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February 24, 2008

Fully Known, Loved, and Alive

Sermon: Fully Known, Fully Loved, Fully Alive
(Before you read this sermon, read the Gospel of John 4:5-42)

Having lived in the Midwest my entire life, I probably take water for granted. In fact, I love fresh water lakes so much that I can’t imagine being very far from one. I don’t know what it’s like to have to walk miles to the nearest well, carrying a container on my head that will hold whatever water we will use until the next trip. I am familiar with closing up cottages for the winter. That includes shutting off the water, crawling under a cottage and opening up the hot and cold water valves. You also turn on all the faucets inside the cottage. This is so that the water in the pipes drains out and doesn’t freeze, bursting the pipes and making a big mess in the spring.

When I was younger, we’d come to the cottage in the winter. We’d take the shutters off the back door and come inside. My grandfather had one of those indoor/outdoor thermometers. We’d run to see what the temperature was inside the cottage and sure enough. Usually, it was warmer outside!

The water wasn’t hooked up so we’d have to schlep through the snow to the artesian well that runs 24/7 and fetch a pail of water. The bucket was not shaped like the plastic buckets we have today. They were metal with a thin metal handle, short sided and large based. I’d put the handle on the spicket, and wait for the bucket to fill up.

Why is it I always let the water get so high? The water would be up near the top and so heavy as I tried to lift it off the spicket. And then I had to carry it back to the house, trying not to spill the ice cold water on my pants or mittens, up the steps, open the door and into the house without spilling some on the floor…

So I guess I know a little bit about schlepping water. We need it to survive that’s for sure. But what I relate to more is the woman’s feeling of being isolated and alone. When you draw water from a desert well at high noon it’s a safe assumption that you will be alone. Her timing was intentional. She went to the well when no one else would be there for a number of reasons, mainly self-preservation.
She was tired of the stares, the whispers, being ignored, being treated as if she was less than everyone else. She felt unworthy. She felt like a second class citizen.

Logically, this encounter wasn’t even supposed to happen in the first place. Jews and Samaritans didn’t mix. Jews looked down on Samaritans, labeled them dogs, mongrels, half-breeds. Samaritans were Jews who had intermarried with foreigners centuries before and thus diluted their pure bloodline. A Jew would walk many extra miles to prevent passing through Samaria. Certainly, they would never get close enough to a Samaritan to possibly become unclean. Let alone a Samaritan, woman…

But if we’ve learned anything about Jesus up to this point, we know that he is beyond conventional. He will not allow our sorry, misguided prejudices to dictate his course…Jesus intentionally goes to Samaria—he speaks to a Samaritan woman.

If Jesus, a stranger in town knew that she had five husbands, you can bet that everyone in her hometown knew her situation too. It doesn’t matter what kind of society you live in, whether or not women are seen as commodities to be purchased or partners in a marriage, we know this unnamed woman was isolated and alone. No one would choose to go to a desert well during the hottest part of the day unless there was no other option or a very compelling reason.

So what the Jews had done to the Samaritans, they also did to each other. Here’s the thing about human beings. We make judgments and decisions about each other quickly and often without any in depth or knowledge. We call these judgments labels. Once we are labeled a certain way, that’s how we are seen and treated by the community in which we live or work. We label each other and then proceed to see the label we’ve attached to each other rather than the person underneath.

These labels tend to isolate us from each other. Usually the labels have a negative connotation. You know what they are. Positive labels can isolate us too. If we see someone as successful and together, we don’t see when they are hurting because we don’t see past the label. And carrying around a label of successful and “all together” carries the baggage of always having to be that way.

Author Linda Hollies describes a situation where a successful business woman was trying to cope with tragedy in her life and no one seemed to notice her pain. Her son had contracted AIDS and he swore her to secrecy. Within one year, he had suffered and died. Three months later her aunt died, and three months after that her 85 year old father passed away. The pressure mounted, the pain increased. She went to church every Sunday, waiting, hoping that someone would notice, reach out, and care. No one did. She was isolated and alone in her pain.

Jesus came into the Samaritan woman’s life and offered her a way out of the isolation. Jesus stepped into her life and he engaged her in conversation. Do you think any people in her community took time to engage her in conversation? Jesus did. And their conversation is the longest recorded in the Gospel of John. During their time together, Jesus revealed to her that he was the one the people had been waiting for. In the course of the conversation, the woman realized that Jesus knew all her mistakes, all her shortcomings, and he still wanted to offer her this gift of living water.

With him, she was seen for the woman she really was, the woman beyond the labels, and she was loved. We see her coming alive in front of us. Her insecurities about who she was melted away and she not only received the living water, she became part of the living water. It ran in and through her! Her spirit was revived from the love and acceptance offered to her from Jesus. And she became fully alive, overflowing with the spirit.

As a result of being infused with the Spirit, she radiated life. It flowed from her like water. As spiritual beings each one of us has the ability to positively, or negatively, affects those around us.

“Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah can he?” The people who had labeled and outcast her saw that something had changed inside of her. They went to see for themselves what had happened. Not only that, she had stripped off the label that people put on her.

Her experience of Jesus, pointed others in his direction and they then had the opportunity to be fully known, fully loved, fully alive…

God knows all about you—the strong capable man, the scared little girl, the dishonest manager, the misunderstood teenager, the jealous friend, the faithful child, the worried elder, the secret hoarder —and God loves you fully. Are you going to stay isolated and alone, or are you going to step out of the cold and into the living waters of grace?

Fill my cup Lord, I lift it up Lord. Come and fill the thirsting in my soul. Bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more. Fill my cup, fill it up and make me whole. (UMH 641)…Pause…. Make me whole Lord so that I can be the one who engages someone in conversation. Fill me up Lord so that the love I have received from you can flow freely from me to someone who feels isolated and alone. Fill me up so I will look beyond label or mask and see one person today for who they truly are. Fill me with your love and compassion that others may feel and sense your love through me.

The fresh waters are still iced over in our area and points north of here. But the living waters of God can flow when the pipes are still turned off. The living waters of God can flow as we wait for Spring to arrive. In fact, it might warm us up a little if we allowed the living waters of God to flow through us so that others could experience a taste of that living water and then seek the source for themselves.

Posted by vickie at 10:00 AM