Lent 3A
March 23, 2014
The Rev. Christopher L. Caddell
I spent spring break of my
sophomore year in college just outside
the entrance to Big Bend National Park.
I had planned to stay with my best-friend inside the park, but little did we know, if you want to stay at Big
Bend National park during spring break, you reservations are a must..
My friend was at Tech and I was at
A&M and it seemed like a perfect place to spend a week together, so we had
been planning it for months. We thought we had everything covered – a tent,
sleeping bags, food. What else could we
need?
Looking back on it, we were
probably as ignorant as the Park Ranger who we met at the gate thought we were.
That park ranger, perhaps seeing
the disappointment on our faces, told us about a place just down the road that
might have some room for us to pitch our tent.
Relieved that he did have room, we
got our tent up with the help of our truck’s headlights and fell asleep,
exhausted.
The next morning brought with it
the revelation that we had not actually found a park, but rather a large ranch
and a rancher who was willing to take our money in exchange for a place to
be.
There were no toilets, no
campsites, no water. Just a vast open
plain. Instead of being able to stay
inside the park where there were campsites with bathrooms and a few basic
necessities, we were twenty miles outside of the main gate.
And as the day got hotter, one more
thing became clear – we did not bring enough water.
This trip that we thought we had
planned so well became an exercise in hauling drinking water. The closest source that we could find was
inside the park, and we soon found that we were making multiple trips per day
just to keep the far-too-small igloo jug that we brought with us full.
We got some hiking in, but every
time we went to another section of the park, our first question was, “Where’s
the water?”
Driving back home from that trip we
realized that we had spent far more time finding and collecting water than we
ever spent enjoying the beauty of the park.
Water, when you do not have it
readily available or in abundance, is something that can consume you.
I can imagine the path between the
Samaritan woman’s house and that well is well worn. It’s a daily trip; probably more than one
trip per day.
Day after day, week after week,
month after month. A never ending cycle
of trips to the well for this most precious and needed resource.
I would bet she could make that
trip with her eyes closed. Perhaps she
even knew how many steps lie between here and there. 108 paces out the front door, then left, then
a sharp right ….
And then there was the hard task of
drawing that water and lugging the full jugs back to the house.
Drawing a daily supply of water was
a never-ending, yet always necessary, mundane task.
And yet, on this day, that mundane
task is going to be interrupted by what appears to be nothing more than a man
wanting a drink of water.
On the one hand, our world and the
world of this Samaritan woman are so very far apart. There are so many things going on in this
story that to our eyes and ears make little sense, but would have resonated
loudly with first-century Palestinians.
A man speaking to a woman in
public.
A Jew asking a Samaritan for a
drink of water.
And a conversation about marriage.
This is the point where we have
been told that this conversation between Jesus and this Samaritan woman is
about morality. When Jesus tells her to
go and bring her husband back, the woman admits that she has no husband, and
Jesus says, “Right, you’ve had five.”
What happens next is a shift in the
conversation. Where we might expect the woman to fall to her knees and ask for
forgiveness, we find the woman, instead engaging in a conversation with Jesus
about worship.
We have worshiped here for
generations, but you say God must be worshiped in Jerusalem.
Therein lies the debate between
Samaritans and Jews. Since the time of
King David’s grandson, these two peoples have been at odds over the proper
place to meet God.
They were once one family, one
kingdom – the twelve tribes of Israel united under one God.
But a united family would only last
for two generations. Unwilling to accept
David’s grandson as king, ten tribes form the northern kingdom of Israel, while
the remaining two form the southern kingdom of Judah.
By the time Jesus is talking to
this woman at the well, this split is nearly 1000 years old.
But northern kingdom of Israel did
not fare as well or last as long as the southern. Just two hundred years in, Assyria conquers
the northern kingdom and disperses the native population throughout its
empire. In turn Assyria settles the
northern kingdom with five other peoples –
The king of
Assyria brought people from Babylon, Kuthah, Avva, Hamath and Sepharvaim and
settled them in the towns of Samaria to replace the Israelites. They took over
Samaria and lived in its towns.[1]
What happens next is exactly what
the Assyrians want – mixing of the population.
This is what the Samaritan woman
and Jesus know that we do not, and this is what moves their conversation from
water to worship, and from worship to hope.
The messianic hope for this woman,
indeed for all of the Israelites of the time, is that the Messiah would come,
restore the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and rule a great kingdom, once again united
as it was with King David.
He cannot be the Messiah, can he?
Of course, Jesus does not turn out
to be the messiah that this woman or anyone else expected. God does not act in predictable ways.
To use a phrase from Rowan Williams
that has come up in our class – God appears as something unfolding and
unpredictable in the passage of time.
We may be worlds apart from this
Samaritan woman, but we have much more in common than we might think.
Days and weeks that can be driven
by routine and mundane tasks.
A life in which we are not
necessarily expecting to find God in those tasks.
A worldview that says God (if he
can be found at all) can only be found here or there, on this day, but not on
that.
The world of the Samaritan woman is
our own.
We come with her to our daily and
mundane tasks of drawing water from the well never expecting to find the
messiah sitting there waiting for us.
Where do you find God in the daily
routine of your life?
What does the messiah have to say
to you when you come to the well?
Do you take the time to allow that
conversation to develop or do you just move on with the task at hand?
What does it look like in your life
for God to interrupt what you are doing and to transform your understanding, to
move you from a place of monotony or despair to a place of hope?
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