3rd Sunday in Lent, Year A: The Living Water of Belovedness

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark

3 Lent, year A

The Very Reverend Tyler B. Doherty, Dean & Rector

It’s a heart-breaking picture. This nameless Samaritan woman who has three strikes against her—as a woman, as a member of a despised, outcast race, and as someone who’s been married five times and is living with a man she’s not married to—is trudging to the well in the heat of the noonday sun. It’s a picture of isolation and shame as she lugs her water jug to the well all by herself at a time when the other women of her community have the luxury of remaining indoors. So complete is her isolation that with the sun directly overhead, she doesn’t even have her own shadow for company.

I think of all those people who have experienced similar kinds of shaming in their lives, who because of the color of their skin, their country of origin, their sex, gender, or sexual orientation, their social class find themselves trudging alone, day after day, to the well of exclusion, drinking the water that never slakes their thirst. Lowering the bucket into the well of “not enough” they depart as thirsty as ever only to return the next day, at high noon, alone, to fill the jar that only makes them more parched.

And, in this time of the COVID-19 pandemic, I think of all those who have been quarantined, or who are voluntarily practicing social distancing. Undoubtedly, this is the right thing to do for one’s own health and out of love for one’s neighbor, but the question is how can our faith assist us in being alone not turning into loneliness? How can we stay connected to our source and maintain our peace, our joy even, when the airwaves are filled to overflowing with sometimes frightening pronouncements? How can we remain planted in the living waters so that we can be resilient and fruitful in times of crisis?

It’s into this picture that the boundary-crossing love of Jesus makes its intervention. Tired, hungry, and enjoying a moment of rest, Jesus sees the Samaritan woman who has been rendered invisible. He reaches out. He initiates an exchange that will transform this nameless, shamed, outsider into the first evangelist, the first person to proclaim Jesus as Messiah to Samaritan city of Sychar.

That’s the first thing to notice, here. Jesus takes the initiative and calls the woman into encounter and relationship. Love reaches out. Love beckons and calls even when everything seems lost, and the situation intractable. Nobody in her town will talk to her. They won’t meet her eyes. When she goes to the market she can hear the townsfolk whispering behind her back as she buys her figs and olive oil. Jesus interrupts that whole pattern because that’s what love does.

The Samaritan woman is so used to being either invisible or object of ridicule and scorn that she tries to fend off Jesus’ attempt to create relationship. No, no, you don’t understand, I’m a woman, and Samaritan, you can’t ask a drink of me. I’ll just go about my business and pretend that this whole thing never happened!

And this is where it gets interesting. Jesus begins to unfold for the Samaritan woman who she truly is in the eyes of God, in the eyes of unconditional love. That’s the living water of which Jesus speaks: the living water of our belovedness, the living water of our true identity as a child of God created in God’s image in likeness which no amount of exclusion, hate, shame can take away. Indeed, it’s the living water that’s available always and everywhere—God with us, for us, and ahead of us no matter the circumstances.

And the astounding thing is that this love is not something we have to earn. It’s free and it’s irrevocable. As Paul writes in his Letter to the Romans, this love “has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” We don’t have to get our ducks in a row for this love to break upon us. “While we were still sinners Christ died for us,” Paul writes. God’s economy is not a meritocracy. The invitation to the banquet has gone out. The gift has been given. That love, that living water, is who we really are. And the question is really whether or not we can let ourselves be loved. Whether we can see those inherited, diminishing stories for the falsehoods they truly are and let them be washed way. Whether we can stop, pause, and drink deeply from the well of the sacrament of the present moment which is the only place God ever is.

The Samaritan woman, through encounter with the living water that is the person of Jesus, sees and experiences in the depths of her being that she is not the stories she has internalized about herself. Her race, her sex, her gender, her bloodline, her tribe cannot diminish or pollute the pure stream of love that is truly who she is. Fear is not who she is. Illness is not who she is. That’s the great freedom of the Christian life in God. She discovers within herself a deep well of belovedness that silences all those other narratives.

