Living Water and Worship in this Hour

This Sunday's sermon is available in video format on facebook at:

https://www.facebook.com/stmatthewsmn/videos/141783887174155/

The readings may be found at:

http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Lent/ALent3_RCL.html

The text can be read below:

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

Jesus said to her: “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.”

My friends, the hour is now here, when we will not worship God in our church buildings, but in spirit and truth, wherever we may be.

It is a strange, confusing time—but it is not unprecedented, and Jesus has been teaching us how to do this all along.

In today’s gospel story, Jesus encounters a woman at a well in the Samaritan city of Sychar.

Samaria, as you may recall, is the name of what was the ancient kingdom of northern Israel—a kingdom that was conquered, deported, and recolonized by the Assyrians some six hundred years before Jesus.The Samaritans worship the same God of Jacob, but have developed a whole different set of practices: they believe that God is to be worshiped on mount Gerizim—visible from the well where Jesus now sits. The Judeans see them as backwater, badly inter-mingled versions of themselves. The Samaritans see the Judeans the same way—and their mutual occupation by the Romans has their anger and lack of agency pointed towards each other. Violence often ensues when they pass through each other’s territories.

Jesus comes to this place, and his disciples go into the village to buy food—they leave him alone to sit and ponder.As he is sitting, a woman approaches—at high noon—to draw water from the well. She is alone—highly unusual--but of course she is alone at noon, because all the other women went in the cool morning, when it was easier, socially appropriate, and safer.

When women and men meet at wells in the Old Testament, there is an expectation of marriage. Moses, Jacob and Isaac all find wives at wells.  This woman is aware of this, and she is aware that they are alone. She is aware that she is in men’s public space, and how men punish women who break the boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable. She is aware that Jews and Samaritans often have violent encounters.

She might be sarcastic and dismissive, but this is the candor of someone with nothing left to lose. She has the courage of a woman who has already been wounded. Only someone who has nothing left to take would tease a man who is putting her in such a compromising situation.

This is why I think Jesus asks her to go and get her husband. He’s not trying to trick her—he’s reassuring her that he is not going to take advantage of her. And that is when she is able to be honest and vulnerable with him. That is when she drops the barriers. “I have no husband,” she replies.

I wonder if you have ever had to say something outloud like this. Something that you know, and everybody else knows, but that just doesn’t get said out loud that often. Perhaps our version of “I have no husband” might be “I have a problem,” or “I am afraid”. Collectively, I believe we are all saying to ourselves: “This is not going to just blow over.” It takes courage to be honest about vulnerable truths.

We don’t know why she has had five husbands, but I’d wager that it is a combination of widowhood, divorce, and violent abusers. She has clearly been ostracized for this—a bad luck woman, sinful, condemned, now contaminated because she lives with a man who hasn’t married her. My guess, though, is that she has no other choice.

But regardless of what really happened, or what others see, Jesus sees a messenger for the gospel. She is longing for something greater, something better, some hope in a barren world, and he is willing to break all the cultural boundaries to give it to her.

In choosing her and teaching her, Jesus breaks all kinds of protocols in Jewish, Samaritan, and Greco-Roman culture. He speaks to a woman he isn’t related to in the middle of the day, outside her home, a woman with a sorted past and a lack of community—and he not only speaks to her, but speaks theology with her, speaks about the things of men, and tells her about his true nature. He barely even tells the truth like this to his own disciples!

As Jesus breaks boundaries to reach this woman, God too breaks boundaries and protocols in our own culture to reach us: to see and know us--to offer us hope through uncertain times and the painful paths that we must walk.

And, we are indeed in uncertain times and a painful path.

In this time when we are practicing social distancing, Jesus is reaching out across our necessary barriers to give us hope. Jesus reminds us that we may be physically apart from our friends, our colleagues, our community—as this woman was—but we are not lost to him. We are not lost to God, and through the transformative power of the gospel, we are not lost to each other.

The hour is coming, and is now here, when God will not be worshiped in a place, but in spirit in truth--in the acts of caring for one another.

The time is now here when what we do in our church building will not matter as much as the things we do for one another: the ways that we protect each other, meet God in one another, pray for one another, and the ways that we stay true to the gospel beyond our church building.

This is frightening, and uncertain, and it doesn’t feel stable, like our common practices of worship might feel. But our God has never been confined to a building, nor a practice, nor a place. Our God is a spring of living water from within and between us.

In times of great uncertainty for the early Christians in Rome, Paul wrote that “hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” These words could have been written for us today.

Hope does not disappoint us, because we have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit, which stirs in our hearts and becomes a well of living water, which can never run dry.

So, this week, let us be compassionate towards ourselves and others for our fear, for our struggles, for our choices, and for all our weird stress quirks.

Let us check in on one another, support those in our lives who are already living pay check to pay check, those who do not have sick leave, and those who cannot halt daily life as we might be able to.

Let us show up in our phone calls and video calls as calm, hopeful people, who with joy take on new challenges to relate to one another digitally.

Let us be people of prayer in this time of anxiety, anchors of spiritual strength amid great fear and anxiety.

And whatever we do, let us not forget that God is present with us. God is true to us. God is spirit and truth, beyond our building, beyond our worship practices, beyond sickness and health. God is stronger than all these things, and God is here among us.

I want to invite us all, now together, to engage in the spiritual practice that we have been exploring for Lent. Though we cannot be physically present to one another, I believe that we can be spiritually present to each other, by joining in this practice.

As you breathe in, whisper or say in your heart God of creation, and as you exhale, whisper, heal and renew me and your world. You may practice this for a whole minute, allowing the words to shape how you breathe, and your breath to shape how you speak.

Peace be with you my friends. Let us pray.