Recognize and Witness

A sermon by

Mr. John Finley IV

March 3, 2002

May the words of our mouths and meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in thy sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.

I take for my text today verse 28 from the Gospel of John. 

“Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city.” 

In that one line the Samaritan woman, who has recognized Jesus, realizes what she has to do and runs off to tell her friends, leaving her water jar behind. 

When you go home today, I want you to remember that she left her water jar because she had seen the Messiah. 

When you go home today, remember that the Samaritan woman hurried home to proclaim good news. 

Remember that she understood that the day and the hour had come.  When you go home today, remember that this Samaritan woman came to Jacob’s well for water

and found something far more precious. 

She found not regular H2O but living water. 

She had a personal, amusing, even playful yet profound encounter with a Messiah who changed her and her town forever. 

When the curtain comes up on the short play that is today’s Gospel, we find our hero, Jesus, resting by Jacob’s well. 

A Samaritan woman comes up to draw water from the well,

and our hero asks her for a drink. 

She reminds him that he is a Jew and that Jews do not interact with Samaritans who are seen as being ritually unclean. 

Jesus ignores her and changes the subject, pointing out that she should in fact be asking him for a drink not of regular water, but

of living water. 

The woman answers playfully that the well is deep and that Jesus has no bucket.  Who does this traveler think he is offering her water when he has no bucket?   Is he greater than her ancestor Jacob who, legend has it, created this well in the first place?  Later, Jesus does reveal exactly who he is,

but we’re not there yet so instead of answering her question,

Jesus elaborates on what he means when he refers to living water.  The living water is the teaching he offers, the inspiration to become freed from sin and death,

the living water that gushes up to eternal life. 

A nice theological metaphor, but the Samaritan woman is having none of it. 

She is a practical woman. 

I can almost see her smiling at this strange Jewish man talking about living water, which satisfies your thirst forever. 

I imagine that she has been coming to this well all her life and that she expects to come back again tomorrow. 

Still she’s willing to play along with this strange bird,

and so she tries take him up on his offer. 

“Sir,” she says, “give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming back here to draw water.” 

I think Jesus catches the impertinence behind her request and decides to up the ante with a minor miracle. 

Maybe he sees that underneath her coy, ironic posture

this Samaritan is open and ready to believe. 

He sets her up by asking her to call her husband, and when she says she has no husband he shows that he knew that all along,

That, in fact, she has had five husbands and that the one she has now is not her husband. 

Quite a racy lady, this Samaritan woman,

but well-versed in theology because in her next question,

she returns to the difference between Samaritans and Jews, asking Jesus where she should worship God: on the mountain like her ancestors or in Jerusalem with the Jews. 

Jesus, predictably, has no interest in religious politics. 

He says that it doesn’t matter if you worship in Jerusalem or on the mountain. 

He says that you worship God in spirit wherever you are. 

The woman then acknowledges that she knows the Messiah is coming, setting up the story’s climax where Jesus reveals his true identity. 

He is not just a traveler hungry and thirty resting by a well. 

He is the Messiah, the Son of God. 

The Samaritan woman accepts this truth, abandons her water jug, and returns to her city. 

Jesus remains with the Samaritans for two days, and this beautifully crafted scene ends with a chorus of Samaritans who round off the drama, saying

“It is no longer because of what you (the Samaritan woman) said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

 Now, when you and I go to our metaphorical wells,

we don’t expect to meet Jesus. 

We don’t expect to bump into him in the post office

or to cross paths with him downtown. 

Most of the time, if we expect to encounter Jesus anywhere it’s here, in church, with the beautiful stained glass and the stirring music, in the intimate power of the Eucharist. 

Hopefully, at some point in every service, most of us experience the very real presence of God. 

Me, I always feel it in the Eucharist,

and usually I feel it when I sing. 

I’m like my Dad in that I sing out loud. 

What I lack in pitch, I make up in spirit. 

As Epiphany’s music teacher once said, “John, you’ll love today’s hymn. It has your note in it.” 

Outside of church, however,

I’m not always expecting to encounter Jesus. 

That is one of the reasons I love my job. 

