St.
Alban's Episcopal Church
Austin, Texas
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Austin, Texas
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From the Pulpit:
Not that it’s anything to brag about, but I doubt that there are many preachers this morning who know quite as much as I do about wells. OK, not like I could actually fix our well at times like yesterday when there were hundreds of people up here and suddenly our taps sputtered and our potties chose not to function. What I know is how dependent we are upon our well, and I have learned in my two and a half years here not to take it for granted. I am truly grateful when the well does what it’s supposed to do, give us water – albeit really fragrant water – from the aquifer that runs deep down in the earth. What we take so for granted at home is precious to us here at church because we have learned not to take it for granted and we know first-hand what things are like when we need it and can’t get it. Imagine what it must have been like when you actually had to take a jug to the well. Water is heavy! You’d have to carry it on your shoulder all the way back to your house, all the water you needed to drink and to wash in and to cook with. Even with our less than reliable well, the water does come out of the tap when it works. We don’t have to carry it as the Samaritan woman did. There are a lot of things to consider in this story, and in importance I rank it up there with the parable of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, except that it is not a parable. It is an event in the life of Jesus. First of all, the woman is a Samaritan. Do you remember what Dusty said on Wednesday about how utterly radical the Good Samaritan story was? That the Samaritans were so despised by the Jews that it could be called the story of the good terrorist. Now I don’t think Jesus was afraid of this woman but for a Jew to speak to a Samaritan, let alone to initiate the conversation would have been shocking. And yet Jesus sees her walking towards him as he is seated on the wall of the well. He waits until she is close and then he asks for a drink of water. This is how he begins the longest conversation he has with anybody in any of the gospels. onger than with Peter or James or John. Longer than with his mother or with his adversaries. Here, in the middle of nowhere in the blazing noonday sun, just the two of them together – which was, by the way, utterly outrageous – he opens the conversation. I think we might take conversation just about as much for granted as we do clean drinking water. We might want to think about it. How much is just chit-chat? How much is our yakking away and expecting the other person to hang on our every word? How much is our standing there, being just barely polite enough while somebody else goes yada yada yada? How much is pushing and pushing, making point after point until the other person comes around to our way of thinking? I’m asking you to pay attention this week, and I’m going to do it, too, to see how many real conversations you have and how they impact your life and relationships. Fred Craddock is known as one of the best preachers in our country. This is what he says: Jesus is not attacking the woman, or judging her; they are having a conversation. Many of us think we know what a conversation is, but a conversation can take place between two people only if three elements are in place: First, the two people must recognize at the outset that they have different backgrounds and traditions, different families, different values, come from different parts of the world. Second, the two people must have enough in common that they can talk. And third, the two people must be open to the honest possibility that either or both of them may be changed by the exchange. That is a conversation. So – what a conversation! I want to stop here for a moment and take us back to last week’s lesson about Nicodemus. Do you remember that conversation? It happened in the dark of night, a darkness that symbolized Nicodemus’ spiritual blindness. The words of Jesus seemed never to connect with Nicodemus, and yet he did seem to get something from it, enough at least not to reject what Jesus had to offer even if he did not go so far as to accept it. Look at this woman. Here she is, alone, coming to the well at noon. Here she is, in the brightest light of the day. The sun is shining so directly overhead that it illuminates even the surface of the water in the well, which is at all other times dark. The conversation is sometimes almost as cryptic as that with Nicodemus, except that the woman seems intent on understanding Jesus. If Nicodemus was spiritually blind, this woman has her spiritual eyes wide open. She has come to the well because she knows she is thirsty in her spiritual as well as her physical being. He offers her the living water and she jumps to accept it. Sir, she says, give me this water. Her soul is wide open as well. And it is Jesus who comes up with the non sequitur: Go get your husband. Well, he knows full well she doesn’t have a husband, but he gives her the opportunity to show him exactly how transparent she is willing to be, how open and truthful and receptive to what he can offer. Five husbands? She doesn’t deny that. But, before we cast aspersions on her it is good to remember that a woman could not divorce a man. Her husbands had either died and left her widowed or they dumped her and left her equally vulnerable. She was a victim of the patriarchy, not a woman of ill repute. The one she lives with now is not her husband, but we don’t know exactly what that means. She responds, though, saying, Sir, you are a prophet. She gets it and Jesus knows she does, and now this conversation has brought both of them to the place where they can overcome their differences – whether God is to be worshiped on Mount Gerazim as the Samaritans do or in Jerusalem with the Jews. God is now to be worshiped by all in spirit and in truth. What happens in this story is mutual revelation. When the woman is honest with Jesus she is able to recognize him for who is, the Messiah, and this is the very first time that he admits that that is true. “I am he,” he says, “the one who is speaking to you.” Our well may not be the reason that we come to St. Alban’s – in fact we may curse it under our breath and look forward with relish the day we get ‘real water.’ but there is something about the well, at least for me, that makes me aware of both my vulnerability and the thirst that brings me here to meet God in community, to worship together on our hill with all its vistas. Not too long ago I spent some time in the hospital and could not have even a drink of water for five days. If that’s ever happened to you, you know how utterly delicious that first sip was. Like the woman at the well, perhaps our thirst can be a blessing, can bring us in our vulnerability to the place where Christ is waiting for us to give us what we need to live fully. And this well, the well where we meet him is all the more precious because it is beyond our control. Mary Oliver has written poetry for many years now and won many prizes. Several years ago her beloved partner died, and in her grief Oliver has ventured into the religious life she had described in her poems but never specifically named. Her latest volume of poems, the one in which she lays her seeking soul bare, is called Thirst. This is the poem that gives title to the book. It might be the poem of the woman at the well. Another morning and I wake
up with thirst Amen.
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05/16/2008 | ||||||
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The
Rev. Margaret Waters