A New Kind of Worship

By now, you probably know that Fred Phelps died this past Thursday. Fred Phelps, who describes himself as an "Old School Baptist," has headed the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, KS since 1955. He and his family members are noted for their infamous protests at soldiers' funerals with their awful "God Hates ***" signs. They've been a symbol for many years of the religion-based animosity against the LGBT community — to the point that they've been labeled a "hate group" and even the most fundamentalist Christian groups denounce his church's activities. The news of Phelps's death has brought to the surface some very strong opinions within the LGBT community, many people rejoicing over it. Stop for a moment, and think about where you stand in your opinion of Fred Phelps and his church. If you were to draw a line that represents religious beliefs, and you placed a dot at the beginning of that line which represents Fred Phelps, where would your own dot be? For many of us, our own dot would be at the opposite end of the line, as far away as possible from Phelps's dot. Those dots that represent how religiously opposite you and I are from Fred Phelps could just as easily be the same dots that represent the religious differences between Samaritans and Jews in this morning's gospel reading. And so as we enter this morning's story of Jesus' encounter with a Samaritan woman at a well, it would be like a member of Fred Phelps's church pausing during the middle of one of their protests, laying their "God Hates ***" sign down, wiping the sweat from their brow, and asking a nearby same-gender couple for a glass of water. The animosity between Jews and Samaritans went back hundreds of years to the return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, when the Samaritans, who had remained in the land and intermarried with the Assyrians, actively worked to prevent the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Samaritans felt the Temple in Jerusalem was a false cultic center, and the Jews, in turn, excluded Samaritans from the Temple's inner courts. Tension between the groups escalated to the point, that in the year 6 C.E., a group of Samaritans desecrated the Temple by spreading human bones within the Temple porches and sanctuary. Whether we are talking about the hate-filled rhetoric of Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church, or we're talking about the dividing lines between Jews and Samaritans, it seems that religion always helps to make each group feel more justified in judging and avoiding and maybe even hating other groups of people. And so Jesus has the unlikely idea of engaging a Samaritan woman in a theological conversation over the equivalent of an afternoon cup of tea. And during the course of the conversation, in the let's-get-to-know-each-other part, which usually takes place at the beginning of such conversations, it comes out that the woman has been married five times, and the man with whom she is currently living is not her husband. And despite what you may have heard in the past about this woman from your childhood pastor, it's important that we let the record show that Jesus neither judged her nor did he tell her to go and sin no more. He never said that she was welcome to drink from the living water so that she could change her sinful ways. So, despite what you may have heard in the past, I want you to consider the possibility that there was nothing sinful about her multiple marriages or her marital status. If she had been married to five husbands in the past, it very well may be that she had been widowed, abandoned, or divorced. And if she was living with a man who was not her husband, she certainly had no say about the matter. She could now be living with someone that she was dependent on, or be in what's called a Levirate marriage (where a childless woman is married to her deceased husband's brother in order to produce an heir, yet is not always technically considered the brother's wife). There are any number of ways, in fact, that one might imagine this woman's story as tragic rather than scandalous. Her story may very well have been heartbreaking, but not necessarily shameful or immoral. I believe the reason Jesus didn't mention forgiveness of her sinful past is because there wasn’t one. MCC's Moderator, Rev. Elder Nancy Wilson, points out that many of us have been, or could be, that woman at the well, no matter our orientation or gender identity. She says, "Sometimes I see her as a heterosexual woman who might be acting out sexually in response to abuse in her early life, whose innocence is in need of restoration. Or a drag queen engaging in a lively repartee with a handsome stranger, finding more than she bargained for, a man who would not just use her and throw her away. Or a transgender woman who is restored to community by the kind and respectful attention of an itinerant preacher from a religious and cultural background that might have put her off at first. Maybe she is a lesbian harboring her secret in a hostile culture, or maybe she is someone who has been a victim of sex trafficking who cannot imagine a different life." And so when we members of the LGBT community place ourselves in this story, there is no reason to talk about sin or repentance with regard to our committed relationships. But there is reason to move the conversation to religion, which has spent so much time and energy excluding gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people from Christian community and communion. And that's just what happened. The woman moved the conversation to the theological differences between Jesus' people and hers, not because she was uncomfortable with where the conversation had landed, but because she saw a window of opportunity to talk to a prophet about spiritual matters. And so she gets right to the sticking points between Jews and Samaritans with her question, "Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem." Which seems to be just the sort of opening line that Jesus was waiting for. A different translation of Jesus' response, from Eugene Peterson's The Message, is helpful here: "...the time is coming," Jesus says, "it has, in fact, come – when what you're called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter. It's who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That's 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." What Jesus did when he spoke these words to this woman, this Samaritan woman, was to dismantle all walls of religious presumption and prejudice that had existed. His conversation with her ushered in a new kind of worship – worship in truth and in spirit, one which was not built upon tradition or doctrine. As followers of Jesus, as followers of the Way, we have also been commissioned to dismantle walls. There are walls that separate us from others. And in our separation, we have come to believe that we are righteous and those others – the ones on the other side of the wall – are wrong, hateful, and sinful. We have been called to dismantle the wall by pronouncing a blessing instead of a curse upon the other. When we bless the other, we see them for who they are and we declare them to be good. We reclaim the blessing that God made at the very beginning of creation, when God looked upon all that had been made and said it was good. And so with our blessing, we take our place, in a position as close as we may ever be, next to the God of the universe. When we bless our enemies, we imitate Jesus in this morning's story, and we answer God's call to dismantle the walls that separate us from each other. And we participate in a new kind of worship – one of spirit and truth. Amen.