4

When did you first encounter Jesus Christ? It would be interesting to go around the sanctuary this morning and describe our first Christ Encounters. Some people would recall a clear and distinct encounter on a certain date and specific time. Just like some businesses mark correspondence or transactions with a date and time stamp, some people have very specific encounters with Jesus. Others would tell about equally memorable but less specific encounters. Still others of you would talk less about particular moments or occurrences and more about a general awareness of Christ. I think we would be quite amazed at the variety of Christian experience even in a group our size.

I hope you will keep that in mind as we work through these Lenten sermons. Christ Encounters don’t happen just one way. There are not good ways and bad ways or right ways and wrong ways. I say this because, regardless of what we may think or how it may appear, Christ encounters us. Time and time again Jesus Christ meets us along the way and I’m hoping these sermons will help us be more on the lookout for him.

The sermons on all the Sundays in Lent are looking at Christ Encounters through the lens of John 4 as it tells the story of Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman by Jacob’s well not far from a village which the text calls “Sychar.” However, that is probably just a corrupted form of the word “Shechem” because Jacob’s well is just 250 feet from that tiny, ancient village.[1]

I didn’t really know until I was studying for this sermon that the Samaritans are not just an ancient group. A small band of them continues to this very day. Even though they have been persecuted and despite the almost constant political and religious turmoil in Palestine, the modern-day Samaritans maintain their ancestral home on Mt. Gerizim and their ancient traditions as a conservative, exceedingly strict branch of Judaism. The Samaritans were and are exceedingly distrustful of anything that smacks of innovation or modernism.[2] Among those Samaritan traditions are two that should be mentioned. First, they believed that only the Pentateuch — the first five books of the Old Testament — can be considered as scripture. And second, because God blessed Mt. Gerizim a couple of centuries before God blessed Jerusalem, the Samaritan’s place of worship should be preferred. Both of those will be important as we reflect on today’s text.

So far in these sermons we’ve seen that Jesus arrives about noon at Jacob’s well which was at the foot of Mt. Gerizim. There he encounters a Samaritan woman. He asks her for a drink and they end up talking about living water that gushes up to eternal life. She says she wants this living water even though it’s clear she doesn’t quite know what it means. Now we come to today’s text.

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.”

The Samaritan woman had three strikes against her. But unlike the 3-Strikes Law in California, Jesus didn’t count her out.[3] Her first strike was the low status of being a woman in the culture and religion of the first century. Her second strike was being a Samaritan — a kindred people whom the Jews despised.[4] Her third strike was being a woman whose moral life was completely suspect.[5] The Jews held that a woman could only be married twice, three times at most[6] and, if anything, the Samaritans were more strict about marriage regulations. But even with three strikes, Jesus treated the woman as a person who was valued. Maybe that’s why his challenging encounter produced such an amazing result. Jesus challenges the Samaritan woman in three ways. First, he challenged her immorality with grace.

I have emphasized many times so far how reprehensible this woman was considered to be when looked at through Jewish eyes. Jewish writings of Jesus’ day expressed the revulsion by saying it was indecent to listen to a woman’s voice or inquire after her welfare. It was said that he who eats the bread of the Samaritans was like to one that eats the flesh of swine.[7]

Then add to that this woman’s moral depravity. If not a prostitute, she was at least someone who had a hard time staying married. And because at least six men were complicit in her immorality, think of the chaos and bitterness that such a woman would cause in a small village.

But Jesus encountered that immorality with grace. He didn’t pull punches, he didn’t say it didn’t matter. He named her sins exactly. And the amazing thing is she didn’t respond as most people would.

Point out someone’s sins and the normal reaction is denial (“I didn’t do it”), belligerence (“who are you to question me?”), accusation (“you’re just as bad”), or plain anger (“get out of my face”) — with a few expletives sprinkled along the way. She didn’t respond in any of those ways and that’s how we know that Jesus challenged her with grace. Somehow his grace broke through the normal defenses. She didn’t feel condemned or put down. His honesty somehow strangely freed her which is exactly what grace does.

