"The Holy Discomforter"

Preached August 26, 2012 at Rennie Memorial Presbyterian Church in Amelia, VA

Text: John 4:1-42

Why do we come to church?

Now that may sound like a rather ridiculous question, especially after the 10 weeks we've spent worshiping together, gathering here every Sunday morning to share song and fellowship and Scripture. And of course there are many reasons why we come to church - to worship God, to be together in fellowship, to learn, to share and bear one another's burdens. We come to church to be in God's presence, to hear God's blessings and promises, to receive God's holy comfort.

God's comfort is a holy thing indeed. Scripture is full of passages that open up to us this holy comfort. There's Isaiah 40 - "Comfort, comfort ye my people" - or Psalm 23 - "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." Or there are the words of Jesus in John 14, when he promises his disciples that the Holy Spirit is coming. Jesus says, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, a Helper, an Encourager, a Comforter, to be with you forever." There is no doubt in my mind that God desires us, when we gather together as Christians, to receive God's holy comfort.

But often, we as Christians confuse coming to church to receive God's comfort with coming to church to "get comfortable." For we are called to be comforted, yes, but not necessarily to be comfortable. This may not sound like much of a difference, but I think there’s something there. For you see, when church becomes a place where we start to feel comfortable with the world as it is and our lives as they are, we are not living into the full potential of our Christian lives. We have strayed from the call of Christ. In fact, there is a Franciscan blessing that begins, "May God bless you with discomfort…" Discomfort? A blessing? And yet it is fundamentally true: Christians are not called to be comfortable. No, we are called to be a people of Holy Discomfort in this world.

And why is that? I believe our Christian call to Holy Discomfort can be seen best in the person of Jesus Christ himself. During his life, Jesus made many people uncomfortable. He ate with sinners, tax collectors, and prostitutes. He challenged both the religious and the political authorities of his day. He didn't follow those religious laws that he believed went against the will of God. Society told him not to touch lepers, or to speak to women in public, but he did so anyway. The fact of the matter is, our Lord and Savior, was someone who made powerful, wealthy, and generally well-to-do people, uncomfortable. 

And as people who believe in the Resurrection, we believe that Christ the Holy Discomforter is still present in our lives today. Reaching out, crossing boundaries, upsetting societal norms. Making people like you and like me uncomfortable. Embracing the people that the rest of the world has cast aside. Making himself known in the least of these, the despised of the earth, the "Other," - the one who is not like us.

We have looked at a number of texts together this summer that focus on this idea of crossing boundaries and embracing the one who makes us uncomfortable. We've talked about the Israelites' struggle with God's command to invite the eunuchs and foreigners into the covenant. We've learned from the Syrophoenician woman who Jesus called a dog before she taught him a lesson about divine inclusivity. We've walked with the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, when they opened their home and the hearts to a stranger, to Jesus Christ himself. We've heard Hagar's story, from her perspective, the story of a woman cast off who would become the mother of the un-chosen descendants of Abraham.

This hasn't been intentional on my part, but I wonder if this theme keeps coming up simply because much of the Bible itself has to do with opening ourselves to new people and new ways of thinking. Scripture tells us that Jesus Christ, the one in whom we find our ultimate comfort, is the man who turns over tables and makes us uncomfortable in our familiar ways of life. The more I read the Bible, the more I come across these stories that upset my complacency and move me into the uncomfortable world of the Christian calling - of Holy Discomfort.

Today's Gospel Lesson, the story of the woman at the well, is just such a story. We may have heard it so many times that we have become familiar and comfortable with it, but in Jesus' time, and in the time of John’s gospel, this is a story that would make people squirm in their chairs. 

You see, when Jesus initiates the conversation by asking for a drink, he is crossing two major social boundaries. First of all, he is a man talking to a woman in public. This is not that radical for us anymore - we live in the South, we're friendly, and we'll wave and greet most anyone we meet. But not so in Jesus' time.

