Removing Our Filters--March 19, 2026

Removing Our Filters--March 19, 2026

"Some of the Pharisees said, 'This man [Jesus] is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.' But others said, 'How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?' And they were divided. So they said again to the blind man, 'What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.' He said, 'He is a prophet'." (John 9:16-17)

It's not a lack of piety or belief that keeps people from recognizing the saving power of God in this story; it's arrogant religious certainty. That's the tragedy, and the warning for us. Sometimes the Respectable Religious People are so unquestionably sure they know who is a "sinner" that they are unable to acknowledge the miracle in their midst that has come from God's own hand. Sometimes we are those Respectable Religious People ourselves, missing out on the gracious power of God right before our eyes. And it quite literally a damn shame when we miss it.

This is one of those realities we have a hard time wrapping our minds around, because most of the time we'd think it's a good thing to have strong faith, sure convictions, and solid confidence in what we believe. And, sure, all of that is true. Waffling faith that keeps looking back, twiddling its thumbs, or is afraid to step out of the boat and onto the water is not a virtue. But when faith curdles into dogmatism--when our faith shifts from being focused on God to being focused on our rightness about what we think about God--we can end up missing what God is actually doing among us, because we've filtered out anything unexpected from our view.

That's what has happened in this passage, which continues the story many of us heard this past Sunday in worship: some of the Respectable Religious People have pre-decided that nothing Jesus does can be good or holy or from God, because he has healed someone on the sabbath day. And this is the hitch--they've decided that their interpretation of what the sabbath commandment means is unquestionable, and therefore when Jesus does something that breaks their interpretation of the rule, they are dead certain that he's broken the commandment... and therefore is a sinner... and must hate the word of God. Funny, isn't it, how we so easily make that leap from "we disagree about what this religious commandment means" to assuming "because you and I disagree, YOU must be wrong, YOU must be the sinner, and YOU must reject the word and authority of God." Jesus, of course, doesn't do any of those things, despite the fact that he believes the sabbath commandment allows for healing and restoring life--in fact, that is the purpose of sabbath in the first place. The trouble here with the Respectable Religious People isn't that they take their faith seriously and care about practicing their piety--it's rather than they are unwilling to even consider the possibility that they could be wrong in their interpretations... and because of that, they set themselves up to miss out on the presence of God's saving power in their midst.

And of course it's easy for us 21st century church folk to rag on this particular group of Pharisees in this particular episode, and to miss the way we do the very same thing. It may not be a miraculous restoration of sight that happens in the course of this day, but all too easily, we make decisions in advance of who "must be" a sinner because they disagree with us, and therefore, we assume they are not only wrong but opposed to God and God's ways. And instead of seeing other people who differ as people who love the same God we do and who are striving their best to live out their faith in that God, we end up saying, "Because we disagree, YOU are wrong--and since I love God you must HATE God." We end up parting company with folks who are striving their very best, just as surely as we are striving our best, to seek the will of God and love the way Jesus loves. And we end up letting our faith become rigid and brittle like a weathered old wooden beam, rather than flexibly strong like a living oak that can sway in the breeze without snapping, precisely because it can bend.

This is at least part of why it is so vitally important for love to include intellectual humility rather than unquestionable arrogance. Arrogance isn't just bragging about my accomplishments: it's also what happens when I am so certain about my rightness than I cannot fathom even the possibility that I could be wrong, or that I could have something to learn. And it's not just bragging that kills Christ-like love--it's when I allow my rigid certainty to keep me from seeing others as people through whom God might be moving, people whom God is healing and saving right now, and even people through whom God might be teaching me something. When our faith is no longer teachable and correctible--when I am unwilling to hear someone else's perspective or see how another person views things--I should be worried that my faith is no longer in God, but in my own certainty. And that kind of certainty is an idol of the most insidious kind.  On the other hand, when we can see that our reason for belonging in the family of God comes from God's grip on us, rather than our exclusive grasp on The Truth, we can consider the possibility of our own wrongness and be open to learning from others, as well as making space for people whose perspectives are different from our own, even while they are still striving to follow Jesus and seek the will of God.

