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Rez is a community where Jesus welcomes, shapes, and sends disciples for the good of our neighborhood. No matter where you are in life, this is a place for you.
Life Together In The Goodness Of God
Well here we are. It is already the third Sunday in Lent and we're about halfway through the season. Where are we with our prayers and actions? Our consumption of food, drink, media, social or otherwise? Whatever Lenten discipline we've chosen to undertake Lent at its core brings us some hope and longing that somehow through what we're doing we'll get closer together. Through what we're doing we'll get closer to God to Jesus. We'll feel the spirit working. On this middle Sunday in Lent we might ask ourselves how's it going? How are we doing on our Lenten journey? Are we following Jesus? Have we encountered Jesus? Today's gospel reading which Father Scott just read for us tells us the story of a woman who did encounter Jesus. Tells us of a very unlikely conversation between a Jewish teacher and a Samaritan woman. A conversation that according to the rules governing their communities should not even have taken place. There was a wall between them. At least they were supposed to be. No encounters. No conversations. Since ancient times Samaria had been populated by a mix of folks and their eventual practice of Judaism had not met the standard strict Jerusalem centered religious practice. They were outsiders to be shunned separated and even disdain was their lot. Yet the conversation between this Samaritan woman and Jesus is one of the longest conversations Jesus has with anyone in any of the gospels. A word as plentiful as poured from a full bucket of water. Imagine the picture. It is a hot day. It's about noon. We know what that feels like, right? Jesus on his way back to Galilee has been walking and he's tired from his journey. He sits down by what was known as Jacob's Well near the city of Sychar in Samaria. His followers have gone to get food. A woman comes to the well to draw water probably for household purposes for cooking, for laundry, for slaking thirst. He asks for a drink. John's words are very direct. Give me a drink. I'm not surprised to be even talked to. Why would you, a Jewish teacher, a Jewish rabbi ask me, a Samaritan woman, indeed any woman for water, for anything? I imagine her looking at him with questioning eyes. Not shrinking away but looking at him face to face with questioning eyes. Jesus tells us she's not afraid or submissive simply that she knows the rules and that he's breaking them. Why would he want water from her unclean jar? An amazing conversation about living water follows. Jesus saying that if she knows God the whole encounter would be reversed and she would ask him for water and would be given living water. Okay, she plays along. Perhaps the man is a bit touched by the heat of the noonday sun. You don't even have a bucket, she says. Where would you get water to give me? I love her honesty. I love her honesty. In my own conversations with Jesus in my prayers I'm given answers that stop me in my tracks and I ask Jesus again and again how's that going to happen? Like the woman at the well I wonder if Jesus, if God is really able to pour water on my parched heart on my heart that's like that rock in the desert that Moses had to hit it with a stick. Can God even pour water on the thirsty hearts of all the peoples in all the lands? Will all just be thirsty again? And then what? And Jesus agrees with the woman. You're right. The water you are depending on will leave you thirsty. And Jesus says to me you're right. What you're depending on will not do. I love how this woman sits face to face with Jesus and pushes the conversation along. He teaches and reveals matters far beyond what she might have imagined and leads her to understand that he a prophet knows her fully knows everything she has ever been and done. He spoke the truth about her lifestyle and neither of them turned away. She talked back of sacred places and history and sacred worship and Jesus answers her in spirit and truth. She spoke of a common Messiah and Jesus said I am he. His words to her were living water. And the walls around her had been tumbling down. She was no longer separated as a woman as a Samaritan as an outsider. Living water washed her clean in that very moment. The living water Jesus promised washed her clean in that very moment. I love this woman. She gives me courage to push my Jesus conversations my prayers to the place where living water can wash away all my pretenses that I am in control or that the world is in control. The place where it doesn't matter who or where I have been or how well made the water jar I have a fashion can hold the water that I think I can collect and gather and have control over. The water that I think the water of the world that I think will satisfy me. Living water clears my heart to simply love to love God and to love neighbor without rebuilding the walls that living water breaks down. And the woman at the well left her jar and ran into town and told everyone that she thought she might have met the Messiah. She expressed some doubt. She didn't have the whole story. But her witness her questions sent the townspeople out to meet Jesus and the disciples who had returned from their errands and the townspeople about living water and about being the bread of the world. And John tells us that many Samaritans believed in Jesus because of the woman's testimony. And Jesus stayed with them for two whole days and many more believed because of his word. I love this woman and her story. She's my kind of evangelist my kind of good news bringer. She encounters Jesus meets him face to face while doing a very ordinary every day, perhaps several times a day task of gathering water for her family. She encounters Jesus she engages in conversation with him and catches a glimpse of the kingdom of God right in her own circumstances right where she is messy life and all and she runs to tell others not because she had it all figured out but because she recognized Jesus. She didn't have the whole story but she had enough she had enough to share with others. The living water given so freely to her splashed over into other lives. Our mid-length evaluation our taking stock does well to be informed by this nameless woman. We might come to know that our various encounters with Jesus are enough and we do not ourselves have to judge the value or efficacy of our prayers our practices or even our understanding. Like the woman at the well we have been splashed with immersed in living water that flows forth from God and like her we can be evangelists bringers of good news with what we have with what we are. Our messy selves are enough. May we take courage from this nameless woman to simply go out of here perhaps dipping our fingers in that bowl of water symbolizing living water water that gives us life. And as we do that may we go to our neighbors to our neighborhood and share simply our Jesus encounters simply how we have experienced meeting Jesus even for a second. We you see are the vessels for living water and we carry that living water out into our neighborhood and splash that water all about us all about us. So help us God. Amen. I invite us to spend some moments of silence considering how even the smallest of our own Jesus encounters might well be living water to a neighbor we might meet this week.