As travelers, we are challenged “to consider the impact of [our] travel on the people [we] meet, to delve deeply into the wonder of God’s created world – and God’s people – and to think carefully about how [our] travel helps (or hinders) matters of peace and justice.” (from “Faithful Travel” by Rick Steves)
June 11, 2023
“The Awakened Traveler”
The Encounter (Part 2)
John 4: 7-40
Rev. Dr. Heather W. McColl
The Encounter John 4: 7-40
In Rick Steves videos and journals, he shares how he believes that “strangers” are simply “friends we have not yet met. He underscores that traveling is a way to learn more about others and about ourselves. It is a way to encounter the beauty and wonder of this world. It is a way to encounter people who don’t look like us, who don’t think like us, who don’t act like us. These encounters with other people, these encounters with other places, opens our hearts and minds to an expanded worldview. These encounters help us to accept the love of others. It helps us to be open to the different ways that this love is shown. As Rick say “Why do I see humanity as one? Because I’ve traveled.” Only when we have encounters with people who don’t look like us, who don’t think like us, who don’t act like us, only when we encounter other places, do the stereotypes or assumptions about those we consider so “different” fade away. As awakened travelers, these encounters challenge us to answer the questions :“Why do I care? Why do I want to contribute? And the answer is Because I’ve encountered the beauty and wonder of this world. Because I’ve encountered people who have expanded my worldview.” When we get up close and “personal,” those who were “they” become part of “we” and we become more personally committed to working together for a better world for all people. So I invite everyone to take a few moments and watch a video from Rick Steves’ “Reasons Why We Travel”.
Video available at https://youtu.be/GRrvNcXmWBU
“When we seek out and are open to new encounters, new people, new relationships, we allow ourselves a spiritual rendezvous with humanity. And in this act, we discover more depth within us than we previously imagined. With this in mind, I invite everyone to hear these words as we remember that Jesus often crossed paths with others not from his “tribe.” He did not shy away. Actually, he most often sought out these opportunities. He met people in their daily lives and locales, such as the Samaritan woman at the well and her community, and engaged with them at the point of their deepest yearning.
John 4: 7-40
A Samaritan woman came to the well to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me some water to drink.” His disciples had gone into the city to buy him some food. The Samaritan woman asked, “Why do you, a Jewish man, ask for something to drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” (Jews and Samaritans didn’t associate with each other.) Jesus responded, “If you recognized God’s gift and who is saying to you, ‘Give me some water to drink,’ you would be asking him and he would give you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you don’t have a bucket and the well is deep. Where would you get this living water? You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave this well to us, and he drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.”
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks from the water that I will give will never be thirsty again. The water that I give will become in those who drink it a spring of water that bubbles up into eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will never be thirsty and will never need to come here to draw water!” Jesus said to her, “Go, get your husband, and come back here.” The woman replied, “I don’t have a husband.” “You are right to say, ‘I don’t have a husband,’” Jesus answered. “You’ve had five husbands, and the man you are with now isn’t your husband. You’ve spoken the truth.” The woman said, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you and your people say that it is necessary to worship in Jerusalem.”
Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, the time is coming when you and your people will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You and your people worship what you don’t know; we worship what we know because salvation is from the Jews. But the time is coming—and is here!—when true worshippers will worship in spirit and truth. The Father looks for those who worship him this way. God is spirit, and it is necessary to worship God in spirit and truth.” The woman said, “I know that the Messiah is coming, the one who is called the Christ. When he comes, he will teach everything to us.” Jesus said to her, “I Am—the one who speaks with you.”
Just then, Jesus’ disciples arrived and were shocked that he was talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?” The woman put down her water jar and went into the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who has told me everything I’ve done! Could this man be the Christ?” They left the city and were on their way to see Jesus.
In the meantime the disciples spoke to Jesus, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” Jesus said to them, “I have food to eat that you don’t know about.” The disciples asked each other, “Has someone brought him food?” Jesus said to them, “I am fed by doing the will of the one who sent me and by completing his work. Don’t you have a saying, ‘Four more months and then it’s time for harvest’? Look, I tell you: open your eyes and notice that the fields are already ripe for the harvest. Those who harvest are receiving their pay and gathering fruit for eternal life so that those who sow and those who harvest can celebrate together. This is a true saying, that one sows and another harvests. I have sent you to harvest what you didn’t work hard for; others worked hard, and you will share in their hard work.”
Many Samaritans in that city believed in Jesus because of the woman’s word when she testified, “He told me everything I’ve ever done.” So when the Samaritans came to Jesus, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days.
This conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman is the longest
conversation recorded between Jesus and anyone in the New Testament. And it is a
conversation that never should have happened in the first place. Here they were,
Jesus and the Samaritan woman, two different people from two different races, two
different people from two different religions, two different people from two very different backgrounds.
Here they were-two people who never should have been talking with each other in the first place, talking, all because some man asked her for some water. Now we as the readers know that this man is Jesus. We know his beginnings and we know all about his miracles. But this woman at the well does not. To her, he is just some guy, some stranger, asking for water, some guy, some stranger who doesn’t even have a bucket. To this woman, Jesus at this moment is just some guy who shouldn’t be talking with her in the first place.
This woman’s first response to Jesus’ request is not “Jesus, my Lord and
Savior” but “What is this man thinking, talking with me? He doesn’t even have a
bucket. And he is a Jew! What is he doing, talking with me? As a Jewish man, it is
just not done for him to be talking with me.
As readers, we begin to think that there is no way that these two people from different backgrounds, different religions, different experiences are ever going to make a connection. And yet, this conversation, this encounter changed this woman’s life. It opened her eyes to the presence of God in her midst.
All because for the first time, through this one encounter, this Samaritan woman was seen as a real human being. She was seen as a child of God. Through this encounter, this Samaritan woman was shown God’s grace by and through another human being.
This encounter expanded the Samaritan woman’s viewpoint. It introduced her to a new way of living, to a new way of being, a way which she had never experienced or known before.
As awakened travelers, when we leave home, when we open ourselves to the world around us, we become just like the woman at the well. Yes maybe we are unsure and yes maybe a little fearful when that stranger, when someone first begins talking to us but then we soon realize that this is no ordinary encounter. This encounter with friends who we have not met yet becomes an invitation, an invitation to experience the gift of God’s grace which binds us together as humanity.
As awakened travelers, these wonderful encounters which opens our hearts and minds to the world around us, to the people around us, this wonderful encounter with friends we have just not met yet, set our lives in a new direction and from that point on, there has been no going back.
What I love about this text is that Jesus leaves the encounter open-ended with the woman. She can come back as many times as she wants, as many times as she needs to to experience the living waters of God because it is a well that will never run dry.
Lives were changed that day because Jesus initiated contact with this woman he shouldn’t have been talking with in the first place! And it all began engaging, and encounter a stranger. Who knows how many lives can be changed just by us having an encounter with friends we have just not met yet?
May we always be ready for the many ways that God invites us to encounter the world and the people around us because when we get up close and “personal,” those who were “they” become part of “we” and we become more personally committed to working together for a better world for all people. May it be so.
sermon scripture
sermon text.
Amen.
See also: Theology Tuesday for Sunday, Month d, 2023 – sermon scripture.
Listen to the podcast.
Leave a Reply
Your email is safe with us.