Today, without becoming spineless jellyfish who have no substance or convictions, perhaps it's enough for us simply to practice the humility that dares to say, "Maybe I'm not right about everything--and if I'm not, how would I know?" Maybe before we leap to saying our disagreements automatically mean that THOSE PEOPLE must hate God or reject the Bible, we could stop and ask, "Is there the possibility that I have something to learn here--and could I be at risk of missing out on what God is up to?" Like the line from Ted Lasso puts it (even if it's not really from Walt Whitman, as the famous scene from the TV shows claims), "Be curious, not judgmental."  When we can be curious and ask others how they see things and how they have arrived at their perspectives, we end up learning a great deal rather than missing out on opportunities for growth.  And most of all, we are less likely to miss out on the movement of God in our midst on account of our inability to see what we did not expect.

A story like this one says to me that Jesus is willing to go out of his way to help us to remove those filters we've put up that keep us from seeing God moving in unexpected ways. Maybe today's the day we let him in close enough to restore our vision to see God's goodness where we didn't think it could be found, right before our eyes.

Jesus, break down the arrogance in our minds that keeps us from seeing where you are at work, and keeps us from recognizing the people through you are trying to get through to us.

Sharing Our Stories--March 18, 2026

Sharing Our Stories--March 18, 2026

"They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, 'He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see'." (John 9:13-15)

The old line goes, "Evangelism is one beggar telling another where to find bread."

I've always loved that way of putting it, because it reminds me that my job is not to have all the answers or think it's my job to dole out heavenly goodies. I am a recipient of God's good gifts, and the most I can do is to tell others where I have found them being given away. Belonging in the found family of God is not like being an elite member of an exclusive club for VIPs--it is a collection of people who have been given grace beyond their earning and, as Frederick Buechner once put it, who have "at least some dim and half-baked idea of whom to thank."

And that truth is both humbling and freeing. It's humbling, on the one hand, because it means acknowledging that I don't have all the answers and am not in control; and it is freeing because it means realizing I don't have to have them all or be in control. I can just tell the truth I know about the grace I have been given.

One of the things I love about the man in this story from John 9 is that he doesn't have anything to prove to anybody, and he doesn't need to make anybody think he's got it all figured out. He doesn't know what Jesus looks like [at this point in the story]. He doesn't know how soil and spittle produced sight. He's not an expert on whether it is, or is not, a violation of the sabbath commandment to restore someone's eyesight on the day of rest. And he doesn't know what else to say about Jesus other than that he must be a prophet.

But for all that this man doesn't know, he is neither ashamed nor apologetic. He is comfortable enough in his own skin to say, "Here's what I don't know, and then here's what I do know: Jesus put mud on my eyes, I washed, and now I can see." He doesn't have to pretend he understands how it worked. But he doesn't have to hide what he has experienced just because he only has his own experience to share. The man tells the truth he has to share--"Now I see"--even if he can't explain the miracle or dissect the divinity of the one who worked it. But once he has shared what he can speak to, he doesn't need to silence anybody else [even though the Respectable Religious Leaders will do that to him], and he doesn't need to weaponize his words against others, either. Neither does he start a crusade telling other people living with blindness that they must have done something wrong because their experience doesn't match up with his. The man can speak to what he knows and leave it there--this isn't a contest or a battle or a war.

There is something we can learn from this man's way of telling his story without turning it into a culture war. All too often, modern day Respectable Religious Folk still talk about sharing what we have come to trust about God like it's a "battle for the truth" or a "war against the people who have it wrong," when the man healed by Jesus doesn't fall for that kind of thinking. He can tell the truth he knows without arrogance [as if he had everything figured out] and without fear [because he doesn't have to pretend to have all the answers]. I wonder what it would look like for us to hold onto both of those day by day. We don't have to pretend we are Bible experts, professional theologians, or perfect peaches in order to tell people what we have received from God in Christ. We can say, confidently and graciously, how we have come to know love beyond earning and grace beyond calculating. We can talk about how Christ's presence in our lives gives hope and direction. We can tell others about the fullness that surrounds us in the community of Jesus' followers, who share joys and sorrows and ordinary times along the way with us. And we can do all of that without having to get up on any high horses as if we're the only ones with anything to say, or that everybody else who says anything different is wrong. We can tell the truth we know without getting defensive, because we're really just beggars telling other beggars where we've found bread.  Witnesses in a courtroom simply tell their account of what they have experienced; they do not also get to be the judge.