But the second boundary that Jesus crosses is perhaps even more serious. He is a Jew, and she is a Samaritan. They are enemy peoples. The text even tells readers like ourselves who may not know: "Jews did not share things in common with Samaritans."

Now, Jews and Samaritans did have common ancestors from many centuries earlier. Centuries before this story takes place, when the Assyrians and then the Babylonians invaded the Holy Land, they took some of the Jews into exile and left others in the land of Israel. When the exiles ended, the Jews who had been deported came home, but they discovered that the Jews left behind were worshiping differently and had married people from other nations. These two groups began to have conflicts, and eventually separated into two different peoples - the Jews and the Samaritans - who wanted nothing to do with one another. They worshiped the same God, but not in the same place: The Jews worshipped at the Temple in Jerusalem, and the Samaritans worshipped at a shrine on Mount Gerizim. And when the Jewish army destroyed the Samaritans' mountain shrine, tensions only got worse. 

Theirs was something of a segregated society - they lived in regions right next to one another, but they did not speak, nor share things in common. In fact, when traveling from Judea to Galilee, many Jews didn't even go through Samaria. Which is why it's interesting that the text tells us that Jesus had to go through Samaria. Geographically, it wasn't necessary. To get from Amelia to Crewe, I could take the back roads, or I could take 360 South - either way, I'll get there. But there is a deeper reason that Jesus had to go through Samaria. He had to go into "enemy territory" and spend time with people that made his disciples uncomfortable.

And so Jesus starts up a conversation with this Samaritan woman that makes both the Samaritan woman and the disciples uncomfortable. When Jesus asks the woman for a drink, she is taken aback. She asks him, in shock, "How is it that, you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" The Jews thought Samaritans were dirty, polluted people. If their lips touched the same water jar, wouldn't he, too, become dirty, polluted, defiled?

And the disciples, when they return, also become uncomfortable. For them, the it is Jesus crossing the male/female boundary that discomforts them; the text tells us they were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one wanted to ask him why. Everyone is uncomfortable with this exchange, it seems, except for Jesus. 

The conversation touches on many topics, but the crux of it, if I understand the text, comes from the woman's question about the proper place to worship God. It is the pressing theological dispute between Jews and Samaritans: Where is the proper place to worship God? Mount Gerizim, where the Samaritans worship, or Jerusalem, where the Jews worship? The Samaritan woman, by this point in the conversation, has realized that she is encountering a prophet, someone who communicates directly with God, and she seeks some divine word on the matter. She wants to know which group of people is right, and which group of people is wrong - which group is superior, and which group is inferior. Who, she asks, are the privileged people in the worship of God?

And Jesus answers her question - sort of. You see, both the Jews and the Samaritans thought this was an either/or question. In their eyes, only one of them could be right. They'd set a clear boundary between themselves - one group was to be chosen, the other, despised. 

We do that too, don't we? This type of separation, segregation, drawing boundary lines and hiding behind them, did not stop after Jesus' times. Our human history is filled with this all-too-similar story of peoples and nations defining themselves over and against other groups. The most obvious ones are the genocides that stain our history, or hate crimes, and acts of terrorism. When one group of people victimizes and kills another because of fear, anger, misunderstanding, or a false sense of superiority. Simply because they make the perpetrators of these heinous crimes uncomfortable.

But there are subtler ways, too, in which we draw boundary lines and divide ourselves from one another. Whether it be race, family, economic status, religious beliefs, political opinion, nationality - we live side by side with many different groups of people, and yet we don't interact with one another because it makes us uncomfortable. I believe if we are honest with ourselves, we too, just like the Jews and the Samaritans, live safely on our sides of the boundary lines we've drawn because we are afraid of what will happen, what will have to change about ourselves, if cross that boundary. 

The Samaritan woman asks Jesus a question that resonates with many today: "Which way is right - our way, or their way?" Where should we worship God - Mount Gerizim, or Jerusalem? On which side of the boundary line that we've drawn does God stand?

