Easter Songs and Stories!

Easter Songs and Stories!

John 20:1-18

Dear Friends,

Let me first wish you again a blessed Easter! In my teen years, when I celebrated Easter in the island nation of Sri Lanka where I was born and where my father worked as a local pastor in several rural churches, he always began the Easter service with a wonderful call to worship: CHRIST IS RISEN, and people responded: CHRIST IS RISEN INDEED! How many of you who are here able to recapitulate those same childhood memories and of that kind of a call to worship? Let us try it now.

           I know you like humorous stories. In the good old days when the Syracuse University had a great basketball team in America, a coach prided himself by saying whenever his team played against any other team the stadium would be filled to the brim on that day. So one day during a big match as he looked around the stadium, he found one empty seat there. He was furious. When the half time came he went up and asked that person sitting next to that seat “Whose seat is this”? The elderly lady responded “It belongs to my late husband”. Well! Don’t you have a son, daughter, niece or nephew to fill it? She said “Yes there are. But they are all at the funeral. Friends I am glad that you are here and not anywhere else this morning and if you do get some nourishment to your soul today, please do come back.

              I like the Easter stories of the bible. It evokes excitement and exuberance in my soul no matter whether they are factual or fictional. All the gospels refer to an open grave on Easter morning. All gospels tell us that Jesus appeared to the disciples after the resurrection. Appeared to them on the road to Emmaus, appeared to them in the upper room and displayed his wounded hands. Appeared to them at the sea shore in Galilee, on a night when they failed catching any fish. After the whole night struggle the resurrected Christ directed them to the best spot where they could catch fish. Matthew and Mark and Luke report that Jesus was at Galilee after the resurrection and John refers to the same Galilee as the sea of Tiberius. I have often wondered why Galilee out of all the biblical places. Then I realized that Jesus spent 90% of his ministry in and around Galilee. Capernaum and Tire and Sidon were the places where Jesus fed the hungry, healed the sick, taught the meaning of prayer and preached the message of peace and justice in the Sermon on the Mount. So when we are summoned today to see the resurrected Jesus, we must get to Galilee. We must get to the Galilees around the world, Fairport included. Wherever people are victimized by the systems of oppression, suffer by violence and hunger, wherever the rich exploit the poor the children are forced to work as slave laborers and innocent people are tortured as political prisoners, there is a Galilee. It was on Galilee Jesus touched and blessed the little children and it was in Galilee Jesus pronounced forgiveness to those suffered from Guilt. And now even after the resurrection the Spirit person Jesus makes god’s presence real to us in every appearance, every word and in every gesture.

         Easter transcends our religious and denominational barriers. It is about the goodness of a presence. It is about love and beauty and life in its multidimensional forms. When I served for ten years as a Pastor in the Eastern coast of Sri Lanka our worship services began before dawn around 5:A.M.We dressed in white and went around the town on a procession carrying a lighted candle and sang songs accompanied by guitars, violins accordions and tambourines. As we processed, people in the neighbored also joined us. On our return to the sanctuary around 6:A.M, the organ would peel out the triumphant music in the dark, announcing “CHRIST THE LORD IS RISEN TODAY. We would see then the tropical sun rising over the Indian Ocean and the coconut palms swinging in the breeze. In that setting no matter how much the weight of suffering and sorrow immobilized me, the message of life over death simply overpowered it. The mystery of resurrection became so natural and real.

         In 1980 I travelled to the United States for the first time. I came to Rochester to study in the Divinity school. When I left my country my children were very small and I knew I was not going to see them at least for a year. They gave me an emotional send off and we wept and howled kissed and hugged and the train slowly moved. It was a one night’s journey to the city’s capital Colombo, 270 miles from home and 20 stations in between. As the train stopped in every station even though my family was not there physically I sensed their presence. The next day I came over to London and spent ten days there and flew again from Heathrow to JFK in New York. Even though my family was not with me physically I sensed them in every flight, every airport every stop. Resurrection is not about a physical transformation of a body into some extra-terrestrial beings. It is a way of seeing in the dark. It is a way of feeling connections. Just because you can’t see someone with your physical naked eye, don’t ever say they are gone. Learn to see like an owl. It has a way of seeing in pitch darkness which you and I cannot do. 

