John 4:5-42 (in which Jesus does not have to be male)

I would like to tell you a story.

This story begins with a well. It’s called Jacob’s well. It’s in the Samaritan city of Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob gave his favored child, Joseph -- Joseph who was the youngest but one of twelve sons, but the firstborn of Joseph’s favored wife, Rachel. The story doesn’t tell us why this well was called Jacob’s Well -- though its listeners might have recalled how Jacob met his beloved wife-to-be at a well. Tomorrow’s lectionary* brings us the story of Abraham’s steward finding a wife for Abraham’s beloved child Isaac at a well -- Isaac who would be Jacob’s father.

This story begins with a person named Jesus, tired from a journey, sitting by this well, at noontime.

This story begins with a Samaritan woman. She has come to the well at noontime to draw water.

Jesus says to the woman: “Give me a drink.” The teller of this story informs us that the disciples, those who have been companions with Jesus on this long journey, have gone into the city to buy food.

Now maybe this Jesus was a man -- and listeners’ expectations were that this would be a marriage story, like Jacob and Rachel, like Isaac and Rebekah. Maybe this Jesus was a man, and the woman felt unsafe, alone out there on the edge of town with a strange man.

Maybe this Jesus was a woman. Maybe the Samaritan woman felt safe from threat of violence because this was another woman. Maybe the Samaritan woman felt apprehensive, wondering what would bring a woman alone to this well at midday (her knowledge of why she came not keeping her from speculation about this stranger).

Maybe this Jesus was a large cat like C. S. Lewis would write about so many centuries later, and the woman was afraid, because Aslan is NOT a Tame Lion.

One might expect any of these things. But what this woman saw, the piece of Jesus’ identity that spoke to her so strongly that she spoke it aloud, was that Jesus was a Jew.

Jesus was a Jew, and she was a Samaritan. Both peoples claimed Mosaic lineage, but the two peoples had broken off long ago, and now they didn’t so much as speak to each other.

This woman says to Jesus, “YOU? ask ME? for a drink of water? Do you not notice who we are? We haven’t invented segregated drinking fountains yet, but that’s basically what’s going on here. What do you think you’re doing?”

Jesus patiently replies, “If you knew the generosity of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked me, and I would have given you living water.”

The woman bites her lip on the ridiculousness of this. She calls Jesus, “Sir,” or, “M’lady,” or some other honorific to soften the scoffing remark she is about to make -- “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and who drank from it with his children and livestock?”

Jesus says, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

This sounds intriguing. A little impossible, but intriguing nonetheless. This time the woman’s use of an honorific is less sarcastic, more petitionary. “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

Jesus smiles at her unreadably and says, “Go, call your spouse, and come back.”

A bit downcast now -- or perhaps a bit on-guard, a bit cagey -- the woman replies, “I have no spouse.”

Jesus says to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no spouse;’ for you have been married five times, and you are not married to your current partner. What you have said is true.”

Taking a deep breath and using the honorific one last time, the woman says, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet.” And what do you do if you end up in conversation with a prophet? Why not ask them for a decision on the major schism in your religious life? So she says, “Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but your people say that the place where everyone must worship is in Jerusalem.”

Jesus says, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Parent of us all, Maker of Heaven and Earth, neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we Jews worship what we know, for God's way of salvation is made available through the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Divine Parent in spirit and truth. Indeed, it is just such worshipers whom the Divine Parent seeks. God is spirit, and those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth.”

The woman says to Jesus, “I know that the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One, is coming -- who upon arriving will proclaim all things to us.”

Jesus replies, “I who speak to you am the Messiah.”

The dramatic pause here is interrupted by the return of the disciples. They are astonished that Jesus is speaking with this woman, but no one comes out and says, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?”

Taking her cue, the woman leaves her water jar and returns to the city. She says to the people, “Come and see someone who told me everything I have ever done! Could this be the Messiah?” The people leave the city and go to Jesus.

Meanwhile the disciples are urging Jesus, “Rabbi, eat something.”

But Jesus says, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

So the disciples ask one another, “Surely no one has brought Jesus something to eat?”

