Pouring the Spirit

 

A Sermon preached on Lent III 8 March at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden

Isaiah 58:1-9a, 1 Corinthians 2:1-12, Matthew 5:13-20

Today, March 8, is International Women’s Day. Here at St. Augustine’s, we have four women qualified to preach: Vania, Dorothee, Linda and Audrey. And so who gets to preach today? I can assure you that was simply a mattering a matter of scheduling and other preferences. At St. Augustine’s, in the Episcopal Church and in most of the Anglican Communion women have access to all offices, functions and roles! It was a long fight, and sadly there are still areas both in our Church and Communion where women are discriminated against, both visibly and – which is potentially more damaging – invisibly.

Jesus shows no such discrimination today in this passage, although there would be plenty of good reasons for him, a faithful, Jewish male and rabbi, to discriminate against the Samaritan woman. Firstly, because she is a Samaritan, a descendant of intermarriage between those Israelites of the Northern Kingdom (the lost 10 tribes) who had not been deported by the Assyrians and the pagan colonists that Assyria settled in the land as part of their strategy of control. There are still Samaritans today, but only about 900 in Israel and Palestine. The Samaritan religion accepted only the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, and their Temple was based on Mount Gerizim and not Mount Zion. There was much hostility between them and the Jews and while the main and shortest route from Judea to Galilee led through Samaria, many would walk round it – Jesus did not.

Secondly, she is a woman, and at least some of the Temple and rabbinic texts of that time warn against speaking with women – as is reflected in the disciples’ reaction: “They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman.” (John 4:27) And finally, as we learn, she was living in sin: “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.” (4:18) Some commentators think that the reason she came to the well at noon, the hottest time of the day, was because of her morally compromised position in her own community. And yet Jesus had a lively and engaged conversation with her!

Seven women get to speak in John’s Gospel, more than in the other gospels, and this is the longest recorded dialogue anyone – female or male - had with Jesus! He treats her as a fully human being, which really should be nothing special. And yet as the dialogue indicates everyone – the woman, the disciples, presumably the first readers – is surprised!

But that’s enough about women, let’s talk about a man instead …..

No seriously, I do want to look back briefly to last week’s encounter with Nicodemus (John 3:1-17) – that was last week’s Gospel reading, even if we didn’t hear it at the Old Catholic Church. Nicodemus, a pharisee, visits Jesus by night and also has a conversation with him. I think we have to see these two encounters as a contrasting pair.

First Jesus meets a complete insider: male, Jew, Pharisee, so learned, a respected member of the community and as a member of the Sanhedrin, the legislative council, part of the elite. Today we heard about Jesus meeting a complete outsider: female, Samaritan, not classically educated (though certainly clever) and definitely neither a respected member of her community, nor part of the elite of her people. Jesus treats them the same. They both have a deep personal encounter, both are the subject of some gentle mocking, both receive profound teaching about the Holy Spirit, both don’t immediately get the point, and yet both become followers of Jesus.

Nicodemus later openly defends Jesus in the Council (John 7:50-51) and later helps bury him (John 19:39) and I think we can safely assume he was part of the nascent post-resurrection Christian community. The transformation of the (sadly unnamed) Samaritan woman is much more open and spectacular! Smart, outspoken, with a good sense of humour she was transformed by the living water to become the first evangelist: “Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony” (John 4:39) and even the ones who believed because of his word (4:41) would not have heard that word if she had not introduced them to Him: And that is actually the job description of an evangelist!

Even if they do not actually meet personally, Jesus brings these two disparate figures into dialogue with one another.

In his meeting with Nicodemus, Jesus compares the Spirit to the wind, that goes and “blows wherever it pleases.” (3:8) You can’t stop the wind! In his conversation with the Samaritan woman, Jesus uses the image of water, of living water which is flowing water. You also should not stand in the way of water. It has great power and just like the wind it always finds its own way, even if that takes centuries or millennia. These images and these stories tell us that God’s Spirit transcends boundaries, both physical and cultural. The Spirit stands for change and transformation, for new life, for great and yet – mostly - gentle power.

The German rock band the Scorpions once famously sang of the “Wind of change”:

“On a glory night

Where the children of tomorrow dream away

In the wind of change”

Right now, with all the changes going on the world around us I suspect we all wish that wind of change would stop blowing: AI is changing how we work, how access information, the creative process (or loss of it), and even more dangerously how wars are fought. The rule of law is not certain anymore, wars are apparently being fought on a whim …… We live in dangerous and frightening times. For many the answer to this fear is isolation and separation, to put up new walls and boundaries, both physical and metaphorical, to exclude the other. That is not a Christian reaction. Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman is inclusive, expansive and generous! Because that is who God is. In his letter to the Romans (5:1-11), Paul reminds us eloquently of God’s generosity: peace, hope and reconciliation are the unearned and undeserved fruits of just trusting and believing in him.

The story of the woman at the well reminds us of our shared humanity and that we all share in God’s love.  In Jesus there are no outcasts, no foreigners, no others. In and through him the conservative, staid, respectable Jew and the possibly scandalous Samaritan woman are united as a model for the unity we are called to enact and embody.

Jesus promises: “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.” (John 4:13-14) Anyone and everyone can share in that water and, as Paul writes, in “God's love (that) has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Romans 5:5) And once we have received that love, we must share it, just as the Samaritan woman did 2000 years ago..

Amen.