           My topic is Easter songs and stories. Here is an Easter song: “Because He Lives,” written by Gloria and Bill Gaither. The song was written in 1971 when our country was going through great turmoil. We have just crossed over the’60s of the Vietnam War, the rise of drug culture, a decade of sexual revolution.        It was a time noted for extreme radicalism expressed by the Death of God theology, and the assassinations of John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. Here was a couple – the Gaithers -- who were expecting their third child Benjamin and they struggled and prayed to God as to how were they going to bring up that child in those turbulent days and in the most crucial times. These words naturally sprang up in their hearts and then they composed the music.

           HOW SWEET TO HOLD A NEW BORN BABY, AND FEEL THE PRIDE AND JOY HE GIVES, BUT GREATER STILL THE CALM ASSURANCE, THIS CHILD CAN FACE UNCERTAIN DAYS BECAUSE HE LIVES. BECAUSE HE LIVES I CAN FACE TOMORROW AND THE LIFE IS WORTH THE LIVING JUST BECAUSE HE LIVES.

        Friends! Let me now draw your attention to today’s gospel. It was early in the morning and the grave was empty and Mary saw a person there. She surmised him to be the gardener, but to her surprise, her name was called out “Mary”. And she immediately recognized it was her Lord. She responded “Rabonai”.Which means in Hebrew a teacher or a guide. Actually it is an Eastern concept. “Guru” for us has a deeper connotation than a teacher. For in guru- disciple, relationship, there is devotion and loyalty, great affection and reverence between the two persons. Perhaps those who have seen the musical “JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR” should be able to relate more meaningfully to what I am saying here. Mary Magdalene sings in that musical, I don’t know how to love him for he has changed me. I don’t know how to take this for he moves me. Perhaps her question when she moved closely with Jesus was: WHO IS HE? She stood with Jesus on that Friday and witnessed the whole agonizing scene of crucifixion and now on Easter early in the morning she showed up at the grave, had an encounter with the risen Christ. Perhaps her question was again: WHO IS HE?

         

we want a winner

 We want a winner 041314

Matthew 21:1-11

We all want to win.  We all want a winner on our side or as our leader or our President or as our child. 

Our society has taught us that what’s important is power and control and winning and living large.  And we’ve made that our theology…..what one writer calls a theology of glory, which shows up in our need to have God be in control and always winning, punishing with eventual hell and rewarding with eventual heaven.  Pain and suffering are necessary to win.

No pain no gain…..Winning in athletics, for example, of course costs something:  not just sore muscles, but damage to family and psyche and society.  It’s the price of winning—eye always on the prize.

Today, on palm Sunday, the theology of glory leads us to wave palm branches, and then jump straight to Easter Sunday….eye on the prize, God wins.

True as far as it goes.  But it doesn’t work for me.  The week between PS and ES is real.  Between parade and party lies passion, suffering.  I need a deeper theology….what Luther called the theology of the cross.

Theology of the cross is more concerned with what looks like failure, not winning, with what seems to be disaster, and the absence of God in our desperate and despairing times.  

The people at the palm parade were looking for a winner, because they were desperate and despairing, but they had a clear winner theology and a certain idea of what the winner would look like and do—heal their hurt, trample the occupying forces and give them their independence back.

And what does Jesus do?  Shows up on a donkey.  Already the glory theology is being challenged. Sure, some may have remembered the old prophecy about their savior coming on a donkey, as Matthew later projects, but these weren’t the learned and elite; they were busy greeting Pilate arriving in another parade of glory, with horses, and soldiers and power and glory.

The people at this parade come, like us, with needs, some physical or mental, some social—Hosanna, save us!  Help! 

The forces of death still seem to be prominent in OUR empire today.  Like them, we see sorrow, and humiliation, and disgrace and injustice all over the place.  And it’s real.  As real today as it was for those parade go-ers and Jesus 2000 years ago.  We too seek to transcend that, sometimes by holding fast to Easter, even as a secular holiday, sometimes with practices like meditation and yoga, hoping against hope that winning will win.  We cling more tightly to our theology of winning, that something we can do, or something bigger and more powerful than us, will make it all better. 

But these coming 7 days tell us otherwise.  They call us back to a deeper spiritual reality.  And offer us a just-as-real, but deeper hope.

