workers. It was only a short while ago that Robert Pickton was convicted of the murders of six women in
Vancouver and while there may not be another trial he is implicated in the
gruesome deaths of many others.
Back in 2002 one of Canada’s national newspapers ran an
editorial asking how more than fifty women could just disappear with so little
public concern. The answer, it suggested, rested in the fact that these women
were, for the most part, prostitutes and drug addicts. Many were aboriginal,
some were mentally ill, others were addicts. When family and friends tried to
persuade police to consider that a serial killer was at work, there was little
response. A sister of one of the missing women was quoted as saying that “if
twenty students from [the University of British Columbia] went missing there
would be mayhem. There would be searches and media interest and rewards.”
That Vancouver murder trial took on a very personal
perspective in a way that caught me totally off-guard. One of the city news
outlets hired two women who had worked the streets during the disappearances to
attend the trial and write articles. One was a native woman named Pauline who
is my cousin.
When Pauline was a baby, she was adopted by my uncle, a United
Church minister, and his wife, who grew up here in Bowmanville.
While she was given all the same opportunities as her siblings, as she became a
teen she became rebellious, angry. She ran away from home often and by the time
she was fifteen she was selling her body for drugs and alcohol. She was increasingly alienated from her
distraught parents.
I had the strange experience of watching Pauline interviewed
for half an hour on CBC television. Although I had spoken with her at my
uncle’s funeral in Vancouver a year before it was in this interview that I
heard for the first time about how she had moved out of a destructive life with
the support of a man who knew her past but wanted to help her break the
downward spiral of addiction and self-loathing. I met him as her husband at the
funeral with no idea of how instrumental he had been in her recovery.
This morning in our Lenten journey we listened to another
passage from what is described as “the un-gospel of John” in the journal the Bible
Review. The author of the article calls it the un-gospel because it is so
radically different from the other three gospels in the New Testament. Half the
stories John tells of Jesus’ ministry do not appear in the Synoptics.
The gospel passage we listened to today is often called the
story of the woman at the well or the story of the Samaritan woman because even
though this is the longest exchange between Jesus and another person anywhere
in the gospels, she isn’t named, as is so often the case for women in the
bible. You may recall from last week, in the story of Nicodemus from John 3, that the religious leader sought Jesus out to speak about
life in the Spirit. This time it is Jesus who speaks to a woman in the area of
Samaria which is between Galilee in the north and Jerusalem in the south.
Samaritans were looked down upon by Jews and there were strict conventions
about a man speaking with a woman of any background. Jesus sits down by a well,
weary and thirsty and there is an exchange about water and the quenching of
thirst which is obviously puzzling for the woman and yet life-giving too. Although these stories are virtually
back-to-back in John’s gospel, Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman lived worlds
apart in almost every way.
You know, women didn’t usually draw water in the heat of the
midday sun. They learned to go early in the morning when the tasks of drawing
water and then carrying it whatever distance was necessary would be least
uncomfortable. We can forget how labour- intensive
the simple act of finding sufficient water for household usage could and can
be. The time at the well was a social time – it still is in many places around
the world – but it could be an experience of tremendous rejection for those who
were considered outside the circle of acceptance. As the story we heard today
unfolds we get the sense that this woman has been rejected and is wary of the
stranger. But Jesus draws her closer and healing happens.
I have mentioned a book by John Shea before with the title An
Experience Named Spirit. In that book he reframes this story with the title
Anything Can Happen at a Well.
As he drank, his face turned up into the sun and the
water ran and glistened in his beard. He drank like a bridegroom, loving the
first cup of wedding wine. With his lips still wet from the water the man
turned to her. If you ask me I will give you living water. The well
is deep. Her tone was instructional. She felt as if she was giving a child
a lesson in logic. You do not have a bucket. Therefore, how do you propose
to fetch this water? Yokes and buckets are always the problem, aren’t they? said the man. His arms flew up in exasperation. A smile popped open her eyes; but her lips stayed tight and
disapproving. Not a simpleton, she thought, just a child.
