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In many ways John 4:1-41 is a very radical piece of scripture. For a start what is Jesus doing in Samaria?

Jews travelling between Judah and Galilee as Jesus was doing usually went around Samaria not through it, despite the fact that going round it adding six days to the journey.

Secondly, Jews and Jesus was a good Jew, did not normally associate with Samaritans. In fact they hardly acknowledged them let alone talk with them. Because as the Jews saw them the Samaritan version of the faith was compromised, somehow not quite right.

Thirdly who is this woman and why is she at the well during the hottest period of the day?

The Jews so loathed the Samaritans that they preferred to add almost a week to their journeying between different Jewish territories.To the good Jew, Samaria was a tainted country. The Samaritans worshiped the Hebrew God ‘Yahweh’ but they did not believe that he had to be worshiped most especially in Jerusalem. The Samaritans built their temple on Mount Gerizim in Samaria which to the Jerusalem focused Jews made their worship inferior, (inferior not different note). The Jews also disapproved of the fact that the Samaritan version of the Pentateuch was in Aramaic not Hebrew and also the fact that the Samaritans did not acknowledge the poetic books and prophetic writings really put them beyond the pale and I quote:

“The Jews regarded the Samaritans as ignorant, superstitious mongrels, outside God’s favour or consideration.” (Wikipedia)

So in talking to this Samaritan woman Jesus is really defying convention. He is conversing with a heretic woman about the Hebrew faith. He is also challenging convention by talking to a woman any way! For women were not part of God’s chosen people (only free born males were included in that gang). This woman is also rather questionable. Why is she alone at the well in the middle of the day? Is she ‘no better than she ought to be’? Is she a woman of loose morals awaiting a pick up? This is what seems to be implied by John:

She is obviously living in sin! She is also probably going to the well at noon to avoid the mockery and disapproval of other women, who would not approve of her life choices or circumstances. Yet, it is this outcast woman who recognises who Jesus is. She is one of the first to be converted by that knowledge and in her joy she sets out with missionary zeal to convert others:

Jesus recognises in the woman a spiritual thirst and tells her that the water he offers will quench that thirst. He describes the living water welling up inside her and flowing eternally if she can accept his gift of living water, meaning the Holy Spirit. Jesus is also very canny with the woman in his full acceptance of her, as she is. In no way does he condemn her for having had so many husbands and for now cohabiting with another man. Because of this she is so taken aback and continues to express a deep interest what Jesus has to say to her and what he says quite literally overwhelms the woman for Jesus basically says to her:

“I do not care how bad you are, I still want to give you the living water.”

New birth and living water are both terms for receiving the Holy Spirit, the salvation of God. They are gifts freely offered and given once and for all time after one has repented of one’s past sins.

How would you respond to Jesus’ offer?

One of the television programmes we have enjoyed over recent years is Britain’s Lost Masterpieces. The concept is a very simple one. Art Historian Dr Bendor Grosvenor picks out a neglected painting which he thinks might be the work of an important artist and hands it over to Simon Gillespie, a picture restorer. We watch as Simon uses solvents and cotton wool swabs to remove layers of dirty varnish and inept overpainting, before carefully touching up any damage. Once the painting has been restored to something very close to its original state, Dr Grosvenor and other experts are able to arrive at a conclusion about which artist was responsible for the work.

In today’s Gospel Jesus speaks of Nicodemus’ need to be “born from above”. In the King James Bible the passage is translated as “born again” and some Christians have taken that to mean a single and dramatic conversion experience and have even argued, wrongly I think, that you aren’t a proper Christian unless you have had that kind of experience. For some of us, the process is more gradual; perhaps the coming to a maturity in which, bit by bit, we accept and own for ourselves the religious upbringing we have received; perhaps the slow realisation that underlying the church music that we enjoy there is a profound and loving reality. That was the way my godmother, who declared herself to be an atheist shortly after escorting my infant self to the font, came to faith towards the end of her life.

