Ss Peter & Paul, Kettering
Making the ordinary extraordinary
He cannot be the Messiah, can he?
At the end of March, Michael and I will be travelling to Western Australia – my dear friend Joanne is to be married and I have been invited to share in the Marriage ceremony. It is about four years since we last saw her when she and the man she is about to marry took us on an amazing trip up through the red centre of Western Australia – the nearest I have ever come to living in a wilderness. The trip took two weeks, we cooked and ate under the stars and we had to carry with us every drop of water we would need for that two weeks. Only then did I recognise water as the very precious life giving resource that it is. We used it carefully, thinking before discarding any, always aware that if we should run out, we would be in serious trouble. With the aid of a rose sprayer, you can shower with just a litre of water!! And how welcome that water was at the end of a day’s trekking, covered with the red dust that is so much a part of that area of Western Australia.
This morning we hear again the story of the woman at the well who would know only too well how precious is the gift of water. The woman from Samaria comes to collect water from the well as she probably every day. But this day would stand out in her mind – someone else was there before her. Jesus has been travelling from Judea heading for Galilee and finds himself in Sychar, tired, dusty and thirsty. He stops to rest beside the well, but has no means of getting any water – the well is deep and old. But then the woman appears and an extraordinary encounter unfolds. Jesus initiates a conversation, and asks the woman for a drink disregarding the ancient mistrust, even hatred, between the Jews and the Samaritans. Here was a people geographically close with similar roots, yet bitterly opposed to each other to the extent that to share the same drinking vessel would have been unthinkable if not totally forbidden. What is more, while it might not have been forbidden for a man to converse with a female stranger in public, it was against all custom for a rabbi to do so. Jesus simply cuts through all those social conventions and religious mores which mar the image of God in his world. But they continue still it seems – the barely disguised mistrust and resentment reflected in the political debate about what it means to be ‘British’. The mistrust and resentment between different traditions within the world-wide Anglican communion; mistrust and resentment directed at individuals who endeavour to thoughtfully question and explore God’s will for his children in a rapidly changing world. But challenging the accepted norms is costly, and Jesus will pay the ultimate price.
Back to that conversation at the well – Jesus simply engages with the woman as a fellow traveller journeying along the same road at the same moment. He reaches out to her with gentleness and warmth. Jesus speak metaphorically about the water; at that moment, her understanding is only that the tedious business of coming to the well regularly for the water so essential to life will no longer be necessary. She may not have fully understood what he was trying to say to her, but she was beginning to recognise something more than the simple humanity of Jesus – their continuing conversation about her home life, faith and worship culminated in Jesus declaration ‘I am he…’
At that moment, the disciples arrive. I find myself wondering what the woman might have felt as these other people intruded upon the intimacy of their conversation – an ordinary event had become so extraordinary but in a split second everything moves and changes. You might want to stay there and revel in the experience but you have to move on. And so she leaves her water jar and returns to the city. “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!” But then adds almost as though it is so wonderful she dare not believe “He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” The townspeople are so captivated that they persuade Jesus to stay with them for a few days. They become so convinced by the experience of what they see and hear that they hail him Saviour of the World – they were able to discern a truth that Judaism, by and large, were blind to.
That confession of faith began with the experience of one woman whom Jesus patiently leads in her journey of faith, step by step. At the beginning she gives Jesus a name that alienates – Jew. Then she is led to recognise him as prophet, then Messiah and then Saviour. That experience confirmed what she already believed “I know that Messiah is coming”.
One Holy Week in the mid 1980’s I had the wonderful opportunity of listening to the late Christopher Bryant, a member of the Cowley Fathers, who led our devotions that year. Faith, he said, is complex and so much more than belief. What gives strength and vitality to faith is experience – the experience, the sense of ‘something more’ whether in the contemplation of nature or of human life that draws us ever closer to God.
The experience of the woman and her conversation with Jesus was a deep sense of ‘something more’; the ordinary became extraordinary. An experience she didn’t keep to herself but a gift to be shared with incredible results. As we come together for our celebration of the Eucharist this morning, the ordinary things of bread and wine will become extraordinary – the body and blood of Christ himself. As we approach, what will our experience be? And how shall we respond?
Lesley McCormack, February 24th, 2008
Office Address:
The Rectory
Church Walk
Kettering
NN16 0DJ