What would it look like if we started there today? What difference could it make for someone around us if we were willing to share what Jesus has meant to us--without having to make it into a battle or a war of words? What might happen in this day if all you have to worry yourself about was telling the story you have to share, and nothing more?

Lord Jesus, free us and humble us to be able to share what you have done for us without thinking we have to have all the answers.

The Muddy-Handed Messiah--March 17, 2026

The Muddy-Handed Messiah--March 17, 2026

"When [Jesus] had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man's eyes, saying to him, 'Go, wash in the pool of Siloam' [which means Sent]. Then he went and washed and came back able to see..." (John 9:6-7)

Jesus chose mud.

Just sit with that thought for a moment. Of all the possible means and methods he might have used to help the man in front of him, Jesus chose to make mud and get his hands dirty. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but mud made from his own spit and the soil of the dirt road. Jesus chose that. For whatever else that fact means, it says that Jesus is not above that kind of messy, grubby kind of work if it is in the service of loving another person and revealing the character of God.  And maybe it's only fitting, since the God we meet in the Bible fashions human beings (at least in one version of the story, from Genesis 2) by forming us out of the dirt and clay of the ground and then breathing into us to bring us to life.  Somehow it seems only fitting, then, that Jesus should restore someone's sight by making mud with his hands and touching his eyes up close face to face.

That's the connection I think I have overlooked in all the times I've read this story before over the years: it's that Jesus' choice to heal this man in literally the earthiest way possible is also meant to show us the beating heart of God. Just before this passage, in the verses we looked at yesterday from this passage that many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, Jesus told his disciples, "We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day." And then the very next thing he does is to stick his hands in the mud he's made on the ground with his own saliva as his way of healing this man. What Jesus does is meant to be a picture of God's own kind of love and power--that is to say, it's not just Jesus who is willing to get dirt under his fingernails: God is.  The messy and muddy-handed messiah is showing us a picture of the way God loves.  Jesus is saying, "This is what God is like."

Think about it: Jesus has the power and authority to heal by just speaking the word. He could have silently willed for the man's eyes to work, or he could have even just laid hands on the man. He does all sorts of things all the time when he heals people--sometimes, to the hear the Gospels tell it, he doesn't even have to be in the same building or part of town as the person he's healing. But here, Jesus chooses something earthy, something humble, something messy--not because the mud is magic, but because Jesus has come not only to heal, but to help all of us to see what God is like. And as Jesus shows us, God's way of being among us is in earthiness, lowliness, and humility. Jesus doesn't have to make spit-mud because that's the only way to give this man his sight; he shows us that the very Creator of the Cosmos and Ruler of the Universe is willing to enter into the mess with us. Jesus gives us a living picture of the God whose love doesn't blush at the thought of spit or soil or mud-caked hands.

And I think that's worth paying attention to, because we are so used to lesser "loves" that won't come close. We are used to the celebrity or politician photo op, where a Big Name stays at the soup kitchen or the disaster response shelter just long enough to get a picture taken--and then gets out of town in a gleaming motorcade. We are used to people who throw money at problems but never darken the door of the actual programs or agencies they supposedly support. We are all too familiar with how easy it is to offer electronic well-wishes or social media "thoughts-and-prayers" that stay safely on a screen but never lead us actually to connect with the people we say we care about. And here Jesus makes a point of saying, "That's NOT how God's love works."

God's love, as Jesus shows it to us, is more like the willingness of parents not only to take pictures of their cute babies in fresh onesies, but also to change diapers. It's more like the willingness of a good friend to sit at your side while your nose is running and your tears are streaming down your face, no matter how unbecoming or unsanitized it seems. It's more like the snap action of a stranger to perform rescue breathing or chest compressions on someone who has collapsed and needs CPR until the ambulance can come. In these moments, genuine love isn't ashamed to be in the midst of our messy humanity--and Jesus shows us that this is what God's love is like, too. Jesus doesn't just drop a couple of shekels in the man's begging bowl and say "Good luck," and he doesn't choose a no-contact way of healing the man, either. Jesus chose mud... so that we would know that God isn't afraid of the mud, either.

