Sunday, March 19, 2017

Everyone is Somebody to God

Lent 3 – 19 March 2017
Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Grand Prairie, Texas

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I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?

So asked the poet Emily Dickinson, musing about the difference between being a Nobody and being a Somebody. The world is full of Nobodies and Somebodies, it seems, and in this world, the woman at the well who meets Jesus is a Nobody. We don’t even get to know her name!

At the time of Jesus, this woman – as a woman - would’ve had no real power over her life – certainly not over her marital situation. She didn’t have any control over being born a Samaritan, either, and that she was a Samaritan made her even more of a Nobody. Samaritans didn’t follow the True Religion – which made them automatically suspect – so, on the basis of religion, she was a Nobody, too.

So, there is Jesus, traveling along through Samaria, and he decides to take a rest by Jacob’s well. This Nobody woman comes along, and Jesus asks her to draw up some water for him to drink. The fact that Jesus even speaks to her is tremendous. To us, it is no big deal. He’s thirsty – why not ask for a drink from the person who has the bucket? But in speaking to this woman – especially in speaking to her alone – Jesus is crossing gender, ethnic, and religious boundaries.

But Jesus doesn’t stop with asking for water. They begin conversing, this Jewish teacher and this Samaritan Nobody – all about springs of water gushing up to eternal life, and about her marital history, and in all this, she begins – slowly, at first – to see the truth about Jesus. She realizes finally that she is speaking with the Messiah, the One promised by God.

This is when the story is getting good!

But then the disciples come back, and the text tells us that they are astonished to see Jesus speaking with a woman. But they don’t say anything to the woman or to Jesus, and the woman does just as these men have done when they became disciples of Jesus – she leaves what she has (her bucket of water). As one of my seminary professors wrote in her commentary about the book of John: “The woman doesn’t get a husband, but instead gets a new job.”[1] She runs to the city and begins to tell people all about Jesus.

And then the text gives us a gift – especially for those of us who’ve had our ministry questioned because of our gender or ethnicity. The text gives us a gift by saying: “Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.”

Because of her testimony, many Samaritans come to believe in Jesus. And in the Gospel of John, belief isn’t just a head thing or even just a heart thing – belief is a relationship thing. To say that the Samaritans believed in Jesus has more of the sense that they began their relationship with him as his disciples. Because of her testimony, Jesus stays with them for a couple of days – which shows this relationship that is developing between Jesus and this group of Nobodies.

Our story today wraps up with the Samaritans declaring, “We know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

And they could’ve added – “The savior of the whole world, even us, the ones who’re called ‘Nobodies.’”

This story, then, is a living-out of what Jesus has just proclaimed in John 3: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” This story also humanizes a group of people who were largely despised in the First Century: the Samaritans. It humanizes them by showing Jesus’ willingness to talk with them, listen to them, spend time with them, be in relationship with them – in the flesh.

And God uses the testimony of the woman at the well to do all this work.

There are times in my life when I’ve received the word of God from a surprising source – maybe words of forgiveness spoken by someone I’ve hurt, or words of assurance spoken at a time when I was faltering, or words of peace spoken into a time of conflict, or words of truth spoken in the midst of lies. At other times, even before I was a pastor, I was the one whom God used to speak those surprising words to someone else – words of forgiveness, or assurance, or peace, or truth.

Just imagine that to which God may be calling you. Now, maybe going out and talking about Jesus willy-nilly to strangers isn’t your gift. But you can show yourself to be a person of faith, and as a person of faith, you can bear witness to Jesus through your words and actions. As a person of faith, you can be the one to offer surprising words of forgiveness, or assurance, or peace, or truth. As a person of faith, each one of us has something we can share or show about God’s love. There are no Nobodies – not one.

God’s vision is so much bigger than our own vision, and God’s love is bigger than our own love. “God so loved the world…” even those whom the world calls “Nobodies,” for everyone is Somebody to God.[2]

+ SDG +






[1] The Very Rev. Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, Conversations with Scripture: The Gospel of John. Published by Morehouse Publishing, p. 62.
[2] The “Nobody”/”Somebody” language came from Deborah J. Kapp’s essay for this Sunday in Feasting on the Word, Kindle Location 20029.

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