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In 1973 my brother, Tim, and I had spent the summer living and working in northern California. We had left from Ohio, but during the summer my parents had moved to Atlanta. So we drove my 1968 Toyota Corona across the country to a home we’d never been before. As we approached Atlanta my mild-mannered brother became unglued when we disagreed over the directions. I wanted to turn left on I-285. He wanted to turn right. But I was driving so we went left. He screamed and shouted and called me a few choice names. I remember being surprised at the strength of his reaction. Have you ever surprised yourself how strong your feelings can be over something relatively unimportant? Conflict is normal. It happens in our personal lives, in our families, our schools, our churches, and nations. But it is not always over something insignificant like directions. Sometimes it is over deeply held values and convictions. Have you noticed when conflict involves religion it is especially virulent and destructive? From the beginning of time people have been fighting and killing each other over different ways to understand God. It is estimated that the majority of wars in the world today are started because of religion. The ancient Jews were no exception. The most direct route north to Galilee was through the region of Samaria. Yet a good Jew of Jesus' day would often be inclined to avoid this region. The problem with Samaria was the people who lived there. They were not good Jews. They were not pure Jews by heredity; they were Jews who had been ethnically mixed over generations of mixed marriages with the Arab race. The people of Samaria were not even faithfully practicing the Hebrew religion, but were mixing Judaism with vestiges of their earlier roots in pagan religions. Such religious practices made them ritually impure in the eyes of a Jew of Jesus' day. When it came to religious and social matters it was better for a Jew to avoid them. Now I suspect you might be thinking these Jews were wrong to treat their northern neighbors this way. Before we get carried away with this judgment, let’s take a look at our own lives. Which group of persons do we judge as having a deficiency of some kind? Blacks? Native Americans? Gays? Do we have problems with people who are against the war in Afghanistan? Jesus was a good Jew, at least up to a point. No doubt he had been taught as a boy about the importance of keeping Judaism pure. He was aware of the sanctioned discrimination against the Samaritans. But here’s where he departed from Jewish tradition. Not only did he disagree with this teaching, but he disobeyed Jewish teaching. In our text for today Jesus had the gaul to actually talk with a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. And this brings us to the central point of this message: Jesus’ mission was about breaking down barriers that divided people. Jesus had no qualms about disobeying human law when it violated God’s law. And God’s law is about love. It is about grace. It is about compassion. Jesus looked at this woman, and spoke with this woman as a real person! Read the gospels! In story after story we see Jesus as one who reached out beyond barriers to see people as they really were. Isn’t that your desire, to be seen and treated as a person worthy of respect? Don’t you want this in your work place? Don’t you teens want this in your school? Don’t you want this in your own homes? Robert Cole tells the story of meeting Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement. "It was on an afternoon, many years ago, that I first met Dorothy Day. She was sitting at a table, talking with a woman who was quite drunk. The woman had a large red birthmark along the right side of her forehead. She kept touching it as she uttered one exclamatory remark after another, none of which seemed to get the slightest rise from Dorothy Day. I found myself increasingly confused by what seemed to be an interminable, essentially absurd exchange taking place between two middle-aged women. When would it end…the alcoholic ranting and the silent nodding? Finally silence fell upon the room. Dorothy Day asked the woman if she would mind an interruption. She got up and came over to me. She said, "Are you waiting to talk with one of us." One of us: with those words she had cut through layers of self-importance, a lifetime of bourgeois privilege, and scraped the hard bone of pride. With those three words, so quietly and politely spoken, she had indirectly told me what the Catholic Worker Movement is all about and what she herself was like." What are some of the barriers dividing you from others? Do social barriers separate you from others? Economic walls? Religious divides? Jesus does not ask us to like the people who are different from us. He asks us to love them! This means you and I, as disciples of Jesus need to risk social convention to reach out to others whom we may not like. The disciples returned from town and were astounded that Jesus was talking with a woman, no less a Samaritan woman! Who are the "Samaritans" that will cross your path this week? Who are the people whom you have been taught to avoid? Will you be like Jesus or the disciples? In his book, Living Faith, former President Jimmy Carter talks about the barriers that divide people and give them a false sense of identity. Having grown up in the South during the time of racial segregation, he had many African-American friends. When his parents were away, he would stay with his black neighbors, Jack and Rachel Clark. He played with black friends, went fishing with them, plowed with mules side by side, and played on the same baseball team. But when he carried water to people working the field, it was unthinkable that black workers and white workers would drink from the same dipper. Humans customs and laws will likely always exclude others. But in God’s kingdom we all are invited in love to drink from the same dipper. We are invited to eat from the same loaf and drink from the common cup. Because of this woman’s encounter with Christ at the well, her life was changed. And many others believed because of her testimony. As you live out your faith this week, who will you tell about the living water you have tasted? What barriers will you break down in order to be Christ’s representative to someone in need? What holy mission will you accept so that the kingdom of heaven may come to your part of the world?
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The St. John Web Site needs your input! Click here to leave feedback Copyright © 1998-2004 Jon S. Dawson. Last modified: February 01, 2009
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03.03.02 - Holy Mission, Part 3 (John 4:4-15, 27-30, 39-42)
