Surprising Conversations – Between Sundays for the Week of 3/9
Our Lenten journey has begun. This year’s theme – Inspired Conversations – invites us to listen deeply to Jesus and to the people around us. As we listen, we build community and connections and recognize the many ways our common humanity unites us.
In John 4:3-43 Jesus has a surprising conversation in a surprising place. Revealing that Jesus traveled out of his way to go through foreign territory on his return to Galilee, the gospel writer wants readers to understand that Jesus’ encounter does not happen by chance, but with intention.
The story invites us to ask who our own Samaritans might be? Who are the people that we don’t want to connect ourselves to? Who are the people we think are the problem? Who are the people we’d rather avoid? Who are the people we consider our other? Who are the ones who are not like us?
The good news of this story is, in part, that Jesus always meets our other, even when we cannot. Jesus offers our others the living water that we cannot, and wouldn’t even want to offer it, if we could.
But that is not the only good news in this story. Jesus not only meets our other, Jesus also meets the other parts of ourselves that we’d rather keep hidden from prying eyes and away from church. There is value in identifying the Samaritans in our lives; but this story also invites us to name the parts of ourselves that feel unacceptable or othered.
What are the parts of your life that you don’t think God would approach? Jesus will always meet these other parts that we’re often afraid to disclose — our addictions, our illnesses, our conditions, our denials, our hatreds, our hidden truths — whatever it is that we’re ashamed to acknowledge before others, or even God.
Jesus sees this thirsty world — the thirst of those don’t have clean water, the thirst of those who are trying to quench their thirst with something other than water, the thirst of those who don’t even know they’re thirsty — and he says: I am the living water. Now is the time. Quench your thirst and live in the love of God who sees you and loves you.
May God inspire our conversations and sustain our faith this Lenten season!
P.S. Our livestream recording offers you the opportunity to hear the dramatic reading of the gospel and Pastor Amy’s full sermon (beginning at 26:07). You can also share in the worship service on our website, where you will also find links to previous worship videos.
Faith Connection at Home
BLC’s calendar featuring Inspired Conversation starters allows families a flexible and quick way to connect with each other during this lenten season. If your family is anything like mine, days can pass when it seems the only time we have together is riding in the car on the way to the next activity. Inspired Conversation starters provide an invitation to connect through sharing and listening to each other, if only for a few minutes during a busy day – waiting for the bus, riding in the car, eating a quick meal at Tom Wahls, getting ready for bed.
You can find these questions in several places this lent:
- here in the Family Faith Connection each week
- on a print calendar that you can pick up at church
- digitally on our BLC website (or by clicking here)
- on BLC’s social media Instagram and Facebook accounts weekly
We encourage you to use the questions in a way that works for your family: with tweaks, shuffled around, or with your own created questions.
Ponderings
During her sermon on Sunday, Pastor Amy referenced the essay printed on the back of the bulletin. These essays are a resource provided by Sundays and Seasons, a worship planning resource created by Augsburg Fortress Publishers. You can read the entire essay below.
The woman at the well is a familiar text for many people. This image of Jesus standing at a well talking with a Samaritan woman is emblazoned in our visual and theological imaginations, but as with all Bible stories that we think we know, we might do well to take another look! Perhaps relegating this text to the simple moralism “be nice to people who are different” causes us to miss how deeply radical and difficult the message really is. We may assume this gospel simply urges us to stand with the marginalized, especially women. Yet while standing with marginalized women is a commendable action it can lead us, after doing so, to congratulate ourselves for being just like Jesus. A more critical and searching look at this text calls us to the reality that Jesus doesn’t just stand with the other, Jesus stands with your other; your church’s other. Your church’s “Samaritans” may be LGBTQ+ people, evangelicals, urban people, rural people, conservatives, liberals, the poor, the rich, the dying, or single parents. Your church’s Samaritans could very well be the key to this text. Because, like it or not, when we draw lines between ourselves and other people, Jesus is always on the other side of that line. So communities and individuals who thirst for the living water would do well to look to who our own Samaritans might be. And when we find them we should perhaps not be surprised to also find Jesus; a Jesus we thought was all our own but who, in reality, is the living water who comes to us in the strange and the stranger.