Sermons at St. John’s Presbyterian Church

The Quenching Spirit

Transcribed from the sermon preached February 24, 2008

 The Reverend Max Lynn, Pastor

St. John’s Presbyterian Church

2727 College Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94705

Telephone 510-845-6830    Fax 510-845-6837

office@stjohns.presbychurch.net    http://www.stjohns.presbychurch.net

 Scripture Readings: Psalm 23, John 4:5-42

In a society, which runs on a hefty dose of honor and shame, and lacks independent economic opportunity for women, what is a single woman who finds herself pregnant to do?  How does she put food in her mouth and that of her baby?  In Guatemala, it often works something like this.  A married man finds a young woman attractive, and finds a way to take advantage of her.  She is frightened and resists but once she has lost her virginity she finds herself liking the attention and hoping against hope that the man will choose her over his wife.  Word gets out and the shamed wife hates the shamed girl.  The girl gets pregnant but the man already has kids and a wife.  Meanwhile her parents are shamed and kick her out of the house. Girls her age are afraid to be associated with her for fear they will be thought to be dishonorable too.  And the mature, respectable married women, forget it, they definitely know the precariousness of a woman’s honor in a patriarchal culture.  She finds herself alone.  If she is lucky, she may have a forgiving aunt named Elizabeth, or someone like that, who still sees the hope of God in her, or at least treats her like a human being and gives her what help she can. 

Meanwhile, the men around town know the girl is vulnerable and available, a target if ever there was one; the target of judgment and scorn by preachers and holy men on the one hand, and boys and old men on the other. Especially on payday after they have been drinking and would rather not go all the way home to face the scorn of their mothers or wives, they seek to do her a favor.  Or maybe they are not drunk, not today anyway, but they own a store, or a boat with which they provide ferry service across the river, and they give her some “free food” or a “free ride.”  But it is not really free, because eventually they plan to collect payment.  She hopes that maybe this time, this man will take her in and treat her right.  Maybe he sets her up for a while, stays a while, until she gets pregnant again.  But her fate is set.  Her loneliness and desperation quenched for a moment, she will find herself thirsty again.  She either becomes a prostitute outright, or seeks the favor of whoever she can to stay alive, and tries to avoid those awkward social situations, like the morning gathering of women at the well, or the washboards at the river, where her presence creates mutual discomfort, where the gossip is within earshot.  The woman in this situation, whether in the first or 21^st century, is the poorest of the poor; and her children, especially her girls, will surely grow up malnourished, vulnerable to disease, lacking health care, uneducated, scorned by the self righteous, and if they live to puberty, will be vulnerable and desperate, likely to face the same fate as their mother.

No wonder that in Jesus' day some men began their morning prayers, “Thank God I am not a woman.”  A holy man would be prohibited from speaking with a woman alone, especially this woman, but he would also avoid her because she was a Samaritan. She had three strikes against her.  She is a woman with a questionable personal life, is of a despised nationality and an unholy, pagan religion. According to law and culture, talking with her, and worse, drinking from her cup, would make Jesus unclean.

So as she comes to the well, carrying her jar upon her head in the heat of the day, after all the other women had come and gone, we can imagine her surprise when she meets Jesus and he asks her for a drink of water. 

And we may be surprised that, as noted by Barbara Brown Taylor: “Jesus talks longer to the woman at the well than he does to anyone else in all the Gospels--longer than he talks to any of his disciples, longer than he talks to any of his accusers, longer than he talks to any of his own family. She is the first person he reveals himself to in the Gospel of John. She is the first outsider to guess who he is and tell others. She is the first evangelist, John tells us, and her testimony brings many to faith.” (Brown Taylor, Barbara .  Face to Face with God. Christian Century, Feb 28, 1996)

In John’s record of their conversation, there are several abrupt changes of subject.  As I have hinted, the story makes reference to several subjects, nationality, family, religion, and as the disciples come back from town and see what Jesus is up to, gender.  These are areas upon which we dig our wells, and if fate is on our side, if we play our cards right, we hope to quench our thirst for belonging, self worth, and economic livelihood.

