SERMON PREACHED BY
THE REVD DR. HAROLD T. LEWIS, RECTOR
CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH,
PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
ON THE THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT
27 FEBRUARY 2005
Jews hated Samaritans, and avoided them like the plague. Everything was wrong with them. They were considered schismatics, who built a rival temple to the one at Jerusalem. They were heretics, whose entire Bible was the five books of the Torah. But they were no less influenced by local heathen practices. They were mongrels, people of questionable ancestry, because they had intermarried with people imported from other lands. They didn't follow the Jewish rituals, and they weren't Kosher. The very mention of Samaritans would cause a visceral reaction on the part of Jews. Jesus knew that, and that's why he makes the good guy in the parable --- the one who ministered to the man by the side of the road --- a Samaritan. Jesus knew how Jews felt about Samaritans, and that's why he tells the story that of the ten lepers cured, only one returned to give thanks, and he was a Samaritan!
The Jews hated Samaritans so much they wouldn't even step foot on Samaritan soil. Samaria was smack dab in the middle of two Jewish territories, Judea and Galilee, but Jews would go from one to the other by a circuitous route, along the Transjordan, just to avoid breathing Samaritan air. It should come as no surprise that Jesus didn't take the indirect route. John tells us "he had to pass through Samaria," and there he meets yet another Samaritan, the woman at the well. He immediately begins to chat her up ---- indeed, their conversation is the longest dialogue in all of Scripture, but let not your hearts be troubled --- I don't feel the need to make this the longest sermon on record!
When Jesus asks the woman for a drink, she throws a very reasonable question at him: "How is it, that you, a Jew, would ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" And she rightly adds, "For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans." For there were at least three reasons that Jesus should not have addressed her at all. First of all, she was a woman --- and rabbis did not speak to women in public. Secondly, she was a dirty, despised Samaritan. But last, she was a loose, disreputable woman. How do we know? Even before the revelation about her serial monogamy and the fact the she is shacking up at the time of her encounter with Jesus, there is an earlier clue in John's narrative: "It was the sixth hour" ---- high noon. Women normally came to draw water in the cool of the morning, or right before sundown. A woman who came to draw water in the blazing heat was obviously there because she knew she wouldn't find anybody else there, and she wanted to avoid the wagging tongues of her neighbors. But there's more. Jesus expressed a willingness to drink from the same cup as the Samaritan woman, which no Jew would ever do. And he engages her in a theological discourse and manages, in a few minutes, to emphasize the similarities, and not the differences between their two religions. In the course of their conversation, Jesus manages, in one fell swoop, to transcend barriers of gender, race, religion and respectability.
We still manage to erect these barriers today, and how we wish that a conversation with Jesus could bring them down! On Thursday, I participated in the dedication of the new African American Episcopal history collection at Virginia Seminary. Bishop Herbert Thompson of Southern Ohio was the keynote speaker. He told the story of his first visit to VTS, as a seminarian, when he came for the annual basketball game between General and Virginia. Herb integrated the team. The bus pulled up on the campus, and the greeter from the seminary boarded the bus, clipboard in hand, and called out the names of the students, each of whom went off with a VTS student or faculty member who would house them for the weekend. When he got to Herb, he took one look at him, and said, "I'll get back to you." After waiting on the bus for two hours, he and his wife were told that there was a mix-up; the people who were to put them up were not available, and they were shown to a hastily made-up back room in a dormitory. Bishop Thompson's story had a happy ending of sorts; the audience chuckled nervously when he announced that the bishop's suite was made available for him on this trip, but everybody who suffers racial discrimination does not have a happy ending to relate.
A few weeks ago, an article in The Living Church likened the so-called revisionists in the church to Samaritans. In case you misplaced your scorecard, we're the revisionists, those who in the opinion of so-called "orthodox" or traditionalist Episcopalians, have reinterpreted Scripture to suit ourselves, have abandoned the faith once delivered to the saints, and have a preoccupation with justice! I didn't give much thought to the article until I learned of the Primates' action on Thursday. They have suggested, as you no doubt read, that Americans and Canadians absent themselves from the deliberations of the Anglican Consultative Council until the next Lambeth Conference. I couldn't help but see a striking similarity between that decision and the threat of expulsion that our parish has received. When differences occur, therefore, the remedy seems to be "Make them disappear!" Whatever happened to "Come let us reason together though our sins be like scarlet?" Whatever happened to the strategy that says we can only work out our differences if we all stay at the table? Whatever happened to compassion, such as that shown by the prodigal son's father who, "while he was still afar off, ran to him and fell on his neck and kissed him?" Since the Primates would not even celebrate the eucharist together, since the presence of certain "revisionist" bishops would taint the sacrament, maybe we need Jesus to come down and whisk them all off to the well at Sychar and give them some living water!
But back to the woman at the well. The turning point in this Gospel story is when Jesus tells the woman to go and call her husband. Why does He say this? To make her realize what her problem is. She has to know, like all of us, that she has fallen short of the glory of God. This woman has asked for living water, but she does not know the value of it. She cannot. Until she first sees her need. Her problem is a spiritual one. She has sinned against God. That's why He says: "Go call your husband!" And what is her answer? "I have no husband." Is she single then? Or a widow? No. She deliberately gives an ambiguous answer. Why? Because she tries to hide her shame. She is on her guard. She doesn't want a full exposure. Not yet, anyway. But Jesus, of course, sees right through her.
If we are honest, we will see ourselves in the Samaritan woman. We too are so good at using evasive tactics. We will admit that we are sinners, of course, but we prefer just say, generically, "we have erred from thy ways like lost sheep, and not to go into any details. "I have no husband," is her curt reply. It is the truth, but not the whole truth. Yet that is what Christ is after --- the whole truth. "You are right in saying you have no husband. You have had five husbands, and the man you're living with now is not your husband. You got that right!"
The Lord also comes to us offering living water. But are we thirsty? But just what are we thirsty for? "Go get your husband," Jesus said to this woman. What would you say if Christ put this question to us? What idea, what desire, what craving are we wed to, that prevents us from thirsting for God?
But we can see ourselves in the woman at the well for other reasons. It is hard for most of us to identify with those who come to Jesus with an infirmity. We are not like the canon lawyer Nicodemus who comes loaded for bear with theological arguments. But we can identify with the Samaritan woman who doesn't really seek Jesus out, and is just about the business of her everyday chores. We can resonate to the experience of this woman whom Jesus found in an unexpected place in her life, a vulnerable place that she wanted to protect.
But the amazing thing is that this woman succeeded where others
failed. The Devil was no match for Jesus; Nicodemus seemed as
confused at the end of his meeting with Jesus as he was when he
drove up. And, of course, the rich young ruler "went away
sorrowful." But this insightful woman, once she had bared
her soul, was able to recognize Jesus as the Messiah. Then she
dropped her bucket and became an evangelist. She discovered, as
we will, that we don't have to have all the answers in order to
pick up the Cross. We only need to trust the Man who calls us.
The answers will come as we go along.