That reality is that new life, new hope, always involves sacrifice, not the no-pain-no-gain kind, that is self-centered, but sacrifice that is self-giving, other-centered.   The kind of sacrifice we’ve seen historically in the 60s human rights deaths, or in the struggle to be rid of apartheid in SA, or peacemakers in foreign lands.  The eye on the prize here isn’t all about me and my winning. Sometimes the self-giving comes in acts of com-passion (quote from Spiritual Literacy)

Nothing new and meaningful comes without self-giving, and it’s no cheap hope that’s offered here-to that crowd nor to us today.  You see, what’s on offer following the com-passion Jesus way means dying…

Dying to the self that pretends

Dying to the certainty that I can go it alone, or that its all about me

Dying to control

Dying to who we think we are

And living….

Living into the true self that knows it is part of something much bigger

Living into the uncertainty of trusting others

Living into giving up control to God’s way

Living into a new identity of compassion, instead of winning.

Not easy.  Sometimes painful, often arduous, and certainly countercultural.  No wonder few follow.

But it’s FULL, abundant, often joyful life, because we go through suffering knowing that death doesn’t have the last word.  Life does.

Here in Jesus we find the answer to our need….not the answer we think we need.

Here in God’s way we find real hope amid real pain.

So what’s your theology?   The theology of glory, of winning.   The all-American dream theology.

Or the theology of the cross, of self-giving, of compassion.

Really?

The question in our last hymn is a real one.  We live in a world of hurt and injustice.  A world Jesus came to touch and heal through compassion, not winning.   Will we answer as he calls us?

The Lazarus Story (theva)

The Lazarus Story!

John 11:17-37

Dear Friends!

Grace and peace are already ours for we belong to the family of Jesus the Christ. The Lazarus story was one of my favorites among the Sunday school classics. For at age 6, I was mesmerized by the power of Jesus to give life to the dead ones. Later on during my seminary years I learnt of two more things about this story. No 1. According to some legends Lazarus was resuscitated at age 30, went away to France with the two sisters, worked there as a Bishop for 30 more years and then died there. No 2. This story is not a miracle story for John uses the word “sign” instead of miracle, which means it points us to something beyond. The signs help us understand the glory of God at its depth. There is both power and powerlessness in God. There is grandeur and a misery as well in the God head. For John the miracle of the water turned into wine is a sign. The healing of the paralytic by the pool is another sign. The sermon you heard last Sunday of a man born blind receiving sight is another sign. With each sign Jesus also gave a theological interpretation. For example with the feeding of the 5000 Jesus pronounced, “I am the bread of life”. What does that signify? If you can live on that Jesus diet the hungry ones can be fed and those who thirst can be quenched. With the healing of the blind man Jesus announced boldly: “I am the light of the world “which means if you follow the light of Christ you can become the light to those who stumble in darkness. With the sign of bringing Lazarus back to life Jesus made a powerful theological statement. “I am the resurrection and the life”, which means If you abide in Jesus’s word, you may be able to help the walking corpses to live life with enthusiasm and dignity.

I do not know the mechanics and the methods Jesus employed to resuscitate Lazarus. But I do know of the criticisms he faced by the sisters. I do know of the instructions he gave to the crowd to bring Lazarus out of the grave. The two sisters were upset that Jesus didn’t show up on time for the memorial service. The professional mourners have come and sang their dirge and gone. However when Jesus arrived at the Bethany home he received comments of accusation: “SIR IF ONLY YOU HAVE BEEN HERE ON TIME OUR BROTHER WOULD NOT HAVE DIED.” These accusations are the most tragic expression of our vanities and helplessness. “If the surgeon had done that procedure right, my cousin would be living today. If the pastor had not made those stupid comments those two families would be still with us in this church today. If the president of our country had consulted the secretary of defense on time we would not have been humiliated in the United Nations’ Assembly.” All of us are great in being Monday morning quarterbacks. Jesus now instructs the crowd at the graveside:  “TAKE AWAY THE STONE”. So they took away the stone. The stone had to be removed for Jesus to resuscitate Lazarus. And stones have to be removed for Jesus to resuscitate the church today. The stones of pride, arrogance and insensitivity need to be removed for us to be a living church. Otherwise we will continue to look like dead people walking. The stones of our dead habits, selfish lifestyle and our indifferent attitudes toward others need to be removed. On Easter morning when I preach I will remind you again of the importance of stone removal. When the three women approached the tomb, they were filled with fear. Who will come to that gave and remove the heavy stone was the reason for their fear? It was early morning hours and to their dismay the stone had already been removed. It can happen again, and again. A secular novelist by the name of Walker Percy in his novel “The Second Coming” says, “IF CHRIST HAS BROUGHT LIFE INTO THE CHURCH, WHY DO THE CHURCHES SMELL OF DEATH?”