What could it look like for us to show that kind of love in our actions and presence today? If we, like Jesus and his first disciples, have been sent to "work the works of him who sent" Jesus [that is, God], then how might we love in that same kind of un-haughty, unpretentious way that is willing to get into the mud if necessary for the sake of our neighbor? When we are tempted to keep other people [especially folks who are different from us in some way] at arm's length, how might we instead let Jesus' dirt-under-the-fingernails kind of love lead us close? And how might that also help peel away our own sense of self-importance and climb down from whatever pedestals we've put ourselves on?

Today, we are indeed called to act in ways that reveal the heart of God for the watching world. And since Jesus has made it clear that God's love isn't too proud to get into the mess among us, we should expect to get dirt under our fingernails, too.

Lord Jesus, lead us to follow where you go and to love humbly like you do, wherever that takes us.

Our Invisible Baggage--March 16, 2026

Our Invisible Baggage--March 16, 2026

"As [Jesus] walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, 'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?' Jesus answered, 'so that God's works might be revealed in him, we must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world'." [John 9:1-5]

Consider this Exhibit A.

I'd like to submit this conversation into evidence for why good theology [and bad theology] matters. I know that in this day and age it is easy to dismiss theology as either fanciful nonsense or intellectual ivory tower stuff that doesn't connect at all with real life, but a scene like this makes it clear that the things we think about God [and humanity, creation, and life] have the power either to build up or destroy, to help us grow in humility and love or to become permission for arrogance or hate.

When I was a high school student and friends or classmates found out I was discerning a call into ministry, the running joke was that I would grow up and work in a "religion factory"--the gist of their joke being that studying religion or theology was a useless and impractical pursuit because there is no such thing as a factory where you can get hired to build "religion." And in that sense, they were right. But the more I pay attention to the ways folks use--and quite often mis-use--their thinking about God to determine the ways they treat other people, the more I wish that all of us spent more time critically thinking through what we believe about God and why... because the consequences are profound.

This opening scene from the story many of us heard this past Sunday is a case in point. Upon crossing paths with man who had been reduced to panhandling for food and spare change, who was also born blind, Jesus' disciples immediately go into armchair-theologian mode and pose a loaded question to Jesus. "Rabbi, who sinned, that this man was born blind?" And notice: these are Jesus' own hand-picked disciples; this is not a case of the Respectable Religious Leaders setting Jesus up with a trap question, as they sometimes do. This is not someone trying to trip Jesus up with a "gotcha" question. These are Jesus' own students and followers, who have been with Jesus for some time already, and who still are convinced that this is how God operates in the world.

Right off the bat they have made assumptions about what is going on here. They were doing theology [badly] and didn't even realize how those assumptions got their question off on the wrong footing from the beginning. They have offered Jesus two options, and both are wrong. Their assumption is that the condition of being born blind is a punishment from God [already wrong on so many levels], and that therefore the only question left to ask is whose sin this is punishment for. Did he somehow sin in utero, or did God possibly punish people in advance of sins they would commit? Did his parents sin, and thereby pass along wrath to their children? These are the options they present Jesus with, not even considering that hey, what if blindness isn't a punishment, and what if God is not in the business of zapping people with maladies every time they mess up?

The thing that gets me about this whole opening scene is that the disciples don't even realize how much invisible and unnamed baggage they are bringing to the situation. They don't realize how much they are unquestioningly assuming when they frame their question. They have already decided in a sense how God operates in the world--and thereby they have set themselves up to look down on some people as divinely-judged sinners, simply by the way they have set the question up. Even before Jesus gets a word in, the disciples have taken their theological starting point--namely, that physical disability is invariably a sign of God's judgment for specific sins--and let it filter their view of reality. Their starting point about God means any time they see someone with some severe physiological condition, they'll assume this is a punishment from God. And conversely, they'll see anyone who is not affected by a medical condition as marginally better or more righteous; after all, at least they're not being punished with an illness, right? And of course, presuming that most of the time these disciples are themselves in pretty good health, that conveniently allows them to cast themselves, not just as "good," but as "better" than others they cross paths with. The disciples may not realize they are doing it, but their own theological assumptions are teaching them arrogance that sees themselves as better and other people as inherently less-than.

