6

We ended last Sunday’s sermon with the question that the woman at the well asked about Jesus. “He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” Today we look further at how the text answers that question, not just to say “yes, he can be the Messiah” but also to reveal further what it means for Jesus to be the Messiah. I’m calling this a Revealing Encounter because this part of the story deepens our insight into Jesus and what he wants to do.

To briefly recap the story so far, about noon one day Jesus stopped by Jacob’s well in Samaria, a short distance from the town of Shechem (called Sychar in the text). The disciples go into the village to buy food and a woman from the village comes to the well. Jesus asks her for a drink, breaking several taboos as he did: Jews had no dealings with Samaritans, men didn’t talk to women in public, and one shouldn’t involve oneself with someone whose moral status was so questionable.

The woman wonders why Jesus would even speak with her and challenges him with questions. He asks if she wants living water and, hesitantly, she says she does even though it’s clear she doesn’t quite know what that means. Then the conversation turns to worshiping God in spirit and truth which the woman acknowledges will happen when the Messiah comes. Jesus claims to be the Messiah.

Just then the disciples return with the food they bought in town. They are shocked, yet silent, about Jesus’ behavior. Meanwhile the woman goes back to her village and tells everyone that she met someone who spoke the truth to her but still accepted and valued her. And with Jesus’ words still ringing in her ears, she wonders out loud, “He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” So we pick up the story now in verse 31.

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.”

When you study John’s Gospel in detail, you quickly notice an important pattern. Almost always the story happens at two levels. One level is the normal, literal, or earthly. The second level is the extraordinary, spiritual, or heavenly. The two levels interact to better reveal who Jesus is as the incarnate Logos — the Word of God — and what Jesus wants to tell us or show us.

So in this story Jesus talks about the spring of living water gushing up to eternal life. The woman talks about his not having a bucket to draw water. She talked about water in the literal sense and he talked about water in the spiritual sense. As the revelation unfolds for her, she gradually moves from the normal to the extraordinary, the literal to the spiritual, and the earthly to the heavenly.

In today’s text that pattern repeats with the disciples. They went into town to buy food and having returned they want Jesus to eat something — literal food. But he talks at the spiritual level about food they don’t even know about. They respond at the earthly level wondering if anyone else brought him food. Of course, no one did bring him literal food for what truly sustains Jesus is the spiritual food of doing the will of God.

We have, then, this interplay of levels. There is water from the well which is obviously necessary to sustain life. But living water is necessary to sustain eternal life. There is food that is obviously necessary for life. But what truly sustains is doing the will of God. On one level the text is about water and food but it reveals another level about true sustenance. The woman talks about water and the disciples about food at the literal level. But Jesus points to the higher level. That’s why this is a Revealing Encounter and we need to get to that higher level.

So I want to talk about two important revelations in this encounter. The first is that Jesus wants for us what truly sustains us.

In the story, there is literal food and spiritual food. So food is really a metaphor for what Jesus came to do.[1] Jesus’ food is to do God’s will which is to bring life. In other words, his reaching out to the Samaritan woman is what sustains him, it is his food. Now think about that. When we’re hungry we want to eat. We want food. Jesus’ food is his reaching out to us. It is something he wants to do! Sometimes we have the mistaken notion that we have to convince Jesus to love us by being good. Just the opposite is true. We don’t have to persuade him to love us. He already wants to love us.

Then in the text there is a series of statements about sowing, reaping, harvesting, and laboring. A lot of ink has been spilled trying to explain these statements but the point is actually fairly simple.[2] Jesus wants to bring life, to give what truly sustains us. He wants his disciples to share in that work of sustaining people. And just as in an earlier chapter he talked about the spirit blowing where the spirit wills, here he says there are others whom we may not see or know anything about. They also have labored and we enter that labor. Jesus wants the fullness of life, both earthly and heavenly, for all his people. So we labor along with others so that everyone may rejoice together in the harvest.

There was a harvest last week that most of us probably didn’t know anything about. For ten years of so the Presbyterian Church (USA) has officially encouraged a boycott of Taco Bell. You may not even have been aware of this. I don’t eat at Taco Bell. But I never paid much attention to the boycott either. That boycott ended last week.

What got it started was the exploitation of farm workers, especially in Florida, who picked the tomatoes used by Taco Bell.[3] In the mid-1990s, eight farm workers found the courage to organize themselves into the Coalition of Immokalee Workers or CIW to stand up to the corporate power of Yum! Brands which owns Taco Bell and also against the cruelty of crew bosses in the field. On the wall in the crowed office if CIW hangs the bloodied shirt of a farm worker who was beaten in the field by a crew boss. After the beating, the growing coalition confronted the offender and said, “If you beat one of us, you will have to face all of us.” With similar courage the coalition helped the U.S. Attorney uncover and successfully prosecute cases of actual slavery in the farm labor industry. Eventually they were able to persuade the powerful business leaders of Yum! Brands to change and a stunning accord was reached.

