Scripture: John 4:5-42
03/24/2019
When I cast my mind back to the recesses of my memories and my childhood, there are few instances that are so cherished as those times I spent with my paternal grandparents. Moving back to my beloved hometown about the time that my youngest brother was born, they were a fixture in virtually every episodic event in my youth until the moments when both of them were called home to be with the savior. And I imagine that this was very much by design. For more than any stuff that they might have given my brothers and I, more than Werther’s Originals at church or pineapple upside down cakes on birthdays or coca-cola floats on hot Carolina summer afternoons, more even than stories and legends that wove the tapestry of our family or the historic tales of the Clan McLeod from Dunvegan on the Isle of Skye, the clan crest, the clan plaids, more than any of the little pieces of life that they offered each brother in equal measure, they, perhaps to a greater degree than anyone I have ever met, knew the ultimate value that accompanies the gift of time. So it was, whether I was out with my grandfather helping him do his “business” (which really just amounted to visiting his old friends at the gas station, the barber shop, the bank) or whether it was sitting outside on the back steps of their house helping my grandmother snap field peas or shuck corn there was an incalculable value to the time that they gave their grandchildren. And so it was that as I was watching something on television earlier this week that an advertisement for a board game sent m back in my own life story to my childhood, to my grandparents house, where, because we McLeod brothers 3 were separated by 6 years, my grandparents kept an array of board games for all ages. So for my youngest brother, they had Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders, for my middle brother, they had games like Operation in which players took turns trying to remove various bones from a poor man laid out on a gurney using metal pinchers while trying to avoid touching the sides of the incision, completing a circuit, and making the poor man’s nose light up. And for the oldest, me, there was the game Mousetrap. And I can remember sitting on the floor with my grandmother, and like my son when he played a couple years back, we, too, would forego the rules of the game, and just build the machine and catch the mouse. And I am convinced that the reason why I remember moments like this so vividly is because of the way in which my grandparents used games like these to spend as much quality time with their grandchildren as they possible could. So it is that in looking back on the time that we had with them, in the midst of all the collection of wisdom that was passed from my grandparents to my brothers and I (mostly about how southern gentlemen are to act), the most important lesson that any of us took from my grandparents, was the manner in which time spent in intentional relationship was deeply intertwined with love and that that love, that attention, that commitment to simply being present as much as possible for as long as possible was where people, not just grandsons in the eyes of their grandparents, but each person, no matter who they are or what they’ve done, does still have an inexorable value and worth and dignity that comes just with being in the presence of the other. And when we engage in those kinds of relationships in our lives, when we actively tear down the walls between one another and see each one that we encounter on a journey as a brother or a sister, when we see the inherent value of time spent just being present with the one in front of you, we begin to see the whole of the world alive and moving with various parts that often don’t look like they fit together, instead being unified with the movement of the spirit. And just like the seemingly disparate pieces of marbles and boots and trophies and ladders and buckets and rubber bands and seesaws and bathtubs all came together to form an impenetrable trap for mice trying to eat one’s cheese, so, too, do all people, does each person have critical roles to play in which they can (and often do ) work for the betterment of the world—and with that role comes a dignity and importance that need not be ignored or relegated to some lesser-status. We all have work to do, from the youngest to the oldest, from the pauper to the prince, from the greatest of these, to the least of these and I am sure I’m right because I’ve seen it in practice.
As I’ve noted before, I have spent a lot of time in that liminal space in the borderlands between the United States and Mexico, where the poverty is debilitating and incredibly and, at times, overwhelmingly, sad. And with this knowledge comes an unbelievable amount of sorrow that most who have been down that way tend to carry with them everyday and in order to try and alleviate even a little bit of that horror, I’ve worked for a number of years with a group down there called Ministerio de Fe, Faith Ministry, in their mission to tear down the shanty style housing in which just about everyone lives and to replace them with simple, but sturdy, cinder block houses with poured concrete columns holding it up and a poured concrete roof overhead. And on one particular trip, I had taken a number of the older members from my youth group in North Carolina and along with some others from the congregation, we had be joined with locals from the community who, in hopes of one day getting a house of their own, were putting in what they called “sweat equity” on another family’s house. Now, it was Spring Break and while it was cool to warming back home, it was hot to hotter in the south Texas/Northern Mexico heat and we would come back from building days completely drenched and covered with mud and dirt and concrete and sweat and stink. But the hardest day in one of these projects always comes at the end. It is the day that concrete is mixed and the roof is poured. On this day, it takes everyone doing a specific task and doing it repetitively for hours at a time. To accomplish the pouring of a roof there have to be a number of folks carrying 50lb bags of concrete to the mixer over and over and over again, a couple more folks to shovel in rocks, even more to lug buckets of water to the mixer to get the ratio of liquid to solid just right. Then there is the wheelbarrow to take the mixed concrete to the house where 5 gallon buckets are waiting. From there the buckets are lifted through two sets of folks up the scaffolding that has been built in front of the house-to-be and finally poured onto the roof where at least a couple of folks are using smoothing tools to spread the concrete out and create a flat surface on the top of the house. Then finally another line of folks to take the empty buckets back down the scaffolding and begin the process all over again. And as it happened, on this day, during a break, I was able to step back and stand in a position to see the whole series of tasks all happening at the same time and the video that I made looks something like one of my son’s mechanical devices in which parts and folks that don’t look like they would go together are moving almost completely in-sync with one another and creating a seamless machine in order to pour a roof on what will become one of the lucky one’s houses. In this one single instance, folks from different races, genders, socio-economic classes. Young, old. Strong, less strong. We were all functioning as a singular whole. A living breathing example of what happens when we allow ourselves to drop all the boundaries that we too often place in front of one another and we just allow the Spirit of God to move about and through us completely unencumbered. A perfect example of what can happen here and now, and of what it will one day look like when we all gather around the great feast of heaven and all of God’s children have been truly called home.
