Third Sunday in Lent (A/RCL)

John 4.5-42

February 24, 2008

Holy Trinity, Manasquan

            I turned on the radio part-way through a story about trees on Fifth Avenue, across the street from Saks and St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  Many of us can picture that location, close as it is to Rockefeller Center.  I was afraid it would be a sad story about the trees having a disease and needing to be cut down or something.  But it wasn’t.  Instead it was a fascinating story about just how those trees came to have thorns…. 

            The expert being interviewed reminded listeners that thorns don’t grow by coincidence.  They’re a protective adaptation, developed very slowly over time.  Thorns protect plants, shrubs, trees, flowers, from specific dangers.  But what would that danger be in New York City?  Pigeons?  Pollution?  One passerby laughingly suggested cabdrivers J.  Botanists compared the size and shape of the thorns on Fifth Avenue with those found in other places.  The closest match is to thorns that grow on acacia (honey locust) trees in Africa.  On that continent far away they protect trees from elephants who like to nibble on the bark.  There are no hungry elephants in Manhattan these days unless the Circus is performing at Madison Square Garden.  There was a form of elephant that lived on Manhattan Island 11,000 years ago, though: the mastodon, whose immense, impressive skeleton and tusks now reside at the Museum of Natural History.  Mother Nature takes millions of years to produce protective thorns, so she doesn’t offload them quickly.  Mastadons may be extinct, but the thorns on those trees on Fifth Avenue are still alive and well!

            People develop thorns, too.  We can be like the honey locust or the rosebush (or the porcupine with its quills) when threatened.  We don’t want to get hurt, so we get prickly, and find ways of keeping other people at arm’s length.  In today’s Gospel, the woman at the well is a bit prickly when Jesus abruptly says, “Give me a drink” (John 4.7).  We can almost imagine her narrowing her eyes to slits as she asks,

“How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”

(John 4.9)

She was surprised that a Jewish man would talk to her at all, no less ask her for something, in a way making himself vulnerable, by suggesting that she had something to give that he needed.  She was also suspicious, because Jews and Samaritans had been enemies for a couple of hundred years before she and Jesus met at Jacob’s well.

            Men and women meeting at wells have a special history, a positive connotation in Scripture.  Isaac met his wife-to-be Rebekah at a well (Gen. 24.10-61); Jacob laid eyes on his beloved Rachel at a well (Gen. 29.1-20); Moses met his wife Zipporah at another well, in Midian.  All those couples ended up getting married.  Jesus wasn’t going to the well on the look-out for a bride, of course.  But He was searching for someone to witness to the world about His identity as Messiah, and to broadcast His mission to bring all people to “worship the Father in spirit and in truth” (John 4.23).

            As we said, it was a bit of a rocky start between Jesus and this woman with the water jar.  He intrigued her by saying He could give her living water that would “become in [her] a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (John 4.14).  She really didn’t know what He was talking about, but she hung in the conversation and then was completely “wowed” when Jesus told her things about herself that she hadn’t shared, namely that she’d been with five husbands and now lived with someone outside of marriage. 

            A lot used to be made of that marital history, and I learned in the past the “woman with a past” was at the well at noon to avoid her neighbors who detested her because of it.  But more recent studies say we shouldn’t make her morality any more of an issue for ourselves than it was for Jesus.  The point isn’t that she was shunned by her neighbors because of the number of partners she had.  The point was that all Samaritans were shunned by Jews because of the bad blood between them, and the Jews’ sense of superiority.

            In this meeting of hearts and minds, Jesus gets behind the thorns the Samaritan woman had grown to protect herself.  He does that with His personal touch: His initiation of conversation, His willingness to have a theological discussion with her, His knowledge of her private history.  Unlike Nicodemus, whose story we heard last week, and whose story comes immediately before that of the woman at the well, this woman without a name and from a despised race responds to Jesus with enthusiasm and runs to invite others to “Come and see!” (John 4.29)

            They do “come and see” on the sheer strength of her excitement.  They use her faith as a springboard for their own.  But then they meet Jesus in person and come to a first-hand and not just a second-hand belief that He is indeed “the Savior of the world,” a precious name for Jesus that appears nowhere else in St. John’s Gospel except for on the lips of this less-than-second-class citizen. 

            News of salvation can come through the strangest channels.  That’s one of the short lessons in this long story.  Why does Jesus befriend, save, and choose such odd people to bear witness to Him?  Why does He tell the Gerasene demoniac who used to run around naked and out of his mind, “Go home and tell [your friends and family] what God has done for you”?  Is he the best character reference Jesus could find?  Why does He choose Mary Magdalene, a woman whose word wouldn’t even stand up in a Jewish traffic court, to carry the word of the resurrection to the frightened, skeptical, cynical disciples?  Why does He choose a Samaritan woman to be His messenger of salvation in Sychar?  Why does He choose us to witness to Him today, to our family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, students, coaches, bosses, employees?

            He chooses us because a) whom else does He have? And b) we’re imperfect enough that everyone will know the gift is God within us, not us, in and of ourselves.

            There’s another story I heard on the radio, about a former Marine named George Hill who joined the military in 1970, became addicted to drugs and alcohol, and ended up homeless for 12 years.   One day he was laying on the sidewalk, and a man who looked even worse than he did approached him.  The man’s skin was so dirty you could only see its true color at the knuckles and joints; he had rags strapped to his feet in place of shoes; his hair was a rat’s nest of two filthy dred locks.  The fellow reached into the pocket of his tattered pants, pulled out four quarters and handed them to George, whose name he didn’t even know.  He said, “Hey man, you take this.  I feel sorry for you.”  Then he walked away.

            George was so shocked that this pathetic man saw him as even more pathetic in his sorry state, that he was shaken from a twelve year stupor, used the money as bus fare to the nearest in-patient detox unit, and turned his life around.  He has now worked for the Veterans Administration for ten years.

            The man who brought George good news in that very strange way was an unlikely candidate to put George back on the straight and narrow.  The woman who brought good news to her friends in Sychar was an unlikely candidate to carry salvation tidings.  We probably feel like we are unlikely candidates to tell people “Come and see.”  But we’re not.  We’re all God has.  We’re all God needs.  God needs our voice through which to speak, our love through which to embrace, our invitation to draw God’s children to God’s heart through worship, service, community.  Someone is waiting for you to overcome your fear and to invite them to “Come and see.”  May God give you the courage to do just that this Lenten season.  Don’t be afraid of thorns you may see or sense.  You can get around them, with care, by God’s grace.  Remember that they are there for a reason: to protect something tender -- and precious.  Amen

Pastor Mary Virginia Farnham