Lazarus story speaks more of life than death. In fact when Jesus heard of the news of the death of Lazarus he said to his disciples “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep come let us go and wake him up.” In an ancient Indian book of Ethics (Thirukkural) this is how death and life are so vividly portrayed. ”Birth is to wake up as death is to sleeping, and both are natural occurrences and they illustrate the impermanence of life”. A well-known Indian sage by the name Tagore, who was a recipient of the Nobel Prize for English literature, wrote:” DATH IS NOT EXTINQUISHING THE LGHT-IT IS PUTTING OUT THE LAMP-BECAUSE THE DAWN HAS COME”. However every time when I think of my own death I am horrified. Nobody knows when I will face my death. We may talk of the clinical death, the legal death and the spiritual death. We may say that when there is a cessation of respiration, cessation of blood circulation and cessation of brain function, death happens. Jesus said in this story, those who live and believe in me shall never die. What does that mean? Who am I? Am I just a body and a mind? Am I just a bunch of arteries and veins, the left and the right hemispheres of brain? Or is there something more? Did God form me from the dust of the earth and breathed into my nostrils the breath of life? Am I still a living soul? What happens to this soul when my body decays? Think about this!

The shortest sentence of the whole bible is found in this story. “Jesus wept.” Jesus wept because he cared for a person called Lazarus. Jesus wept because he loved the Bethany family. Jesus was a person of love. Jesus with his love can remove all the stumbling stones in our midst. What then is the message of the Lazarus story? It is simply this:  When we weep and feel the pain of being human, crushed by the weight of the circumstances of life, struggles to get on with life itself, there is one who understands our feelings and our emotions. There is one who will weep for us.  For hundreds of years, year after year during the 3^rd and the 4^th and the 5^th Sundays in Lent we have been hearing the same stories; the Samaritan woman’s story, the story of the man born blind and the Lazarus story. In the early church after 40 days of the long hours of study and discussion they asked some hard questions. Perhaps these stories helped them towards self-examination or self-diagnosis. I know we need them today to know more about our own selves.

A story is told of a patient who was complaining to his physician of a pain in several places. The doctor asked him to indicate where it hurts. He pointed first to his leg, then to his side and finally to his head. “Every time I press in these places it hurts”, he said. After a careful examination, the physician diagnosed his problem. “You have a broken finger”.

 The Samaritan woman reminds me to ask the question: Where do I thirst? The man who was born blind helps me to pose a question: In what ways am I blind?  Helen Keller once said “the saddest thing in the world is people who can see but have no vision”. And the Lazarus story raises to me the question: What part of me needs resuscitation and revivification?

The Lazarus Story!

John 11:17-37

Dear Friends!

Grace and peace are already ours for we belong to the family of Jesus the Christ. The Lazarus story was one of my favorites among the Sunday school classics. For at age 6, I was mesmerized by the power of Jesus to give life to the dead ones. Later on during my seminary years I learnt of two more things about this story. No 1. According to some legends Lazarus was resuscitated at age 30, went away to France with the two sisters, worked there as a Bishop for 30 more years and then died there. No 2. This story is not a miracle story for John uses the word “sign” instead of miracle, which means it points us to something beyond. The signs help us understand the glory of God at its depth. There is both power and powerlessness in God. There is grandeur and a misery as well in the God head. For John the miracle of the water turned into wine is a sign. The healing of the paralytic by the pool is another sign. The sermon you heard last Sunday of a man born blind receiving sight is another sign. With each sign Jesus also gave a theological interpretation. For example with the feeding of the 5000 Jesus pronounced, “I am the bread of life”. What does that signify? If you can live on that Jesus diet the hungry ones can be fed and those who thirst can be quenched. With the healing of the blind man Jesus announced boldly: “I am the light of the world “which means if you follow the light of Christ you can become the light to those who stumble in darkness. With the sign of bringing Lazarus back to life Jesus made a powerful theological statement. “I am the resurrection and the life”, which means If you abide in Jesus’s word, you may be able to help the walking corpses to live life with enthusiasm and dignity.

