The Holy Spirit and Sparkling Water - John 4:5-42
/Lectionary Readings for March 15, 2020 (preached on 3-22-2020)
Exodus 17:1-7 – God gives Moses water from a rock
Psalm 95 – v2-3 Let us sing psalms of praise to him. For the Lord is a great God…
Romans 5:1-11 – v4 Endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation.
John 4:5-42 – Jesus talks with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well
Any time I preach or lead a group, regardless of age, I start the same way. I’m going to say three short sentences. Please repeat each sentence, with enthusiasm.
God made me. God loves me. God has plans for me.
I love this story! There are so many little nuances in it that if we, modern readers, just take it for a literal, face-value reading, we’ll miss a great deal of the richness here.
First of all, while Jesus was traveling from Jerusalem to Galilee, he took a major detour to end up at Jacob’s well in Sychar. This would be like traveling from Susanville to Janesville by way of Standish. It was totally unnecessary.
Secondly, Jesus’ conversation with the woman is wildly inappropriate! By today’s standards, they lived in a highly conservative society – men by themselves did not speak to women by themselves… unless they were up to no good. Our story is the equivalent of Jesus walking into a bar, looking over and saying, “Hey lady, want to buy me a drink?” She knew something was way off for several reasons. I love the look of skepticism in Pierre Mignard’s painting Christ and the Woman of Samaria. I can imagine her saying, “Listen man, you got no bucket and no rope. But you have living water? Sure, buddy!”
Which brings us to…
Jews (like Jesus) generally hated Samaritans. There’s bad blood between those two that goes back 700 or so years. How bad? Think back to the 1980s and 90s, the brutal fighting in Northern Ireland between the Protestants and Catholics. Or today between Israelis and Palestinians.
I firmly believe that God created every human being, and no matter how “good” or “bad” someone is, we – all of us – are equally children of God created in God’s loving image.
That’s easier for me to see in some people than in others.
When I fail to recognize the spiritual equality I share with others, it can be easy for me to dismiss them, ignore them, or even reject them.
The Samaritan woman was culturally trained to not see the fullness of God’s Spirit in Jews like Jesus. She was culturally trained to distrust and dismiss Jews, as were Jews of Samaritans.
This story challenges us, myself included, to ask ourselves:
Who am I instinctively rejecting?
Who do I naturally think lesser of?
To whom do I give – or deny – the benefit of the doubt?
How are my biases, my prejudices, hindering me from seeing God’s presence in them?
AND how are my biases, my prejudices, hindering me from sharing God’s love with them?
Maybe your bias is for or against a race, a religion, a gender, a nationality, a culture, a political party, an occupation, a personality type, a company, a sports team, etc.
Answering the questions above through some honest self-reflection challenges all of us to actively look for and discover God’s Spirit in new places. In new faces.
Identifying our biases and looking for God within those biases may range from making us feel a bit outside of our comfort zones to making us feel painfully uncomfortable.
This week, take your prayer cards (or create your own prayer list) and write the names of at least two local people you have a bias against. Discuss your biases and those people with God. Ask God to help you see God’s Spirit in them. Using the Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23 may help you.
If you try, where and how can you see “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and/or self-control” in them?
How might you be withholding some of that fruit from others?
How might you be unable to receive some of that fruit from others?
I ask you to do this self-reflection exercise (click here for the weekly handout) because the Samaritan woman was able to see beyond her biases and in doing so, opened herself up to a life-changing encounter with God in an unlikely place with an unlikely person.
If you and I work to see beyond our own biases, I believe that we too can be blessed by life-changing encounters with God and the people of God’s creation. Amen? Amen!