The Blessing of the Light
Rev. Christa Fuller Burns

Faith Presbyterian Church
John 8:12-20 – 25 February 2018

 

“I am the light of the world”.

During the Feast of the Tabernacles, Jesus is again in the temple. The Feast of the Tabernacles, also known as the Festival of Booths or Sukkoth is one of three pilgrimage feasts and the faithful are encouraged to go to Jerusalem to celebrate the harvest. Farmers and their families have been working around the clock to finish the harvest. They’ve constructed shelters out by the fields so that they can sleep close to their work. Part of the festival is about water, water being vital to the success of crops. Jesus has already announced that anyone who is thirsty should come to him and that out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water (7:37-38).

When night falls, four huge candelabras are lit in the temple, casting light beyond the temple walls out into the darkened city. The candelabras remind the faithful of their ancestors’ time in the wilderness where they were led by a pillar of fire.

Like water, light is essential to the success of the harvest. Light is the first thing God made. Light is essential to life. Weren’t we all outside on Wednesday just soaking up the warm sun – getting our therapeutic dose of vitamin D?

It is in the context of the temple at the Feast of the Tabernacles that Jesus announces that he is the light of the world…summoning memories of how God provided light in the wilderness darkness. Jesus is the light of the world in the current darkness. It is, we think, six months before Jesus’ death when the world would be covered in darkness as Jesus hung on the cross. Jesus is the light of the world in our current darkness – a world in which children are crucified in Florida and Syria, a world in which there is so much suffering and pain.

What does Jesus mean when he says he is the light of the world?  Does he mean that he is the source of understanding, as in to shed a light on something? Does he mean that he will be the one to lead us out of darkness, whatever that darkness represents (oppression, depression, hopelessness, etc)? Does he mean that he will be the one to deliver Israel from its occupiers? Does he mean that he will be the one to expose the corruption and misdeeds of those who have power? Does he mean that in him God is revealed? According to Bruce Chilton, who argues that Jesus was a rabbi in the mystical tradition of the Kabbalah, when Jesus says he is the light of the world he sees his “own practice of purity and healing illuminating Israel, and Israel as God’s light among the nations”. (Rabbi Jesus, pg.122.) With the exception of the idea that Jesus sees himself as a political liberator, all of these interpretations make sense to me. At any given time, we may prefer one or the other.

However, the more challenging part of this passage may be that Jesus continues: “Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life”.

Uh oh – is he talking about us? Is he saying that if we believe in him we will be the light…of life? If we believe in him, we will never walk in darkness? Is he talking about us?

Martin Luther King wrote a sermon on the parable Jesus tells about being in bed in the middle of the night and hearing a knock at the door. Even though the owner of the house tells the visitor to go away, the knocker persists. Jesus’ point is that we should be persistent in prayer. However, King points out the obvious – it is midnight in our world. Recent events in our country have prompted us to question just how far we’ve progressed on that arc King referred to – the one that bends towards justice. We still have racism. We still have super powers who don’t trust each other and who have atomic weapons. We still have extreme poverty that lays waste and we still have war.

In addition, King points out that it is midnight inside us. He wrote: “Everywhere paralyzing fears of anxiety and depression are suspended in our mental skies. More people are emotionally disturbed today than at any other time of human history.” “The popular clergyman preaches soothing sermons on ‘How to be Happy’ and ‘How to Relax.’ Some have been tempted to revise Jesus’ command to read, and, lo, I will make you a well-adjusted personality.’ All of this is indicative that it is midnight within the inner lives of men and women”. (Strength too Love, p.57) In other words, it is not morning in America. It is midnight in America.

As King points out, the visitor who knocks at midnight is asking for bread. Maybe the visitor who knocks on our doors, the doors of our church, the doors of our homes is looking for light.

If that is the case, what do we give them?

In your bulletins today is Jan Richardson’s Blessing Are You Who Bear the Light. That’s us.

Blessed are you
who bear the light
in unbearable times,
who testify to its endurance
amid the unendurable,
who bear witness to its persistence when everything seems
in shadow
and grief.

In other words, blessed are you who bear the light when it is midnight in America.

During my sabbatical, I was in India on New Year’s Eve. We were outside on a large lawn and there was entertainment and it was dark – so dark one had to be careful where one walked. At one point, women processed to the stage wearing their brightly colored saris and carrying bowls of fire on their heads. It was magical and slightly scary. None the less, that is the image that came to me this week – we are the ones who are to bear the light…like those women with bowls of fire on their heads!

