Crossing Boundaries in the City

August 02, 2009

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
Micah 4:1-4, 6:6-8; Galatians 3:23-29; John 4:5-15
The Reverend Cathy S. Gilliard

Listen to part one of this sermon

Listen to part two of this sermon

For those of you visiting for the first time we are continuing our summer series: Now is the Time to Love the City in which we are taking stock of our fabulous city of New York and the varying ways that God is present to us here. Today, our focus is on Crossing Boundaries in the City. If you have missed other Sundays, I encourage you to pick up a written copy of sermons from the past three weeks which can be found in the narthex on your way out or go online and read or listen to them.

You might imagine that I am bursting to tell you about our missions work trip to Cartagena. It was a transformative experience in many ways and I am still processing it all. Our work involved laying the foundation for a church that will include a community and educational center - the first United Methodist Church built from the ground for the purpose of being a house of God. Existing buildings have been purchased in the past and are used as churches but never from the ground up for that purpose. And you can imagine the sheer wonder of such a unique experience: one's own hands and feet; sweat and tears being poured out physically to create a space for worship where hundreds and perhaps thousands of people over time will hear the good news of the gospel proclaimed. Where people of faith will gather to say their prayers, gather at the communion table, babies will be baptized; men and women will enter into marital covenant; and people will say farewell to their loved ones.

It was clear that while we were doing the business of creating a physical structure - digging holes and pouring cement that God was very present with us - building upon the foundation that had already been laid thousands of years ago - one church not made by human hands. We had to lay aside financial, geographical and language barriers in order to cross the divide and engage others in a way that was life-giving for them and as well as for ourselves. Because it was in those encounters that we were awakened to new dimensions of what it means to love God above all things and dour neighbors as ourselves. And you, though not present physically, helped to make it possible. Our lives are intertwined. Though separate in many ways and by many things, we are hopelessly linked together.

The bishop told us that the village where the church is being constructed is a community of prostitutes, drug addicts, the homeless; displaced and discarded people. I think it's fascinating that he chose such a place for this historic moment. Not to build the church in "old Cartagena" with its colonial charm, beautiful forts and cobbled streets where tourists visit. Or in "new Cartagena" with its giant skyscrapers, hotels and business centers that look so much like something out of Miami Vice. But in that throw-away part of town where the poor live; and the outcast are plentiful and people exist day by day in the margins of society. But then, it also occurred to me that that is exactly what Jesus did and that is the group with whom he spent most of his time. It was there in that far away place that hope and faith seemed most alive. Where we entered into fresh dialogue with our neighbors and discovered a new circle of friends; a community grounded in deep listening and whose reality became our own at least for a little while. But long enough that we will never be the same again.

Our gospel lesson this morning gives us a window into the dynamics that come into play and the life- giving potential when we are willing to step outside of what seems comfortable, "normal" and are open to encounters with others. The first three verses establish the particular geographical, cultural, and theological context in which Jesus crosses all sorts of boundaries and amazing things happen.

We find him alone, tired out from so much travel, sitting at Jacob's well in a Samaritan city. It was the middle of the day and a woman comes to draw water from the well. Jesus reaches across the barriers that separate the two of them and initiates a conversation. "Give me a drink." By doing so, he breaks through every concrete and personal expression of prejudice for the Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. And furthermore, she is a woman; who for whatever reasons found it necessary to draw water in the middle of the day rather than the early morning like all of the other women. She is a Gentile woman on public display having what seems to be a casual conversation with a Jewish man.

No mere accident I am sure, that Jesus decided to wait at high noon when the well would normally be deserted and while the disciples are conveniently away buying food. For John tells us that he "had" to go to Samaria. Jesus crosses over and meets her where she lives and in the reality of her human need. He asks for water because drawing water is what she knows.

He does not talk down to her. Nor does he try to convert her. He does not begin a debate about whose religion is right or best. Nor does he impose himself on her. Instead, he invites her into a mutual exchange, a dialogue about a common need. "Give me a drink." And there the door is opened....

In disbelief, the woman said to him, "How is it that you, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria? For Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans."

Jesus answered: "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink', you would have asked him and he would have given you living water." The woman said, "Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?" Jesus said, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life." And the woman said what each of us has said at some point in our lives in our own way though we may not have understood any better than she: "Give me this water." She thinks that Jesus is talking about stagnant water - a combination of hydrogen and oxygen that comes from the ground. But what Jesus is offering is living water, life-changing water more precious than anything she can imagine. He is offering her love that has no bounds; that cannot be contained in a bucket or consumed by a drought but will last a lifetime.

What I am most clear about, clearer than anything else I know or understand is God's unwavering determination to embrace all of humanity, and to do so without any conditions at all. God just loves us all. God loves the stranger and outcast. God loves the ones on the other side. Our own sense of "somethingness" is tied to them in extraordinary ways.

Jesus was breaking down all the barriers and ushering in a new way of being that transcends ethnicity, geography, gender, tradition, history, or any other human condition. How easy it is to build walls and set up boundaries.

In places like Colombia or Ghana the contrast is stark. They jolt us into another reality. Cultural, geographical and language differences are obvious. Hard physical takes us from our daily routine. Sometimes we find it easier to engage those we can keep at a distance, whom we can send on their way as we go back to our own way and perhaps never see again. But we are also being invited to look around our great city and discover not our difference but our common bonds.

Geographically, we are a city divided into so many parts: east side, west side, upper east, lower east, upper west, midtown, downtown, below 14th street, Harlem, the Bronx, Brooklyn: you get the picture. So easy to stay in our side of town with but why not go out of your way to discover a new part of town. Walk around. Eat the food. Smile and see who smiles back. Take a peek into a synagogue or mosque and ask the questions you've always wondered about. What are the rituals and practices that makes their faith so sacred?

What about the countless people we encounter everyday performing some mundane service - the cashier in the grocery store, the bus driver, or the waitress who serves our food. Or the persons we walk past on the street or share a subway car. Here is a real human being - someone's son or daughter, maybe someone's parent as well.

Among our ranks are people from 44 nationalities and almost every state in the union. What roads led them here? What customs and traditions keep calling them home? Why not approach them in conversation as the inquisitor who has much to learn. Tell your story and invite them to tell theirs. And listen, really listen.

Crossing boundaries presumes that there is openness to deep encounter and connection with the other. Barbara Brown Taylor in An Altar in the World says that "sometimes the hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self - to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it." [1] To learn/embrace/be open to someone else's culture, way, etc.

The Samaritan woman "set down her jar" in order to run back to the village and tell the good news. The heavy jar can be a symbol for those things we may need to set down in order to make space for others. Anytime we are willing to cross whatever boundaries are necessary; whatever inhibits us from loving the other and intentionally engage one another laying aside those things that prohibit honest engagement life happens for them and also for us.

Here in our harbor is a statue of a robed woman holding a torch. She is one of the most recognizable icons around the world. With her hand lifted high she represents the hope of this city and all people everywhere. She speaks to us. A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame is the imprisoned lightning and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command the air-bridge harbor that twin cities frame. Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp! Cries she with silent lips. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door. [2]

[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, HarperOne, New York, p. 93.

[2] http://www..libertystatepark.com/’emma.htm.