En el nombre de Dios, a cuya familia todos pertenecemos... In the name of God, in whose family all belong. Amen.
The clergy of our diocese met in retreat last week. Our retreat leader was Jake Owensby, former rector here at Emmanuel and current bishop of WLA. It was lovely to get to know Bp. Jake and hear stories about Emmanuel from him and other clergy whose spiritual journeys are connected to us.
Listening to them affirmed my belief that this parish is really good at something that scares most Episcopalians into silence: evangelism! You are – but we’ll get to that a bit later.
The foundational thought I took away from Bp. Jake’s talks was this: for followers of Jesus, our self is received, not achieved. I’m not even sure he said that, but I wrote it in my notes because it spoke in my spirit.
Who we are is a dynamic reality – both in our bodies and our spirits. Watching ourselves, our children, and grandchildren grow, we witness the dynamic nature of our bodies. There is continual change and progress. Right now, my youngest grandchild, who has quickly become a pro at walking, is beginning to talk: baby-gibberish, but spoken with true intention. The words are not far off.
The same is true for our spirits. Baptism welcomes each of us into the family of God in Christ. Then we spend our time and gifts helping each other grow, moving from what we were taught as children toward a more mature, interconnected understanding and experience of God, other, and self.
Continual spiritual change and movement toward... what? The answer may not be what you think.
You see, we aren’t living our lives hoping to behave well enough to receive the prize of eternal life after we die. Eternal life is already within us for we have been baptized with the living water Jesus describes to the Samaritan woman at the well.
We are called now to do what Jesus was doing at the well: connecting with someone from whom he had been disconnected by the dictums of religion and society. In that newly forged relationship, Jesus gave and she received, a new way of understanding herself, God, and her neighbor.
Here’s the context. The religious authorities are getting nervous because Jesus’ ministry in Judea has become even bigger than John the Baptist’s was. Under threat of arrest, Jesus decides to return home to Galilee. It’s a 3-day-long journey that takes them through the Samaritan city of Sychar, where they pause for food and rest.
The relationship between the Jewish and Samaritan people was quite hostile then, and the place Jesus stopped was a place of shared religious significance: Jacob’s well. If we’re open and aware, we will always find something in common with the opposition, won’t we?
Jesus is sitting at Jacob’s well at about noon, when a Samaritan woman comes to get water. Why she’s getting water in the heat of the day is unknown.
Maybe the woman didn’t want to meet up with the other women of the village because she was ashamed of her personal circumstances. Or maybe, they excluded her - in a Bridgerton kind of way.
Her circumstances, revealed by Jesus, have to do with her husbands – 5 of them – and the man she’s with now is not her husband, meaning they are living together, but are not married. Even by today’s standards, that would turn religious and societal heads.
We don’t know her story. We don’t know why she is in this circumstance, but if we follow Jesus’ lead, we don’t need to. Jesus doesn’t judge her for it, and neither should we.
Let’s look at a few other things Jesus doesn’t do in this story. He doesn’t exclude the woman at the well according to all of her categories: Samaritan, woman, married 5 times, living with a man who isn’t her husband. He doesn’t ask her to repent or change the situation of her life. He also doesn’t stop her from proclaiming the amazing news he hasn’t even told his disciples yet – that he is the Christ, the Messiah of God.
The woman at the well, who has no name, no fame, and no legacy except in this story, is the first person to whom the Christ reveals himself in this gospel. She is the first evangelist, the first person to share the good news of salvation in Jesus, the Christ.
All of this happened because Jesus bridged gaps created by the world, gaps that divided women from men, Samaritans from Jewish people, those judged to be unworthy from those who believe they are worthy. Jesus eliminated those gaps by making a personal connection at a place that mattered to both of them: Jacob’s well, where God saved the people by providing an abundance of water that gushed up out of the well. Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that he offers water that will gush up to eternal life!
She seems to get it! Bp. Jake joked that that’s why Jesus chose women. They got it faster than the guys did. Maybe, but the important thing is, she left her water jar to go home and tell of her encounter with the long-awaited Messiah.
Gathering water was a function women performed. It was part of their identity – and she left that behind, because in Jesus, our identity is determined by who we are: the beloved of God, not by what we do or how society sees us.
This is really good news for us today. In our current culture, both religious and societal, wealth is a source of glory for those who have it, while poverty is a source of shame. The rich overtly blame the poor for being poor.
Blaming them enables those in power to separate themselves and construct a self-contained universe of us and them, the worthy and the unworthy. The list of un-worthies in each era reflects the prejudices, insecurities, and malice of the powerful of the time.
Eventually, they demonize and dehumanize the poor, immigrants, women, and any others they deem to be unworthy, which justifies them arresting, detaining, and even torturing them. Susanna+ preached powerfully last week, reminding us that “identity must rest in promise and belonging to one another.”
This was the shift Jesus demonstrated with the Samaritan woman at the well. Our identity as people of God, as followers of Christ, is received, not achieved, and is grounded in the promise of eternal life and belonging. There are no barriers for anyone in the family of God.
Over and over again in his life and ministry, Jesus brings down these barriers. Sadly, it took the institutional church very little time to put many of them right back up.
Holding the story of the Samaritan woman at the well in your minds, receive what some of our most revered “church fathers” have said about women:
- Clement of Alexandria (180 A.D): With women, “the very consciousness of their own nature must evoke feelings of shame.” (Pedagogues II, 33, 2)
- Thomas Aquinas (13th century): “Woman is defective and misbegotten.” (from his most acclaimed and foundational Christian work: the Summa Theologica, 1 q. 92.a. 1, completed in 1273)
If you think this doesn’t continue to affect women in the church, think again. This anti-feminine bias lives in the bone marrow of Christianity.
The Church – and by that I mean the Christian Church – with its elevation of males and male principles over women and feminine principles, starting with the story of Eve being the cause of sin, evil, and pain for humanity, played a significant role in the circumstance we now find ourselves in: discovering the nature and extent of trafficking and abusing our girl children and other vulnerable groups. And I truly believe, the Church has the responsibility and the ability to lead the way of transforming this by faithfully following our Savior.
The Samaritan woman at the well was transformed by her encounter with the grace of God because Jesus valued her and restored her to the community of the family of God. Through this woman, her whole community was restored as well.
And this brings us back to evangelism. Evangelism is doing what the Samaritan woman did: opening ourselves to receive a new, divinely-bestowed identity grounded in promise and belonging, then making connections with others, especially those the world judges as unworthy, and sharing this good news through our lives, our stories, and our ministries.
That is the great charism I and others find is present here at Emmanuel, and that is encouraging and gives me hope.
I close with a prayer from our clergy retreat, written by our bishop. Let’s pray: “Enduring presence, goal and guide, you go before and await our coming. Only our thirst compels us beyond complaint to conversation, beyond rejection to relation. Pour your love into our hearts that, refreshed and renewed, we may invite others to the living water given to us in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
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