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Is The Lord Among Us Or Not? |
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Written by Jeanne Knepper
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Sunday, 24 February 2008 |
IS THE LORD AMONG US, OR NOT?
Exodus 17:1-7; John 4:1-42
February 24, 2008
Yesterday was a difficult day for me. The Oregon-Idaho Reconciling United Methodists met—a group I ordinarily enjoy the company of. The focus of the meeting was to prepare and bless people who will be going to the General Conference of the United Methodist Church in late April and early May. As a part of that preparation and blessing, Deborah Maria, the moderator, had asked those of us who have been there before to speak about what people needed to know and how they should prepare for General Conference.
I’ve gone to General conference, as an activist and an advocate, 4 times, in 1988, 1992, 1996, and 2000. I couldn’t bring myself to go in 2004—my health was too fragile, and, I think, my spirit as well. Marcia went without me that year. And this year, I struggled with the question of whether I would go again or not. In January, Marcia and I had a heart-to-heart conversation with the Staff-Parish Relations Committee, one where we talked of the reasons for going, and for not going. We decided, together, that Marcia and I would go this year. Once we had had that conversation, we contacted the people who are organizing the activist presence and offered our services. I will be a monitor for one committee at General Conference, the committee on higher education and ministry, the committee that deals with issues of ordination.
There is so much that is good and wonderful about this church of ours. I believe that; I live out of that conviction. But there are also things that are terribly wrong with our church. We seek to be the realm of God, the body of Christ alive in the world, but there are times, painful times, when we are as clueless as the disciples who came back to that well in Samaria and wondered, why is Jesus talking to her? We have important work to do and places to go, and she just isn’t on our agenda for today.
I’m sure you understand that men of that time and place did NOT talk to women in public, that Jews avoided all contact with Samaritans, that women who had relations with men who weren’t their husbands were stoned, not engaged in conversation. Jesus was breaking all the rules here, and for what? To talk about God, and God’s love to a sinful, outcast Samaritan woman who had the gall to engage him, to argue with him, in public.
Of course you know that the villages of the day didn’t have running water. Twice a day, in the early morning and again as evening approached, the women of the village would go to the village well. Morning and night they would gather together, talking as each of them filled her buckets or jars, a time for the women to gather, to exchange news, and to care and share with one another. But this woman was at the well at high noon. Now, do we suppose she went there then because she liked working by herself in the hot midday sun? Or do we imagine that she went to the well then because she was not welcome to be there with the “good” women of the village, or because she was tired of being shunned and judged by the ones who should have been her social community?
This is what Jesus would have known, as the woman came to the well while he was resting there—that she was an outcast in her own village, that she was bright and maybe belligerent, that she had no place, really, where she could belong, where she could live in confidence and safety. And that she was not willing to be a victim, not willing to knuckle under to the whispers and insinuations that she was not fit for human company.
And this is what he did. He engaged her in that most sacred of all activities for observant Jews and Samaritans alike, a conversation about God, about the spirit of God, about the living water that could quench her thirst. He engaged her; he recognized and named the reasons for her life as an outcast within her community, and then, amazingly, he took her as a disciple, sent her back to her people as a bearer of the good news of God’s abundant love for all.
Well, there it is. In the church, you see, we have been struggling for many years now about who is “good enough” to be a bearer of the good news. Who can be ordained? Who can be leaders? Who, even, can join this company of fragile, fractious, and sometimes funny followers of Jesus?
