A Deep Conversation by Cheri Holdridge (with an assist by Kurt Young)

The scripture reading today is about a conversation between Jesus and an unnamed Samaritan woman (John 4:5-30, 39-42 from The Message translation for those following along from afar). We have just wrapped up a series of great conversations about our dreams for the Village church’s future. One of the things we learned is that we want to get to know one another a little better. Another smaller groups of us have been working on a new Conversation Project here at The Village and across Ohio, in Columbus, in Cleveland, but it started here. We are learning that when one person asks another person some questions and then really listens, it can be a really enlightening experience. We seem to have a theme of conversations going on around this place, did you catch that?

So I would like to start today with a little conversation experiment. I’m going to ask you to have a short conversation with one other person before the message. We call the person who invites the conversation the host and the other person the guest. So if you are someone who is not feeling like you want to talk much today I encourage you to be the host in your pair, because the host mostly just gets to listen. The host listens and asks questions like: why, and tell me more. 

It might go something like this. I might ask the question: what brought you to Toledo? My job. Tell me more about that. I’m a teacher. Really, why did you decide to be a teacher? I just always liked kids and thought I could make a difference. Really, can you tell me more about that? Well I guess it was really this one teacher I had. When I was in the 7^th grade I had a really bad year. I had no friends. But there was this one teacher, the science teacher, who made me feel like I was ok. I loved science and he just opened up a whole new world to me, but more than that, he showed an interest in me. I didn’t have any friends that year, but that teacher helped me survive the worst year of my life. 

Do you see how by asking a few questions, “why” and “tell me more” we got learn quite a bit about what brought the person to Toledo.  It wasn’t just a job, it was a turning point in 7^th grade, that made her a teacher and gave her a calling.  By just asking a few questions like “why?” and “tell me more”, we learned a great thing about our friend here.   

In the worship experience we did just that, we took the scripture conversation seriously, we invited everyone to get into pairs and Today’s scripture is about a conversation. The Congregation then shared what they heard from one another.  People described themselves as feeling valued and validated when they were heard.  They felt the connection between people and how we are connected and more alike than we think we are.  It was hard to just listen and let the person speak was what person shared.  But connections were found for a little conversation of a few minutes. 

In our scripture for today, (John 4) Jesus has a conversation with a woman. He travels through a part of the country where no self-respecting Jew would generally travel.  Jews and Samaritans were not friends.  They would make a huge detour in any trip, in order to avoid Samaria. But Jesus does not see divisions; he just saw people, he just saw children of God. He sends his disciples into town to get some food and he sits down by a well to rest.

A woman comes to the well, in the middle of the day. We know she’s a woman who wants to avoid the crowds, because the custom was that all the other women come to the well early in the morning when it’s cool. We know because she comes in the middle of the day that she is a woman who is trying avoid the other women. This is a sign that she is an outcast. You name a religious law, and she has probably broken it. No one respects her anymore. 

She came to that well that day, quite possibly dejected, lonely and without hope. But she likely was not seeking anything except a bucket of water.  What she found was Jesus, a man, first of all, who would look her in the eye and have a conversation with her.  This was shocking enough. For those who are outcasts, for instance our friends who come to Food for Thought on Saturdays to get food & hygiene items, it is something just to have someone look you in the eye and voluntarily talk to you.  

For a Jewish man to talk with a Samaritan woman broke about a hundred customs right off the bat. She was unclean. Taboo. But he not only talked to her, he listened to her. She later told her friends: “this man knows me inside and out.” I’m quite sure we don’t have the whole conversation recorded. Remember this is oral history, written down long after the fact. Only a few details actually got written down. I have an idea that it took his disciples a long time to walk into town and come back. I think they sat their all afternoon talking Jesus had all the time in the world for this woman.

Have you ever had a conversation like this? A conversation with a dear friend or relative? Someone who knows you deeply and really cares about you? Jesus kept questioning more deeply with this woman. She mentioned a husband and he said: “Yes, tell me more about that husband, because I have an idea that you have had several husbands, and the man you are with now is not your husband.” 

Perhaps it was harsh of Jesus, it seems a bit harsh, but it was like he had to peel back the layers of an onion in order to get to the truth of who the woman is. She had spent so many years living in sin.  Jesus had to help her find her way back to being the loving creation that God made her to be.  Because Jesus sees everyone of us as the beautiful, beloved child of God we are.  

They had a conversation about worship and Jesus said to her: This is “the kind of people [God] is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before [God] in their worship. God is sheer being itself—Spirit. Those who worship [God] must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration.”  He was calling her to be her true self – the person God created her to be – a person of love, compassion and generosity.  Like a little child who hasn’t learned how to sin, to separate oneself from God.  

Jesus freed her. She was filled with shame. She had no friends, no self-respect. She was an outcast in her community. But when you community tells you that you are no good, you start believing it. And for this woman, it appears, there were some choices she made that caused her to be on the margins, some choices for sin. 

But all of that changed when she met Jesus. In her encounter with the living God, she was set free. She went back to her village and told her friends, 

“Come see a man who knew all about the things I did, who knows me inside and out. Do you think this could be the Messiah?” And they went out to see for themselves.

^39-42 Many of the Samaritans from that village committed themselves to him because of the woman’s witness: “He knew all about the things I did. He knows me inside and out!” They said to the woman, “We’re no longer taking this on your say-so. We’ve heard it for ourselves and know it for sure. He’s the Savior of the world!”

Because this woman had an encounter with Jesus, her life was transformed and the lives of many people in her village were transformed.  She became not only a follower of Jesus but an evangelist as well.  Not only was her life transformed, she transformed her village.   She went from being an outcast, to being an instrument to transform the world from one conversation.  

You see, this is what happens when we allow Jesus to peel back the layers of our lives and help us discover who God wants us to be. 

It is very easy for us to read the story of this woman, and distance ourselves from that woman.  She was bad. She was a sinner.  She went to the well in the middle of the day because she wanted to avoid the other women who were not so sinful. The scripture says when the disciples come back from the village, “They were shocked. They could not believe that Jesus was talking with that kind of a woman. No one said what they were all thinking, but their faces showed it.” They were judging the woman and they were judging Jesus for even talking with her.

But what do we say here at The Village? We know we are imperfect people who make mistakes. We give thanks that God loves us anyway.  My friends, every one of us is that woman at the well. Jesus is coming to us today, and standing in front of us, and naming with us, the things we have said and done that we wish we had not done and said. And he is naming with us the things that we have not done that we wish we had done. We don’t have to be ashamed and beat ourselves up.

But we can only be set free when we name and own up to our failings. When we hide from them, and pretend we have done nothing wrong, our sins become a cancer. They grow and spread. They make everyone around us sick. Jesus came to the woman at the well and said, “Be free. Speak the truth, and then do not be controlled by what you have been and done. Let these things go. Drink the living water that God has to offer. Leave the past behind and step forward into a new life in God’s way.  A beautiful future that God has to offer you.   

And so I invite us now, to confess our sins and to move forward into the light of God.   Cheri then led us in a prayer:  Holy God, each of us knows we are not perfect.  We are not the person you created us to be. We have hurt others and hurt ourselves.  We have failed to take opportunities to help others, to be giving and generous. We open our hearts to you and we ask your forgiveness. 

If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just and will forgive us. Take the time to do this quietly now.  For yourself, be open to God and let go.  And then say these simple and powerful words and know that they are 100% true, ready? “In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven.”  That’s it.  You are forgiven.  Now, start reclaiming that you are a beloved child of God and you have something to give yourself and others.  Now, go find that.  Amen.