It may be more helpful to think about the meaning of that phrase “born from above” by using picture restoration as a metaphor. As a devout member of the religious establishment, Nicodemus knew the Hebrew Bible. He had read and reflected on the passage in Genesis which teaches that human beings are made in the image and likeness of God. What Jesus is suggesting is that, in Nicodemus, that image and likeness had become obscured, perhaps by the over-confidence that can afflict religious leaders, perhaps by a lack of charity. Nicodemus was in short, like all of us, in need of a clean-up, in need of the kind of restoration that would reveal in him the image and likeness of his Creator.

Pictures cannot restore themselves to their original splendour, and neither can we by our own unaided efforts. That is the point that St Paul is making in today’s Epistle, when he makes a distinction between works and faith. It is only by placing our trust in God’s ability to cleanse and restore us that the cleansing and restoration become possible. And Lent is a time when we are reminded of that need for trust, a time to open ourselves by prayer and reflection to the grace of God and to the cleansing and restoration that God’s grace makes possible.

Jesus then goes on to say some very challenging things to Nicodemus, and the challenges reach a climax with these words:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.”

It’s a verse which is often read in an “us and them” way – “believe in Jesus and you’ll go to heaven, fail to believe in Jesus and you will be damned.”

And that’s a reading which can very easily turn into the kind of religious comfort zone out from which Jesus was trying to draw Nicodemus. The purpose of God’s self-giving, universal and unconditional love is to evoke from human beings a love of exactly the same kind. And Christians do not have a monopoly on that kind of love. As Archbishop William Temple put it:

“Whatever promotes among men love and joy and peace has its source in that divine love which sent the Son into the World, not to judge the world, but that the world may be saved through him.”

The world, not just individual Christians. And the Greek word which is translated as “the world” is kosmos – suggesting the whole of creation.

When St Athanasius, that great fourth century Christian thinker, wanted to explain the reason for the Incarnation, for God’s giving of his only Son, he turned to the idea of picture restoration. Suppose, he suggested, that the portrait of someone is so badly damaged that it is impossible to restore it unless that person can be traced and can sit as a model for the restorer. That is what had happened to humankind.

The image and likeness of God had become so overpainted with selfishness and greed that human beings had lost sight of it in themselves and in other people. Until, that is, Jesus came to show us that image and likeness in reality, in his words and actions and in his Passion and to give us an understanding of what God intends us to be. If we respond to that reality, then God’s work of restoration can proceed.

Athanasius put it like this:

“Even the wood on which the artist painted is not thrown away, but the outline is renewed upon it; in the same way also, the most holy Son of the Father, came to our region to renew humanity once made in his likeness.”

A thought that John Keble took up when he wrote the hymn Blest are the pure in heart.

“The Lord who left the heavens

Our life and peace to bring,

To dwell in lowliness with us,

Our pattern and our King.”

Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7

15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. ¹⁶And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; ¹⁷but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.’ 3 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God say, “You shall not eat from any tree in the garden”?’ ²The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; ³but God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.” ’ ⁴But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not die; ⁵for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ ⁶So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. ⁷Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.

This story in Genesis of how Eve and Adam gave into temptation is telling. They had everything they needed or could really desire and were happily living in Paradise. Yet they did not realise that and Paradise proved not to be enough for them. There was that one tree, that one fruit that they had been forbidden to eat and that was the temptation. We all know what we humans are like, if you are told that you can’t have something you desire it all the more. How contrary we are, for often the thing we think we really, really want, once we have it, is not what we wanted at all. It was just the thought of having it or the thought that we needed it, was what was desirous. One only has to look at our consumer society and see the debt that many people live with to see this truth. It certainly does not bring happiness getting all that we want or desire, as Eve and Adam discovered.