Jesus says to them, “The food that keeps me going is doing the will of the One who sent me and bringing this work to completion.

“Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor at harvest time.”

As if to explain this saying of Jesus’, the story returns us to the people of the city. Many Samaritans from that city believe in Jesus because of the woman’s testimony, “This one told me everything I have ever done.” So when they come to Jesus, they ask Jesus to stay with them; and Jesus stays there two days. And many more believe because of Jesus’ word. They say to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

***

*For values of "tomorrow" that are true if you are using the RCL and are operating as if I'm telling this story on Sunday Lent 3A 2011.

One of these days I will have a sermon for Lent 3A 2011, but today is not that day.

My best friend’s lesbian christology is what first started me thinking of Jesus as other than always-default-male, and continues to be foundational in my continuing explorations of that.

For helping to spur and/or shape this particular retelling, thanks also to: Molly’s friend Val (who told a folktale at Molly’s Peach Fuzz Party on Saturday), Support Pastor Ian H., Chris D., and Julia W. (and Ian T. for Lenten weekday morning prayer).

Thanks to The Inclusive Bible and Eugene Peterson’s The Message for some phrasing assists (and to the NRSV for providing the base text).

[unpreached sermon #4] All Saints Day 2009 (Our God is a God of Life)

[Yes, I wrote this as if I were preaching it on November 1, despite not finishing it until the next week.]

All Saints Day 2009 (Our God is a God of Life)

Pentecost 22 (Year B) - November 1, 2009

Ruth 1:1-18
Psalm 146
Hebrews 9:11-14
Mark 12:28-34

Our Old Testament reading is from the Book of Ruth.  Is *the* passage from the Book of Ruth.  Bringing heathens to the one true God through the power of queerness.  On this Sunday when Cambridge Welcoming Ministries celebrates and honors contemporary saints who have worked for the full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender persons at all levels of the United Methodist Church.

And then we get to the Epistle to the Hebrews, which makes explicit that blood atonement theology that so many of us find so problematic and even hurtful.

But when Christ came as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation), she entered once for all into the Holy Place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with her own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.  For if the blood of goats and bulls, with the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer, sanctifies those who have been defiled so that their flesh is purified, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered herself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God!

For this reason she is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, because a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant.

The more time I spend at Cambridge Welcoming, the more uncomfortable I become with the body and blood language in Communion.  My mother was one of the people who pushed back on me about this.  She said:

I still think that the fact that Jesus was literally broken for us is core to the Christian faith. [...] And I thought that your birth required that I be cut open. It strikes me that the greatest treasures require sacrifice of some kind. Some are harsher than others.

It reminded me of the poem I wrote when George was born. Somehow it is important to me to remember that Jesus suffered for us. His pain was real because he was really human. And if we don't acknowledge his brokenness, somehow we are disrespecting his sacrifice.

My brother George and I were both born through caesarian section (yay modern medicine -- my mom would have died twice over otherwise).  The poem she refers to is about the experience of receiving Communion in the hospital after having given birth to him.  In it she says:

In my hand I hold the bread;
Cradling, blessing, my baby's head.
Rememb'ring when I was torn
That this new life might be born.

[...]

As I drink His holy wine,
My baby partakes of mine.
He takes his life from my breast,
His tender self in quiet rest.

Reenacted holy communion
With every birth, at each nursing breast.
Mother and child in holy union.

What strikes me in this is the LIFE imagery.  It's not about glorifying the pain and suffering that were a part of the journey to this moment; instead it's celebrating the life that has come out of this.

Hear again the Gospel:

One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that Jesus answered them well, the scribe asked Jesus, "Which commandment is the first of all?"
    Jesus answered, "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.'  The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'  There is no other commandment greater than these."
    Then the scribe said to Jesus, "You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that 'God is one, and besides God there is no other;' and 'to love God with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,' and 'to love one's neighbor as oneself,' — this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."
    When Jesus saw that the scribe answered wisely, Jesus said to the scribe, "You are not far from the kingdom of God."  After that no one dared to ask Jesus any question.

