May the words of my mouth and
the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in thy eyes, O Lord our strength and
our redeemer…Amen.
So he came to a Samaritan city
called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given his son Joseph.
Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus tired out by his journey was sitting by the
well.
I remember my first clumsy
attempt at reading bible stories to my first child. Like a dutiful father, I
had gone to the bookstore looking for version of the bible that was accessible
to a two year old. I found a book in the children’s section called the Beginners
Bible. (It’s the same one we give children for their baptisms at St.
Martin’s.) The book had friendly
illustrations and used simple language.
I returned home feeling quite
triumphant.
After bath and dinner, we sat
down to begin the religious training that would shape the moral and ethical
future of my daughter’s young life.
I opened the book to the first
page…Genesis, creation…that sounded pretty good….oops, I then remembered
humanity gets thrown out of the garden….I thought I would come back to that
story another night…
I turned to the next section it
said Cain and Abel. Well Florrie didn’t have any siblings yet but I certainly
didn’t want to give her any ideas….so I skipped that one as well.
I was beginning to feel like a
spiritual failure….but I still hadn’t given up so I turned the page to the next
story…it said Noah and the Ark….great God gets mad at humanity and decides to
wipe us all out….
Clearly the session on religious
training was not going the way I expected. So I put the book down and decided
to try Curious George instead.
After looking at a few Old
Testament stories, the man in the yellow hat seemed a lot more benevolent than
Yahweh.
Certainly some of these older
stories seem strange to modern ears, especially when we try and reflect on what
they are trying to teach us about God.
I always come away from some Old
Testament stories with the feeling that I am despite years of study painfully
ignorant of all the cultural, historical, and spiritual worldviews that shape
these stories.
This brings me back to the
mention we have in this morning’s gospel about Jacob and Joseph. Do you
remember them from Genesis?
Jacob if you recall was the
fellow who cheated his brother Esau out of his first-born blessing. Deathbed
blessings were an important thing in ancient cultures.
Folks believed that the dying
relative could pass along some of their power, good luck, or karma to the next
generation by pronouncing a blessing upon them.
Now Jacob’s father, Isaac, was
getting old and couldn’t see. He had two sons, Jacob and Esau. Now Isaac
favored, Esau the older one because he was a more macho outdoorsman type of
fellow.
Jacob was the favorite of his
mother Rebekah. He was more sensitive and hung around the tents, and wrote
poetry.
Anyway Isaac realizes his time
is almost up so he calls Esau and tells him to go out shoot some game and bring
him something to eat. Isaac will then give him a special blessing that was part
of his birthright as the firstborn son.
Well mom overhears dad and
convinces Jacob to pretend to be his brother. She makes a lamb stew and puts
the wool on Jacob’s arms and neck because Esau was a hairy man and knows this
will fool dad.
She then sends son number two
into the tent to pretend to be Esau. Isaac is a bit suspicious and says, “Come
near that I may feel you, my son, to know whether you are my son Esau or not.
The voice is Jacob’s voice but the hands are the hands of Esau.”
So this bit of trickery works
and Jacob gets the blessing: It is worth hearing what he gets from Dad to
appreciate what was important to our spiritual ancestors:
“May God, give you the dew of
heaven, and of the fatness of the earth and plenty of grain and wine. Let the
peoples serve you, and nations bow down to you. Be lord over your brothers, and
may your mother’s son bow down to you. Cursed by everyone who curses you, and
blessed be everyone who blesses you!”
Esau of course, shows up five
minutes after his brother has left, he is not too pleased to hear that he is
out one family blessing. He resolves to kill his brother and thus Jacob has to
go live with Mom’s relatives until Esau cools off.
Now even if you may have never
heard this story, you should be asking yourself, why do you think God picks
such a fellow to be father of the nation of Israel?
Jacob tricks his dying father,
cheats his brother, and tries to runs away from all his troubles.
When I said it is hard to penetrate the religious and cultural
backgrounds of some of these stories, this is part of what I was trying to
capture. Yet this flawed individual reminds us that we don’t have to be perfect
for God to use us to do amazing things.
This story is important this
morning because John makes a point of letting us know where Jesus has stopped
before telling the story of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the
well.
It is on a special piece of
land, land that Jacob had given to his younger son Joseph, the one with the
fancy coat, that Jesus stops during the heat of the day.
Now whenever I hear an exact
location like this in the Bible, I usually stop and ask myself why the writer
felt it was necessary to give us the location.
Why does John even care where
Jesus was? What does this land deal have to do with Jesus’ encounter with a
fallen woman?
Part of this understanding I
think has to do with knowing the history of Jacob and his sons, understanding
the story.
This piece of property
represented a direct connection to Israel’s past. It had been told around
campfire after campfire, and passed along from parent to child for at least a
thousand years.
In Jesus’ day this well and land
had been a matter of dispute between Samaritans and Jews. Who were Jacob’s real
descendants? What people had a right to
claim the religious heritage of Israel as there own possession?
This is part of the discussion
we see when the woman and Jesus are arguing about the proper place to worship
God.
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 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.”
Part of the argument between the
Jews and Samaritans, I suspect is a type of religious one-upmanship. One group
of people says to another they have a possession like a well or a mountain that
shows they truly have God’s favor.
Yet the irony of the story of
Jacob as I said before is that God’s favor sometimes rests upon the person who
is a rascal and rogue. The very one who does not appear to be very deserving.
This is the true mystery of how
God’s purpose is sometimes worked out in our lives.
It might not seem fair but we
are reminded in the Bible that God’s love for us is not limited to a temple, a
mountain or even by a well.
None of us sitting here this morning
have be perfect people for God to change our lives.
If anything stories about Jacob
and Joseph remind us that nobody except Christ has ever been perfect. And if
you recall his perfection did not win him many friends.
In this Lenten season, Jesus words
remind us that one-day the time will come when we will worship the Father in
spirit and truth. Jesus wants to be
clear that a possession or our perfection is not going to matter that much.
This is Jesus emphasis in this
morning’s lesson. He knows like Jacob, the Samaritan woman has not lived a
perfect life but she needs God like everyone else and he is willing to sit, to
listen and to talk with her about changing her life.
In fact, it is this Samaritan
woman with her many husbands, who has the courage to witness to the rest of her
village. She gets them to open themselves to hearing Christ’s message when
normally they probably would have just wanted to throw stones at her and at
him.
John’s gospel lesson reminds us
as well that God comes to us in some pretty remarkable ways.
Maybe we are just going to fetch
some water by the well. Maybe we are standing in an aisle at the supermarket.
Maybe we are just reading stories to our children at night.
It probably doesn’t matter what
we are doing, as long as we remember that God’s message of salvation is meant
for all of us.
It doesn’t matter if you are
like Jacob, or a Samaritan woman or even little like that Curious little monkey
that always seems to need the man in the yellow hat.
God is always waiting to find
us, and I hope we will be ready.