OUR CHRIST CAKE

 Sermon preached by the Rev. Michael Anderson Bullock

[Exodus 17:1-7; Romans 5:1-11; John 4;5-42]

Today’s gospel reading is a masterful example of a “layer cake” story.  Constructed by one layer of narrative upon another, this “cake” from St. John’s gospel produces something more delicious that its specific parts.  This is one reason for careful investigation of the Bible, in general, and the gospel accounts of Jesus, in particular.  There is more than meets the eye.  The point here is that while the goal is to eat the completed cake, savoring the layered parts provides an appreciation of the impact of these foundational parts.  Think of having some Italian tiramisu.  The layers and what holds the layers together create the finished delight.

Keeping this cake imagery in play (and perhaps teasing you to come to coffee hour!), the first layer of this gospel cake comes by way of background information, information contained in last Sunday’s gospel account.

Remember Nicodemus coming to speak with Jesus under the cover of night?  Nicodemus needed to interview Jesus because of the impact our Lord was making among the people, an impact that was threatening to the Hebrew establishment.  In today’s reading, the Hebrew “Puritans” (the Pharisees) recognized that Jesus’ popular impact has reached a tipping point, that the “Jesus Movement” was growing faster than the one surrounding John the Baptist. Something needed to be done to head off Jesus’ growing trajectory.  In terms of context, remember that in the Baptist’s case, beheading him was their controlling solution.

So, it is in today’s gospel episode that the second layer of the cake comes into play.  Jesus is in the Samaritan city of Sychar at “Jacob’s Well”.  Intending to stay out of harm’s way for a time, Jesus has moved northward with the intention of returning to his safe home region of Galilee.  Yet, the road “home” contours its way through Samaria – a region we all recognize as “out-of-bounds” for observant Judeans.  Tired from this leg of his trip and having sent his disciples away to buy groceries, Jesus stops at “Jacob’s well” to rest.  It is noon.  It is hot.  He is alone; and in that heat, at that time, no one would be about – save in this case a woman -- a Samaritan woman who approaches the well.  For her part, she casts a suspicious eye on the figure of this man at the well – at noon, alone, in the heat of the day.  In this uneasy encounter the third layer of the cake comes into play.  As it turns out, this third layer that will require some steadying adjustment if it is to support the cake’s construction.

Right away, it should be evident that exposure to a Samaritan risk making a Jew “unclean”.  After all, Judeans historically regarded Samaritans as “half-breeds”, heretics from the orthodox followers of Abraham’s covenant with God.  But beyond risking exposure to “these people”, no respectable male Judean would be caught alone in the company of a woman-not-his-wife.  Moreover (fellow detectives), what kind of woman would be coming to the well – alone -- in the middle of the day?  And here is the point at which some of the cake’s luscious icing needs to be applied to cement the layered tiers together.

As the woman approaches with her clay water jug skillfully balanced on her head, she, spies Jesus and is immediately filled with her own concerns and questions.  “What’s up with this guy?  What kind of man hangs out at the village well – at noon, in the heat, alone?”  From a hard-life’s cynicism, she wonders sourly what this lone ranger wants?”  And then it happens.  Jesus speaks to her, which is another “No-No!”  And they both know it.

Speaking directly to the woman, Jesus asks her to give him a drink of water.  Now given the circumstances of his travel, we know the request’s innocence; but to the Samaritan woman, his request sounds like a pathetic “pick-up line”, a version of “do you come here often, sailor?”  Nonetheless, rather than blurting out her instinctive thoughts, she asks Jesus a question that cleverly would reveal his intentions and to explain his presence.  She coyly inquires, “how is it…”. “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”  (And just in case we might miss her point, John describes the historical reality of this ethnic segregation.  He informs us all that “Jews do not share” anything with Samaritans!). And now, at this point. the cake building truly begins.  And it begins with Jesus asking her for help: “Give me a drink.”

To the woman’s ethnically bounded question, Jesus inaugurates the transforming process of this encounter with a most pithy reply: “If you knew…” “If you knew the generosity of God and who I am, you would be asking me for a drink, and I would give you fresh, living water.” [The Message] Revealing her inner suspicions again, the woman barks back: “You don’t even have a bucket to draw with.” muttering under her breath, “Typical male!”  But more tactfully, she speaks aloud, “how are you planning on getting this living water?”  “People have been coming to Jacob’s Well for water for 1500 years, and you say you have special water, living water to give?”

