March
22, 2006
from the Lenten Preaching Series
Calvary Episcopal Church
Memphis, Tennessee
Astonished
by the
Rev. Dr. John Buchanan
Fourth Presbyterian Church (USA)
Chicago, IL
(This
sermon is also available in audio)
John
4:3–42
“Just
then his disciples came. They were astonished . . .”
John 4:27 (NRSV)
Islam,
Judaism, and Christianity remind us that civilizations
survive
- not
by strength but by how they respond to the weak;
- not
by wealth but by the care they show for the poor;
- not
by power but by their concern for the powerless.
The
ironic yet utterly human lesson of history
is that
what renders a culture invulnerable is the compassion it shows to the vulnerable.
The ultimate value we should be concerned to maximize is human dignity—the
dignity of all human beings, equally, as children of the creative, redeeming
God.
—Jonathan
Sacks
The Dignity of Difference:
How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations
Startle us, O God, with your truth
and open our hearts and our minds to your wondrous love.
Speak your word to us;
silence in us any voice but your own
and be with us now as we turn our attention,
our minds and our hearts, to you,
in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
For
many years I have begun my sermons with a little prayer: “Startle
us, O God.” Some people like that prayer and
tell me they miss it when I change it. Some have told
me that they’ve been startled quite enough all
week long, thank you very much, and the last thing
they need on Sunday morning is to be startled again.
I
use that prayer for myself, if truth were told, because it
is my experience that the capacity to be startled,
surprised, astonished, can and does become diminished
in us. We are so preoccupied, so focused
on our goals, on our list of things to accomplish,
people to see, calls to make, that we shut down whatever
capacity we have for wonder and astonishment because
it is a distraction from what we think is important.
Georgia O’Keefe painted dramatically exaggerated
pictures of Iris—to startle us and persuade us
to stop and look and see.
In
any event, “Startle us, O God” seems like
a good way to begin, because God, in the Bible at least,
is astonishing, and when God acts, people are startled.
Religion can become predictable, routine. But God,
John Updike once wrote, “whatever else God may
be, God should not be uninteresting; God should not
be pat” (Roger’s Version, p. 24).
“They
were astonished,” the Fourth Gospel says about
Jesus’ friends one day. It is in a brilliantly
crafted short story in the Fourth chapter of the Gospel
of John—like any good short story, packed with
rich detail. It is, first, about water, that most mundane,
most extraordinary element. You can live without food
for a month, but you can only live a few days without
water. You can preach a whole sermon on water.
Water
carves valleys, floods entire islands—the city
of New Orleans—yet sustains life everywhere.
A symbol of our age is bottled water. In a Lenten devotion
he wrote for us, James Finn Garner, friend and Chicago
author, says that “in Lincoln Park in the summer
a bottle of designer water is as ubiquitous a personal
accessory as a wristwatch.” They’re everywhere— courtroom,
concert hall, our choir members process with bottles
under their robes. And I’m not the only preacher
to look out at the congregation and see a worshipper
take a pull during the sermon.
But
the detail I want to underscore is this rich short
story this time was that almost throw-away observation “They
were astonished.”
John
wants to make sure we understand that Jesus’ disciples
are astonished at his behavior, and the implication
is that if you read this story correctly and understand
what is transpiring, you will be astonished, too.
They
are walking, Jesus and his entourage are—the
twelve, maybe a few women and other friends—from
Judea in the south back to their home in Capernaum,
in Galilee, in the north. For some reason they take
a detour through Samaria. John says, “He had
to go through Samaria,” but the people who first
read this story knew that wasn’t true. You don’t
have to go through Samaria to get from Judea to Galilee.
You only go there if you want to—which no good
Jew does.
Samaria
is a despicable place. Samaritans were regarded as
inferior, racially, religiously, and socially. For
something like 700 years Jews and Samaritans had been
arguing and generally hating one another as only members
of the same family can argue and hate. Think of the
bitterness, the violence, between Sunni and Shi’a
Muslims or the hostility and verbal violence between
red state/blue state Christians, or Roman Catholics
and Protestants in Belfast. Originally it had to do
with a disagreement about whose holy temple was the
real one and whose city was the really holy city. But
it had disintegrated into a particularly nasty racial
prejudice fueled by religion which can be, we have
seen, a lethal combination.
So,
the entourage is over the border, in Samaria, and they’re
not happy about it, and besides, it’s high noon
and blazing hot and they are hungry and thirsty. So
Jesus’ friends go off to the nearest town, leaving
him sitting alone beside a well.
A
woman approaches with a bucket, a Samaritan woman drawing
water. Jesus asks her for a drink. Now there are some
things going on here that are not immediately apparent.
First, women, who do the water drawing and carrying,
come to the well in the cool of the early morning or
early evening, never in the heat of midday. This woman
doesn’t come to the well with the other women
of the village. Second, Jews
don’t ask Samaritans for a drink. A Jew would
rather die of thirst than drink from a Samaritan cup. One
thinks automatically of segregated drinking fountains
a generation ago. Third, a Jewish male, particularly
a rabbi, does not speak with a single woman, publicly,
who is not his wife, ever.
