Sunday, March 15, 2020, was our last “normal” worship service before the pandemic hit in force. Looking back, parts of this sermon are (charmingly?) naive, but I do still appreciate the words from Martin Luther with which I concluded this service.
Here’s my sermon on the story of Jesus meeting the woman at the well in John 4:5-42 for the 3rd Sunday of Lent. I found helpful Chana Tetzlaff’s commentary at Modern Metanoia and James Howell’s thoughts here.
How many of you have heard the term “Social distancing”?
Now, how many of you had heard of it before this week?
I certainly hadn’t. Seminary covers very little in the way of practical steps to slow pandemics!
The idea of social distancing is for people to consciously separate themselves and avoid close contact with each other, so the virus won’t spread as quickly, which buys time for our healthcare system to keep up. (See this explanation.) This is the first time in my life that I’m encouraging you to spread out in the sanctuary/worship space, and not to sit by each other!
Of course, social distancing is not usually a good thing. We were created to be in community. Human beings are made to live together, to talk, to touch, to interact with each other.
One of the first things God says in Genesis is “It is not good for the man to be alone.”
In today’s gospel reading, we hear about a Samaritan woman who goes alone to the local well to draw some water. A woman drawing water from a well is perfectly normal in that time, but there are a few things unusual happening here.
First, notice where Jesus is: He’s in a Samaritan city. You know the Samaritans from the story Jesus tells about the Good Samaritan, but there are a few more things you should know. (This will sound familiar to the ladies who were here Thursday for WELCA study.)
Hundreds of years earlier, the Assyrians and then the Babylonians had invaded Israel and taken the Jewish people away into exile. They deported all the elites, the educated people, the rulers, the religious leaders, the wealthy, everyone with power.
All those people—and then their children—spent about 40 years in exile in Babylon. That’s where Bible stories like Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego come from.
In exile, they worried about forgetting who they were as God’s chosen people. Much of the Bible was written down during this time, because they were worried about how they were going to pass on their sacred stories to their children. But then, after 40 years, God rescued them and they returned back to Israel.
And when they got back, they discovered there were still people living there. Remember, only the elites got deported. Many of the poor people were left behind.
They still believed in God, but the exiles didn’t trust them. I mean, who knows what they’ve been doing while we’ve been away? We’ve worked so hard to stay faithful, but they’ve intermarried with foreigners and they just can’t be trusted.
The people who stayed behind became known as the Samaritans, and still in Jesus’ day, the good Jewish people didn’t trust them. They don’t talk to them, or interact with them.
This woman who comes to draw water is a Samaritan, so she’s got that going against her.
But not only that, notice when she comes—it’s the middle of the day, the hottest time to be outdoors. You draw water in the cool early hours of the morning, or in the evening, not midday. This woman is trying to avoid people. She’s socially isolating herself!
When the disciples return from whatever errand they’re running, they immediately recognize how odd this scene is. Verse 27 says Jesus’ disciples “were astonished that he was speaking with a woman” (let alone a Samaritan woman!), but apparently by this point they’re used to Jesus breaking social norms, so none of them ask “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?”
It’s not as obvious without the cultural context, but Jesus is doing something dramatic here.
As Pastor Chana Tetzlaff says, this woman is “other” in every way to Jesus. Everything about her separates her from Jesus and even from her own society: Her gender, her religion, her social habits—as comes out in her conversation with Jesus, her personal history, and her lifestyle. In the eyes of the world, she is a nobody.
But Jesus notices her. He meets her in her isolation and loneliness, not at a distance, but up close and personal. Rather than shunning her and turning away, he talks to her.
John doesn’t give us her name, but I have to imagine Jesus asked her for it. He sees her as someone worthy of God’s care and attention, worthy of God’s salvation.
Did any of you see the movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, about Mister Rogers?
In the article the movie’s based on, the writer Tom Junod tells a story about a boy born with cerebral palsy, who was treated terribly as a child and made to think his disease was his fault, to the point where “he told his mother that he didn’t want to live anymore, for he was sure that God didn’t like what was inside him any more than he did.”
He loved Mister Rogers though, to the point where his mother sometimes thought Mr. Rogers was keeping her son alive. A foundation arranged for Mr. Rogers to meet him, and when he came into the room, Mr. Rogers asked the boy, “Would you pray for me?” The boy was thunderstruck because nobody had ever asked him for anything. He was always the object of prayer, not the one to pray for someone else.
When Jesus asks the woman for a drink of water, he’s giving her giving her power and agency, lifting her up. She has something she can offer. She is not worthless.
Because of the way Jesus treats her, because he is willing to bridge the gap the world placed between them, the woman’s life is transformed.
Jesus overcomes her social distancing, her fear, and her loneliness, to give her himself, the living water. This woman becomes an evangelist, going to into her city and telling everyone she meets that she’s found the Messiah, the Savior. She goes to the people she’d been avoiding, and brings them to Jesus, so they can hear and come to believe for themselves.
The key to this story, I think, is that Jesus meets the woman where she is. He doesn’t wait for her to repent of her lifestyle, or to change who she is.