I admit, the first time I read this lectionary passage this week, I only kind of skimmed it -- having heard this basic story so many times before. But when I went back to edit the gendered language, I noticed something I hadn't caught the first time: "this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."  This -- to love God with all that one has and to love one's neighbor as oneself.

This reminds me of Jesus saying elsewhere in the Gospels (Matthew 9:9-13), "I desire mercy, not sacrifice."  He's quoting the prophet Hosea (Hosea 6:4-6, NIV):

"What can I do with you, Ephraim?
    What can I do with you, Judah?
    Your love is like the morning mist,
    like the early dew that disappears.
Therefore I cut you in pieces with my prophets,
    I killed you with the words of my mouth;
    my judgments flashed like lightning upon you.
For I desire mercy, not sacrifice,
    and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings."

What is most striking to me in reading that Hosea passage is, "Your love is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears."  That's a harsh critique -- that our devotion evaporates under the slightest heat.  The verse that follows says, "Like the first human (or like humanity) they have broken the covenant — they were unfaithful to me there."  We don't offer burnt offerings these days, but there are many other ways in which we make as if to give to God without offering our hearts.  How many times have we failed to live into the covenant with God?

We call ourselves Christians -- at least most of us gathered here do -- and yet we are so very much "of the world."  We go on "diets," not because we want to honor the body we have which is created in God's image by feeding it food full of justice and nutrients and love, but because we believe the voices of the world that there is some magic number at which we are acceptable.  We mutter curses at those traveling the road with us rather than joining our hearts with theirs and praying for peace, patience, and safety.  We shake our heads at those we pass on the street who are begging for spare change rather than inviting them to sit with us in a coffee shop, to buy them something to warm their hands and fill their bellies.  Over and over we turn away from that Emmaus encounter, when the risen Christ was revealed to the mourning disciples in the breaking of bread -- the breaking of bread with an apparent STRANGER they encountered on the road.  Tiffany exhorts us to "look around," to see that "Christ is present" in the gathered congregation.  Far more challenging is a practice Anne Lamott writes about in one of her books -- to see each person she encounters when she is out walking her dog as if that person were Christ.  Because that person is Christ.  We can all recite Matthew 25 -- "whatever you did to the least of these, you did to me"... feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, visiting the imprisoned.  And we are ALL "the least of these."  Everyone is hungry for something, sick from something, imprisoned by something.  And we are called to be God's hands and feet and voices and shoulders in the world -- to be the BODY of Christ in the world, ministering to this embodied world.

We are, to quote from Ann B. Day's liturgy in Shaping Sanctuary (p. 97, based on I Corinthians 12:14-31), "The hand clapping, toe tapping, heart pumping, mouth tasting, arms embracing, justice seeking, hymn singing, love making, bread breaking, risk taking, Body of Christ."

To return to the passage from Ruth... Ruth gives up EVERYTHING.  "Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.  Where you die, I will die — there will I be buried."

That is some radical fidelity.

I'm less interested in wrestling with Paul and making peace with atonement theology than I am in challenging us to live in to this Call -- this Call to walk with God, to make God's ways our ways, to love God and our neighbor and ourselves all with our whole being.  Yes, I believe that just as we are called to love God with heart, mind, strength, and soul, so too are we called to love our neighbors -- for we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, and how can we love ourselves except with all of our selves -- our heart, our mind, our strength, and our soul.

So why should we want to walk with this God?  This God who calls us to give up the walks, the lodgings, the people, and the gods of our former lives?  This God who births us into the world but exhorts us to not be "of" this world?

In the daily lectionary readings leading up to this Sunday, Tuesday's readings are Ezekiel 18:1-32 and Acts 9:32-35.  From Ezekiel:

Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit!  Why will you die, O house of Israel?  For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Sovereign Lord God.  Turn, then, and live.  (Ezekiel 18:31-32, NRSV)

And from Acts:

As Peter traveled about the country, he went to visit the saints in Lydda.  There he found a man named Aeneas, a paralytic who had been bedridden for eight years.  "Aeneas," Peter said, "Jesus Christ heals you. Get up and take care of your mat."  Immediately Aeneas got up.  All those who lived in Lydda and Sharon saw Aeneas and turned to the Lord.  (Acts 9:32-35, NIV)

Our God is a God of life.