Now, I would hope it is obvious that Jesus shuts down all of this thinking. He rules out that God is to be found in this situation as the judge handing out a sentence for sin, but rather that if you're going to find God here, it will be in the healing of this man and the doing of good. [This is kind of like the old line of Mr. Rogers that when tragedy happens, we look for "the helpers" who are repairing and restoring.] Jesus isn't just giving the disciples an answer for this specific man in front of them, but he is pulling apart their whole theology to get out the poorly laid foundation they have built it on. Jesus tears down the disciples' bad theology that unwittingly taught them to see others as "less than" and instead insists that God is to be found in mending rather than in zapping. Their assumptions about God are not only incorrect; they are also bending the disciples' hearts and lives toward arrogance rather than in the direction of love. Our theology always shapes the kind of people we are becoming. And while nobody is saved by their theology [or damned by their bad theology], God does care about the kind of people we are becoming. God's love not only forgives us and claims us, but also reshapes us and forms us in the likeness of that love. So bad theology matters, because it has a way of giving us permission to hate some people, or to shrug off other people in apathy, or to see others as inherently less worthy of care and dignity. And that matters to Jesus, because those people matter to Jesus.

Today, it is worth looking more closely at our own assumptions about God and where they come from, and to see how our theology sometimes leads us away from love and into arrogance. Where that is happening, maybe it's time to let the living Jesus start pulling down the structures, worldviews, and thought-patterns we've built on top of shoddy foundations, so that he can build us anew in the likeness of his love and goodness.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to let you help us re-examine what we think, what we believe, and what we unquestioningly assume, so that we see the world through your eyes rather than our own filters.

The Telltale Jar--March 13, 2026

The Telltale Jar--March 13, 2026

Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him. Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. (John 4:28-41)

Nobody walks away from an encounter with Jesus the same as they were before. In his presence, we are changed. We are made more fully alive.

Everybody in this short passage, which concludes the story that many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, discovers that to be true, each in their own way.  The woman who met Jesus at the well, the disciples of Jesus who re-enter the story here, and the townspeople who come to hear about Jesus through the woman and her report, they are all changed by having been in the presence of Jesus.

There are signs of that change everywhere.  For one, in one of the most poignant details of this whole chapter, the woman who had first come to the well in order to draw her water for the day, leaves her jar behind so that she can go and tell everybody in town about the stranger she has met and how he somehow knew her whole life story and didn't bail out on her on account of its messiness.  Her whole reason for coming to the well (and possibly her intended plans of coming at high noon to avoid the busier times at sunrise or sunset, when it would have been cooler) had been turned inside out. It's not that she would never need to get real water for cooking or washing anymore, and it's not that she hadn't been trying to avoid people earlier.  But being in Jesus' presence has made her more alive, and all she can do is tell as many people as possible about the man who offered her genuine love and infinite life as a free gift.  That now supersedes the original to-do list of fetching water and running errands.  She can't help but tell other people about Jesus, so that they can meet him, too--and be changed.  The water jar, left behind at the well, is a telltale sign that Jesus has done something to transform her.

But she's not the only person to walk away from this scene changed by the encounter.  When Jesus' disciples catch up with him after having bought some food in town, they are startled to find him talking with <gasp!> not just a woman, but a Samaritan woman at that! And not only is Jesus not embarrassed in the least to be speaking with her, but when she goes off to tell her neighbors about Jesus, Jesus tells the disciples that she is preparing the ground for them to do their own work in reaching other people with the message of Jesus.  Like harvesters who can only do their job because someone else has done the hard work of planting and tending the crop earlier in the season, the disciples will join in the work she has already done.  In other words, the disciples will depend on the impromptu ministry and message of this unnamed woman, and any success they have will turn out to have been dependent on her first sharing the word about Jesus. (Let this put to bed any notion that Jesus does not endorse or call women into ministry. Not only is this woman the first to spread the news about Jesus in the story, but the disciples can only join in the work she has already begun!  Just like at Easter, when the first witnesses to the empty tomb are women and the rest of the disciples have be brought on board secondarily to realizing that Christ is risen.) So the disciples, who walked into the scene certain that they knew the pecking order of who's who in terms of status with God, now discover that not only is this woman they looked down on actually included by Jesus, she stands shoulder to shoulder to them in terms of being used by Jesus for kingdom work.  The disciples find their perspective is changed--and, of course, not for the last time in the gospels, either!  They can no longer see themselves as the gatekeepers who control access to Jesus--this scene reminds them (and us!) that they never were!  Not only did Jesus welcome the Samaritan woman into relationship and ministry with him, but she now has gone off and invited others, without even seeking the permission of those twelve disciples!  Jesus, of course, doesn't need anybody else's permission to welcome people into relationship with him, nor to commission people to be his messengers. The disciples should have remembered that, since of course, he had first called them to be his disciples even though they were looked down on by some of the Respectable Religious Types. But this moment compelled them to see it was true when Jesus chose to welcome and work through somebody else, too. Maybe this moment helped those disciples to hold their tongues the next time the Spirit led someone else to join in Christ's work who was not on their pre-approved list.