But, oh my, how we struggle with grace. We are just not used to free gifts with no strings attached. It can even produce anxiety because we can’t control God’s grace. We can only receive it.

A professor once offered a class on grace at a church-related university. It was one of the most popular classes ever and, as you can imagine, the course left students with a feeling of gratitude for this stupendous gift.

The feeling changed to consternation and anxiety, however, when they got the year-end exam. It was a killer. They all failed. As a group, the students approached the professor and complained. “Here you teach us about God’s free gift to us out of unconditional love, and then you give an exam we all fail! That isn’t fair!”

The professor responded that it was true that everyone had failed. The students thought they had been betrayed and continued with expressions of anger, pleading, and anxiety. Then the professor added, “You have all failed the exam; and I am going to give you all passing grades. This is grace.”

There was a stunned silence. Then the students were angrier than ever. They wanted to rewrite the exam. They did not want a mark they had not “earned.” It is hard to accept grace.[8]

But somehow the woman at the well did. Jesus named her brokenness, her weakness, her corruption, her looking-for-love in all the wrong places. Maybe because she knew he was breaking all the rules himself just to talk with her, she felt loved, not condemned. So she was changed or at least began to change because Jesus challenged her with grace.

A second challenge in this encounter has to do with worship. When Jesus spoke so accurately to the woman about her moral condition, she realized she was talking to someone extraordinary and said he was a prophet. That led to a discussion about the preferred place of worship. The Samaritans insisted the right place was Mt. Gerizim. The Jews insisted it was Jerusalem.

I mentioned at the beginning that the Samaritans only accepted as scripture the Pentateuch — the first five books of the Old Testament. The Pentateuch does not mention Jerusalem but it does mention Gerizim as a place blessed by God.[9] Jerusalem didn’t become important until a couple of centuries later during the time of King David. Therefore, the Samaritans argued, Gerizim had priority over Jerusalem.

Jesus replied that place doesn’t matter. True worship doesn’t happen by being at Gerizim or Jerusalem or any other place. True worship happens when God is worship in spirit and in truth.[10] What does it mean to worship in spirit and in truth?

In other words, where we worship or even how we worship isn’t important but who we worship is.

Danger lurks here, however. Jesus deemphasized holy places and we translate that as “you don’t have to go to church to worship God.” In and of itself, that’s true but it also leads to one of the most prevalent of all heresies. It’s a heresy that ensnares me sometimes and most of you sometimes. The heresy is sloppy thinking and lazy behavior with regard to worship attendance.

I admit that throughout my years of ministry I have always had a reluctance to insist on church attendance because it sounds legalistic and self-aggrandizing or at least church-aggrandizing. But if we are not present in church we may be missing spirit and truth — that is the specific place where Jesus is. If Jesus is here then you need to be here. And if Jesus is not here, then you need to be somewhere else where he is. But not nowhere![11] So Jesus challenged the woman about worship.

Finally he challenged her about time. Don’t put off what needs to be done now. In the conversation about spirit and truth, the woman seems to be aware that the subject is complicated. So she affirms that the Messiah is coming and he’ll make everything clear. In other words, there will be time to get things figured our later. “No,” challenged Jesus. “I am he.” In other words, now is the time. Jesus challenges our tendency to put off important things.

Quite a few years ago the phone rang one night. A church member was calling because his wife’s father had just died. Could I come over to the house? Of course. The wife’s parents were not members of my church though they attended from time to time, especially when their grandkids were doing things during worship. So I had met them on many occasions and they seemed like nice folks. They belonged to a different church but their minister was out of town. So I did what I could do to be of help and comfort in their moment of need.

Mostly we just talked for quite some time — the man who called me, his wife, her mother, and, until it got too late, the grandchildren. We talked about many things and prayed for awhile. This man’s death was not unexpected. He was in his late 80s and had been visibly declining in recent months. In fact, he had taken a serious downturn and was in the hospital when he died, the doctors still trying to figure out if anything could really be done. So the conversation was not about tragedy or shock but about thanks to God for a long life well lived.

