St. James Episcopal Church
Greeneville, TN
Year A - Lent 3 - March 15, 2020
I feel that I am at an impasse this morning. Stuck somewhere between the decisions to forgo gathering for worship for the next few weeks and figuring out how to continue our worship life in creative new ways. Some folks may feel that this virus stuff is a bunch of hype… and some are in fear of their life… However, if we listen to the Center for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, and The Department of Health then we know that there is no room to play.
To help curb the spread of the virus, we have been asked to suspend gathering for pubic worship to disrupt the rhythms of our life to err on the side of caution.
Friends, I feel that we are in a sort of Catch-22… If we continue to gather, and the disease spreads, then we are not loving our neighbor, and protecting the least of these. If we suspend services, then we get complaints from the folks who feel that it is all hype, and there is really nothing to worry about.
Our Christian lives are full of decisions, decisions about how we are to be followers of Jesus… of how his actions inform what we are to do with our life.
In our Gospel story, Jesus is in the land of the Samaritans… For those of you that may not know, Jews and Samaritans did not get along. Each thought the other was making the wrong decisions… decisions on where and how to worship, and how to live... decisions about who had the proper authority. Jesus and his followers made a decision to venture into non-Jewish territory … into Samaria.
The Jews held the Samaritans in low regard. Yet, we find Jesus in the middle of Samaria, at a place where he comes upon Jacob’s well. At the well, he meets a woman… And then Jesus does what was totally unexpected… Jesus makes the decision to speak first.
Jesus tells the Samaritan woman to give him a drink... and you would think the world would have been stood on its ear. By doing this, Jesus crosses many boundaries… social, sexual, cultural… See, in that culture, Jewish men didn’t walk around speaking randomly with unaccompanied women… especially Samaritan women.
With this decision, Jesus gets into a conversation… a conversation where he tells the woman all about her life and reveals to her his messianic identity. From that one decision to speak with the woman at the well, Jesus gained many believers in Sychar.
That makes me think deeply about the outcomes of the decisions we make on a day to day basis. Good or bad, each decision we make has consequences… sometimes we take time to evaluate those consequences and sometimes we just rush to a decision because it needs to be made quickly.
This past week, there have been some very difficult controversial decisions that needed to be made and they were made with as much information as we could gather… They were also made in consultation with many, for the benefit of many… The decision to close things down to flatten the curve and slow the spread of a virus was a difficult one…
Many dioceses and churches across the country are not gathering even today… We will not be gathering the next two Sundays as we see how this pandemic plays out. I, for one, am devastated, because worship is my lifeblood… Worship for me is the reason my heart beats. However, I know the importance of the act of physical distance to slow the spread to our most vulnerable neighbors…
This is a true way we are caring for others. a true way we are following Christ by the decisions we make. At the well, Jesus tells the woman of Samaria that he can provide “living water.” But, she misunderstands it to be the same as the water that is being drawn from the well.
The disciples arrive back from buying food in the town and immediately you would expect them to chastise both Jesus and the woman… “what do you want?” they might say to her… “why are you speaking with her?” they would say to him… But they remain silent.
Then the Samaritan woman responds by deciding to rush back to the city and tell others about this man… questioning his ability to be the messiah just because he didn’t follow the expected path and keep the cultural norms… She probably told them something like “The messiah wouldn’t actually talk to me like that, would he?” Because of her and her astounding testimony, many of the people in the town go out to him, and they believe.
Jesus' decision was bold and crossed barriers to bring others into the realm of belief. The Samaritan woman’s response was just as courageous as she went back to town and tell her story. Her decision was to believe in his messiahship... believe in the living water…
Our decision to follow Jesus as Lord is a courageous one. It means that we are making a conscious decision to live in the life and love of Jesus. It means that we let go of all of the other “LORDS” who have power and control over our life… and follow the path to the living water…
The water of health and restoration… the water that quenches that thirst for that which we sometimes cannot name. Jesus’ identity is revealed there at that well to a foreign woman and she and that town were forever changed. When we follow in the life and love of Jesus, we sometimes must make tough decisions… sometimes those decisions have consequences but if we are focused on doing the will of God, often those consequences lead to abundant life.
I can only hope that these next few weeks hold good results as we navigate these unknown waters and learn how to be together in new ways. But please know, we are trying to make the best decisions we can.
No comments:
Post a Comment