Somehow this seemingly naive, childlike man leads her past her
bitterness and hardness of heart into the fullness of life that is like a
fountain of living water.
If Christ still comes into our midst, who are the people he
meets at the well of life? Of course the answer is,
everyone who desires living water. As much as we are tempted to separate
ourselves from others by the barriers of our own creation, Christ comes to
break them down. Bridging this gap can seem almost impossible unless we realize
that it is actually Christ who does so.
We all meet Christ at the same well and when we encounter him
there he sees us and hears us for whom we are and he infuses us with the hope
of new life and healing. And it is as we become aware that we are all
spiritually thirsty and need to receive the living water that Christ provides
that we can meet others where they are with an understanding and acceptance
that is a gift from God. The power of our gospel stories in the past two weeks
is that whether the encounter was with someone who was respected or rejected by
his culture, Jesus mediated divine love which was life–changing.
To return to John Shea, he uses the story of the Samaritan
woman to explain what he describes as “the rejected heart accepted.”
The electricity of Jesus’ presence was
that the love that flowed from him was free . . . This freely available love, more than
anything else, is the folly of God made manifest in Jesus . . . The divine love
of Jesus accepts us just because we are creatures, in spite of our failures
that prove we are not worthy (the rejected heart) and in spite of our efforts
to prove we are worthy (the envious heart).
I’m sure Shea would want to caution us that there is nothing
sentimental about the story we heard this morning. No doubt there are some of
us here who would want to offer our own caution or concern that we might not
appreciate the “real world” of dealing with those who live at the edges of
society. The people who are seen as too soft on the poor or the mentally ill or
those who are substance abusers are often labelled as
“bleeding hearts.” It is an interesting term when you stop to consider that
elsewhere in scripture we find “A new heart I will give you, and a new
spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of
stone and give you a heart of flesh.” God wants us to be “bleeding hearts”
because that means we are alive and compassionate. Jesus, the man, and Jesus
the Christ lovingly yet persistently calls us into God’s “real world” of
changed hearts and sensibilities.
This morning you may feel that your own heart is rejected. You
may be at a place in your life where you feel worn down and hopeless, even
though others may be unaware of the pain you experience. I can’t tell you how
many people through the years have shared with me their sense of leading a kind
of double life because they keep up a careful front to hide what is inside. The
good news is that Christ’s living water can revive our parched souls.
You may be aware that yours is an envious heart, hardened to
others through prejudice or a sense of superiority. We are tempted to bolster
our sense of worth by looking down on others and, sadly, religion often becomes
the justification for doing so. The good news is that Christ’s living water can
open us to generosity of spirit.
This story of the Samaritan woman is not one of the New
Testament miracle stories in the sense that sight or hearing or physical health
is restored in some extra-ordinary way. Yet a miracle does happen within her,
doesn’t it?
When the disciples return from looking for food, they discover
Jesus with her, and are astonished. At what? His lack
of discretion or propriety? It’s too late anyway, the “damage” has been done
and her life has been changed. She abandons her water jar and returns to tell
other the good news that Jesus somehow knows everything about her and accepts
her anyway. That powerful, accepting love overflows into the lives of
others.
Perhaps the woman at the well deserves a name even though she
isn’t given one in the passage. A
traditional name such as Sarah would be good for her. One of the women who went
missing in Vancouver was Sarah Devries.
This modern-day Sarah had a diary which includes a number of her poems
and one of them is a reflection on the death of another woman found beaten
beyond recognition. The final stanza reads;
She was a broken down angel
A child lost with no place
A human being in disguise
She touched my life
She was somebody
She was no whore
She was somebody special
Who just lost her way...
Jesus would appreciate this poem,
don’t you think? We will find grace, and abundant life
and love as we meet Christ at the well.