Ms. Richardson, alas, does not tell us how we bear the light or what that looks like. So, I am just going to throw out some ideas. I like to think I got them from Jesus.

We learned on Friday night that Sondra’s daughter died after a horrific car accident. Now, we do not know Sondra very well. She is a friend of Mary’s who comes to Bible Study. She is the member of another church. However, the care, the concern, and the empathy that has been demonstrated by people at Bible Study are full of light. We cannot solve a lot of the world’s problems but we can be Christ to each other in our love for each other, especially in those times of sorrow and pain. Jesus took the time, even on the Sabbath, to heal a lame man and to give sight to a blind man. And we remember that when Jesus discovers his friend, Lazarus, has died, he cries. When Daniel Rich sang There is a Balm in Gilead on Friday night, I was thinking of Sondra and hoping for her some of that balm. We all need that balm. More importantly, we can all be that balm for each other. We can be light for each other, even if it seems what we do is small and seemingly insignificant.

When Jesus taught in the temple and elsewhere, he threw a light on some of the injustices of his time. When he told the story of the man lying in the ditch who was ignored by the privileged of his community only to be helped by a despised Samaritan, Jesus illuminated the calloused indifference of those who should know better, those with power.

So, we can bear light by taking a hard look at ourselves and our society. Who are we leaving in the ditch? Who are we ignoring?

One of the stories that is indelibly printed on my clergy brain is the young woman who told me that the reason she struggles with the church is because, when she was a teenager, her youth pastor sexually abused her in a dark room at the church. The clergy abuse, the sexual assaults, the racial mistreatment, all are done in the dark places of our neighborhoods –yes – our own neighborhoods! Have we, too, simply walked by without looking? To bear the light means paying attention to those who are lying in the ditch.

I do not want to suggest that bearing light is always a courageous or a serious obligation. Sometimes to bear the light means to simply smile. I was cheering on Maame Biney, the Olympic short track skater, in part, because of her infectious smile that just seemed to make the world a better place. She has prompted me to make smiling a Lenten practice. We shouldn’t underestimate a smile. Happy are those, sings the psalmist, who know the festal shout, who walk, O Lord, in the light of your countenance. (Psalm 89:15) Happy are those who…smile!

Blessed are you, writes Ms. Richarson,

in whom
the light lives,
in whom
the brightness blazes –
your heart
a chapel
an altar where
in the deepest night
can be seen
the fire that
shines forth in you
in unaccountable faith,
in love that illumines
every broken thing
it finds.

If we are going to have a heart that is a chapel, an altar where, even in the deepest night, even when it is midnight, there shines out of us a fire, love that illumines every broken thing, we need to be able to recharge our batteries. We need to put in a new light bulb. We need to stock up on kindling. What do you do that recharges your heart? Maybe music recharges our souls. It did Friday night. Maybe playing with your grandchildren recharges our souls –suspending reality and pretending you are a turtle. Maybe sheer silence recharges your soul. Maybe prayer recharges your soul. Maybe, as the poet writes, being in the presence of wild things recharges our souls:

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feed.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief.  I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light.  For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. (Wendell Berry, Collected poems, pg.69)

Blessed are you…who bear the light.

The Blessing of the Gate
Rev. Christa Fuller Burns

Faith Presbyterian Church
John 10:1-10 – 18 February 2018

“I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.” (John 10:9)

During Lent this year we will be considering who Jesus says he is. As we move toward Jerusalem and his death, we will hear many competing arguments about the identity of Jesus. Is he a prophet? Is he the messiah? Is he a political threat? Is he a sinner, a blasphemer, a fake? Jesus has just given sight to a man born blind and he appears to be still talking to the Pharisees who have some questions as to this man’s identity. I am, Jesus says, the gate.

I saw an interview with the snow boarder, Shaun White, after his spectacular victory at the Olympics in which he tried to answer questions about his alleged harassment of a woman. In a clumsy response, White said, “I am who I am”, a statement that didn’t sit well with a lot of people. How we finish the sentence “I am…” is very important isn’t it? It was important for Jesus and it is important for us. Indeed, when God announces to Moses, “I am who I am”, God lays down the gauntlet for those of us who try to live fully into our calling as God’s children. Who do we say that we are?

