Your Kingdom Come
John 4:5-42 Lent 3 March 12, 2023
St. Martin’s Episcopal Church Williamsburg, Virginia
What an abundance of riches for a preacher, today, in the
lectionary! All three readings invite a
depth of reflection.
I’m drawn to that great story in the gospel of John. That’s because we’re journeying through Lent. The practices of Lent are rooted in our
baptisms – and water is such an important element in this story of Jesus and
the Samaritan woman at the well.
Think of how
Lent returns us to our baptisms.
Lent focusses
us on practices of repentance. The call
to “Repent!” is often caricatured as something negative, a fearful warning from
a pulpit pounding preacher. But, in
fact, repentance is a joyful turning, or, rather, a re-turning. When you and I repent, we turn away from what
makes for death and, instead, we re-turn to God. Now, listen to how that’s expressed, in the Book
of Common Prayer, in the liturgy for baptism:[1]
“Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you
fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?”
“I will, with God’s help.”
To interject a little bit of Lutheran teaching (which,
those of you who know me know that I was bound to do!), fundamental to our
lives on the way of Jesus is that we return to our baptisms every day – because
we “fall into sin” every day; we cannot help it; we cannot perfect ourselves
(contrary to our American self-help culture).
To use Luther’s language and imagery, every day, the old person in us
must be drowned, so that the new person that God is creating can rise out of
the waters. Every day! My baptism will not be complete until the day
of my death.
“Will you
persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return
to the Lord?” “I will, with God’s
help.” The operative words are, “with
God’s help” – because this is not something I can accomplish on my own. And that’s true for you, too!
Listen to
these other practices of baptism.
“Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of
God in Christ?”
“Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving
your neighbor as yourself?”
“Will you strive for justice and peace among all people,
and respect the dignity of every human being?”
The answer, to each of these questions, is, “I will, with
God’s help.” With God’s help.
Here’s
something else I want to say. In these
practices of baptism, God’s kingdom comes!
Do you recognize that phrase? It’s in a fairly familiar prayer!
Say the Lord’s
Prayer with me – not quickly, but contemplatively.
Our Father,
…
“Your kingdom come.”
What does that look like? In
fact, it looks like the story we read this morning, in the gospel of John!
Look at this encounter of Jesus with a Samaritan
(!) woman (!). This whole
encounter is shocking, according to the standards of Jesus’ day. The woman herself is astounded: “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a
drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”
This encounter
is told in a story that’s beautifully constructed. There is, for instance, great comedy in this
story. (This is true in several of the
conversations Jesus has with people, in the gospel of John.) Jesus talks with such head-in-the-clouds,
flowing, metaphorical imagery, and his listeners are woodenly literal. It’s funny!
For instance, Jesus says, “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….’” Is Jesus talking about literal water that you
draw up from a well with a bucket?!
“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.”
What does the woman say in response? “Wow!
That would be great! If I’m never
thirsty again, I won’t have
to keep coming here to draw water.”
It’s a joy to read this conversation that’s so cleverly
constructed: the comedy of the very-human woman as she struggles to understand
just what the heck this guy Jesus is talking about! Because (of course), that’s been exactly true
for me, too, during my nearly 70-year-long journey of faith. What about you? I engage in practices of the faith that make
it more likely that I’ll receive some understanding of just what the heck Jesus
teaches in his words and actions. But
any understanding I receive is just that: pure gift. (Maybe you resonate with this?) In this story, you and I are the woman. And maybe you and I can see ourselves in her,
as the story proceeds, and she comes to receive enough understanding to run
back to her village, saying, “Come
and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”
What does “your kingdom come” look like? It looks like what Jesus’ is doing, in this
morning’s story. And what Jesus is doing
is incredibly offensive!
Here is how
Jesus is offending the religious and social sensibilities of his day. For the first thing, Jesus is in Samaria,
which in and of itself makes him ritually unclean according to God’s holy law
as it is taught by the religious leaders.
Jesus is talking with a Samaritan, who is, by definition, a heretic,
according to God’s holy law as it is taught by the religious leaders. Jesus is talking one-on-one, in public, with
a woman he is not married to – which is not allowed, according to God’s holy
law as it is taught by the religious leaders.
(Do you remember how Jesus’ own disciples reacted in shock, when they come
upon the scene? 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?” Are they so tongue-tied
in their astonishment that they’re not even able to ask such obvious questions?) And Jesus is not only talking one-on-one, in
public, with a Samaritan woman he is not married to, but to a woman whose own
history of marriage and non-marriage is scandalous, according to God’s holy law
taught by the religious leaders!
What does “Your kingdom come” look like? It looks like this encounter of Jesus with
the Samaritan woman at the well. When we
pray, “your kingdom come,” we are asking for God’s help, to be attentive, and
to encounter, and to care for those who are on the margins.
Andrew DeCort writes: “For Jesus, desiring the kingdom
isn’t code for crusades, colonization, or Christian nationalism. Jesus teaches that the kingdom looks like
care for the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the foreigner, the imprisoned, and
the sick – people who sound to me like victims of Ethiopia’s civil war or
people so desperate for a new start that they’d leave everything behind to try
to enter the United States….
“Praying for the kingdom, then, places vulnerable, easily
erased people at the very center of our hearts.
Their security and dignity become our daily desire – indeed, our very
first request to God.
“In this way, praying with Jesus becomes a therapy for our
desires and the world we’re making. The
endgame of the universe is not winner takes all. It’s a global party in which the nobodies –
and those who ache for their well-being – finally feel at home. Prophetic imagination gets unlocked and
energized.”[2]
In his flesh and blood, Jesus brings the kingdom. There is, certainly, a “now and future”
perspective in the gospels, and especially in the gospel of John. We look with hope to the future when God will
bring history to fulfillment. But Jesus
has embodied that fulfillment, that kingdom, as reality in our world, now.
Think of when you and I imitate
Christ, with God’s help, in our everyday lives!
What does Jesus do, through us, with God’s help, as we practice our
baptisms? Not by our own doing, but with
God’s help, the kingdom becomes reality in and through us. It looks like what Jesus is doing, in paying
attention to this Samaritan woman. Think
of what God does through us, in our own conversations.
In the name of God, who is Father
and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Pastor
Andy Ballentine
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