I do not know the mechanics and the methods Jesus employed to resuscitate Lazarus. But I do know of the criticisms he faced by the sisters. I do know of the instructions he gave to the crowd to bring Lazarus out of the grave. The two sisters were upset that Jesus didn’t show up on time for the memorial service. The professional mourners have come and sang their dirge and gone. However when Jesus arrived at the Bethany home he received comments of accusation: “SIR IF ONLY YOU HAVE BEEN HERE ON TIME OUR BROTHER WOULD NOT HAVE DIED.” These accusations are the most tragic expression of our vanities and helplessness. “If the surgeon had done that procedure right, my cousin would be living today. If the pastor had not made those stupid comments those two families would be still with us in this church today. If the president of our country had consulted the secretary of defense on time we would not have been humiliated in the United Nations’ Assembly.” All of us are great in being Monday morning quarterbacks. Jesus now instructs the crowd at the graveside:  “TAKE AWAY THE STONE”. So they took away the stone. The stone had to be removed for Jesus to resuscitate Lazarus. And stones have to be removed for Jesus to resuscitate the church today. The stones of pride, arrogance and insensitivity need to be removed for us to be a living church. Otherwise we will continue to look like dead people walking. The stones of our dead habits, selfish lifestyle and our indifferent attitudes toward others need to be removed. On Easter morning when I preach I will remind you again of the importance of stone removal. When the three women approached the tomb, they were filled with fear. Who will come to that gave and remove the heavy stone was the reason for their fear? It was early morning hours and to their dismay the stone had already been removed. It can happen again, and again. A secular novelist by the name of Walker Percy in his novel “The Second Coming” says, “IF CHRIST HAS BROUGHT LIFE INTO THE CHURCH, WHY DO THE CHURCHES SMELL OF DEATH?”

Lazarus story speaks more of life than death. In fact when Jesus heard of the news of the death of Lazarus he said to his disciples “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep come let us go and wake him up.” In an ancient Indian book of Ethics (Thirukkural) this is how death and life are so vividly portrayed. ”Birth is to wake up as death is to sleeping, and both are natural occurrences and they illustrate the impermanence of life”. A well-known Indian sage by the name Tagore, who was a recipient of the Nobel Prize for English literature, wrote:” DATH IS NOT EXTINQUISHING THE LGHT-IT IS PUTTING OUT THE LAMP-BECAUSE THE DAWN HAS COME”. However every time when I think of my own death I am horrified. Nobody knows when I will face my death. We may talk of the clinical death, the legal death and the spiritual death. We may say that when there is a cessation of respiration, cessation of blood circulation and cessation of brain function, death happens. Jesus said in this story, those who live and believe in me shall never die. What does that mean? Who am I? Am I just a body and a mind? Am I just a bunch of arteries and veins, the left and the right hemispheres of brain? Or is there something more? Did God form me from the dust of the earth and breathed into my nostrils the breath of life? Am I still a living soul? What happens to this soul when my body decays? Think about this!

The shortest sentence of the whole bible is found in this story. “Jesus wept.” Jesus wept because he cared for a person called Lazarus. Jesus wept because he loved the Bethany family. Jesus was a person of love. Jesus with his love can remove all the stumbling stones in our midst. What then is the message of the Lazarus story? It is simply this:  When we weep and feel the pain of being human, crushed by the weight of the circumstances of life, struggles to get on with life itself, there is one who understands our feelings and our emotions. There is one who will weep for us.  For hundreds of years, year after year during the 3^rd and the 4^th and the 5^th Sundays in Lent we have been hearing the same stories; the Samaritan woman’s story, the story of the man born blind and the Lazarus story. In the early church after 40 days of the long hours of study and discussion they asked some hard questions. Perhaps these stories helped them towards self-examination or self-diagnosis. I know we need them today to know more about our own selves.