And of course, last of all in this scene, there are all the other people in the Samaritan village who are drawn to Jesus because of the unnamed woman's witness to them.  They would have grown up with the same kinds of ingrained assumptions of prejudice about Judeans that the woman mentioned earlier in her exchange with Jesus, and they might not have wanted anything to do with a rabbi from Galilee who was born in a Judean town like Bethlehem. (There is, after all, a story in Luke's gospel about a whole town of Samaritans who won't welcome Jesus precisely because he is intent on passing through to Jerusalem--and Jesus has to stop his disciples from trying to call down fire from heaven in judgment on them!) But by the end of this story, the woman's witness has led the townspeople to go and listen to Jesus, and from there, they welcome him into their town for several more days!  Their old ethnic and racial prejudices are broken open, and they come to know Jesus and realize that he really is the One they have been waiting for.  

Old boundaries are pulled down. Old bigotries are dismantled.  And old assumptions about who God can--and cannot--work through are overcome, all from being in the presence of Jesus and his transforming ways.  Nobody is ever the same after being with Jesus.  And neither will we be.

Lord Jesus, transform us by being in your presence on this day.

Jesus Defuses A Bomb--March 12, 2026

 

Jesus Defuses A Bomb--March 12, 2026

"The [Samaritan] woman said to [Jesus], 'Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.' Jesus said to her, 'Go, call your husband, and come back.' The woman answered him, 'I have no husband.' Jesus said to her, 'You are right in saying, I have no husband; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.  What you have said is true!'" [John 4:15-18]

So, a confession:  for a lot of my life, I assumed Jesus was scolding this woman with a not-so-subtle jab about her having had five husbands before... and for a lot of my life, I was wrong.

It's funny how easily we put ourselves in the role of judge over other people--even people we know dangerously little about--and how quickly we assume the worst of them when we do.  And from there it is even easier to assume Jesus endorses our verdict over the people we have decided to condemn.  Funny, isn't it, how often we picture Jesus standing beside us in condemnation of others, rather than with his arms wrapped around the ones we have condemned?  And how easily we try to force Jesus' words to sound like a condemnation of this woman for who she loves or how her relationships have gone, rather than hearing them as Jesus' way of saying, "I know what you've been through; and I'm not running away from you."

What I want to propose is that if we have read, or heard [or been preached at] that this passage presents Jesus shaming this woman for her past marriages, we need to listen and look again more closely and see whether those conclusions come from the text, or from our assumptions about her--and maybe our own insecure need to find someone we can cast as "less than" or "unworthy."

The truth is that we just don't know how she got to this point in her life, having had five previous relationships end and now muddling through a sixth. Maybe you noticed that in hearing this passage read in worship this past Sunday, but there's really not much said at all about her backstory, other than that she has had her heart broken at least five times before by relationships that ended. It's easy to assume she is the problem, and that she's wrecked five marriages because of some fault of hers--that's easy because it lets us make her the problem, or at least allows us to look down condescendingly at her.  But Jesus doesn't speak with that assumption. Maybe she's met a lot of jerks, and everybody in her town was pressuring her to get hitched rather than wait to meet someone who would treat her well. [You know what they say about dating in small towns:  your odds are good, but the goods are odd.] It is certainly possible that she has outlived multiple husbands who have died [there was even a commandment in the Torah about widows marrying the brother, or brothers if need be, of the deceased to continue the family line in what was called "levirate marriage," and the Sadducees even present Jesus with a hypothetical question of just such a case with a widow of seven husbands at one point in the gospels, too].  It's possible that, in a culture where some Respectable Religious Leaders taught that you could divorce your wife for something as petty as burning dinner, one husband treated her like garbage and threw her away, and then she became convinced that she wasn't worth any better treatment than that.  It's possible she had been through a host of terrible arranged marriages, or that one or more spouses had been a victim of state violence from the occupying Romans.  There are countless possibilities, and yes, certainly, one of them is that she herself was a contributing factor to her past marriages ending.  