For now, back to the story. Jesus asks for a drink of water from her jug or scoop or cup.  We are not sure how, but as in our society, somehow she can tell he is from the other side of the tracks.  “You are a Jew, I am a Samaritan,” she says, “How can you ask me for a drink?”  “If you knew the gift of God,” Jesus replies, “and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

“Sir, the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep.  Where can you get this living water?”  Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?”  Note:  Nationality, family, economic livelihood.  “Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.  Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

I think this is one of the most powerful lines in all of scripture.  We want to look outside ourselves, to our nationality, the status of our family and economic wealth to quench our desire of identity and self worth.  But Jesus says the water he gives will well up from within, and no matter where we find ourselves in the world, it will satisfy. 

“Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.  Then we get one of those abrupt changes of subject.  We switch from family line or nationality to her personal family.  “Go call your husband and come back.”  “I don’t have a husband.”  “You are right when you say you have no husband.  The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you are with now is not your husband.  What you have said is quite true.”

Taylor again, "I have no husband," she says, and with that shred of truth from her, he tells her the rest of the truth about herself. Note that he does not pull away from her. If anything, he gets closer. He still wants a drink from her, and he wants to give her one too, only the intimacy of it all seems suddenly too much for her.”

So she abruptly changes the subject again, this time to religion.  “Sir, I can see that you are a prophet.  Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”  “Believe me woman, a time is coming when you will worship neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem…A time is coming and has now come when true worshippers will worship the father in spirit and truth…God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and truth.”

Nationality, economic wealth, family, gender, sexuality and religion:  each of these things will leave us with an inadequate sense of wholeness and if satisfied for a moment, we soon find ourselves thirsting for more.  The water from such wells is limited; they only hydrate certain people, while others are left un-served and thirsty.  Perhaps we have our own well at which we are well watered, at least for a time, but sooner or later we find ourselves at the foot of another, and our pride or theirs, our laws or theirs, tell us this is not a well from which we may be serve or be served. 

She continues, “I know that the Messiah is coming.  When he comes he will explain everything.”  Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.”

Taylor once again:  “It is the first time he has said that to another living soul. It is a moment of full disclosure, in which the triple outsider and the Messiah of God stand face to face with no pretense about who they are. Both stand fully lit at high noon for one bright moment in time, while all the rules, taboos and history that separate them fall forgotten to the ground. By telling the woman who she is, Jesus shows her who he is. By confirming her true identity, he reveals his own, and that is how it still happens.” (Brown Taylor, Barbara .  Face to Face with God. Christian Century, Feb 28, 1996)

It is not that God and Christianity are not concerned with the subjects of nationality, economic livelihood, family, sexuality, gender or religion.  There is certainly a lot of conversation about the propriety of being Anglo or Latino, Israeli or Palestinian, Serbian or Albanian, or on the religious front about whether God is found in Mecca, Jerusalem, on the Ganges or in Nepal, in Kentucky Pentecostal or University Lutheran, in evangelical First Church or Progressive Avenue Presbyterian?  But underneath all that talk, underneath our rational questions, the questions of culture, our claims to holiness or our grief and shame, God our Mother comes to us and we meet Her personally, in Spirit and in truth. The God is personal, yet cannot be contained, not to this mountain or that, or this gender or that, but only in spirit and truth.  And it is from this intimate encounter with this very personal God, that the spirit of love wells up from within and we find the truth about ourselves and all the rest of it.   

“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. The Messiah is the one who shows you who you are by showing you who he is--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, so that you go back to face people you thought you could never face again, speaking to them as boldly as he spoke to you. "Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done."” (Brown Taylor, Barbara.  Face to Face with God. Christian Century, Feb 28, 1996)

Let us pray. My shepherd, my Lord, even now I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for thou art with me; they rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies; thou annointest my head with oil. My cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.