In his “I am” statements, Jesus uses metaphors to attempt to tell us who he is. I am the gate, Jesus says. Specifically, Jesus says that he is the gate for the sheep. I can never hear about sheep pens without remembering our family’s drive east just after I had graduated from High School. Our father had been transferred to Missouri which, as Californians, we thought was just about the end of the world! We set out in our old station wagon. Our Dad wasn’t one for making reservations, or researching where we would spend the night. We just drove until we were tired and then we stopped. In this case, on our first day, we drove through the desert and we were someplace in Arizona or maybe New Mexico when we started looking for a place to spend the night. There was nothing – that is my memory of it – nothing as far as you could see – no towns, no gas stations, no nothing. Finally, we came across a run down motel and we pulled in. It wasn’t exactly up to our mother’s standards, but we had beds. I wanted desperately to watch the Democratic convention in Chicago, but there wasn’t a TV. This whole trip did not bode well, I thought. Then, after we had settled into our beds, we heard it. The motel was actually a sheep pen in the middle of a Navajo reservation. We were surrounded by bleating sheep that had been brought into the safety of the sheep pen for the night!

I suspect sheep herding has not changed all that much since Jesus’ time. Then, as now, it was important to provide protection for sheep, to gather them together in a secure place for the night…a place with a gate.

We know that gates serve two functions. Gates both allow entry and gates keep out. Gates are meant to keep out the bandits, the wolves – anything that might harm the sheep. Unfortunately, we Christians, we People of the Gate have proved very adept at using gates to keep out. My husband grew up a Southern Baptist, but when he went to college and saw the Deacons, the gate keepers, of the First Baptist Church standing on the front porch of the church to prevent Black people from entering, he left his church.

I suspect most of us have experienced closed gates at some point in our lives – a sign that says you can’t drink from that fountain, or worship at that church or eat at that counter, you can’t be ordained because of your sexual orientation, your application was turned down, your relationship ended, you had an illness that crippled you, or you were rejected one way or another. We all know what closed gates look like.

However, I think Jesus’ primary intent in describing himself at the gate is to emphasize the positive purpose gates serve as vehicles for entrance. Jesus declares that his purpose is to provide life, abundant life. He says, I came that you may have life and have it abundantly.

The image of that life is the pasture on the other side of the gate…the pasture that is green and where there is water, and peace and safety. Most of us have pleasant associations with the image of pastures. We can picture those idyllic places where we see God’s creation and are restored. Perhaps it is easy then to reduce pastures to sentimental pictures on Hallmark cards.

At a time when we confront yet another horrific school shooting in which 17 people were killed, I wonder it the image of a pasture is more nuanced that a romantic vista. In fact, I wonder if a green pasture has implications for our society.

Our schools should be pastures where our children find nourishment and peace and safety. They have become places of death and destruction. There have been 16 school shootings this year and the silence from our elected officials, those who are supposed to be gatekeepers, those who are supposed to be protecting us, is deafening!

No, this morning, I think we have to face the reality that if you are a child in school, if you are an immigrant, if you are a woman, if you are a young Black man you are not safe in this country! Those who are supposed to be the gatekeepers, the protectors – politicians, law enforcement officers, employers – are very often the ones who fail to keep us safe!

Consequently, I suggest that when Jesus says that he is the gate, he is not inviting us into a picture on a Hallmark card, much as we desire that kind of idyllic setting. I suggest Jesus is inviting us into a place where we are safe from the real evil that lurks outside the walls. This man who lived in a very dangerous time in a dangerous place and who was increasingly unsafe himself, this man says to Jerusalem, that city where he will definitely not be safe, “O that you knew the things that make for peace.” When a woman accused of adultery is brought before him by people who want to stone her, Jesus rescues her. When the disciples are out on a boat and it gets dark and a storm starts to blow, Jesus comes walking on water to bring safety.

In my mind, Jesus’ pasture summons the words of the psalmist:

For he will command his angels
concerning you
to guard you in all your ways.
On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone. Ps.91:11-12

On the front page of the paper the day after the shootings in Florida was the picture of an anguished mother with a cross of ashes on her forehead. When I saw it I thought about what we had done together on Ash Wednesday. We sat in the quiet peace of the chapel with flute and guitar and piano music and we marked each other with the sign of the cross. We said to each other, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

I don’t do Ash Wednesday, some people tell me. Why is that? Is it because we don’t want to be reminded that life is fleeting and fragile and always too short? Is it because we don’t want to be reminded of our own shortcomings and weaknesses? Is it because we don’t want to admit that we are, in fact sinners? Is it because we don’t want to think about the world outside the gate in which 17 people are slaughtered?