If we would listen carefully, I think we would know that the answer is that God can call anyone to be a bearer of good news. But too often, we fill our ears with the humming of our own songs of self-importance, making it hard to hear God’s message of welcome. We think, sometimes we insist, that there was a part left out of the story, the part where Jesus said, “Okay, listen. You are a sinner, woman. You dared to challenge me; you have had a bunch of husbands and are now living with someone you aren’t married to; you need to repent and get down on your knees and completely change who you are, and then, go get the man in your life, so I can tell him how to make you shape up, and then, well, be really grateful that I stopped to listen to your sorry self.” Wasn’t that in there? Betty—you read it—didn’t we just miss that part? I mean, we want to be disciples of Jesus, and even they were clear that there was something really wrong going on here. Maybe the disciples needed to pass a new resolution at their next gathering, at their next conference—no loose solitary Samaritan well-women can be received, ordained, or appointed to serve in our churches, ever. And maybe, in the meantime, they could take Jesus aside and explain to him, look, we’ve got a campaign to run here and you need to stay on message. None of these side conversations—we’re going to get really bad press from this one, and, well, you just know that this is going to make the Pharisees even angrier with you. You keep doing this and, don’t you know, you’re gonna get killed in the polls—and maybe for real as well.
So, as I was preparing to talk about going to General Conference, I was remembering all the ugly, un-Christian, hateful things I’ve experienced from folk who, like these first disciples, just wanted the body of Christ, the church, to stay on message and stop engaging the unwelcome people at the margins—and then, I guess three things happened.
One was that people listened to each other, and shared from their hope and their pain, and the meeting was a real encounter—sort of like the conversation that Jesus had with this unnamed woman. No matter how bad things have been, it is so important to be listened to, to be engaged, to experience that people care enough to let you speak your own story and truth. That carries over to lots of life. Everywhere we go, people in pain want to be heard. People struggling, whether it’s with injustice or bad habits, want to be heard, not dismissed. This is one of the drafts of fresh water that we can pull out of our well, to listen to the ones who are alone, outcast, in pain, suffering—for whatever reason. In the game of discipleship, listening trumps judgment.
A second thing that happened was that I remembered that this struggle we are engaged in, for a more open and more inclusive church, is a struggle that goes to the heart of who we are, as persons, as followers, as a church. It’s not done yet because we continue to be fallible human beings who want to badly to have someone to look down on, to have someone, someone who is worse than I am, someone who I can point to and say, thank you God, for not making me be one of them. We, all of us, are so tempted to respond to our own feelings of unworthiness by directing our own attention, and that of others, towards the unholy them, whoever they are. So, when I go to General Conference, perhaps it will help me to remember that those people who think it’s a sin and a crime for me to be your pastor are really quite a bit like Peter, or Thomas, or one of the other disciples—they just haven’t figured it out yet, that Jesus would really sit down and talk with someone like me, and then tell me to go tell the good news. Or with someone like you, whoever you are.
But then, the third thing that happened to me, between yesterday’s meeting and today’s sermon was that I came home and logged on to my e-mail and read a beautiful message from Carolyn Hammett. She sent on a short film on the theme, “I have cancer, but cancer doesn’t have me.” “I have experienced injustice, but injustice doesn’t have me.” “I know suffering, but suffering isn’t who I am.” “I can learn from this hard time in my life that I am strong, and courageous, and caring, and beloved—and if I learn that, then, however hard it is, it is also a blessing.”
When the Israelites, fleeing from the slavery and oppression of Pharaoh, came into hard times in the desert, they challenged Moses, “Is the Lord among us, or not?’ And we ask the same question when we are in our own desert times, “Where is God? Why is it so hard? Is God with us, or not?”
And the answer, then as now, is that God is in the desert, offering us refreshing water that will be drawn by someone we didn’t expect to be a disciple, a bearer of good news. God doesn’t promise us a church without fault, a body without cancer, a relationship without pain, a life without great hunger and thirst for healing and justice. God knows life isn’t a simple skip in the park. Sometimes we are parched and dry and dying for a word of refreshment. Sometimes, we think we are the one who needs care, and learn, to our surprise, that we are called to be the bearers of good news to others. Sometimes, the care comes from unexpected disciples. God is at work all over the place, in the deserts of our lives. Using us, using each other, calling us all, even those we think unworthy, to be the bearers of good news and grace and love. And that is such amazing good news. It makes us want to jump up and run and holler and say, to one and all—“I just met this amazing Jesus, and he knows who I am and he still sent me to tell you that God loves you. Now and always. No exceptions. Spread the word.” Spread the word. Spread the word. Amen.
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