Words of encouragement and support for those ministering "in the fields."

It is mid-March, 2007, and this week in Walnut Creek, Christian supporters of the Easter Bunny are defending the purveyor of colorfully-wrapped chocolate eggs as a direct and significant link to the Resurrection faith. Last week in Benicia a fellow citizen grimly instructed me, “The Bible says, ‘The Lord helps those that help themselves.” Have we absentmindedly pushed the “mute” button on the Reformation’s rallying cry, “sola scriptura” [faith based on scripture alone]? Or perhaps it’s simply more convenient to go with what we “know” than to subject ourselves to actual Biblical discernment. More satisfying to cling to custom than to excavate the bedrock.

In 1976 in Ames, Iowa, I attended a session of the ISU Bible Study. I was curious. Students at Iowa State University, where I was a campus minister, were flocking to these Bible studies, and I wanted to see what they offered. Also, I love scripture.

On that particular October afternoon I sat among about a hundred young people gathered in a small auditorium The leader of the study, a very clean cut white man in his late twenties, stood at the foot of the central aisle, opened his large black leather-bound Bible, and read from the gospel of John, chapter 4, verses 5-26. The story of Jesus’ meeting with a woman of Samaria.

Jesus and his followers are heading back home to Galilee and for some reason decide to cut through Samaria. The Samaritans are regarded by the Jewish folk of the day as unclean corrupters of the faith, and the relationship between the two peoples has not been cordial. Around noon, as Jesus and company are passing through a Samaritan town, Jesus goes off to the village well looking for something to drink. He doesn’t have a jar or bucket with him that would allow him to draw water, and the heat of midday is not the likely time for anyone else to be at the well to help him out. But a woman comes along and when Jesus requests water from her she puts it on the line by responding, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" But they strike up a conversation which soon takes them to a theological plain where they discuss “living water.” Jesus remarks, Maybe you should bring your husband so I can explain this to him,” and she says, “Well I don’t have a husband, so you can just keep talking to me.” At that point Jesus says, “You’re right, you don’t have a husband; you’ve had five, but the man you’re with now isn’t your husband.” To which she responds, “OK, you gotta be a prophet.”

They continue to talk about their beliefs and she says that the Messiah is coming who will reveal all things, and, without missing a beat in the interchange, Jesus says, “That’s me.” Which Jesus hasn’t yet said to anyone else yet in John’s recounting of the Gospel. The dialog continues after he drops that nugget into the stream of discourse. They talk some more about the nature of God and how to worship. Then the disciples come along and wonder with unspoken annoyance why Jesus is speaking to a woman. She leaves the well and starts evangelizing among the townsfolk. A great story.

Our Bible study leader finished the reading, closed his black leather-bound Bible and looked around the room. Holding the closed Bible in his left hand, he asked, “What do we learn from this scripture?” And went on to pace and wag his head and occasionally look up at the assembly while exegeting the passage. “Jesus knew about this woman’s life. He knew that she’d had FIVE husbands and that now she was living with a man she wasn’t married to. She’d stolen some other woman’s husband! And that was wrong. When she came to the well that day, she didn’t know that the very Son of God would be there and see right through her and speak to the corruption in her soul. But that’s what happened. She was convicted of her sin and brought to repentance.”

He stopped pacing, stood at the center of the lecture area, and smiled up at us. I took this as an invitation to ask questions, so I shot up my hand to get his attention. He nodded to me.

“Where do you find that in the passage?” I demanded, with more energy than tact. “Jesus doesn’t say anything to condemn her. They’re having a deep discussion about faith and religion AND Jesus reveals to her that he is the Messiah. That’s the first time in John’s Gospel that Jesus has said that about himself. She’s convinced and she goes off to spread the word in the village.” I ruffled through my open Bible, scanning the lines he had read to us. “I don’t see anything that supports what you have said. Where is it in the Bible?”

I sort of expected the students around me to start re-reading the passage from their open Bibles. They didn’t. The leader kept his Bible closed, elevated his left hand so that he held his Bible over his heart, and pointed with his right index finger to a young man on the other side of the room, who, presumably, had a more fitting question to ask.

***

If you have ever been critical of our church’s historic reliance on individual conscience and community deliberation to interpret scripture day by day with the expectation that there is “yet more light to break forth from God’s holy Word,” or resentful that more rigid and “tradition”-infused interpretations of scripture inspire such fierce followings, or wistful in your desire to broadcast comparable certitude in matters of faith, please remember that we in the UCC stand firm in the Biblically valid view of all-embracing, reconciling, compassionate Love as embodied in Jesus Christ, and when we say that God is still speaking, we mean that the Almighty, the Great Tender Spirit, is ever ready to burst through our culturally-induced deafness and pop our spiritual eardrums in the effort to reveal the truth of the Living Water. We may not always hear what we want to hear. We will often hear something we do not expect to hear. We must keep listening.

                                                                                                        ~ Mary Susan

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