Like Jesus who tells the disciples who insist that he needs to eat something, “I have food to eat that you do not know about,” the Samaritan woman has come in contact with the very source of all Beauty, Goodness, and Truth, an inexhaustible treasure house of life-giving and life-affirming sustenance not dictated or determined by outward conditions. The well is seen to be who she really is at the center of her being. This is good news in a time when churches are shuttered and we’re stuck inside. The well is here. Not just in a building, not just up on an altar. The well in a cup of coffee. The well behind the wheel of our car. The well while we wash our hands. The well as we potter about the garden.

And the amazing thing is that once the Samaritan woman has made contact with this ground of love, everything changes. She leaves her water jug, symbolic of all the old stories about herself she lugged around for years at Jacob’s well and goes back to the very people who ostracized her in the first place. She returns to the scene of the crime, the very community that is responsible for her exclusion and shame not as a sword of vengeance, but as life-giving water for others. She comes as a witness, an evangelist of the Good News of Jesus Christ bearing the balm of forgiveness and reconciliation.

It’s no mistake that her first words to the townsfolk echo the calling of the first disciples—“Come and see!” she says. “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!” and loved me anyways. And loved me anyways. The greatest words Jesus never spoke. The Samaritan woman is freed from the claustrophobic narrative about herself and she goes towards the people who scorned her to free them from their addiction to scapegoating her. The healing works both ways. Certainly, the woman was wounded by them casting her out, but the community was also sick as a result of this exclusion.

The implications for us in this season of Lent and in light of the COVID-19 pandemic are pretty clear. The first to see and name those diminishing stories that we’ve inherited from parents, teachers, nation, and sometimes church. Naming the hurt, giving voice to the wound is extremely powerful and important. What wells of water that only make us more thirsty have we been drinking from? What places in our lives need to be irrigated with waters of Jesus’ boundary-crossing love? Notice, name, and hold in love the fear, the panic, the anxiety these times are likely to produce. There’s no point pretending it’s not there or pushing them away. Better to cradle it like an infant in your arms. Let the little children come to me.

The second thing the Samaritan woman has to teach us is the transformative effect of coming into contact with the living water that is the person of Jesus Christ. All the holy habits and spiritual disciplines of the Church are facilitators of this transformative contact—daily prayer, reading scripture, worshipping in community, serving others, engaging in prophetic witness—all help to contact with the ground of love that is at the center of our being. These are the tradition-honored buckets for drinking from the well of the living waters that rise up to eternal life. These are the tradition-honored ways of saying “yes,” to the invitation to the banquet of divine love. These are the tradition-honored ways of unwrapping the gift that has already been given. Of course, weekly worship is out of the question, but what if this were a time to root and ground ourselves in Christ once again through prayer and scripture? What if this were a time when we drank deeply from the well of love in checking in with our neighbors by phone or e-mail? How will you lower your bucket?  How will you drink of the waters that gush up to eternal life, even here, even now?

And the third thing this encounter teaches us is that our healing is never just for ourselves. Freedom from is always freedom for. Freedom from our hurts and wounds is always in the service of showing others the healing and freedom  and forgiveness that is their birthright. The Samaritan woman comes in contact the love and forgiveness in the person of Jesus and then brims over with that love and forgiveness for others. With eyes, ears, and hearts open, we go towards those who have been damaged, diminished, whose dignity has been denied. We hear the voices of fear in our neighbors. We listen deeply. We cradle their hurts and listen to their stories of brokenness, hurt, anger and resentment. We work to change what can be changed, and then we invite them into the reality that those stories, as real and painful as they are, don’t have to be the place they live from for the rest of their lives. Those stories don’t have to be the single narrative that defines their life. Come and see. Take and eat. Drink thirsty pilgrim.

When people come to the end of their lives and look back, the questions that they most often ask are not usually, “How much is in my bank account?” or “How many books did I write?” or “What did I build?” or the like. If you have the privilege of being with a person who is conscious at the time of his or her death, you find the questions such a person asks are very simple, “Did I love well?” “Did I live fully?” “Did I learn to let go?” “Did I learn to forgive?” “Did I drink of the living water?”

Love. Fullness of life. Surrender and letting go. Forgiveness. This is living water. Drink deeply. Discover the gushing well of life that is who you really are. Then go as that water to others. It’s a thirsty world, but remaining rooted and grounded in Him will help us reach out, stay green, and bear fruit even when heat and drought come knocking on the door.