God calls us to cast off that which keeps us from relationship with God and to repent, to turn back to God.  God lifts us out of our paralysis, calls us out of our beds, invites us to be a living sacrament pointing to the Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer of all that is.

Every week at Wednesday night service I say, "This is the Bread of Life, that you might have life abundant."  I might also say, recalling my best friend's threefold reflections on the Bread of Life lectionary arc: "This is the Bread of Life, that you might have life, and have it abundantly, and have life everlasting."

Our God is a God of life.

"I desire mercy, not sacrifice."

The letter to the Hebrews speaks of the high priest Christ who entered into the Holy Place with her own blood.  But Ruth needed no blood to join with Naomi, she merely pledged her life to hers.  We have had enough of death when this story opens.  Naomi's husband Elimelech "died" we are told, and her two sons -- Mahlon and Kilion, the husbands of Orpah and Ruth -- "were killed."  Famine drove Naomi and her family from Judah to Moab, and famine (in some sense no less literal a famine, as she has no male kindred to provide for her in Moab) drives her back to Judah.  "So Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law, arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning."  [Ruth 1:22, NIV, from Thursday's daily lectionary]  The famine in Judah is over, and Naomi is returning to her people, just as the harvest is beginning.

Our God is a God of life.  Of abundance and renewal, of welcome and family.

Hear again the Psalm:

Praise the Lord our God! Praise the Lord, O my soul!
I will praise you as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God all my life long.
Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help.
When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish.
Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God,
who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps faith forever;
who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. God, you set the prisoners free;
you open the eyes of the blind. You lift up those who are bowed down; you love the righteous.
You watch over the strangers; you uphold the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked you bring to ruin.
The Lord will reign forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations. Alleluia!

I struggled with the lectionary texts this week, and also with how to preach a sermon on All Saints Day, particularly in light of the sudden losses suffered by some of my friends.

I finished reading Emil Fackenheim's What Is Judaism? this Saturday.  In a section titled "The World to Come and the Holocaust," Fackenheim writes, "Only if we share in the anguish of the victims dare we affirm their resurrection.  Only then dare we affirm the resurrection of anyone.  For if the world to come does not exist for them, it does not exist at all." (p. 274)

And yet we are a resurrection people.  A people who affirm that Weeping may come in the night, but joy will come with the dawn.

In our brokenness, our barrenness, and even in our bitterness, we are over and over again welcomed back to Bethlehem, just as the harvest is beginning.  We are called to work the fields and welcome the stranger, called to embrace long-lost family members and those they bring with them.

On this All Saints Day, I invite us all to help share in the long birthing process toward new life and renewal.

"melech": king, mother, abundance

I recently read a Velveteen Rabbi post on Yom Kippur 5770, and I was struck by her section on king:

The word מלך, "king," is a prevalent metaphor in the High Holiday liturgy. We can see this through a new lens if we unpack the individual letters of the word:

• מ / mem: this letter can be found in the mmm of mama and ima, the m-sound at the beginning of the word mayyim (waters, both cosmic and otherwise). Mem is a letter of motherhood and water.
  
• ל / lamed: this letter begins up high, then takes a crooked path to reach the ground below. Like the flow of divine abundance which begins on high and divagates as it reaches us; like our lives, which start out straight but always wind up complicated. Lamed is a channel from high to low.
  
• כ / chaf: this letter is cupped, like hands brought together to receive.

These three letters flow together sequentially in the alef-bet. Here in our liturgy they speak to us of divine kingship or sovereignty -- and they also speak to us of the root metaphor of motherhood and divine flow, coming down through its crooked channels into our hands.

Before reciting the ha-Melech prayer on Yom Kippur morning, Simcha Zevit gives over this teaching in the name of Reb Marcia Prager, and then invites us to rise and embody it: hands waving above our heads like the rish-rush of the waters, then twisting and flowing down toward the ground, then cupped to receive abundance and then to offer it to someone else in the room. Suddenly melech doesn't seem to be so much about power-over anymore.