Yes. On Ash Wednesday, we are saying we are fragile. Yes. We are saying that life is short. Yes. We are saying that we need to repent. Yes we are saying we need to be saved.

Being a Christian is hard. Even though, God intends safety for us, we aren’t spared pain, or hardship or suffering. The woman whose forehead was smeared with ashes knows that. We know that Our calling is to follow Christ despite the knowledge that there are thieves and bandits and those who want to harm the sheep – us.

My question is this: If we are Christ’s body on earth, doesn’t that make us the gatekeepers? Are not we the ones who should provide sanctuary to those who are danger? Are not we the ones who should protect the vulnerable, the abused, the victims of discrimination, the children, for God’s sake! Are not we the gatekeepers?

How the Light Gets In
Rev. Christa Fuller Burns

Faith Presbyterian Church
John 9:1-41 – 11 February 2018

I read an article recently about the actor, Mickey Rourke in which Mr. Rourke talked about his trouble childhood. His father was abusive and Rourke took his desire to defeat of his father out on others, becoming a fighter himself who would fight over anything. He also resorted to drugs and other destructive behavior. Finally, Rourke went to a priest who talked him into getting help. Rourke didn’t say it but I wonder if part of what the priest was able to do for him was to enable Rourke to see himself as more than the kid he was – the fearful, fighter, substance abuser. And I wonder, too, if he was always seen in his neighborhood as that angry, violent kid.

We could ask the same question of the man born blind. Jesus happens upon him – a man blind from birth. His disciples want to know what he did to be so cursed. Or, was it something his parents did? We are so sophisticated now, are we not? We know too much science to come to the conclusion that blindness is caused by something we did wrong. However, I would ask every parent in the room: have you never looked at your child who may be struggling in some way, whose marriage failed, who may be handicapped in some way, who may be addicted in some way and asked yourself: What did I do wrong? What should I have done that I didn’t? Maybe the disciples question isn’t so naïve.

Jesus tells them that no one did anything wrong. The man was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed to him. In other words, the man’s affliction is the opportunity for the light to get in. In the words of the sadly now deceased song writer, Leonard Cohen:

Ring the bells, that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in. (Anthem)

Jesus is not saying that illness or suffering is a gift. Let’s be clear about that. He is saying that in our tragedies and our pain, there is an opportunity to be closer to God. We might be better able to know God because of our suffering. In our blindness, we in fact may be better able to see.

Jesus spits and makes some mud which he smears on the man’s eyes, telling him to go and wash it off in the pool of Siloam. Then Jesus disappears.

The man washes his eyes out and is able to see.

His neighbors, those who’ve known him from the time he was born, want to know if this is the same guy, you know, the guy who sat here and begged? Is this the same little boy who felt like it was him against the world?  Some said, no, it can’t be. But, it is me, he said. I am the man you know. How come you can see now, they want to know.

This guy named Jesus put mud on my eyes and told me to wash it off and when I did I could see. When I did wash it off I could see.

So where is he, then? I don’t know the man said. I don’t know. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that people tend to see us as they did when we were children? Isn’t that Joseph’s boy, they asked about Jesus? Our perceptions are trapped in our memories of how someone should look or be or not be. Here is this man who has been radically changed standing right in front of us but we don’t see him because, wait, isn’t this the blind kid? Didn’t we know him when he was in diapers? We know this kid. He is blind. Who’s blind?

The neighbors take the man who had been blind, not the man who can see, the man who had been blind to the Pharisees who have a lot of questions, one of which is: What exactly did this man do to you because if he actually mixed up the mud, that is a violation of the Sabbath, it being work. The Pharisees don’t believe the man.

What keeps us from seeing? Is it perhaps our preconceptions and our notion of what is tradition? In the movie about the Washington Post and the release of the Pentagon Papers, the owner of the paper, Katherine Graham struggles against the perception on the part of her advisors that a) she is a woman and therefore doesn’t know anything, b) she inherited the paper from her husband and therefore doesn’t know anything and c) there are traditional ways, safe ways to run a paper and she goes against that wisdom therefore she doesn’t know anything. Who’s blind?

Since the Pharisees don’t believe the man, they go and get his parents. Is this your son? He says he was blind and now he can see. Is that so?

The parents admit he is their son. They admit he was born blind. But they chicken out when it comes to saying how their boy got his sight. Ask him yourself, they say. He’s old enough.

