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I must admit, though. This week I wish I could have the luxury of just ladling out some chicken soup; then we could all "feel good" and go home happy. But it's not that easy, is it? This sermon was headed, for most of the week, in a certain direction. But on Friday, things veered off course and, now, we can't get where we need to be without walking this new and difficult path.
Dateline: (for those who have had trouble pronouncing it): Sylacauga, Alabama. The headline of the article...on page 10A of Friday's Post-Dispatch. ..read "2 are held in killing of gay man in Alabama." The subheading said, "Men claim they were angered by sexual advance, police say." Because.. .supposedly...Billy Jack Gaither had "come on" to them, they devised what they apparently felt would be an appropriate way to rebuff his advances. After devising a plan on how to get him off alone, they beat him to death with an ax handle and burned his body on a pyre of old tires.
I'm ashamed to admit that this murder took my breath away - harder and quicker - than the news of Matthew Shepherd or other similar stories. You see...I know Sylacauga. I went to college in central Alabama...I lived and worked in both north and south Alabama early in my adult life. My Mom and Dad...and most of my relatives...all live in Alabama. This one is very real to me. Funny how people's judgements of one another and the consequences of those judgements can become so personal when they are in a familiar context.
I think it's extremely ironic that the text of this week's Gospel reading deals with Jesus and a woman who knows the sting of people's judgements against her. The woman at the well has a lot of strikes against her in the eyes of the world around her. She's a "she," first of all. That made her lower than cattle or other property in the world of her day. She was a Samaritan: a race of people long despised by the Jews who lived in surrounding regions. She was not a "nice person." She knew the pain of rejection from among the other women of her village because she had not been a "one man woman" but had had a succession of husbands and was now, as they might have judged, "living in sin." And she suffered under the confusion of a religion that called for worshiping God but seemed to focus on the "how to's" and "how not to's" more than on anything that really mattered to God. The woman at the well knew the sting of the judgements that people make about one another.
And then, when she just wants to get her water and get out of the noon day heat, there's Jesus - initiating an encounter for which she is not prepared.
Jesus: breaker ofbarriers. Speaking openly, in public, to a woman. A Jew addressing - even asking for water from - a Samaritan. Doesn't he realize that even taking a cup from her hand would render him "unclean"? Jesus...discussing important issues of God and the Spirit with this immoral person! Jesus: dismissing the debate over where God is to be worshiped as irrelevant in relationship to how God is to be worshiped. Jesus: the ultimate banrier-breaker.
What is the message for us in this reading today? What are we to take away from this encounter with Jesus? The woman went away having, finally, heard at least some of what He was trying to explain to her. What about us? What should we hear today through this encounter with Jesus?
Perhaps, from all this dialogue between Jesus and the woman at the well, if we can take away and remember just 3 short phrases, we might be able to find some comfort and peace in a world that stings with the effects of people's judgements against one another.
The first phrase comes from Jesus' answer to the woman's question,"You're a Jew. How can you ask me, as Samaritan, for a drink?" He says, "If only you recognized God's gift...." Why is it that we cannot recognize and accept that it is not we who initially seek God? It is God who seeks us out - who extends a hand and asks us to take it? "If only you recognized God's gift...."
A farmer had started having a well dug on his property. At lunchtime, the workers took their break and left for a while. The farmer's young son, naturally curious, wandered near the hole and accidentally fell in. The hole had only been dug down to about 6 feet but the little boy was terrified and screamed for his father. The farmer rushed over and thrust his arm and hand down into the hole. "Grab my hand, son!" he shouted. But when the boy looked up, the noonday sun overhead shown so brightly that he couldn't see his Dad's hand. So he cowered at the bottom ofthe hole, despairing that his father wouldn't help him.
"If only you recognized God's gift." How often do we fail to see God all around us? How many times do we despair that we've been abandoned or forgotten when, in fact, God is extending a hand to us...initiating a relationship with us...trying to get our attention and pull us up from the hole into which we've fallen?
"If only you recognized God's gift." God's gift comes to us, as it came to the woman at the well, in the form of Jesus Christ. That's why Jesus said, "...drink the water I give...." This woman was glad to hear that there was a water she could drink that would quench her thirst for good...but she couldn't hear clearly when Jesus said, ".. drink the water I give...." She was thinking, still, in worldly terms. Jesus was speaking in spiritual terms.
So often we think that we can find what we want or accomplish what we try all on our own. Or we seek some magic path or special way that will make everything come easily Jesus says, "...drink the water I give...." but we decline -- sure that the world offers a better way.
A number of years ago, Mother Teresa was lecturing at an American university. She told of her religious "social work" among the poor of Calcutta where she brought love, joy and hope to the sad and hopeless. During the question-and-answer session that followed, a young man studying to be a social worker thanked her for her talk and the transforming work she and her community contributed to the poor of Calcutta and the world.
"But," he continued, "I am bothered by your constant references to Jesus. We live in a pluralistic, even secular world. I want to do the work you do, but I don't want to do it with Jesus."
Mother Teresa asked, "How old are you?
He answered, "Twenty-one."
"I'm seventy-six," Mother Teresa said.' "When you are as old as I am now and have done what I have done, you come and tell me how you've done this work without Jesus."
You see, Mother Teresa knew. When you're trying to bring love, joy and hope into a world that is held captive by the sickness and bigotry and hatred that people's judgements have bred, you need to be in partnership with One who will not be bound by tradition, expectation, society or religion - the ultimate breaker of barriers is Jesus. "If only you recognized God's gift-." "...drink the water I give...." And then, the final phrase which might bring some sense into a crazy world, "...worship in spirit and truth." As long as we - as human beings - continue to carry judgements against others -- we cannot truly know and worship God. The tragedy is that so many -- and sometimes us included -- have used God and what we assume are God's judgements as a shield for our own evaluations...and condemnations...of others!
Look here [hold up a piece of paper]...what do you see? Now [turn paper over and show dot in the middle], what do you see? Imagine this piece of paper is a person - yourself or someone else; an individual or a group of people. The small dot you saw is that person's (or those people's) biggest fault. The space surrounding the dot represents all of their worthwhile qualities which we so easily fail to see. Often a fault seems bigger than it really is and we allow it to overshadow -- to be a barrier to seeing - the many positive aspects of that person or people. When we identify that person -- or those people - on the basis of a dot on which we have chosen to focus, we are casting our judgement on others.
It's that kind ofjudgement that has literally killed Billy Jack Gaither in Alabama. It's that kind of judgement that can kill us -- emotionally and spiritually - if we allow it to take control of us and dictate our attitudes and relationships with others. It would be so easy to give in to anger and hurt and judgement when we look at those who are so against us. But Jesus said we must "...worship in spirit and truth." Judgement is not our job. Explaining the senselessness in our world is not our job. Our job is to love God, ourselves and others...using the strength that only God can provide. Judgement is a barrier that prevents us from seeing God clearly. Don't buy into barriers that diminish our ability to reach out and take the hand that Christ offers to us!
"If only you recognized God's gift." "...drink the water I give...." "...worship in spirit and truth." These are the keys that Jesus has given us for rising above the sting of the world's judgements...from giving in to despair at the presence of hate...from becoming just another enemy to someone else...fiom dying of spiritual thirst when a well of living Water is right before us.
Before this day is over, I challenge each of us to take a moment to pray - sincerely and with their best interests in mind - for Steven Eric Mullens and Charles Monroe Butler, Jr.: the two young men who enacted their judgement against Billy Jack Gaither. If we cannot pray for our enemies, then aren't we like them? As long as we keep buying into the barriers that separate people from God and from one another, aren't we like them anyway? Amen.
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