The Woman at the Well

To all intents and purposes the lectionary reading could be just another of the stories which we hear or read week after week after week. And whatever I might say, to me or to you, it is likely to go in one ear and not long later emerge out of the other. This is just the way things are!

But every now and again, at least for me, there are moments when some kind of fusion occurs and I am forced to sit bolt upright – for me a moment of memorable intensity.

When I was a teenager it was a Marilyn Monroe film that was one such moment … and a memory has been maintained for over sixty years!  At that time there was also for me a text from John’s Gospel: ‘You did not choose me, but I choose you,’ which shook me to my very core and propelled me on to a completely unexpected journey. A journey which has continued with the varying degrees of intensity as the Marilyn Monroe moment and has also lasted sixty years!

Why am I telling you this? Well, today the lectionary reading, to my mind, has a certain ‘atomic’ quality. Suddenly I find myself faced with more than I bargained for. A quick recap:

Jesus is alone by the village well, it is the middle of the day (hot); a women comes to draw water. ‘Give me a drink’; ‘What, you, a Jew, asking me, a Samaritan?’

There are so many leads into this passage, so let’s cut straight to the chase! This passage is dripping with the burning issues of our day: boundaries, territory and identity. Crimea/Russia on the one hand, Scottish devolution on the other, and for some members of this church ‘permission to reside in the UK and to work’.

The video clip http://loiter.co/v/watch-as-1000years-of-european-boarders-change/ shows boundary changes in ‘Greater Europe’ over 5000 years. Massive changes almost everywhere, but far less in the British Isles – because we live on an island.

A close friend was recently awarded a PhD for his work on limology. (Hands up those who know the meaning of limology? [on the day, only one person!]) Limology is the study of boundaries. He examined the history of the changing boundary between Mexico and USA and he did so
primarily by studying Westerns – yes, cowboy films! That one boundary has countless cases of ‘land-grabbing’. Mr Putin is but the most recent example.

Many years ago I was caught up in a complex pastoral situation relating to a fourteen-year-old attempting to get into the UK to see his estranged father. He had been sent by his mother to get him out of the country during a parliamentary election campaign in which she was a candidate!  The estranged father only knew the boy was en route after the plane left Australia. It was clearly a situation filled with bear traps!

The insensitivity and heavy-handedness of the Border Agency staff resulted in me spending many hours at Heathrow, during which I somehow ended up the wrong side of customs – without my passport. To all intents and purposes I was powerless – in no man’s land – and the repeated questions, which I answered again and again, did nothing at all to humour me! Not only did I feel vulnerable, but I soon discovered I was in a minority. I was the only white person there, except for the immigration officers. It was a place in which it seemed as if human value and all compassion no longer existed.

Finding myself on the wrong side of the boundary was an acutely difficult situation, but it was not completely new to me, in that I had appeared in court on behalf of homeless men and women time without number, and once had been the only person to speak for a person at a Crown Court. The man was given a conditional discharge (to live at the project the church ran). And once we had to wait almost two hours in an unlocked cell, waiting for his possessions: three pence, for which he had to sign.

Nationality, identity and boundaries are enduring points of friction, primarily for the unrepresented and vulnerable. Representing/standing with outsiders can be a chilling and indeed frightening experience.

Jesus, in choosing to speak with the woman at the well, not only chooses to side-step traditional protocols but to face the woman as she was. By side-stepping tradition, Jesus allows other truths to emerge – she had had countless partners – but he offers the possibility of acceptance. A recognition at a deeper level – ‘Water of Life’,  he calls it. He speaks of that which really does quench that particular thirst: of not being accepted; of not being good enough; of not being the right age or gender, or nationality, or not having the right qualifications, or papers.

‘Whoever drinks the water I give,’ says Jesus, ‘will never be thirsty again.’

Sadly, the bloodthirstiness we see around the globe is not only in land-grabbing, but in the denial for women to be freed from fear and abuse; for gay and lesbian people not being bound by the bigotry of others; or indeed young girls being free of the threat FGM.

However, heinous things continue to occur in what is considered modern, civilised, Western-type countries. Aboriginal babies, especially those of mixed parentage, continue to taken from their families by Australia officialdom. In 2008 Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister, publicly apologised to the Aboriginal People, but the underlying issues remain – he was soon out of office and it was business as usual.

My big question for today is, How do we learn to ease ourselves from the straightjackets that trap us into assuming what we know and accept is bound to be correct? How is it that we get such fixed and final and divergent ideas about other people’s value and worth?

Another of my closest friends believes to his very bone marrow that the word ‘marriage’ must be reserved exclusively for the contract between a man and a women. He has no room for change! The fact that same-sex marriages are now legal and the first will occur next Saturday makes no difference to him. As you may guess, I do not agree with him.

We are all, of course, as much a part of the problem as we are the answer. The privatisation of faith – of believing faithfulness is exclusively about personal development/salvation – is perhaps the greatest sin of the Church today. (Look at the bookshop here at Cornerstone,
primarily stocked with what I would name ‘cosmetic literature’ – aimed at cheering us up, not transforming/overcoming the deep persisting hurts in society.)

This Church of Christ the Cornerstone was erected to be a dynamic symbol that faith can lead to deep and enduring change; that we no longer need to be ‘prisoners’ to Methodism, or Anglicanism or Catholicism, or Luther or the Reformers. That I can be thoroughly Methodist and MUCH MORE.

Being ecumenical is to be serious about each other and choosing ways of standing in other people’s shoes; being ecumenical is developing the skills, the working practice, the know-how, of ‘knitting’ together the fabrics of daily life into the image of a world resembling that of the Cross Bearing and Servant-hood of Christ.  And that may NOT always be a pretty picture.

I do not doubt that many of the celebrating Russians in the Crimea are in the main as decent people as are we: people who feel they have returned to their roots, to their homeland; whereas the non-Russians speakers differ completely in their longings.

Crossing boundaries, experiencing change, ceasing to believe that nothing really changes; being open to facing and speaking gently to those who are different or who offend you,  is exactly what Jesus is doing in asking for a drink of water – it is code for saying, ‘We are both human.’

A great sadness for me – as a member of this congregation – is that in the on-going rush of life we do not/cannot make the time or the space for the softer or silent voices among us to be heard. The greatest treasure of this community is the stories we carry – we all carry them; your insignificance may be another’s enlightenment/wonder/salvation.

As a twelve-year-old boy living in Cirencester in the Cotswolds in the 1950s, with three friends I would cycle for miles during the school holidays. How we never got lost was a miracle in itself! Toward the end of one very long afternoon ride, the four of us were dying for a drink. I was the one to knock on a cottage door and ask for a drink – I was the smallest! But first, rub your face with your hankie, plaster down your hair, pull up your socks and don’t forget to smile. Nervously, I knock on the door; it is opened by a woman the age of our grandparents – I ask for a drink of water; wonder of wonders, we were invited in! – lemonade and cakes. Amazing, wonderful. We probably made her day, as she ours!

Another moment of memorable intensity! (I do prefer secular English to describe my deepest experiences.)

So, sixty-four years on that moment of memorable intensity retains its power and reminds me, as nothing else does, that the Eucharist is sharing joy. ‘Give me a drink,’ says Jesus!

We can keep that story going by crossing boundaries, by opening up opportunities. It is a reminder that our shared meals can be a way of crossing boundaries and opening up the treasure houses of family and community history safely.

And all because he asked a stranger to share her water!

Sermon preached by Revd David Moore on Sunday, 23 March 2014