It seems the parents didn’t want to get kicked out of church. If they admitted that they knew who had given their son his sight, they would be talking about Jesus. Isn’t that something! Talking about Jesus could get you in trouble at church! Change is tough, isn’t it? How many parents cannot admit their child is Gay? I remember John Lewis telling about his involvement in the Civil Rights movement and how his parents were not so supportive of his activism. How many kids don’t claim their abilities as students because of what their peers will say about them – how it is un-cool to be smart? One of my friends in college was from Tupelo Mississippi. We keep in touch at Christmas. One year she wrote me that her parents had disowned her because her daughter married a black man. Maybe they, too, were afraid of what their church folk would say. Change is hard. But that is what Jesus did – he changed people – blind beggars, an outcast woman, a Pharisee, a leper. And, you know what, sometimes Jesus changed people even on Sunday, even when it broke the law, even when it upset the church folk. Who’s blind?

Here’s the thing. There are a lot of blind people in this story. The disciples are blind because they cling to their preconception that illness or misfortune is caused by sin. The neighbors are blind because they cannot see past how they first got to know this man as a man born blind. That’s what he will always be to them. The Pharisees are blind because they can’t see that someone other than Moses can be God’s messenger and because they cannot allow restorative work if it breaks the rules. The parents are blind because they can’t own up to their son in his new self if it means they get kicked out of the community, the church, the synagogue, whatever. The only ones in this story who aren’t blind are Jesus…and the man born blind! Who’s blind?

According to the church calendar the Sunday before Lent begins is Transfiguration Sunday. Jesus takes three of his disciples up on a mountain and suddenly there is a blinding light and Jesus is changed right in front of their eyes. I always maintain that it wasn’t just Jesus who was changed. Because of what they saw, the disciples were changed too. They had been blind, but now they could see. They would trudge down the mountain, back into the darkness of the world where all the hurting people were waiting for them. They would carry with them a changed image of who Jesus is, a source of light not even the crucifixion could extinguish. I think they had a sense of possibility they did not have before.

Jesus comes along and he cracks us up. He points out Nicodemus’ flawed sense of security. He points out the Samaritan woman’s need for fulfillment. He showed the disciples how limited their view was. He reveals to us our sightlessness. We all have cracks, Jesus seems to say. We are all broken. That is how the light gets in!

Words Matter
Rev. Christa Fuller Burns

Faith Presbyterian Church
John 4:1-42 – 4 February 2018

Anyone who travels to Cuba on our church-to-church trips knows that there most always is some drama. My most recent trip just the week before last was to attend a gathering of pastors. It was to be a retreat and it was decided to have some time during which we considered the stresses of our professions and how we deal with those stresses. Our Cuban partners had acquired a psychologist to facilitate these discussions. On the very first morning, in the very first conversation, there was some drama. Our resident psychologist began the session by speaking of couples and the unique issues ministry poses for couples. Hands immediately went up. Some of my American colleagues objected to the focus on couples. First of all, not everyone in the circle was part of a couple, as evidenced by my presence. I am not sure I understand all the dynamics of that discussion. What I do remember is that the Cubans pointed out that the word for “couple” in Spanish is the same word for “partner”. Words matter.

When he was running for president, Barak Obama was accused by his opponent of having a lot of words but not much experience. In a speech in which he addressed this criticism, Obama argued, “Words matter”. I watched that speech this week. It was poignant to hear someone who could use words in such a beautiful and moving way – a skill not much in evidence these days.

The use of words is a main theme in the film, The Darkest Hour, in which Winston Churchill sets out to convince the English nation not to capitulate to Hitler despite the urging of some of country’s most influential leaders. When Churchill gives his speech in the House of Commons that completely changes the direction of the war, Lord Halifax observes that Churchill “mobilized the English language and sent it into battle”. Words matter.

For the author of the Gospel of John, words matter. My Gospel of John guru, Ray Brown, points out John’s predilection for word plays in reference to the passage we heard this morning.

Our text reads “Jesus had to go through Samaria”. Jesus did not have to go through Samaria. There were other ways to get where he was going. Samaria was to be avoided. Samaritans were to be avoided. They were the Jews who did not get shipped off to Babylon. They were regarded as unclean, as heathen. Samaritans were to be avoided. None the less, Jesus goes to Samaria. He is tired and thirsty and he sits down at a well. It was the middle of the day and it was hot.

