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United Church of Paducah
4600 Buckner Lane
Paducah, KY 42001
(270) 442-3722
Worship Times
Sunday Service: 10:00a
Refreshments &
Fellowship: 11:15a
Christian Education
For All Ages:
11:20a - Noon
Nursery Services Provided Handicap Accessible
All Are Welcome!
A Congregation Of The
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From February 24, 2008
The Other Red Carpet
John 4: 5-42
Hollywood's red carpet has been rolled in
time for the 80th Academy Awards tonight. All it has to do
is wait for A-list actresses and actors who, even before the
first Oscar is presented, already know they are the best of
the best.
While Hollywood's most gifted and glamorous prepare to take
their places in the spotlight, you and I are here with Jesus
as he sits well-side under the blazing noon-day sun. He's
here resting on the dusty trek back home from the holy city
of Jerusalem. Hungry, the disciples have left Jesus behind
while they go in search of food.
As he waits at the well, he's a man out of bounds, Jesus is.
Rather than take the long way (make that the proper way)
home--around Samaria, Jesus has opted to cut straight
through a country inhabited by dirty, half-breed
unbelievers. Or so that's who the Jews said the Samaritans
were, despite common roots that connected them like cousins.
He's come this way, Jesus has, not because he's looking to
save time. He's taken this route because he has no grudge
against the Samaritans, no judgment, no fear of them. Jesus'
heart simply doesn't see other; it only sees brother.
Or sister, as the case may be. While the sun beats down on
Jesus, a woman carrying an empty earthen vessel approaches
him. She's no A-lister, this one. Even among her own people,
she can't seem to make the D-list. This is why she shows up
at the well when she does; self-respecting Samaritan women
have shunned her.
When she spies Jesus at the well, she does not expect to be
acknowledged. No honorable Jewish man, and certainly no
rabbi, would ever, ever think of initiating conversation
with a woman like her. Or with any woman, for that matter,
not even his own wife if the two were out in public
together. Conversations like the one Jesus is about to
initiate were considered strictly taboo.
"Give me a drink," our savior says, turning a nobody into a
somebody.
To the woman's ears, Jesus' request is as unlikely as the
sound of midsummer's rain on the rooftops. "How is it that
you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" responds
the woman who only seconds ago presumed she was all but
invisible. After all, they are, the two of them, separated
by three divides, all too vast to be bridged.
But Jesus knows the woman needs more than this; even the
sturdiest bridge can leave a person feeling vulnerable,
hanging in the air. With this simple request for water,
Jesus rolls out the red carpet of his heart, creating a
solid place, a place of honor for the Samaritan to stand.
The woman has every reason to reject Jesus; she's alienated
enough from her people as it is. And yet something moves her
to accept Jesus' acceptance of her. Something our gospel
story goes to great lengths to describe. Because she accepts
Jesus' acceptance, the woman experiences a transformation so
marvelous that we remember her still, even though we don't
know her name.
The transformation that takes place in today's story would
never have happened had Jesus avoided Samaria and had
instead returned home by way of socially-safe Jewish
roadways. Nor would the woman's God-given dignity have been
restored had Jesus not been an iconoclast, willing to break
with convention to behave in ways that were strictly taboo.
Let's talk for a minute about human nature.
When I worked with international students, I learned
something that every cultural anthropology textbook promptly
addresses: people prefer people like themselves.
Before each semester began, my office would hold a week-long
orientation for all our new students. At week's end, we
would throw a huge party in the College Union.
No matter how friendly students had been with one another
during the week, Turks easily chatting in the hallways with
Finns, Haitians happily lunching with Malaysians, Kuwaitis
swimming in the pool alongside Bolivians, when it was party
time, the pattern was predictable. Students gathered with
those who were most like them. They organized by country
groups, even by regions within their own countries if there
were enough of them. If they were the only one from their
country, then they would seek out students from their part
of the world.
We prefer to associate with our own kind, a trait I notice
here whenever Paducah Cooperative Ministry sponsors a
worship service or gathering of some sort. You would think
we would already consider ourselves one tribe--we share a
common desire to care for Paducah's hungry and hurting.
But that's not how we tend to gather. If left to our own
devices, we PCMers won't mix and mingle; we will do what my
internationals did, except that we cluster by congregation
rather than country.
It begins early, this human habit does. One of a baby's
first developmental tasks is to learn what doesn't belong.
Sesame Street even has a song about it.
