3/15/20 “From Isolation to Inclusion” by Nancy E. Petty
Scripture: John 4:5-42
Before I begin my sermon, I want you to do something for me. With your eyes closed, I want you to envision the Pullen sanctuary. If you are not familiar with our sanctuary here at Pullen, then I would ask you to envision a place where you go and feel safe with other people. Maybe it’s your grandparent’s home where the family gathers for family reunions. Maybe it is a local bar where “everybody knows your name.” Maybe it is an AA meeting. Or maybe it is your hiking or yoga meet-up group—any place that feels sacred and safe to you—where you make a connection with others. If you do attend worship at Pullen, I want you to envision the pew or the area of the sanctuary where you usually sit. Take a moment and settle in to that space in your mind. Now, in your mind’s eye, look around you. See the people that you often see sitting beside you, in front of you and behind you. See their faces. Listen for their voices singing. You can even call their names out loud if you want to. Feel their presence. Know that you are not alone. These same folks are thinking of you. They are seeing your face. Hearing your voice. Welcoming you into this space.
I don’t want to minimize the fact that a global health crisis has us practicing social distancing this morning. I want to acknowledge, that for some, church on Sunday morning is the one place and time a week where they receive a hug, where they are greeted by friends who know their joys and sorrow, where they receive, in-person, hope for the week. That is significant. And it is a loss when it is disrupted. If you are feeling that loss, it is okay to grieve it. Sit with it and if you need help with it call me or someone who you know will hold that space with you.
If today, we hold the newspaper in one hand and the bible in the other, we are holding in one hand the news of a global pandemic and in the other hand a narrative about a woman at a well. Most of us, at first glance, would read these two stories and see no connection. One is a 1st century faith story that seems to be teaching us about a kind of “living” water that quenches our spiritual thirst. The other, a 21st century story of human fragility that we are only beginning to get glimpses of what it is teaching us. So what, if anything, do these two narratives have in common? Is there a common thread, woven throughout humanity, from the 1st century to the 21st century that is represented in these two stories? And if so, what is it and what might we learn if we take hold of this thread?
Mahan Siler, my mentor and former pastor of Pullen, once said to me: “Nancy, we preach the same sermon every Sunday. We simply use different illustrations to make the same point.” As I think back over Mahan’s sermons the prominent thread that I pick up in one of grace. He spoke not of a cheap grace but of a costly grace—a kind of grace that Dietrich Bonhoeffer described in his writings. Bonhoeffer writes: “Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices…Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system…Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves…Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, [grace without God incarnate.] Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a [woman or] man will gladly go and sell all he/she has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all their goods…it is the call of Jesus at which the disciple leaves her or his nets and follows him…Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which one must knock…Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus.”
I often think of all the ways Mahan called us to this costly grace—to welcome the stranger with mercy, to open our doors to those whom the church had slammed the door in their face, the challenge to know ourselves as God’s beloved, the call to show up and to speak truth in love—all enfolded by a grace, Mahan would remind us, that only comes from God, a costly grace that asked us to open our hearts as well as our minds.
This story of the woman at the well picks up the prominent thread that Jesus wove throughout his sermons and ministry. It is the thread that moves us from isolation to building God’s kin-dom through inclusion.
In the story, Jesus, as a Jewish male, is in a position of power over the woman he encounters at Jacob’s well. But as a thirsty and tired traveler he is also in a position of vulnerability. He is a thirsty stranger in the land and he doesn’t have a bucket to draw water. Jesus invites the woman into a conversation by becoming vulnerable. He asks for a drink of water. And by asking that of her, he gives up some of his power. The interaction is paradoxical. “Here is the giver of living water, thirsty himself. At this well, a thirsty Messiah and a resourceful woman will find out that they need each other, a wonderful metaphor for how God and humanity are interconnected.” And thus, how we are connected to one another as God’s creation. As we are learning in this moment, as Jesus and the woman at the well illustrated, that we need and depend on each other.
In this familiar story, Jesus shows us what it means to move from isolation to inclusion as he crosses all kinds of boundaries—gender boundaries, racial boundaries, cultural and tradition boundaries as he engages the woman as a valid conversation partner: a profound and relevant example of the work 21st century disciples are being called to engage in. It is to this woman that he makes the first self-revelation of the entire gospel: “I am he.” In doing so, he includes women in his circle of disciples, for it is this Samaritan woman who returns to her village to tell of her experience with Jesus.