A story is told of a patient who was complaining to his physician of a pain in several places. The doctor asked him to indicate where it hurts. He pointed first to his leg, then to his side and finally to his head. “Every time I press in these places it hurts”, he said. After a careful examination, the physician diagnosed his problem. “You have a broken finger”.

 The Samaritan woman reminds me to ask the question: Where do I thirst? The man who was born blind helps me to pose a question: In what ways am I blind?  Helen Keller once said “the saddest thing in the world is people who can see but have no vision”. And the Lazarus story raises to me the question: What part of me needs resuscitation and revivification?

None so blind

None so blind….033014  John 9

The following are simply notes to use, depending on what comes up, from congregational conversation in small groups, using the notes to flesh out the thought…..this followed their hearing the text in many voices, and some of congregation wore blindfolds, as the blind man, some as the leaders.

“There’s none so blind as those who will not see”  - who’s blind, what’s my blindness?   Margie is legally blind and often has to point out how blind I am to the unique needs of being, for example, a non-driver, dependent on others, always having to ask for help….

The leaders in this story, the Pharisees and the Jewish elite, are meant to be visionaries, yet Jesus says, they’re the blind ones…all those fine upstanding church going, hymnsinging Christians who can’t see beyond the end of their noses….they never get their hands dirty like Jesus did…..but some do.   Some go to Reach and touch filthy homes and needy people…..some go to the shelters and pray with people they used to condemn…the victims we’re used to blaming.

Jesus dispenses reckless mercy, and we don’t like it.  I had to pull myself up by my bootstraps, why can’t they?  We still blame the victim today.  Henri Nouwen quote: as long as we continue to live as if we are what we do, what we have, and what other people think about us, we will remain full of judgments, opinions, evaluations and condemnations.  We will remain addicted to putting people and things in their ‘right’ place.

The Pharisees say, you’re not saying we’re blind are you?                                                                                            We’re all blind in some way….physically we don’t see what’s right in front of us…..pass someone who looks lost without stopping to help, pass quickly by the panhandler without noticing anything about him,

Mentally we don’t ‘see’ what all the fuss is about gender equality or sexuality issues, we don’t get why we have to change the order of worship or have new songs introduced

Emotionally we’re blind to the needs of our closest relationships, we don’t pay attention so we fail to notice when someone has withdrawn, or is depressed, or is in pain

Spiritually we don’t see Jesus who comes looking for us, stands knocking at the door of our soul to offer us Jesus-eyes.

Did you notice all the questions in the story?  Why was he born blind? Isn’t this the beggar? What did he do?  where is he? why do you need convincing?  Who is he? Do you believe?

Human need, Jesus says, is an opportunity to show God’s mercy.  When we see need, is that what we see?  Or does tradition and social privilege blind us?  (blame victim above)

It was Sabbath.    Deed before creed; compassion over rules

Here we have another encounter with Jesus….another teaching moment….another opportunity to go deeper in understanding self and God….another chance to have our eyes and hearts opened.  All the characters except the healed man are no different at the end of the story than they were at the beginning.   These kinds of moments are offered every week here at church and in everyday encounters as well---I can’t help but wonder if we leave those encounters as blind as when we came in.

I am hoping that we might hear past the outward appearance and surface questions to the truths deep in the heart of things.

End:  Jesus isn’t really the main character here.   We are. Whatever character you took on, Jesus engages us.  Did you hear that little phrase, when Jesus found him?   When he heard this guy had been thrown out of the best religious places, he evidently went looking for him.   What grace.   Think about that this week….do you need to be found?  Or does God call you to go looking…..open our eyes, Lord.   Amen.

A well-side conversation (THeva)

A Well side Conversation!

John 4.5-26

Dear Friends!