My primary church is really uncomfortable with hierarchical language for God, and I have come to internalize that discomfort to some extent -- though at the same time I think the idea of God's sovereignty can be really useful. I really like this meditation on so many of the ideas that are included in this God we worship.

[Firefly] on Incarnation, atonement theology, etc.

Some local folks have been watching Firefly every other Friday night, and in watching "Safe" (for literally the sixth time) a couple weeks ago, I was really struck by the resonance of one exchange (text c&p'ed from script here), thinking about God reaching out to us.

RIVER: You gave up everything you had to find me. And you found me broken. (beat) It's hard for you. You gave up everything you had.
SIMON: Mei mei ["little sister"]... Everything I have is right here.

I think God is always reaching out to us, and that's one of the ways I think of the Incarnation -- not just that we weren't understanding God's Will for us and needed shepherding back to the path (The Way), but also that God reaches out and touches us, sits down at table and shares bread and drink with us.

And our brokenness grieves God, and God is right there with us through it all.

Christ descended from the Right Hand of the Father to come to earth, born of a human woman and suffering as humans do, but at some levels it wasn't a sacrifice because God's home is with us, our home is with God. (And now I'm thinking of the Children's Moment and Reflection from my evening church this past Sunday.)

***

I tagged this entry "mother is the name of god," mostly because the fanfic I learned that quotation from takes place during this episode, but it also got me thinking.

Our interim lay speaker began his time with us (Fifth Sunday After Pentecost) preaching on family (specifically 2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10 ... on how David is covenantally anointed a leader of family -- "All the tribes of Israel came to David at Hebron and said, 'We are your own flesh and blood.'")

"Mother is the name of God..."

At SCBC prayer group this morning, people kept saying "Lord" and "Father" and "He." I don't want to co-opt the term "double-consciousness" (esp. since I think I wouldn't really be using it correctly), but I was very conscious simultaneously of how the speakers intended the language and how it failed to resonate with me. I've been inclined recently to use female language for God (e.g., "Mother," "She"), even though any gendered language for God makes me uncomfortable to some degree because God is so beyond our conceptions of gender. "Mother" in particular often make me uncomfortable because I feel like the speakers are intended to conjure up this happy fluffy "if only women ruled the world we would live in socialist harmony" idea. I was thinking about how recently I've had that fierce protective "place myself between you and the powers of darkness" urge, and how that feels to me really true to who God is and also echoes the Mama Bear response I've seen from my own mother.

"Mother is the name of God in the lips and hearts of children" [Google tells me (1) that originates with William Makepeace, (2) it was quoted in The Crow -- which is probably where it was initially familiar to me from.]

***

At CWM tonight, I think it was in the Welcome that Tiffany said something about how we are gathered around this table, and I realized that by gathering around the Communion table, we literally mirror the Last Supper -- Christ gathering together with his friends.

Carolyn went off lectionary and preached on: Psalm 29, 1 John 4:19-21, Amos 5:18-24

She talked about how Amos' audience believed that their prosperity (though I don't think that was the exact word she used, but I totally thought, "Wow, that really undercuts the idea of the Prosperity Gospel") was the result of God's favor on them. Retribution will come at the time it is least expected. She also talked about how this idea of divine retribution is problematic (though I think she might have been overgenerous in stating that we liberals are uncomfortable with the idea of divine retribution raining down on our adversaries ;) ).

She said that the word translated "stream" in Amos is a word from the Noah flood story, so it's rather more intense than just the literal translation of "permanent stream that will never run dry." She talked about how the water language of the Psalm recalls Creation and Noah -- order out of chaos. She suggested that one lesson we could take from this is that God helps us find meaning.

Three things we can learn from this Amos passage:
1. Justice is important to God. (On the Day of YHWH, YHWH's justice comes to fruition. Even God's people can act counter to what God wants.)
2. God is there with us.
3. Perhaps we are called to be the prophets.


Interestingly, I used to really like the name "Yahweh" for God, but my best friend and I have had conversations about the Tetragrammaton, and so now my immediate reaction is to find it problematic that we are pronouncing a name which was purposely unpronounceable/unpronounced.