LET
GOD CHANGE YOU AND THE WORLD
JOHN
4.5-42
FEBRUARY
24, 2008
WESLEY
UNITED METHODIST CHURCH
Douglas
Norris
He
was tired. He was hot and thirsty. They had walked all morning. It
was noon. The sun was high. The dust was heavy. I wonder if Jesus
became irritable, as we do, when he was tired, hungry and thirsty!
The disciples went into town to buy food for lunch, and Jesus sat
down to rest by Jacob’s well. The well was located in the province
of Samaria, and when a Samaritan woman came to draw water from the
well, Jesus asked her for a drink, and the world has not been the
same since! What’s the big deal, some ask. A thirsty man asks a
woman for a drink of water. So what?
Most
of us have lost the full impact of the request and subsequent
conversation. We need some geography and history to understand how
radical Jesus was. Some call Jesus meek and mild. Evidently they
have never read the Gospels, or if they have, they don’t understand
the history. Samaria was a province between Galilee in the north and
Judea, of which Jerusalem was the capital, in the south. When
traveling from Galilee to Jerusalem, there was a long way around,
which most Jews took so they wouldn’t have to walk through Samaria,
but some took the short cut as did Jesus and his disciples this
particular day.
After the reign of King Solomon, who
unfortunately was an inept administrator, the nation had a civil war
and divided into two kingdoms. The northern kingdom was called
Israel. Samaria was its capital. The residents were called
Samaritans. The southern kingdom was called Judah, later Judea, and
Jerusalem was its capital. The residents were called Jews. In 720
B.C., Assyria conquered the northern kingdom and carried off the
leaders. Foreigners then moved in, and intermarriage between
Samaritans and foreigners occurred. Intermarriage horrified law
observing Jews. Jews felt the Samaritans were mongrels. Besides this
prejudice, the Samaritans believed their mountain was the holy
mountain. They built a shrine on Mt. Gerizim and claimed that it,
not the Jerusalem temple, was the proper place of worship. The Jews,
of course, disagreed. There was enmity between Jews and Samaritans.
By
the time of Jesus there had been 400 years of this hatred. No Jew
would have anything to do with a Samaritan, and certainly would not
eat with a Samaritan or drink from a Samaritan’s cup. When Jesus
told the parable of a Samaritan helping an ambushed Jew, how shocked
and horrified his listeners must have been.
In
the Scripture lesson read this morning, there was a lot happening in
this encounter at Jacob’s Well in Samaria, a lot more than just a
chance meeting between a man and a woman. Jews didn’t talk to
Samaritans, and men didn’t talk to women publicly. It was against
the rabbinic law for a man to talk to a woman in the street even if
she were his wife. A Jewish man thanked God daily that he had not
been born a woman! Women had no civil rights and took almost no part
in religious ceremonies.
Not
only did Jesus break the rules of racism and sexism by asking her for
a drink of water, he was talking to a woman of questionable
reputation. We know she was ostracized by the women of her community
because she came to the well at noon! The other women would have come
to the well at the beginning of the day. This woman had to come by
herself, but what a treat in store for her! The longest recorded
conversation of Jesus in the Bible is the one he had with the
Samaritan woman at the well. In John’s Gospel, the first person to
learn that Jesus was the Messiah was not a Jew, not a man, but a
Samaritan woman, a Samaritan woman of questionable reputation, a
woman who was ostracized by the other women of the community. Radical
Jesus broke all the rules, which Jesus loved to do.
Not
only was the conversation and interaction with the woman radical, the
response of the villagers was phenomenal. Not only did many of them
come to believe in Jesus, they announced, John 4.42, “We know that
this is truly the Savior of the world.” Not only did they
acknowledge that Jesus was the Messiah, they proclaimed that the
salvation Jesus the Messiah brings is for the whole world, and not
just from the Jews and for the Jews. It was Samaritans, not Jews, who
recognized who Jesus was. Unbelievable!
Jesus
broke through centuries of prejudice, discrimination, oppression and
just plain stupidity. John proclaims the universality of the gospel.
God’s embrace does not just include Jews or even Samaritans. God
embraces the whole world—all people, colors, classes, national
origins. The living water which Jesus offered the woman is offered
to everyone.