Grace and peace are already ours for we belong to the family of Jesus the Christ. I want to talk to you this morning about conversation, spiritual conversation and to be true to our text a well side-conversation. With all the modern technological gadgets such as the e-mail, the face book the twitter, the fax modems and texting are we getting closer to each other as humankind? Have these material devices freed us from our nervousness and anxieties? Are we free from depression and fatigue, fear and suspicion? Do we want to possess more than what we already have? With these questions I invite you now to the famous Jacob’s well. It was hundreds of years ago at this well side, love and romance began between Jacob and Rachel. We are told that she brought her father’s cattle to this well to offer water. Then we read in Genesis 29 that Jacob married the two sisters Rachel and Leah and they became the parents for the twelve tribes, the children of Israel. I am not going into how Leah struggled with Jacob in her marriage relationship. Not even about how Rachel was treated as the husband’s favorite wife. That is a different sermon in itself.

         I understand last Sunday you heard a sermon on a spiritual conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a male, a prominent person in the community, educated, a teacher of Israel and a member of the Sanhedrin. And the person at the well today is a female, nameless, Samaritan by birth means not from the main stream of society. She had very little education and faced a challenge in maintaining relationships. Perhaps she had an addiction for relationships. She was already married to five husbands. She opens up to Jesus that the sixth person in her life who was not yet her husband. Jesus appreciates her honesty.

        John 4 begins with the story of Jesus choosing to go to the Galilean region and continue ministry there. Because more people around the river Jordan were willing to follow Jesus than John. So they both parted ways with mutual consent. And now Jesus is getting to Galilee, but he could have gone there by a different route; it was shorter by crossing the east of river Jordan and to get to Galilee. Thomas Merton once said that everything happens in life is a connection and not a coincident. History tells that the Jews and the Samaritan hated each other based on the century old family feuds. They worshiped in two different places the Samaritans in Mt. Gerizim and the Jews in Jerusalem. They even used separate Torahs.

        It was a hot and humid noon, an unusual time for any woman to go to draw water. Most women in that neighborhood got to the well during the sunset hour and made that gathering somewhat like the United Methodist women’s circle meeting, without coffee and cookies. They engage in conversation; about husbands or the significant others, children and families learn the news both local and global, like the disappearance of the Malaysian jet with 239 people on board and about Ukraine, Crimea and Russia. Friends! The hot noon time may not be the best time for conversations and chit chats. Because this woman was hurt by the many gossips about her and wounded by the judgment of people on her character, she preferred to get to the well by herself quietly at noon. I have worked with families and in churches long enough to say that people often were made to feel by others that they are not good enough. Children are bullied in schools. People of other cultures and races are segregated in communities. The poor are discriminated against the well to do. Fifty years ago the poor came and sat in the back pews of our churches and now they don’t just come inside.

           “Give me a drink”? Jesus asked this woman. There is something unusual about a rabbi asking a woman of a questionable character for water. Now the disciples who went on a lunch break after the morning preaching session are back. They are wondering what was going on between the master and this woman. Are they having simple conversation or something deeper? Isn’t it true that in this vicinity our Patriarch Jacob fell in love with Rachel at first sight? They remembered their history.

        Friends! When two strangers meet for the first time and begin to relate to each other of their thirsts, the spiritual conversation begins. It is about listening to each other, hearing one another’s story, treating each other with dignity. Jesus the truly human had his physical thirst. And the woman was thirsting for some deep meaning in her life.  Her life has become insipid, and she was going through the day today motion without any passion in it. Jesus now tells this woman about the water he would offer, which will quench all the yearnings of every troubled person. Jesus said if anyone wants to worship God one does not have to climb mountains and offer sacrifices, just submit oneself to the truth and be absorbed by the Spirit. ”Give me that drink master “the woman asked. I do not want to feel thirsty again. ”Give me that drink master “so that I don’t have to come daily in the scotching sun here again at 12:00.

        This is a story of a woman John wrote in 45 verses in the 4^th chapter of his gospel. A woman who was in the margin of a society is now brought back into the main stream. No wonder she now gets to her people and brags boldly “I have found the Messiah”. I have found a prophet who knows all about me. Through him I have regained my lost life. I have now found my true self, true love, a depth of acceptance, found the love of God, and the God of love as well.

        I want to close this message with a ”peanuts” comic strip. It is somewhat connected to my main message today. Linus is listening carefully as his sister Lucy boasts of her religious faith and her potential as an evangelist. She says to Linus, “Do you know that kid who sits behind me in school”? I convinced him that my religion is better than his religion. Linus asks “How did you do that”? Lucy replies “I hit him with my lunch box”.