No wonder she can’t help spreading the good news, even to people who’d rejected her. Jesus recognizes her as human. This is how God acts towards us.
Listen to how Paul puts it in Romans 5. “While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. (There are good causes that people heroically give their lives for. It’s not unheard of.) But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
God didn’t wait for us to get our act together, or to have everything all figured out. God didn’t wait for you to stop sinning. Before you were even alive, God had a plan to save you, a plan that involved God doing all the work.
In this time of fear about a pandemic, and of course, fear about all the other things we were afraid of before the coronavirus, in times of loneliness and shame and grief, hold onto the good news.
Instead of God putting distance between God and us sinful people, God comes to be with you. Instead of waiting for us to be healthy, pure, free of sin, God enters into our world, meeting us in the places where we try to hide.
While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. You are forgiven, you are beloved, and you are not alone.
Amen
[At the conclusion of the service]
Before we end our time together, I want to say a little more about social distancing and this coronavirus pandemic.
In response to a question as the black death bubonic plague was raging in Europe in 1527, Martin Luther wrote a public letter titled, “Whether One May Flee From A Deadly Plague.” (Read the whole thing here.)
In describing how Christians ought to respond to a plague, or as we call it today, a pandemic, Luther talks about two different traps we can fall into.
First, our priority must be to help our neighbors. I want to read you a portion of his letter:
“This I well know, that if it were Christ or his mother who were laid low by illness, everybody would be so solicitous and would gladly become a servant or helper.
Everyone would want to be bold and fearless; nobody would flee but everyone would come running. And yet they don’t hear what Christ himself says, “As you did to one of the least, you did it to me” [Matt. 25:40].
When [Jesus] speaks of the greatest commandment he says, “The other commandment is like unto it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself ” [Matt. 22:39]. There you hear that the command to love your neighbor is equal to the greatest commandment to love God, and that what you do or fail to do for your neighbor means doing the same to God.
If you wish to serve Christ and to wait on him, very well, you have your sick neighbor close at hand. Go to him and serve him, and you will surely find Christ in him, not outwardly but in his word.
If you do not wish or care to serve your neighbor you can be sure that if Christ lay there instead you would not do so either and would let him lie there. Those are nothing but illusions on your part which puff you up with vain pride, namely, that you would really serve Christ if he were there in person.
Those are nothing but lies; whoever wants to serve Christ in person would surely serve his neighbor as well. This is said as an admonition and encouragement against fear and a disgraceful flight to which the devil would tempt us so that we would disregard God’s command in our dealings with our neighbor and so we would fall into sin on the left hand.”
So first, the Christian duty is for us to help our neighbors. But sometimes the way to do that is by physically distancing ourselves from them to avoid the potential of spreading a disease that could harm them. Luther continues:
“Others sin on the right hand. They are much too rash and reckless, tempting God and disregarding everything which might counteract death and the plague. They disdain the use of medicines; they do not avoid places and persons infected by the plague, but lightheartedly make sport of it and wish to prove how independent they are.
They say that it is God’s punishment; if he wants to protect them he can do so with- out medicines or our carefulness.
This is not trusting God but tempting him. God has created medicines and provided us with intelligence to guard and take good care of the body so that we can live in good health.
Use medicine; take potions which can help you; fumigate house, yard, and street; shun persons and places wherever your neighbor does not need your presence or has recovered, and act like a man who wants to help put out the burning city.
Moreover, he who has contracted the disease and recovered should keep away from others and not admit them into his presence unless it be necessary. Though one should aid him in his time of need, as previously pointed out, he in turn should, after his recovery, so act toward others that no one becomes unnecessarily endangered on his account and so cause another’s death. “Whoever loves danger,” says the wise man, “will perish by it” [Ecclesiastes 3:26].
If the people in a city were to show themselves bold in their faith when a neighbor’s need so demands, and cautious when no emergency exists, and if everyone would help ward off contagion as best he can, then the death toll would indeed be moderate.
But if some are too panicky and desert their neighbors in their plight, and if some are so foolish as not to take precautions but aggravate the contagion, then the devil has a heyday and many will die.
On both counts this is a grievous offense to God and to man — here it is tempting God; there it is bringing man into despair.”
Obviously, we have far better medical resources today than Luther did, and a much better understanding of how diseases spread.
(Earlier in that letter, he talks about evil spirits spreading vapors and mists that pollute the air.)
But I encourage you to hold to his main points in these coming weeks and months. If you are sick or at risk, quarantine yourself to avoid spreading it. Even if you’re sure you’re going to be fine, love your neighbor by not putting them at risk.
Use the phone and other technology to check in on your neighbors. And of course, pray for your neighbors and for those who don’t have the option of avoiding contagious people.
Love one another. Be patient and gracious with those who react differently under stress.
Remember that in the midst of whatever is happening in the world, God is still good, and God is still faithful.
As English mystic Julian of Norwich, who herself survived the plague wrote, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
Now, receive the benediction: May the Lord bless you and keep you, may the Lord’s face shine upon you and be gracious to you, may the Lord look upon you with favor, and give you peace. Amen