My point is to say that the text itself doesn't give us more information, and Jesus doesn't seem to make any assumptions, other than that he seems to know what surely was an open secret in town--and he doesn't scold or shame her over it.  It's almost like Jesus names this fact to get it out in the open and say, "If you're worried about me judging you when I find out about your past, you don't need to worry--I already know, and I have no condemnation for you." It's like defusing a bomb before it goes off, or a nurse acknowledging the wound you've been trying to cover up with your arm--so that you don't feel like you have to hide it, but so that it can be treated and healed.

And yet, so easily, we can come to a story like this and turn this woman into a pariah or notorious "sinner," and once we've decided to take that interpretation, we start hearing Jesus' words with the same judgmental tone of voice, even if that's not what Jesus himself had in mind.  Jesus doesn't end this conversation trying to push this woman into a cookie-cutter pattern of a family with a husband, two kids, a dog, and a white picket fence.  He makes his offer of life that is infinite to her as she is, without additional prerequisites, expectations, or conditions. That's the thing: sometimes I think we modern-day Respectable Religious Folks think that Jesus has called us to find people we have decided are "broken" and then to "fix" them by forcing them into the molds we've prepared for them, when Jesus instead just finds people, regardless of the barriers others would have put in his way, and tells them, "I'm giving you infinite life as a free gift.  This love is for you."

We have a way of reworking Jesus' message to sound like "Come to me and I will make you fit the expectations of other people better, so then they won't judge you so much," rather than hearing him say unabashedly, "I already accept you; I don't condemn you, and I'm not here to rub salt in the wounds from what you've been through. And I won't bail out on you." And when we do that, we reveal the worst kind of arrogance around--the kind that dresses up as compassion but is really condescending pity.  That's not love--that's a backhanded way of saying, "You are currently unacceptable, but I can change you and make you acceptable according to my standards."  Jesus doesn't do that to this woman. He simply names the elephant [or all five of them] in the room as if to remove their power over her--he says, "I know about what you've been through.  And my offer still stands."  Jesus isn't here to pity this woman or look down on her.  He treats her as a peer, going toe to toe with her from topic to topic without talking down to her or belittling her. 

So here in a new day, how can this story shape the way we treat people?  How can Jesus' way free us from the baggage of arrogance we've been lugging around with us, and simply love people where they are at?  How might Jesus' way of putting this woman at ease without making it feel like they all have to walk on eggshells or avoid touchy subjects give us direction for our words and actions?  And maybe how could this closer look at a well-known story make us take a second look at the ways we often co-opt Jesus to endorse our judgment over other people and the assumptions we make about them?  Where have we been sitting in judgment over people--and where has Jesus been trying to peel open our clenched fingers and reliniquish the gavel?

Wrestling with those questions and figuring out some answers won't be easy--but it will certainly be more honest than ignoring them.  And it might just help us to more fully love like Jesus--and that makes it worth the effort.

Lord Jesus, keep us from trying to speak for you or to steal your authority to back up our condemnation of other people.  Teach us to love like you.

The Necessary Detour--March 11, 2026

The Necessary Detour--March 11, 2026

"[Jesus] left Judea and started back to Galilee. But he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “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.” (John 4:3-10)

Of course, he didn't "have to" go through Samaria. Or rather, he didn't "have to" in the sense that it was the only route from Point A to Point B for Jesus.  Plenty of folks in Jesus' culture and time would make trips from down south in Judea and go up north to Galilee, but many of them would have deliberately avoided going through the in-between region of Samaria.  After all, that was where--gasp!--Samaritans lived.  And if you were a good and devout Judean or Galilean, you didn't want to be caught dead in Samaria.