There
are many lessons to be drawn from this magnificent passage, but let’s
concentrate on one lesson which our world today so desperately needs
to learn: the breaking down of barriers. The preoccupation with
protecting boundaries between the chosen and the despised is not
limited to the Samaritan/Jewish conflict of the first century.
Throughout human history, people and nations have defined themselves
over against other groups. The history of race relations in the
United States, the notion of racial purity that was at the
ideological heart of Hitler’s Germany, the ethnic wars that
devastate the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Europe all have their
roots in the same prejudice and fear that divided Jews from
Samaritans.
I’ve
been talking about change for several Sundays, how difficult it is to
change, how sin is pervasive, but God does the changing. Last week,
I challenged us to turn our cups upside down, empty ourselves, and
let the Holy Spirit fill our cups and change us. Let God change you!
The lesson this morning illustrates how God changes people,
villages, and eventually the world by breaking down barriers of
prejudice, fear and hatred. Jesus broke barriers, treating the woman
at the well as fully human, and welcoming the villagers into God’s
kingdom.
Last
Sunday evening, the Day of Remembrance was a moving experience as we
recalled the unfortunate and debilitating internment of Japanese
Americans in 1942. We were challenged by Samina Faheem Sundas,
Executive Director of the American Muslim Voice, Commissioner of the
Santa Clara County Human Relations Commission, and a woman. She
pointed out the tragic similarity of the treatment of Japanese
Americans in 1942 and the treatment of Muslim Americans in 2008.
Since 9/11, like Pearl Harbor, prejudice and hostility towards
American Muslims tragically, illogically, are skyrocketing.
Barriers
are not new. Barriers are as formidable and unfortunate today as
ever. The goal of the Day of Remembrance is
to bring communities together in peace and in friendship, to show
that we are all people and that we have more in common than what is
different, so racial and religious prejudice can be eliminated.
“We
are all people”. Jesus treated the woman as fully human, a person,
and treated the villagers as equals. No longer Samaritans or Jews or
Muslims or Christians or Asians or Africans, but people. It is
amazing how barriers fall when we get to know people and realize we
are all human beings, we are all children of God, loved by God.
The
speaker Sunday evening, Samina Faheem Sundas, uses food as a method
of breaking barriers. She believes that when people eat together,
they begin to see each other as people, not objects to be feared.
She often stands on the streets of Palo Alto with a plate of food,
which she offers to share, and then engages in conversation. You
see, Muslims eat food, just as we do. Muslims like to belong, just
as we do. Muslims are people loved by God, just as we are. Food
breaks barriers.
At
the Day of Remembrance Sunday evening, I purchased a delightful book
and learned another way to break barriers. It is a book for children
called Baseball Saved Us,
by Ken Mochizuki. He was a child in the Minidoka internment camp in
Idaho. When his older brother began sassing their father, father
decided the camp needed activities so he and his friends built a
baseball field. Ken was not a natural athlete, usually the last to
be chosen for teams, but he played as hard as he could. He was
intimidated by one of the Caucasian guards in the tower that
overlooked the baseball field. He was afraid of the guard’s stare
and his stern disposition, but the day that Ken hit a home run, he
looked up at the tower, and the stern guard, with a grin on his face,
gave Ken the thumbs-up sign! Another barrier had crumbled. The
guard no longer saw the Japanese American child as an enemy, a
prisoner, traitor, a spy; but he saw a person, a little boy
determined to play baseball, and finally succeeding with a coveted
home run! Over the years, baseball has become a bridge between Japan
and America. Instead of weapons, perhaps we should teach the Iraqis,
Afghans and Iranians how to play baseball! Where did we get the idea
that change can be forced!
When
the woman at the well rushed to the village and began witnessing
about the man, questioning if he were the Messiah, the villagers
followed her back to the well. They were intrigued by her story, but
by the end of their encounter with Jesus, they were no longer
bystanders. They were no longer observers. They were no longer
second-hand believers. They had become participants. God changed
them.
Sisters
and brothers, let us move from the sidelines, move from the bleachers
and become players, working with God, cooperating with God in
changing the world—overcoming barriers of prejudice and fear by
treating people as children of God, people like us, loved by God.
Let
God change you and the world.
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