(a slightly timey wimey approach to these sermons, as I did not preach on the Third Sunday of Lent in 2008 .. so this from three years after the previous two ... )
SERMON
PREACHED AT CHRIST CHURCH, WHANGAREI
SUNDAY,
MARCH 27th 2011
(THIRD
SUNDAY OF LENT)
Readings: Exodus 17.1-7
Psalm
95
Romans
5.1-11
John
4.5-42
In the reading of scriptures, no less than any great works
of literature, it is important to seek passages, sentences and words that
provide a key to the author’s aims and intentions. There will always be debate
about the keys and about interpretation, but that is precisely where
understanding grows, in the dialogue between perspectives. It has been so since
John put down his quill, and all the more so since, thank God, his creative
masterpiece of Jesus-story-telling entered the canon of Christian scripture a
century or so later. It cannot be emphasized too much that the verses 39-42
provide a critical key by which to understand this moment in the life of Jesus.
Many
Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He
told me everything I have ever done.’ So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him
to stay with them; and he stayed there for two days. And many more believed because
of his word. They
said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe,
for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Saviour of
the world.’
More than anything else, this is a story about belief. It is a
commonplace in Johannine interpretation to note that all that will be of
importance in the fourth gospel is foreshadowed in the Prologue, the opening
verses of chapter one: one scholar, Simon Ross Valentine, neatly observes ‘the
Prologue is nothing less than the theological matrix from which the themes of
the gospel arise’ [Simon Ross Valentine, “The Johannine Prologue – a Microcosm
of the Gospel” (Evangelical Quarterly,
68:3, 1996, 291-304), 292]. Remember the resounding words, He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him?
Here, by contrast, Jesus comes to those who are not, in ethnic terms, his own,
and they do believe him. We are meant
to hear the contrast, meant to observe above all that this is a litmus test of
our own response to Jesus: belief, or unbelief? This is, paradoxically, about
us.
The believers, those who believe, are in this passage the outsiders.
The themes of outsider and insider run throughout the scriptures of our faith,
often with a complex, porous ambiguity. Like an Escher sketching (or a Hogwarts
stairwell!) in which up-side becomes down-side, the biblical outsider often
becomes the insider, and, perhaps of even greater concern, the insider becomes
outsider.[1] We are warned that we should not be afraid when we see
greater faith and Christlikeness in those outside the boundaries of the faith
community than we do from those within. The Spirit of God goes always before,
ahead and around us, and here appears to be at work in the life of the
Samaritan woman long before the followers of Jesus were willing to be so
progressive (if ever they have). Woe to those, the Beatitudes might say, who strive to keep the outsiders out by word or deed while keeping the insides pure, tidy, and well-oiled!
In this scene, as always in John, there are key words
floating around, appropriate to the characters’ lives, but appropriate too to
ours. There is much about water, living or otherwise, that clearly signifies
something more than merely a means of re-hydration, as the woman first interprets
it. We will find later in the gospel that water, signifying it seems new life,
flows from the side of the crucified messiah, and that waters of rebirth are a
key motif: there are some 20 references to water in John’s gospel-account, and
half or more of these appear to represent something far more eternal than mere
H20. There are suggestions of immorality – though a deeper scratch
may suggest that this woman’s five husbands may have far more to do with
Samaria’s relationship with what were known at the time as the ‘five idolatrous
peoples of the East’ of 2 Kings 17 than to any individual serial monogamy,
despite the later life-choices of Elizabeth Taylor. There is language about
reaping and sowing, language about hospitality and rejection, all of which has
clear implications for our own applications of this scene to our individual
and church-communal lives.
There is above all language about Jesus venturing into
unexpected and unclean places – and finding belief there. We often tend to
expect to find God within the comfortable armchair zones of society and faith,
rather than in the exposed, risky and unpleasant places. Would we find God in a
brothel, or does God belong only in nature walks, churches, cathedrals? The witness of
both New and Old Testament is clear: God will escape our comfort zones, as
God-in-Christ here clearly demonstrates. But this is not merely about comfort
zones: this is about hatred zones. Here it is as though a Benghazi
Gaddafi-opponent were chin-wagging with a Tripoli Gaddafi-loyalist. This is the
stuff of God at deep risk, a risky edginess that continued on into the life of
the Christian community, for it is almost certain that this story is told to
both Jewish and Samaritan, as well as gentile Christian members of John’s
faith-community.
Ultimately this is a story about belief that transcends
of hatred and the healing of hurts. This is the story of belief that transcends
ethnic barriers, gender barriers, even creedal barriers, and all those
artificial barriers that forget that we are one and all created in the image of
the Creator. This is not a story about a wimpish anything goes love-in, a
hippie commune or Helen Steiner Rice lovefest of meaningless platitudes, ignoring
destructive behaviour and letting it ride on unabated. This is the story of a
socially challenging God and openness to God that transcends deep-seated human
hatreds. This is a story that challenges us not to plastic platitudes but to
transcendent culture-changing belief. Does our belief transcend prejudice?
TLBWY
[1] This was written in 2011, but since then I have encountered church leaders and gate-keepers desperately keen to protect the "always done it this way" of churches; those leaders and gate-keepers might well want to note that the Gospel of the Troublesome Christ does not respect the boundaries of aesthetics or propriety.
No comments:
Post a Comment