I want to stay with this Samaritan woman for just another minute. In the Eastern Orthodox Church she is venerated as a saint with the name Photine, meaning “the luminous one.” From her interaction with Jesus we learn that she has had five husbands and the man she is currently with, her sixth relationship, is not her husband. There is a lot we could speculate about that and we might be right or wrong in our speculation. It is telling, however, that she is at the well at high noon and all alone. It was not customary to draw water in the heat of the day. The women would have usually gone to the well in the early morning or late afternoon before the heat of the day. We also know, that for the women of the village, going to the well was a communal act. It was a gathering place. Yet, this particular woman was at the well alone. Whatever her situation was, it would seem that she was isolated within her own community. Regardless of the circumstances, it seems that social distancing is not new, and sometimes for all the wrong reasons.
But it is this thread representing the move from isolation to inclusion that Jesus weaves throughout his ministry that holds the whole tapestry of the kin-dom of God together. All are included. “There is neither male nor female. There is neither Greek nor Jew. There is neither slave nor free.” We are all one. We are all included. In all our diversity—whatever gender you identify with, whatever political party you represent, what religion you follow, whatever neighborhood you live in, whatever job you hold, whatever good or harm you have done in this world—we are all included. There is no isolation in God’s realm. And if anyone tells you different, it isn’t so. Nothing, nothing in all creation can separate or isolate you from God’s love. Every living creature, human and non-human, is included in God’s community. It is the thread that became flesh and lived among us.
The final title I ascribed to this sermon is From Isolation to Inclusion. However, my working title was, Whose Well are you Willing to Drink From? It was the question that confronted me when I read this story—a story I have read a hundred times. I wondered to myself: Are you only willing to drink from Jacob’s well—the tribal well, the well of your tradition? Are you only willing to drink from the well in your village where your people live? What boundaries am I, are we, willing to cross to ask for a drink of water that just might be living water? How vulnerable am I willing to be, what power am I willing to give up, to ask another for a drink of living water? How willing am I/are we to give up our wrongful social distancing that was in place long before the coronavirus and pick up the thread that Jesus handed to us and called us to keep weaving—the thread of social inclusion?
As I wrestled with these questions, I was taken back to an experience I had in the Republic of Georgia with a woman at a well. I have shared parts of this story with you before. Malkhaz had taken us to an area along the Black Sea, in the region of Abkhazia, to visit one of Peace Cathedral’s house churches. As we arrived at the house church, we were greeted by an elder woman standing by a well with a basket of glasses. As we stepped out of our van, we were immediately kissed and hugged by this lovely woman. We were asked to sit in chairs that had been arranged around the well. The woman, quite enthusiastically, began drawing water from that well and pouring it into the glasses from the basket. She first handed me a glass of the water and then handed one to Jack. Then she poured Malkhaz and herself a glass. Once we all had a glass of water, she lifted it up as to toast us at which point we all lifted the glass to our lips and began to drink. It was water unlike any I had ever tasted. Malkhaz called it sour water. That would be one description. It was different, to say the least. But here’s the thing about that glass of water. That one drink of sour water from a well, in a village still oppressed by Russian occupation, moved us, on that day, from isolation to inclusion. Now, as often as I think of that woman at the well in Georgia, we don’t have to sit beside one another in a sanctuary to know that we are community and that we belong to one another. The thread holds us together. I can still see her wrinkled face and her broad smile that greeted us. I can still feel the glass in my hand and feel the touch of her seasoned hands as she handed me that drink of living water—a simple act that moved us from isolation to inclusion.
The kind social distancing we are being asked to practice today will end. One day in the not so distance future, we will return to this sanctuary for our weekly worship. Our children and youth will return to the classroom. Our lives will return to our normal routines. The question that Jesus and the Samaritan woman asks is this: “Despite the necessary social distancing of this virus, are you willing to pick up the end of the thread that weaves us together from places of isolation to places of inclusion?” That question will never fade or become irrelevant for people of faith.
I close with the poem that Mahan shared with us in a sermon a number of years ago.
The Way It Is
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
William Stafford
May we never let go of the thread of social inclusion that Jesus handed to us.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship
Vena, Osvaldo. Commentary on John 4.