At one point I asked if he had a will. I usually ask that because sometimes people have spelled out things in their will about their memorial service or what should be done when they die including people they hope will be contacted. So I asked if there was a will.

The answer still surprises me. Without any hint of irony, the widow said to me, “No. We always thought we would have time.”

I hope my face didn’t register surprise or shock or disapproval. But if you’re in your late 80s, if you’ve been married for 60 years, if you’ve raised children and been there for grandchildren, you’ve had time. Some things are too important to put off. Wills are one of those things. But much, much, much more important is encountering the Messiah.

“I know that Messiah is coming,” said the woman, “and when he comes, he will explain everything.”

I said at the beginning it would interesting to share together where and when we first encountered Jesus or even when we most encounter him today. Were we to do that, I think we would be surprised that our Christ Encounters are often not where or when we expect. The Samaritan woman went to the well not expecting anything except drawing water for the needs of the day. Instead she met someone who knew her at worst and still treated her as a person, accepting her with a challenging love.

And isn’t that what we most want and need — to be known and accepted? Imagine you were visiting Washington, D.C. and as you walked down the street a motorcade drove by. Imagine that it came to a screeching halt right by you and the President got out and came over to shake your hand and said, “I know you and it’s great to see you.” Would that not impress you and make you feel good, even if you didn’t vote for him?

Imagine visiting the Vatican and as you walk down a corridor, out of a side door pops the Pope who greets you with a hug while saying, “I know you and it’s a blessing to see you.” Would you not be flattered and happy even if you are not a Catholic? Of course, because we want to be known and to know that we’re known.

At the Agasha Temple of Wisdom in downtown Los Angeles, devotees gathered each Sunday night for 27 years to hear their leader Fred Zenor go into trance and advise action based on the insights of Agasha, an ancient seer who supposedly spoke through Zenor’s mind and voice when he was in an altered state of consciousness. Predictions as important as marriage and business success or as trivial as vacation choices and the timing of grocery purchases were all treated with equal gravity in these sessions where Zenor served as a channel for Agasha. The services were always crowded and immensely popular.[12] This is not just because strange things happen in Southern California. People will believe almost anything if they feel their personal lives are really known.

So it is that Jesus Christ encounters you. He doesn’t need to be channeled. He is the Living One, the Messiah. And he knows you, and encounters you, and challenges you — in love. Thanks be to God.

[1] Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John (i-xii) (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1966) 169. Brown argues persuasively that Shechem makes far better sense than Sychar, the latter necessarily being identified with modern Askar which is a mile from Jacob’s well and has a good well of its own. Both factors make improbable the woman’s visit to Jacob’s well. But with Shechem “everything fits.”

[2] Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan, eds., The Oxford Companion to the Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) 671-672. The Oxford Companion argues against the oft-repeated claim that Samaritans originated from intermarriage with Assyrians after the destruction of the northern kingdom. Nor should they be identified with those left in the land at the time of the Babylonian exile.

[3] Online, http://www.facts1.com/general/3strikes.htm, Internet, 25 Feb. 2005. The 3-Strikes Law in a nutshell means that if a person commits any felony and, if the person has one previous “violent” or “serious” felony conviction (which includes burglary of an unoccupied dwelling), he or she is sentenced to twice the term prescribed by law for each new felony (and must serve at least 80% of the sentence). If the person has two previous violent or serious felony convictions, he or she is sentenced to a life sentence with the possibility of parole. The minimum term of the life sentence is the greater of: (a) three times the term otherwise provided; (b) 25 years; (c) or a longer term determined by the court.