With a calmness to his voice that conveyed truth, Jesus told her that the well water would ultimately leave a person thirsty, but the water he has to give will quench thirst for ever.  He called it, “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” [4:14].  At this, the woman’s suspicion changed to intriguing curiosity.  “Wow!  Please give me this water.”  You have no idea how I hate having to come to this well every day.  Carrying water is a drag that I’d be glad to be saved from!”

With this slight opening, Jesus quickly jump-shifted the conversation and (as it were) lays a fourth layer to the cake.  “Call your husband and come back,” he says.  Ooops!  As a former South Carolina parishioner used to say to me, “Now he’s gone from preachin’ to meddlin’!”  Ooops!

To those of us who are nourished by the Prayer Book tradition, at this element in the story, strains of the “Collect for Purity” should echo in our ears: “Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets ae hid…” [BCP. p. 355]. With no small amount of painful shame, the woman responds, “I have no husband,” to which Jesus essentially says that she has courageously uttered the truth, that in her life she has dug six wells with men in a desperate attempt to alleviate her soul’s deep thirst, and all to no helpful effect.

So, the woman moves into what the world (and you and I are tempted to do) when confronted by God and the God-life.  She turned to things magical.  “Oh, wow!  You are an amazing fortune teller; aren’t you?  Unlike the other hucksters, your answers are spot-on.  How’d you do that?!  What kind of religion do you practice?  I’d like to know.”

Well, you know what Jesus said to this.  In effect, “Woman, believe me, the time is coming when everyone will be compelled to look through the right end of the telescope; and in so doing will see spiritually and truthfully God and the God-life at the center.”  “Oh, for sure,” the woman said reactively.  “We all know that when the Messiah, God’s Christ, comes, it’ll all work out!  After all, there are many pathways to the top of the mountain.”

“Not exactly,” Jesus replied.  “The stunning truth is that you don’t have to wait any longer to see from the mountain top.  What you see now in me is what you get.”

And with that, the layer cake is finished.  But every cake requires its icing; and the icing on this cake comes by way of what this Samaritan woman did next.

The Twelve arrive back from grocery shopping; and spying Jesus speaking with a Samaritan woman, they go into emergency mode to intervene and limit any damage.  They don’t want Jesus to have to go on t.v. like some indicted evangelist, sobbing his confession about being with this woman.  Yet, in contrast to the Twelve, the Samaritan woman returns to the village that had previously shunned her for her broken behavior and shares her own transforming experience of Jesus.  She confesses the truth about her life and the transforming reality of God in her midst.  It is her witness that propels the villagers of Sychar to see for themselves who and what Jesus is, to the extent that they, on turn, invite him to stay with them, which he does for two days.  And nothing was the same after the encounter.  The layer cake, replete with icing.

I will close with another, very short story.  It is one that involved me personally.  This story also involves a woman.  While I never knew how my story ended, the contrast between the two women makes the point about our common need for what Jesus gives.

I was a young priest, an Associate Rector of a “tony” parish church just outside of Boston.  It was my second placement as an ordained person, my first parish experience.  I was the preacher one Sunday.  At the end of the liturgy, I greeted the homeward bound members at the church’s front door.  Having said my “goodbyes”, I walked toward the pulpit to retrieve my text.  The lights in the church had been turned off in preparation of closing up shop.  The resulting shadows were soft and comforting.  I thought I was alone.  Yet, from the pulpit I heard the faintest of noises.  I looked up and saw a solitary figure, standing in the shadows of the rear of the church, in front of the baptismal font, facing the altar.  I was surprised by her presence.  Yet, even in the shadows I could tell that the figure was a woman and that she was crying.

I move quicky to the head of the center aisle and began slowly to walk back toward her.  I asked her if she were ok.  What was wrong?  Before I could walk halfway down the center aisle to her, she sobbed deeply; and in a broken voice, she asked a question I have never forgotten.  “How can you believe in a God who would love someone like me?”

I don’t recall what happened next; nor what I said or did.  For some reason neither do I remember what happened to her.  Yet, I tell this story to contrast today’s gospel story in hopes of making the point that it is hard often times to believe in a God who would love someone like us; but God’s belief in us and God’s love for us – for us all – is never in question.  Perhaps, then, the old saying about cake makes an important God-life point: namely, that with God’s Christ, we can have our cake and eat it too.  Amen.