But Jesus answers her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither or this mountain nor in Jerusalem."  She asks, "Which side of the line?" and Jesus answers, "With God, there is no line. With God, there is no privilege." Jesus' life and ministry teaches us that it does no good to cling to notions of a privileged people, or a privileged place, because Jesus has already ushered in a time when when all are equal, and privilege is no more. Instead, he says, "The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth."

 Worshiping in spirit and truth may just sound like nice liturgical language for us, but it was probably a puzzling concept for the Samaritan woman. Worship in Jesus' time was tied to a place; the very word for "worship" meant to bow down and direct oneself toward the object of worship. They understood how to bow down toward a shrine, a mountain, a Temple, but how do you bow down in the direction of spirit and truth?

Those who have studied this passage carefully have come to believe that worshiping the Father in Spirit and in truth means aligning not your body, but your very life in the direction of God's will. And how do we know what God's will looks like? We look to Jesus and we seek to live as he did - breaking down the barriers that divide us, and loving all people.

In this conversation with a Samaritan woman, Jesus has cast out all discrimination, all notions of privilege or superiority, every boundary that divides us. Paul testifies to this in his letter to the Galatians, saying: "In Christ there is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female - for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." We, in our human sinfulness, continue to create boundaries, no doubt, but Jesus has already shown us that those boundaries are false. God has already broken them down. God has different intentions for humanity, for in Jesus Christ God has created a new community, where all dividing walls are broken down.

The end of this story gives us a glimpse of what that community might look like. The Samaritan woman rushes back and tells those in her village what she has experienced - she becomes the first witness to Christ Jesus in the Gospel. And these Samaritan villagers hurry out to see Jesus the Jew - they ask him to stay with them a few days, and he does. He teaches them, and by his divine Word, they have faith. And suddenly, it seems that the animosity between these two groups has been forgotten. These Jews and Samaritans, who we've been told don't share things in common, don't even associate with one another, spend two days together in worship, teaching, and fellowship. And no one is uncomfortable anymore. The boundary has been broken down. 

And when Jesus and his disciples leave, the Samaritans say that because they have seen and heard Jesus for themselves, they know that he is truly the Savior of the World. Not the Savior of the Jews. Not the Savior of the Samaritans. The Savior of the whole world. They have witnessed this new community that Jesus creates, the Beloved Community, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called it. They have seen Jesus' boundary-crossing love and witness. And because of this, they believe that he is the Savior of the world.

We, too, are invited into Christ's Kingdom, into God’s new community where the walls that divide us no longer exist. Christ calls us there, today and every day. And just as it was for the Samaritan woman and for Jesus' disciples, so it is for us initially uncomfortable when start crossing these boundaries that we've constructed, boundaries that we and the world have believed in and held to for so long. But just like the disciples and the Samaritans, we, too, can be a part of that Beloved Community. 

This Holy Discomfort we experience is not the last word. For you see, the miracle is that in our Triune God, Jesus Christ, the one who makes us uncomfortable, also the Holy Comforter - the one who says "Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest." The one who says "Comfort, O comfort my people; speak tenderly to Jerusalem." The one who says, "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled." This is the very Lord who has guided us through our lives thus far on the way, whose comforting presence has been with us when we were sick, lonely, and afraid. God's comfort is a holy and beautiful thing. 

But it is not the comfort we expect, not the comfort that makes us comfortable. For Christ has inaugurated a new way of living, a way of living very different from what we know. The comfort that Christ offers is a new kind of comfort. It is not the comfort of hiding behind the walls we have built, not the comfort of staying within the boundary lines that we and the world have drawn. Christ offers us a comfort we cannot even fully imagine, a comfort that can only be fully manifested in the Kingdom of God, where no lines divide, and no boundaries separate.

We are invited into this Kingdom without dividing lines - will we accept the invitation? I hope so, for it is only Christ's world-beyond-boundaries that we will truly experience the "peace of God that surpasses all understanding" - the presence of the Holy Comforter.  Amen.