This habit begins early in human history, as well, although
then the focus wasn't on what belonged but who. In tribal
societies, survival depended on knowing who belonged.
Keeping insiders in and outsiders out was, quite literally,
a matter of life and death.
Yet--and Jesus felt this keenly--this survival strategy was
enormously dangerous. He knew that our safety ultimately
depended on something greater that knowing who was friend
and who was foe. Until we find our common humanity and our
common thirst for what Jesus called living water, we are all
at risk. Divisions have been and will continue to be our
undoing.
When Jesus spied the woman at the well, he could very well
have viewed her as different. Make that entirely different:
a woman, a Samaritan, and someone encumbered by her past.
Jesus could have easily seen her as a "you' un" rather than
a "us'n," to use language common in these parts.
But he didn't. Instead, Jesus saw past the woman's outward
identity and perceived her inward personhood, her essence.
In the way Jesus spoke to her, in the way he looked into her
eyes, the Samaritan was drawn out in the open, into the
spotlight of Jesus' heart, where she could experience
herself as Jesus experienced her, as beloved and worthy and
intrinsically whole, as someone deserving of what Jesus had
come to share. The endless river of God's love.
And that red carpet treatment Jesus gave her made all the
difference in the world. To this nameless, historied
Samaritan woman falls the distinction of being the first
person in John's gospel Jesus reveals himself to. She is the
first outsider to grasp that he is indeed the Messiah. She
is also the first to go forth to tell others about Jesus and
bring them to faith, something not even the disciples had
yet managed to do.
Like many of our gospel stories, this one is so familiar
that we often miss how shocking it is. What happened between
Jesus and the woman at the well constitutes a miracle. It
wasn't magic, the carpet Jesus rolled out. It was just
real--very, very real. And born only of love.
If it was a miracle, it was also a scandal. Not even Jesus'
circle of disciples could grasp the rightness of it all.
The Samaritan woman's story, both the miracle of it and the
scandal, is a story told many times over in our United
Church of Christ. So many times and in so many ways, our
forebears have felt compelled by Jesus' example to throw off
the shackles of convention. They risked accusations of being
transgressors simply because they were willing, again and
again, to go where they shouldn't go to make a priority of
those society rejected, scorned, or rendered invisible.
Our forebears' strong leadership in the struggle to abolish
slavery is a fine example of this. So is our record of
having involved women in congregational leadership since the
days of Plymouth Colony. We have long been like Jesus at the
well for members of the gay and lesbian community, even as
other parts of the Body of Christ are still hard at work
deciding to decide about making a decision about whether to
offer his living water to folks of differing sexual
orientations.
Jesus makes it plain today. What divides us is not of God;
it is man-made. Or, as I accidentally spelled it mad-made.
We are mad, we are crazy, we are plain nuts whenever we
allow ourselves to believe that our differences are more
significant than our common humanity. Not only are we insane
when we insist this, we are also "in sin," because our
choices work against the kingdom life God intends for us.
Listen to the wisdom of Martin Luther King, Jr.: If we are
to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical
rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our
race, our tribe, our class, and even our nation.It really
boils down to this: all of life is interrelated. We are
caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a
single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly,
affects all indirectly.I cannot be what I ought to be until
you are what you ought to be." (Source unknown)
The red carpet Jesus rolled out for the Samaritan woman was
like none other. You see, it didn't stretch from this point
to that like the one Hollywood will be walking on tonight.
And it wasn't reserved for those who were set apart because
of their fabulosity (to borrow from Kimora Lee Simmons).
It was, Jesus' red carpet was, a huge and glorious circle.
One he rolled out for each of us. For all of us. One that
always has room for one more. And one more. And one more.
We don't earn a place there. But we do need to be willing.
And willing to make room for someone who doesn't look,
sound, or think at all like we do.
Let us pray:
Thank you, Gracious God, for the welling of up your love in
our lives. We thank you that the love Christ reveals is in
no way partial, predetermined, or prejudiced. Your love is
big enough to embrace us all.
This Lenten season, we confess to you that we are often more
like the disciples than we care to admit; we doubt and
question Jesus' broad reach. Help us befriend that place
within that creates and maintains divisions. Heal us of our
tendency to build barriers rather than bridges. Heal and
help us so that we can, with you, work to create a world in
which no one is seen as "other," but instead regarded as
brother, as sister, as kin.
We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
© Rev. Karen Winkel
United Church of Paducah (UCC) |
"Never place a period where God has placed a comma." - Gracie
Allen
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