A Samaritan woman shows up with her jug. Jesus asks her for a drink of water. By the way, the text tells us, his disciples had gone to the 7-eleven to pick up lunch. You talking to me, the woman wants to know? You – a Jewish man –  speaking to a woman…a Samaritan woman at that? Jesus and the woman engage in a conversation which, by the way, is the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone and it is with a woman, a Samaritan woman. It becomes apparent that Jesus and the woman are not talking about the same kind of water. The woman comes back at him – you don’t have a bucket, the well is deep – where are you going to get living water? Jesus tells her that the water he is talking about gives eternal life. If we drink it, we will never be thirsty again. The woman is talking about two kinds of water – sedentary well water and flowing water which is fresher and preferable to well water. Jesus is talking about the water of eternal life. It is all water but the meaning is very different. Words matter.

Jesus tells the woman to go and bring back her husband. The woman says she doesn’t have a husband. Jesus knows that. You’ve had five husbands, he says, and the man you’re living with now is not your husband.

This exchange has led scholars to portray the Samaritan woman as a woman of ill repute. I used the word “prostitute” in a sermon one time and people objected to the use of that word in mixed company. Words matter. So I will say “woman of ill repute”. However, it needs to be pointed out that just because this woman had five husbands does not mean she was a loose woman. Perhaps she was divorced. Perhaps her husbands died leaving her a widow. Perhaps she is living with her husband’s brother who was simply obeying the Levirate law about looking out after his brother’s wife. Indeed, perhaps the woman is more of a victim than a harlot. How does the story change if we see this woman as a victim – a person who has no means, no power, no respect from the other women? Maybe she was ashamed which is why she comes for water at noon when no one else is out. Words matter.

The woman continues to ask Jesus questions about where right worship takes place: I see that you are a prophet (“see”. by the way, is code in John for “to understand”.) In other words, the woman gets it! Words matter. My people, she says, claim Mt. Gerizim is the right worship place. But, your people say it is Jerusalem.

And Jesus answers her. It doesn’t matter, Jesus says, whether it is this mountain or that mountain. What matters is that you worship God in spirit and honestly.

The woman says, Well, I know this. I know that the Messiah is coming.

And Jesus answers with the first of his “I Am” statements.

At that moment, the disciples show up; back from their shopping trip. They’re shocked to see Jesus talking with that woman but they don’t say anything. The woman puts down her jar and leaves. She leaves behind the symbol of what she was looking for – her water jar. Does that mean she does not need it anymore?

The disciples say “Let’s eat.” Jesus says I have food to eat that you know nothing about. Here is the word play again. The disciples want to know if Jesus already ate. Did someone else bring lunch?  Jesus is talking about another kind of food, the kind you get from God. He is talking about harvesting – the fields are ripe for the harvest, he says. Does he mean that, as they speak, the Samaritan woman is telling her town folk that they should come and hear this man who told her everything about herself? Has the Samaritan woman been in town sowing seed while the disciples were worried about lunch? Has this Samaritan woman become the first real preacher of the gospel? John tells us that many Samaritans of the city believed in Jesus because of the woman’s word. Yes. Words matter.

The story of the Samaritan woman comes on the heels of last week’s encounter with Nicodemus. Nicodemus had credentials. He had a college diploma from Johns Hopkins with a gold sticker on it but he does not get Jesus. When Jesus starts talking about being born again, Nicodemus does not get it and I wonder if its because Nicodmeus can only understand “being born” as meaning physical birth. Words matter.

In Samaria, on the other hand, Jesus has an encounter with a woman- uneducated, unwanted, from a place that is disrespected and despised. Do we think this woman totally got Jesus? Do we…totally get Jesus? I mean, I am in my sixties. I’ve been doing this sort of thing a long time – studying the Bible, trying to preach the Bible. And I have to say I am not totally sure I understand what Jesus is saying in this passage about water of life and the harvest and fruit for eternal life.

But I do get this: I know what it means to say I am thirsty for the kind of water Jesus offers us. I know that I want the water that gushes up within us and gives life.! Maybe that is why I like poets so much – poets are willing to live with abstract realities. Poets use words to describe things they may not completely understand. And, so the poet writes, “Another morning and I wake with thirst for the goodness I do not have.” “Who knows what will finally happen or where I will be sent, yet already I have given a great many things away, expecting to be told to pack nothing, except the prayers which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning.” (Mary Oliver, Thirst, p.69)

Isn’t that what the well woman had – a thirst for the goodness she knew she didn’t have? We don’t have to understand it. We simply have to be honest about what it is we need and then we need to be open to strangers who show up and tell us everything we need to know: The water I can give you is a spring of water that bubbles up into eternal life!