Now the company is working with its suppliers to identify ways to pass an additional penny per pound directly to the tomato pickers. It has committed to work with the coalition and its suppliers to seek industry-wide reform. It has strengthened its Code of Conduct to assure that there will be no slave labor in its supply chain. And it will seek legislative reform to protect the rights of farm workers. Taco Bell has truly begun a movement towards fair fast food.[4]

The Presbyterian Church helped. Through money given to funds like the One Great Hour of Sharing, this month’s special mission emphasis here, the church stood with some of the least ones and the boycott’s end was celebrated last Thursday at a worship service at the Presbyterian Center in Louisville. The farm workers acknowledged the church’s role. At Thursday’s worship service, they expressed through a Spanish translator their joy at the settlement and their appreciation to the church. Many of the workers are people of deep faith, but one told that he had never been part of a church. “I have learned a lot by visiting all of these churches,” he said. Then he offered the heartfelt benediction which hardly needed translation: Que Dios los Bendiga. “May God bless you.”

Jesus wants for us what truly sustains. And that begins with literal food and a living wage. And it leads to dignity and hope and thanksgiving for God’s blessing. I think the Messiah was present in Immokalee, Florida last week and there was a rejoicing in the harvest.

The Messiah was also in Cambridge last week but there was no rejoicing. This is almost too embarrassing to tell, but I tell it because it’s on my heart and because confession, which we do every Sunday in worship, is not just a liturgical exercise. It’s real. And it’s necessary.

Mary Beene, our seminary intern, is doing her studies at Boston University but her internship with us is actually through Harvard Divinity School. Harvard has certain requirements for supervisors. Even though over the years of my ministry I have supervised 25 or 30 different interns, I’ve never been supervised while I was supervising. So to meet Harvard’s requirements I needed to take a class. From September through December I went every other Monday and from January through May I have one class session per month for which I take the train into Cambridge. That’s what I did last Monday.

On my way from the train stop to the divinity school, I usually stop for a few minutes at a Starbucks on Massachusetts Avenue. I have time for a cup of coffee while I read a bit more for class. As I sat there last Monday, looking up occasionally from my book, I saw a shabbily dressed man stop by a garbage can outside the Starbucks, obviously looking for food. I thought to myself I should go give him a couple of bucks. Maybe I will when I’m done. But I kept on reading and he went away.

Several minutes later he was back, looking again for some food. This time I even thought it through. Jesus said if we don’t do unto the least ones, we don’t do unto him. That’s a least one there. That’s Jesus. That’s the Messiah. I’ll give him everything I have in my pockets. I had maybe twenty bucks or so. But I kept on reading another page or two. And he went away.

I finally got myself going and went to find him. I searched all up and down Massachusetts Avenue, even behind some buildings. I looked for him again after class on my way back to the train. I missed him. Goat that I am, I missed the Messiah.

When Jesus talked about separating the sheep from the goats (Matthew 25.31-46), the goats asked him, “When did we see you hungry and not give you food?” Jesus answered that in not giving food to one of the least ones, they did not feed him. Apparently the goats didn’t know where the Messiah was. What convicts me the most is this. I knew. I saw. But I didn’t do what I should.

I have asked God to forgive me and I know that I am forgiven. But I’m not relieved of the burden of not only watching for the Messiah’s revealing encounter, but being ready to act when I see him and see what he wants me to do. We need to be ready to sow. We need to be ready to reap. We need to be ready to do God’s will so that all may rejoice together.

I’m not going to spin this into a happy ending today. But my purpose here isn’t to beat myself up. Or to beat you over the head or make you feel guilty if something similar has happened to you. Or, thinking back to the Taco Bell boycott, if you don’t think the church should be involved with such things, I’m not here to argue with you. If you feel or think differently about these issues, my purpose is not even to change your thoughts or your feelings. My preaching today is but a pointer to what seem to me to be some deeper revelations this week about what Jesus is doing in the world and what we need to be doing in Jesus’ name. For me, one of those revealing encounters with Jesus was hopeful. The other pierces my heart and probably will for a long time to come. Rightfully so.

And the point, I think, is to be not only more alert to where Jesus is, but also, as I was not last Monday, to be more nimble and effective in response. May God help me — may God help us all — to labor so that all might rejoice together.

[1] Gail R. O’Day, “The Gospel of John” The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. IX (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995) 569.

[2] O’Day, 570. Many allegorical interpretations of the text suggest meanings from outside the story (e.g., God is the sower and Jesus is the reaper. O’Day argues that it is better to think of the meaning within the story. In this sense, it may be the woman who is reaping what Jesus has sown. The Samaritans are already on their way out of town because of her witness!

[3] The tomato pickers earn 50¢ for every bucket they pick. Each bucket contains 32 pounds. So to earn $50 per day, they must pick and carry 3,200 pounds of tomatoes. What’s worse, they were also paid 50¢ per pound in 1980. To earn an equivalent amount of purchasing power they should be paid $1.16 per pound today. So even the extra penny per pound that Taco Bell will now pay, they are still earning only 70% of what they were earning 25 years ago.

[4] Online, http://www.pcusa.org/boycott, Internet, 11 Mar. 2005.