A
peculiar conversation ensues about water: “May
I have a drink?” “Jews don’t drink
with Samaritans,” she responds. “I can
give you living water,” Jesus says. “How
can you do that? You don’t even have a bucket,” she
answers. “If you drink living water you will
never be thirsty again,” Jesus says. “Then
I’ll have some,” she responds.
They
talk some more about religion; it’s almost bantering.
They talk about her marital status, which she lies
about, but he somehow knows about. As it turns out,
she has been married five times, which is two over
the limit, and she’s currently living with a
man who is not her husband. And now we discover why
she is at the well at noon, in the searing heat of
midday, and not in the evening with the other women.
She’s
a disgrace. The others will have nothing to do with
her. Everywhere she goes people stare, make snide comments;
men aim obscenities or sexually suggestive barbs. It’s
better to go to the well alone, even if it is hot.
The fact that she is living, unmarried, with man number
six also tells us that she has pretty much given up
on organized religion. She no longer even pretends
to be part of the faith community, because she is not
welcome. She is an outcast. Religion wants nothing
to do with her. She certainly couldn’t be ordained
in the Presbyterian church.
Just
then the disciples return with lunch. They are astonished.
Startled. What they are seeing challenges some of their
most precious assumptions. Here he is, a Jew, sharing
a drinking cup with a Samaritan, a man conversing with
a woman in broad daylight, a Rabbi bantering with an
immoral woman.
The
woman, in the meantime, is charmed, astonished, so
taken with all this she drops her water bucket and
runs to town to tell anyone who will listen about this
amazing man who drank with her and talked with her
and even knew abut her marital status and did not condemn
her. It didn’t seem to matter to him.
What
Jesus has done is so extraordinary the whole town comes
out to see him, and then the most astonishing thing
of all happens. The Samaritans invite the Jews to stay
with them for a while and, remarkably, they do, for
two days. They have a party, I suppose. What a picture—Jews
and Samaritans, men and women, walking back to town
together, eating together for two days, sleeping under
the same roofs together. Astonishing.
Jesus
pushes beyond seven centuries of religious divisiveness,
racial prejudice, gender marginalization, moral exclusivism,
to show—for two days at least—what God’s
kingdom on earth looks like. Jesus
refuses to be constricted by religious and cultural
convention and in the process transforms a predicament
into a person; a theological and moral problem becomes
a human being; a marginalized outcast becomes a woman,
a child of God. No wonder she runs
back to town to tell everybody about it.
Jesus
simply refuses to be constrained by cultural and religious
difference. And in a world where cultural and religious
differences divide and turn toxic and violent, nothing
is more critical.
Jonathan
Sacks is Great Britain’s Chief Rabbi, and he
has written an important book, The Dignity of Difference.
Sacks writes,
I
see a rising crescendo of ethnic tensions, civilizational
clashes, and the use of religious justification
for acts of terror, a clear and present danger
to humanity. For too long, the pages of history
have been stained by blood shed in the name of
God.
Sacks
believes we need to be converted from thinking of cultural
and religious differences as something to be overcome
to regarding difference as something to be affirmed
and celebrated.
He
calls it the Dignity of Difference and bases it not
on sociology or political philosophy but on theology,
on the image of God in every single human being. “The
test of faith,” he says, “is whether I
can make space for difference. Can
I recognize God’s image in someone who is not
in my image, whose language, faith, and ideals, are
different from mine? If not, I have made God in my
image instead of allowing him to remake me in his” (p.
201).
Reaching
across the boundaries of culture and religion is, I
believe, the most urgent mission priority before us.
Affirming the other, as a person, a child of God, is
the clear mandate of our Lord himself.
It
is a particular challenge to reach across the divide
of religion, perhaps the most difficult challenge of
all. Irving Greenberg, Professor at City College, New
York City, former chair of the U.S. Holocaust Museum
and an Orthodox rabbi, has written a remarkable book, For
the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter between
Judaism and Christianity. It is a courageous attempt
to redefine Judaism and Christianity, not as competing
and conflicting truth claims but as covenant partners
who need each other for their individual integrity.
Jews
need Christians because Christianity is an authentic
outgrowth of Messianic Judaism. Christians need Jews
because Judaism is the family in which we were born. Greenberg
urges both communities to listen to and take seriously
the most important beliefs of the other, not in order
to erase or disguise differences but to appreciate
and learn from them. There is nothing
about crucifixion and resurrection that Jews cannot
understand, this brave rabbi writes. Likewise there
is nothing about waiting for the final fulfillment
of the messianic promise and the kingdom of God which
is here, but always coming, that Christians cannot
understand. When I read that, I wrote in the margin, “Wow!”
It
does, however, challenge us deeply. Truth claims that
are different from our own make us terribly uncomfortable
precisely because we have been taught and have thoroughly
absorbed the idea that our truth is the only truth
and that our mission is to convince the other to come
over to our side, to wage war against the infidel in
the name of God, theologically if not militarily.