Both Adam and Eve ignored God’s warning and discovered the pain that wanting too much can bring. Contentment is not something we humans happily embrace. It is a lesson we have to learn or grow into and often we have to do it the hard way. Yet, for some of us until we learn that lesson there is always that itch for more, that bit of discontentment that drives us to desire that which we neither need nor want but think we do.

How much do we actually need? That’s a good question for all of us to ponder over Lent.

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise person who built their house on rock (Matthew 7:24)

If I was to ask you “do you speak first or do you listen first” what you would say? Are you someone who must always be heard or do you listen first in order to respond appropriately? Recently I listened to radio 3 when they referred to a programme entitled “Deep Listening”. Tom Service was to explore deep listening, a practice created by composer Pauline Oliveros to train performers to listen better and respond to environmental matters. It intrigued me.

Delving further I found out that “deep listening” is a practice that is used for anything from spiritual growth to building better communication pathways within a business or other organisation. Essentially it is about developing the skills required to pay attention to what is being said without bringing too many of our thoughts and prejudices into the equation. This means the ability to listen to and to go beyond simply hearing the words being uttered. Instead, it requires the listener to empathise and relate to what is said without jumping in with counter-arguments or other proposals.

Even in the Church Times, Chatsworth Estate, in Derbyshire, known to many of you, is looking for a part time priest who will be “pastorally gifted, inclusive and a discreet listener”.

On this the last Sunday before the beginning of Lent, my attention was drawn to the headline of a national newspaper last month entitled “University cancels Lent because it is too Christian”.  The London School of Economics has overhauled titles of its traditional terms to be more “international”. For example, “Christmas” is now “winter break”. “Lent term” is now “winter term” and “Easter break” is now “spring term”. The commentator went on to say “This ludicrous decision is more virtue-signalling nonsense that creates exclusion in the name of inclusivity”. 

Our readings today are all filled with action:-

In Deuteronomy, we are exhorted to “put the words of God in our hearts and souls, to bind them as a sign on our hands and to fix them as a emblem on our forehead”.

In Romans, we are encouraged “not to be ashamed of the gospel as it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith”.

In our gospel which closes the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew stands out among the Gospels, by emphasising the significance of doing what Jesus says.  Jesus addresses the disciples while a crowd has been eavesdropping. He ends his teaching with words that send a message – a sobering and challenging one – only those who hear and do his words will enter the kingdom of heaven.  For him, head, heart, will and hands are integrated into a life that trusts God and serves humanity. He calls us to a life of being and doing. Words and deeds are interwoven.

Jesus uses the well-known image of two builders to make his point. No one builds a house in bad weather – too much heat or too much cold impede construction. The foundation must be solid.

As we look towards Lent may we take encouragement from that much loved hymn “The Church is one foundation”

The Church is one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord;

She is his new creation by water and the word:

From heaven he came and sought her to be his holy Bride;

With his own blood he bought her and for her life he died.

Epiphany VI 2023 Year A

A rather hard Gospel to hear this morning as Jesus seems to be telling his disciples and followers that if they follow him they have to be very strict with themselves and each other. That they have to go beyond the injunctions of the 10 commandments. It all sounds very difficult to conform to. Yet, what I think Jesus is doing is encouraging his followers to lead lives of integrity and honesty. Not to say one thing and do another  but to try and live lives that respect other people and to treat others with good intentions. No malice should be in the heart of a follower of Christ and no ill will should be wished upon another. Basically treat each other as you would wish to be treated yourself. I think that teaching holds true as much today as it ever has.

When you say; ‘Yes’ mean  it and when you say; ‘No’ mean it also. This is good advice from Jesus. Have you ever wished you had said; ‘Yes’ to something or ‘No’ and not felt guilty? What Jesus is telling us is that it is okay to say; ‘Yes’ if you really mean it and to likewise say; ‘No’ too and not to over use either. Sometimes we need to say no, to stop ourselves being over whelmed and others times we need to say; ‘Yes’ to draw ourselves out of a comfortable rut. The lesson to learn is when to say yes and no appropriately.