[4] Günther Bornkamm, Jesus of Nazareth, trans. Irene and Fraser McLuskey (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1960) 41. “The Gospels especially show how the old enmity between the Jews and the inhabitants of Samaria, which went back in its origin to the split between the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah after Solomon's death, had grown to an extreme degree — an enmity which had finally come to a head with the reorganization of the Jewish community after the exile. This enmity is a national as well as a religious one. The Samaritans are looked upon by the Jews as religiously unclean, because of their intermarriage with pagans, but more so as followers of a satanic heresy (John 8.48). Only the Mosaic Pentateuch is valued by them as Holy Scripture; and the legitimate place of worship, hallowed by the ancient tradition of the patriarchs, is in their view the mountain Gerizim, in the heart of their country (John 4.20f.; cf. also Luke 9.51ff.).”

[5] Hannah Ward and Jennifer Wild, eds. Resources for Preaching and Worship Year A: Quotations, Meditations, Poetry, and Prayers (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004) 102.

[6] Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Gospel According to St. John, vol. 1, trans. Kevin Smyth (New York: Crossroad, 1990) 433.

[7] William C. Placher, Jesus the Savior: The Meaning of Jesus Christ for Christian Faith (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001) 208.

[8] Aha!, online, http://www.joinhands.com/aha_online/, Internet, 27 Feb. 2005.

[9] The case for Gerizim depends on the interpretation of three texts from Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 12.5-7: “But you shall seek the place that the Lord your God will choose out of all your tribes as his habitation to put his name there. You shall go there, bringing there your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and your donations, your votive gifts, your freewill offerings, and the firstlings of your herds and flocks. And you shall eat there in the presence of the Lord your God, you and your households together, rejoicing in all the undertakings in which the Lord your God has blessed you.” Deuteronomy 11.29: “When the Lord your God has brought you into the land that you are entering to occupy, you shall set the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal.” Deuteronomy 27.12: “When you have crossed over the Jordan, these shall stand on Mount Gerizim for the blessing of the people: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin.” Since the “place” chosen by God is not named in Deuteronomy 12.5 but the place of “blessing” is identified as Gerizim in 11.29 and 27.12, the argument is made that Gerizim was the place God chose. Thus, Gerizim has a greater claim to veneration than Jerusalem because its sacredness goes back to the wilderness wanderings and entry into the land. Jerusalem entered the people’s history only much later in the time of David.

[10] Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol. 3, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1993) 370. “In worship individual Christians are united with others in the church’s fellowship by the ‘ecstatic’ [i.e., “spiritual”] fellowship with Jesus Christ that lifts them above themselves. Only at worship does the fellowship of believers come to realization as a sign of our future fellowship in God’s kingdom for the praising and glorifying of God to all eternity. But individual Christians as believers are not only lifted above themselves in Christ. They have also to live in this world as those in whom Christ is present and at work by his Spirit.”

[11] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. II, 1, trans. T. H. L. Parker, et al. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1957) 481. Barth makes a powerful case. “It does not mean that the divine presence in the world had suddenly become that of a mere undifferentiated ubiquity, and not of definite and distinct places. The opposite of Jerusalem and Gerizim and all temples made with hands — and we can apply it and say the opposite of Rome, Wittenberg, Geneva and Canterbury — is not the universe at large, which is the superficial interpretation of Liberalism, but Jesus. And the worship of the Father in spirit and in truth is not the undifferentiated worship of a God undifferentiatedly omnipresent. On the contrary, we have only to glance at the way in which the terms ‘spirit’ and ‘truth’ are used elsewhere in St. John’s Gospel and we shall see at once that it is worship of God mediated through Jesus as the One who makes everything known to us. According to the testimony of the New Testament, God does not cease to dwell in the world in definite and distinct ways, i.e., even as omnipresent, and without detriment to His omnipresence, He does not cease to be in special places. On the contrary, the reality of the definite, distinct dwelling of God in the world is now made clear in this true but not abstract antithesis, in which it can be said ‘The Word (the very Word which was in the beginning, which was with God and which was God, the Word by which all things came into being, this really omnipresent Word) ‘was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory’ (John 1.14).”

[12] H. Newton Malony, “Pastoral Implications,” Lectionary Homiletics 4.4 (1993): 11.