It
is not always popular to advocate for a more inclusive
way of thinking. Rabbi Greenberg was astonished at
the hostility his ideas evoked from his own colleagues.
He was forced to submit to the Jewish equivalent of
a heresy trial until charges were dropped.
In
a presentation I made recently at Congregation Sinai,
I said that I do not believe that the Bible teaches
that Christianity supersedes or replaces Judaism, quoting
Paul.
The
next day a Christian who was there wrote a very angry
letter and told me in no uncertain terms that “I
was tinkering with the very underpinnings of our ‘appeasement’ faith
in order to make a fool’s bargain.”
The
question Jesus’ behavior raises is this: is
our faith authenticated and validated by its exclusiveness,
by who we think gets in and who therefore is left out? Is
that really what Jesus taught?
The
picture in front of us today is of a Lord pushing beyond
cultural convention—and seven centuries of religious
certainty—to include and embrace an outsider,
a moral and theological and social outcast. The picture
before us today is that group of former enemies; Jews
and Samaritans, arm in arm, walking back to town to
sit down to eat and drink together.
The
picture before us today is that woman, who, in the
presence of Jesus, was no longer a statistic, a racial
minority, a moral embarrassment, but a human being.
Jesus loved her back into her personhood, her innate
human dignity. He saved her—saved her life literally.
It
is a miracle whenever that happens even, maybe particularly,
in tragic circumstances, when it is easier not to think
about individual human beings. I’m grateful to
the Chicago Tribune for translating American
casualties in Iraq from statistics to real people.
I read them every morning: 21-year-old Marine Corporal
John T. Olson who gave his mother a gold pendant before
leaving for his third tour of duty and a note thanking
her for all she had done for him and who died when
a roadside bomb exploded beside his vehicle.
And do
you worry, ponder the fact, as I do, that we don’t
pay much attention, don’t even count the
thousands, the tens of thousands, of innocent Iraqis
who are the collateral damage—each an individual,
a precious child of God, created in God’s
image?
I
was privileged to read recently an exchange of e-mails
between two physicians from Northwestern Memorial Hospital,
one here in Chicago, Stephen Ondra, and one in Baghdad,
Jeff Poffenbarger.
Jeff
is trying to treat a 10-year-old Iraqi girl with severe
scoliosis and other critical complications. He knows
that the required surgery really should happen in Chicago
and he’s trying to figure out how to get his
young patient to Children’s Memorial. His friend
Steve is contacting the hospital, physicians, Ronald
McDonald House, the government, trying to find funding
for transportation costs.
Then
it becomes apparent that the project will be very difficult
to pull off, maybe impossible, and the little girl’s
condition is seriously deteriorating. So the two doctors
begin to discuss Jeff doing the surgery in Baghdad,
with careful coaching from Steve in Chicago. The e-mails
became highly technical at this point.
And
then Jeff’s last e-mail reads:
Steve:
I’m
very sorry to tell you that the little girl and
her father were most likely killed by a truck bomb
at the gate to the green zone. On the day she had
an appointment with me, a truck bomb blew up at
the entrance and killed many Iraqis waiting to
get in. She did not show up for her appointment
and I have not heard from her since. I went and
talked to the American guards—none remembered
her specifically, but one recalled a blue jacket
like one she always wore on the body of a little
girl. She and her father were faithful about coming
here for their appointments so I fear the worst.
This
is a hard city for the little ones.
Jeff
I
read Steve’s response gratefully:
Jeff:
I
found your note heartbreaking but appreciated it.
It reminds me of just how difficult and real and
dangerous life is, particularly in Iraq. You, our
soldiers, and the innocent people of Iraq are in
my mind and prayers, a bit more so today. I will
pass this story on. It helps remind us that every
day news stories have a human face. I hope you
return safely and soon. You are all heroes. Hang
in there.
Best
wishes,
Steve Ondra
It
is always a miracle when a story becomes a face,
a statistic becomes a person. Even in heartbreaking
tragedy, the grace of God in Jesus Christ transforms
anonymity into individuality.
The
heart of our faith is a wondrous love that did not
condemn a Samaritan woman for immorality, did not exclude
her because of her religion or race or gender, but
graciously accepted her and loved her back to her humanity,
her God-given status as a child of God.
It
is a love that is offered to each of us: to you, no
matter who you are or how excluded you have been. It
is a wondrous love that comes to you to affirm who
you are and to remind you that whatever words others
may use to define you, whatever words and ideas you
have come to use to describe yourself, the one permanent,
unchanging, indestructible thing about you is that
you are God’s child, and God’s own Son
came to make sure you never forget that.
Jesus
took his friends into Samaria one day to make certain
they understood.
In
a Lenten devotion author Jim Garner wrote,
To
receive this living water we don’t have to
drag our buckets to the well and drag them home.
We just need to ask for it and it rains all over
us.
Living
water.
Astonishing.
Amen.
Copyright ©2006
John Buchanan
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