Sermon for the Episcopal Church of St John the Baptist, Capitola,
given by Rev. Steve Ellis/February 22, 2008
The Episcopal Church of Saint John the Baptist welcomes all to worship God and to share
Christ's love in the world. We are a parish family committed to provide liturgy, Bible study, music, counseling, and Christian education for children, youth, and adults, and to equip all our members for life and for service to other
Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Exodus 17:1-7 - From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. The people quarreled with Moses, and said, "Give us water to drink." Moses said to them, "Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?" But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, "Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?" So Moses cried out to the Lord, "What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me." The Lord said to Moses, "Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink." Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, "Is the Lord among us or not?"
Psalm 95 Page 724
1 Come, let us sing to the LORD; * let us shout for joy to the Rock of our salvation.
2 Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving * and raise a loud shout to him with psalms.
3 For the LORD is a great God, * and a great King above all gods.
4 In his hand are the caverns of the earth, * and the heights of the hills are his also.
5 The sea is his, for he made it, * and his hands have molded the dry land.
6 Come, let us bow down, and bend the knee, * and kneel before the LORD our Maker.
7 For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. *
Oh, that today you would hearken to his voice!
8 Harden not your hearts, as your forebears did in the wilderness, *
at Meribah, and on that day at Massah, when they tempted me.
9 They put me to the test, * though they had seen my works.
10 Forty years long I detested that generation and said, *
"This people are wayward in their hearts; they do not know my ways."
11 So I swore in my wrath, * "They shall not enter into my rest."
Romans 5:1-11 - Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
For 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. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
John 4:5-42 -Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, `Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." The woman said to him, "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 with his sons and his flocks drank from it?" Jesus said to her, "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." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water."
Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come back." The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, `I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!" The woman said to him, "Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem." Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming" (who is called Christ). "When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us." Jesus said to her, "I am he, the one who is speaking to you."
Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, "What do you want?" or, "Why are you speaking with her?" Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, "Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?" They left the city and were on their way to him.
Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, "Rabbi, eat something." But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you do not know about." So the disciples said to one another, "Surely no one has brought him something to eat?" Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 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."
Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I have ever done." So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said 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."
SERMON
The journey to the Kingdom of God bogs down. So often our hearts don’t seriously engage the darkness because the way seems too long. We don’t exercise hope. We get cynical. We stop taking God’s dream seriously. We become dead weight holding back those who are trying to build momentum for a better world. Fear is not rewarding, but it is comfortable.
How often, when I was growing up, did we talk about poverty, the worst poverty, and say, "There’s really nothing can be done, the problem is too large." I grew up afraid that was true. So, when I first read Jeff Sach’s book, The End of Poverty, and realized there is a real plan to end the worst of poverty in my own lifetime, and that the nations of the world had already signed on to it, promised to fund it, and that some of its programs were really on track, and that it needed grass-roots work to build the constituency to assure nations would live up to their promises, and that our churches had to be foremost in this fight, a little hope began to dawn.
I’ve seen the impact that congregations and committed people can make to problems like homelessness in this county, and in another amazing alliance called Stockton Metro Ministries, and in Nehemiah projects in Chicago and East Brooklyn and in San Antonio, and so on. But I hadn’t realized there was a global alliance ready to tackle the world’s worst poverty intelligently, decisively, sustainably. And as I’ve watched that taking shape, I have more hope. As I understand better I get involved in more ways, because I begin to know what is strategically useful. It will take cooperation between nations. It will take dedication from political leaders. We have to make them want to do it and show them what committed people can do, and we are key to that. But we can’t do it if we are afraid.
You see, the Israelites wanted the promised land, but they couldn’t give themselves to the journey, because they were longing for rulers to resent. They turned poor Moses into Pharaoh, because the only way they knew to deal with leadership was resistance and complaint. They didn’t want the responsibility of freedom, they bickered constantly with Moses, they feared that God who had delivered them was not with them at all.
Ernie Cortes puts it well, "God got the people out of Egypt, but had a harder time getting Egypt out of the people." The clear teaching of scripture is that they could have shortened the wandering in the wilderness by 39 ½ years if they’d worked with Moses instead of against him. That would have got there about 80 times faster, but they had to learn the hard way.
I think we need to learn two things from that.
First: It is human to learn the hard way. Do you find that there are many lessons you don’t learn the first time around? It is good that we acknowledge that. It isn’t unusual to be mistrustful, argumentative. It is human nature.
And second, we could do most things about eighty times faster, if we were less grudging and more willing to lend a hand. What task is not more enjoyable when it’s a common cause? It doesn’t matter how hard the work is when it is shared. One of the great blessings of working on the building project is the three incredible teams of dedicated disciples of Jesus that lead the project, the architecture, the campaign. Just working on those teams gives one courage and strength. There’s a harvest ready, and we must be ready for it.
Globally, the opportunity to eradicate malaria and reduce HIV/AIDS infections and to help the orphans AIDS has created is such a worthy cause. Homelessness in our own community, creating housing people who work in the community can afford, (some of our own people at St. John’s); making our neighborhoods safer; increasing access to healthcare are all worthy causes for us in Jesus’ name. And there are so many people who just need the hope that joining in Christ’s work can bring into their lives. These are the beginning of the call to freedom. But when you get to work on these things there are setbacks, there are delays. In fact, working on these justice issues makes a building program look straightforward & easy. People get discouraged, and often, get stuck and complain about and resent our leaders, national, state, local.
But feelings of resentment and futility are the contrary of hope and dedication. Our anxiety often reveals to us that our trust is not in God. Resentment is no gospel virtue. We all struggle with this. But God can be trusted.
The people I have known who were most effective in gospel justice are prophetic in the deep sense. They see what’s wrong and face it squarely. They share what they learn, they get involved, they form relationships, they investigate, build coalitions, bring others into the work, maintain their prayers, their hope, they are willing to ask us all to live up to our values, to deepen our values. Over the years their commitments witness to the love of God that is in them, and others are bound to them and to the work with bonds of affection, admiration, and shared commitment and change comes to the community. Such people built my youth group growing up. Such people built affordable housing for five hundred seniors, all beginning in that congregation.
There is a tremendous contrast in the first and last lessons today. In the first the people are wandering in the desert full of fear. Set free from slavery, their response is not trust in God, but great anxiety, and quarreling with Moses. God gives them water, but Moses calls the miraculous spring "contention" to remind them of their bitterness. And it is named "proof" because they had no trust.
But the gospel lesson turns this on its head! Jesus asks for water, the woman has the courage to engage him. She is quarrelsome, defends her traditions, and he engages her. It takes her a while to check him out, and he probes and agitates, as Jesus will. But her response is so different from Israel in the wilderness. Instead of being resentful of a Jew, afraid of a strange man, anxious about being unmarried, she decides this man who is taking her seriously is the real deal, the Messiah her people await. She is filled with faith, and she becomes a disciple and apostle from that moment.
Nicodemus didn’t do half that well. Her courage is remarkable. Her clear-hearted probing of Jesus is honest hope. She is ready for the new life. She is the example for us to follow: She asks the hard questions and then she dives in to the journey!
It doesn’t have to take "eighty times as long", we don’t have to be dragged most of the way. There are better springs than the waters of Massah and Meribah, "contention" and "proof." God give us the water that gushes up in us to eternal life, and let us welcome it and be refreshed. This nameless woman at the well is our example. And if we drink the water Christ offers, we can go and do likewise!