In our scripture for this morning, we are told that it was near the hottest part of the day, with the sun at the apex of its journey from east to west, when Jesus decided to take a well-deserved moment of rest at a well near the town of Sychar. He had previously sent his disciples into town to gather more supplies for their constant journey criss-crossing the region and was now just enjoying some rare alone time when a lady from the village made her way to the well. And one if left to wonder if this was how Jesus interacted with everyone he met or if this woman elicited some special reaction from him but almost immediately he begins to tear down the walls of division that first century Palestine has placed in between these two people. “Give me a drink,” he said to her. On any other day, this interaction would have looked starkly different. Surely this woman was used to following orders in her daily life, a life in which the men of the village would have held the vast majority of the power and position within the society. I suppose it could have meant, you lady, give me a man a drink, so that I don’t have to trouble myself with it. Of course, it could have been a regional issue as well. Give me a drink would have certainly sounded like a request that one didn't have the right to refuse in an interaction between one from Israel and one from Samaria. Samaritans were stuck near the very bottom of the society. The were rebels in the eyes of the Jewish hierarchy, a belief that often cast the a people of Samaria as lazy, dumb, worthless. In this light, “give me a drink,” may well have sounded like a directive from one who held more communal sway than the woman who had walked up the the well. But we soon learn that this interaction is anything but typical, anything but based on gendered stereotypes, class stereotypes. This interaction is anything but common for the woman who had just come to the well to get water for cooking. Indeed, she would leave that well, her life forever altered, forever changed. Never again would the world and her place within it look the same. In that moment, that moment in which the brokenness of society, the brokenness of the woman, the brokenness of the world encounters the savior of creation, this woman who no one would have otherwise cared about, is offered redemption, is offered grace, is offered the chance to drink of the living water that is found in Jesus but that is also found deep in the well of each one of us. Their interaction, marked by the knowledge of the societal norms of the day as well as the manner in which she had lived her life, a manner in which she had had five previous husbands and was living out of wedlock with a sixth man, their interaction allowed the light of the new life to shine in her, to be birthed in her, to give her a new license on the gift of time that she has and before you know it, she has become the biggest missionary of the village, calling all the people that she encounters to come see Jesus and to have their lives altered as well. And as the disciples return and struggle to understand the practical aspects of what is going on, all the towns people have gathered and are hearing and in hearing are developing faith. Like water in a parched desert, Jesus’s message sprinkles down on all the people and they cannot help but be moved to be different than they were before. And from their, once Jesus has broken down the societal boundaries that would have before dictated everything that happened between them, he then turns to breaking down everything they thought they knew about the spirt of God in their midst. About the way in which we are called to worship. About the spaces in which we are called to worship. About the way in which we are to see and hear the realm of God erupting all around and shaking to its core all the foundations of the world and demanding that we rebuild everything see each one, not through a societal, or gendered, or classist, or even religious lens, but as simply a sister, a brother in God, each of the same spiritual lineage, each with the same holy destination, each the beloved of God.
We are in the midst of Lent. A time in which we are called to take an accounting of our lives and the things in our lives that separate from a deeper faith, a more courageous faith, a knowledge of the love of God that permeates all of creation. We find ourselves seeking to die to all that brings about pain and separation and sin and brokenness and casts all the world in the darkness of despair and when we encounter Jesus at the well with the Samaritan woman, just as he invites her to die to those things in her life and her past that do not allow her to see the light of God beaming all around her, so, too, do we find ourselves called to do the same thing. To confront, honestly, those areas of our lives that have caused anguish to ourselves and others. To confront, honestly, those spaces in which we have not allowed the grace of God to touch us, to heal us, to make us whole. To confront, honestly, our own mistaken perceptions about the other in our midst and the integral part that each one plays in the blessed story of creation. But once we have done that, once we have taken this Lenten time to cleave those parts from us that do not produce good fruit, then we must be prepared to live a life that is alive because, more than anything else, the world needs people who have come alive in the spirit and find themselves ready to live and love without any boundaries, to offer the grace and forgiveness that are the birthright of each person, to grant our neighbor, no matter who they are, the dignity and honor that comes strictly from being a child of the most high. And when we do that, when we live lives that are alive, it starts a revolution, not of some major cultural movement, but of 1,000 little pinpricks of light that slowly but surely continue on the work of casting out the darkness and bathing all the world in the light of a new day in which all are one, male, female, slave, free, Jew, Greek, all are one in Christ Jesus. So knowing that, and believing that, let us continue on our journey of leaving behind all that weighs us down and prepare to arrive at Easter morning as individuals, as people, as a church ready to be alive and let’s just see what the spirit of resurrection can do with that. Amen.