Water, Word, Witness  (John 4:5-42)

"il y a une église dans ma vie !" = "there's a church in my life!" It's a Lenten fundraising effort for the Catholic church in France. But for most, there is no church! A poll published last year in Le Monde des Religions showed the number of self-declared French Catholics had dropped from 80 per cent in the early 1990s and 67 per cent in 2000 to 51 per cent today. Of those who still call themselves Catholics, only half said they believed in God. Many said they were Catholics because it was a family tradition. The survey showed atheists as the second-largest group at 31 per cent, which means that together with non-believing Catholics, atheists make up 56%, with Muslims at 4%, Protestants 3%, and Jews 1%.

I dreamed last night, in my jet-lagged attempt to stay asleep, that I had been invited to minister in a church of England congregation. The first difficulty was to find my way into the sanctuary. The church seemed to have been set up for anything and everything except worship. Then they showed me the pulpit. It was a rickety structure (like the pulpit at Notre Dame in Paris, where there's a sign that warns it's dangerous to enter the structure, that it's not safe to stand in, and likely to fall). The pulpit in my dream was to be entered by a set of missing stairs that made it look like a climbing wall. I tried several times and the steps collapsed under my weight. Finally, I jumped up onto the pulpit, and it teetered, nearly falling to the floor.

Actually, the pulpit was on the side of the building, facing out onto a little grassy area. The church leaders explained that the preacher preached from this pulpit but the congregation gathered on the other side of the building. The sermons were nearly inaudible and sort of "phoned in" by some system of sound transmission. The leaders told me that the congregation "had its own way of doing other things," including prayer. They simply talked to each other on the lawn. The leaders said this was all in violation of the rubrics of the Prayer Book, but they felt there was nothing to be done. I said I must descend from the pulpit and speak to the people.

The dream reminds me of what I saw in Paris. A building called the Pantheon, which is dedicated, not to the gods, but to writers and poets, politicians and revolutionary heroes. All of this is fine, to celebrate the memory and gifts of France's great leaders, but it's not a pantheon. It represented to me a country that has lost all trust in something more than great individuals, and the glory of the nation…

So how does my dream illuminate the gospel lesson? What stood in the way of Jesus' being able to preach to the Samaritan woman and her community?  First, his own followers and his own religion would have told him not to speak to her, a woman. It was the same groups who tried to stop him from welcoming children, or tax collectors, prostitutes, alcoholics, and others branded as "sinners." Second, the difficulties of cross-cultural communication made it almost impossible. Jews and Samaritans had no dealings with each other. And in her attempt to escape reality, the woman tried to talk theology rather than to meet Jesus. But finally, Jesus broke through and talked to the woman about her life as she lived it, and the love of God spoke to her heart.

We miss the love and power of Jesus if we ignore the water, the word and the witness in this story. Water is the answer to thirst--addressing real human yearnings. What would you like to drink? This is the first thing you hear in any restaurant, anywhere in the world… Word is speaking to where people are, not where we might like them to be. More than bread alone… Witness is telling the truth. That God is neither here or there (not Jerusalem and not Mt. Gerizim), not in books of theology or buildings. God is in your heart, and in your blood and in your breath, and worshipped in the daily life of who you are and where you find yourself.

Even the church's distortion of the woman's situation, imagining that she was a prostitute, blaming her for the ending of her previous marriages, and leering about the line "the one you have now is not your husband" stand in the way of our hearing the witness of Jesus in the story… John images a magic Jesus, but we may picture Jesus as empathic…

Where is the passion in this tale of Jesus' encounter with the woman at the well? What do I want to leave with the congregation as I move on?  St. Francis is supposed to have said, "Preach the Gospel always, if necessary use words." (Probably not.) Actually, in 1221, Francis wrote: "Let no friar preach … unless it has been conceded to him by his minister. And let the minister beware of himself, lest he indiscreetly concede (this) to anyone. However let all the friars preach by works."*

As followers of Jesus, we are compelled to speak, but we must also remember that actions always speak louder than words. If you want this church to grow, or even just to survive, you're going to have to talk about it. And ACT LIKE IT! Draw water to meet the thirst of all spiritual seekers. Speak the Word that addresses people where they really live. Live your witness in a way that all the world may see the good that you do. Amen.