Exodus
17: 1–7 / Psalm 95 / Romans 5: 1–11 / John 4: 5–42
This
is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, by Fr. Gene Tucker
on Sunday, March 15, 2020.
“IS ANYONE BEYOND GOD’S ABILITIES?”
(Homily text: John 4: 5-42)
We are blessed this morning to hear and consider
the account of Jesus’ interaction and conversation with a woman at a well in
Samaria. (Indeed, we are also blessed to be able to spend some more time in
John’s Gospel account…last week, recall that we heard John’s account of the
Lord’s encounter with Nicodemus,)
As we hear how the conversation unfolds between
this unnamed woman and the Lord, a clear message leaps off of the page: “No one
is beyond God’s ability to love.” To this comment we might add another: “God
loves and is concerned with everyone, not just with some people and not
others.”
Jesus’ actions toward the Samaritan woman bear out
this truth. We see it clearly as we consider how Jesus breached the conventions
of His own day in His interactions with the woman. We can summarize the walls
that came tumbling down by recounting the following:
Jews
and Samaritans: In our Lord’s day, Jews looked with disdain
on the Samaritans. The history between these two groups was marked by armed
conflict (about 150 years before Jesus’ birth). Furthermore, the Samaritans
were regarded by Jews as belonging to a substandard racial group because the
Samaritans were the descendants of those who had remained after the conquest of
the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 BC at the hands of the invading
Assyrians, who had intermarried with other peoples who were resettled into the
area after the fall of the Northern Kingdom. To add to the problem, the
Samaritans possessed a version of the five books of Moses, but the Samaritan
version differed from that of the Jews, so that, too, was reason for suspicion.
Finally, the Samaritans regarded Mount Gerazim as being the holy mountain. This
is a facet of the interchange between Jesus and the woman in our account this
morning, for she asks the Lord to resolve the dispute about where, exactly, is
the place where people ought to focus their attention on God.
Many pious Jews in our Lord’s day would have gone
to extraordinary means to avoid going through Samaria if they had occasion to
have to travel from Galilee (in the north) down to Jerusalem for some of the
sacred feasts. Many, perhaps most, of them would have avoided Samaria entirely
by taking a route down through the Jordan River valley, or along the coastline
of the Mediterranean Sea.
Women
and men: In the culture of the time, men did not
interact with a woman to whom they were not related in public. The Samaritan
woman is aware of this prohibition as she asks, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask
of me, a Samaritan, for water?”
People
with questionable life histories: Perhaps one reason why the woman was forced
to come to draw water from the well at midday was due to her life’s trajectory.
Jesus informs her that He knows about her marital history, and about her
current life situation. Even in Samaritan circles, having been married five
times, and being in a situation of living with a man without the benefit of
marriage, would have created a stigma that would have caused many in the
Samaritan city to shun or avoid this woman, most likely.
Jesus breaches all these walls, walls which divide
people from one another and from God. To begin with, instead of avoiding
Samaria, He makes His way right through it. Furthermore, He is unafraid to
engage this woman whom He did not know in conversation in public. And finally,
He doesn’t mind treating the woman with care and respect, even through He knows
about her life history.
Jesus’ actions with the Samaritan woman are
completely consistent with His actions throughout His earthly ministry. The
Jews of His day shunned those who were considered to be unclean, those who were
of questionable ancestry, those who, because of their life’s history, were
forever marked (in their estimation at least) as being outside of God’s care,
concern and love.
You and I, by virtue of having been called by God
into relationship with Him through our Lord Jesus Christ, are called to behave
like Jesus did and does.
We cannot claim a special and favored status in
God’s plan, for we, ourselves, were once outside, looking in on God’s love. To
draw us into relationship with Him, God calls us into the waters of baptism,
calling us to say “goodbye” to our old way of sin and disobedience into a new
life, a new life of rebirth in the waters of baptism, into a new relationship
of love with God. God’s invitation is for all people, of all racial and ethnic
backgrounds, of all ages, of all past histories.
God’s invitation is a radical one, one of radical
welcome. God’s invitation calls us to see how valuable and important we are in
God’s estimation. God’s invitation calls us to allow the Holy Spirit to remake
us into the full image of God as we see it in Jesus Christ. Truly, we can say
that God calls us wherever He finds us, but He never leaves
us there.
AMEN.