It gives me an opportunity to encounter Jesus. 

You see, I live in great comfort and security and tend to forget that I have to rely upon God. 

I have a family that loves me, and my partner Stan is the greatest, and life has good to me. 

Thanks to my father and my sister’s work in real estate,

I have enough money to live in a beautiful apartment, to exercise in a nice gym, and to take nice vacations. 

All this is well and good, but it’s not always easy to remember that God’s love is behind it all.

The abundance I enjoy is not the experience of the families at Epiphany. 

To be admitted, a family of four, for example, must earn less than $41,000 a year.

Most families, in fact earn considerably less. 

Though on average our students make huge academic strides rising two or three grade levels in a year,

most enter our fifth grade unable to read with fluency,

unable to write a sentence and unable multiply or divide. 

Though most of us feel safe in our familiar Dorchester nieghborhoods, we all know Dorchester is a violent place. 

Last week in my religion class I took a poll and discovered that every single student in my eighth grade religion class had been present at a shooting. 

Even though many of our students have great parents and guardians who each contribute two hours a week of work to keep Epiphany running,

fully 20% of each incoming class at Epiphany is in foster care and is separated from people they love. 

Yesterday, I received a message for you from one of those children in foster care. 

This young man’s family was broken up several years ago, and he’s been in and out five different homes in the last two years.  Two weeks ago, he was picked up on his way home by two teenage girls in his neighborhood who burned their cigarettes into his arm.  Despite all this, yesterday when I walked into the gym, this same boy slid up to me across the floor with a smile that would break your heart. 

He lay there, panting from the game, and I asked what I should tell you today. 

He said to tell you to be happy because Jesus loves you and died for your sins. 

Then, he rolled over, jumped up, and went back to his friends.  That’s what I like about my job, where every day real evil is overcome by tremendous joy. 

Children like that have a lot to teach us. 

Even now do we really accept that God, the Omnipotent, All-Powerful, Ruler of the Universe has came to earth in human form and lived, suffered, and died as one of us?

Do we know that our God is not a Zeus, living on Olympus,

that he is living among us. 

Most of you here must remember Nell’s Tripp’s smile, don’t you?  That was our God. 

Most of you know about the men and women who work in Sunday school, who serve in Altar guild, or in the choir, or as ushers, or on Vestry, or who have a kind word for you when you need it. 

That’s Jesus.  The living water he offers is something that is intangible, ineffable but that is intensely real. 

It’s here in the Church of the Redeemer. 

It’s in Epiphany School, and it’s everywhere else. 

Our God is not interested in what we will drink or what we will eat.

He is interested in our souls. 

He loves each of us passionately and wants us close to him. 

When you stop to think about it, you realize that today’s Gospel story calls us to put down our metaphorical water jugs and to run and tell our friends about Jesus.  

Now, don’t start getting nervous when I say run and tell your friends about Jesus.

Evangelists have given evangelism a bad name.

I am not talking about ringing your neighbor’s doorbell and asking him to accept Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior. 

No, we don’t do that in Chestnut Hill, nor do we do that at Epiphany where the low-income, inner city Episcopalian market is very, very small. 

It would be inappropriate to take advantage of our position as teachers to proselytize and besides Episcopalians don’t do that sort of thing. 

What we do do, however, is witness to our faith by building a school. 

We live out our conviction that every child is sacred, that all children call us to sacrifice ourselves not so that we lose ourselves in serving them but so that we can save our souls.  

What are you doing today to witness to your faith? 

How do you share what you have been given in Christ Jesus? 

In my experience, all of us have some way to love other people. 

When you go home today, remember the Samaritan woman.  Remember how she recognized Jesus, left behind her water jar, and ran to tell her friends. 

Over this next week, look for Jesus and try to find some small thing you do to witness to your faith. 

If I know you as well as I think I do, you already have those opportunities. 

Take this Lenten time to renew what you’re already doing. 

I pray that you and I may both drink from the living water of God’s word so that we may no longer thirst for truth and meaning in our lives. 

Let us be fed by the joy of living out God’s will in the word. 

We ask this through His well-beloved son, our Savior and the Redeemer of the world. 

Amen.

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