We might like to imagine that we, in our "enlightened" modern age, have outgrown such geographic segregation practices, but we are fooling ourselves.  It's not just the lingering memory of Jim Crow segregation in American history, with its "sundown" towns and separate stores, schools, and drinking fountains for people with different skin colors. It's not just the memory of redlining neighborhoods in cities so that Black families could not buy homes in communities that were deemed "White" neighborhoods, and it's not just the recollection of those who grew up in towns with Catholic and Protestant sides of town, either.  My guess is that you've been in situations where you chose not to drive through "that neighborhood" for whatever reason--it might be dangerous, or you're worried about who lives there, or it's run down and impoverished, or whatever other euphemisms you choose--even though it was the direct route through to your destination.  Highways, interstate bypasses, and beltways have all made it possible to avoid having to even set foot in "those places"--as well as helping to contribute to isolating the very neighborhoods that already felt cut off from the rest of their community.  We are all guilty of going out of our way in order to avoid having to go through "one of those bad neighborhoods," because somebody ingrained it in us NOT to go there.  And people have been doing the same for literally thousands of years.

The point here in the opening scene of this story from John's fourth chapter, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, is that Jesus would have had plenty of excuse NOT to go through Samaria if he was intent on going from down in Judea up to Galilee.  Most of the folks he had grown up with all his life would have modeled for him that little exercise in geographic bigotry by avoiding Samaria altogether with a longer, more out-of-the-way route instead of a course straight through this region of "those people" traveling as the crow flies, as they say.  So for John the narrator to say that Jesus "had to go through Samaria" points to something different.  It's not that the lay of the land or the concerns of safety required Jesus to go through Samaria--plenty of people didn't go that way, and they told themselves it was in order to avoid going into a dangerous neighborhood.  There's another reason Jesus "has to" go through Samaria.  It's a person.  The woman who comes to the well looking to get the day's water supply is his reason for this necessary detour.  Jesus is intent on breaking down boundaries between "us" and "them," and the only way he can do that is with a real, honest-to-God face-to-face conversation with one of the people he had been told was "an outsider," someone who also viewed Jesus himself as an "outsider" from her perspective.  Jesus "has to" go through Samaria, not because there is only one road to his eventual destination, but because Jesus is intent on pulling down barriers and welcoming in those deemed "unacceptable" by the Respectable Religious Crowd.  I'm not even sure that Jesus initially had it in mind that he had to meet up with this particular woman.   We don't necessarily get the sense that Jesus had some sort of clairvoyant or prophetic vision about her in particular, so much as that Jesus is deliberately bringing the Reign of God to everybody--people like him, and people not like him... insiders and outsiders... men and women... everybody.

And while Jesus certainly could have just stayed safely in his own comfortable turf and just preached sermons about how God's love is "for everyone," those words would have rung pretty hollow if he had only ever stayed in the gated communities and HOAs of his own group. The only way to create a community that really includes everybody is to take the risk of being the stranger who shows up among the ones you had always thought of as "outsiders" and building real relationships with each other.  So that's what Jesus does--and he brings his disciples along on this field trip, too, to watch and learn from him... and to be transformed.  Episodes like this (and similar stories in the other gospels as well, where Jesus crosses borders into Samaritan or Gentile turf) are how the first followers of Jesus learned to overcome the prejudices and casual bigotry that had been ingrained in them without even realizing it from their youngest memories. This is how Jesus builds a new community that will deliberately welcome women from Samaria, mothers from Phoenicia with troubled daughters, Roman centurions with sick members of their households, and Gentile beggars at the roadside with ailments and sicknesses.  Jesus doesn't just leave the church a written constitution that says, "You should welcome in Those People" somewhere in its by-laws; he models that kind of inclusion himself by deliberately taking field trips with the disciples that bring them all into the experience of being the outsiders in someone else's territory, so that they learn what it feels like to be the foreigners at the mercy of others' welcome and hospitality.

This is how Jesus' revolutionary kind of family comes into existence: one boundary-crossing, stranger-welcoming face to face conversation at a time, as Jesus himself initiates relationship with people who would have seen him as the outsider in their town, and then teaching his disciples that God's new community really does welcome ALL people.  Twenty centuries later, we still don't always (or maybe even often?) get it right. We are still much more likely to invent ways to keep "those people" out, or to politely discourage them from even trying to get "in" in the first place.  We divide ourselves along socio-economic lines, racial and ethnic groupings, political party alignments, and denominational cliques as well. And over the generations, we have gotten quite good at inventing skillful and subtle ways of avoiding the people we label as "other," even more sophisticated than the longer-route travel plans that would have taken many a Judean traveler out of their way to avoid going through Samaria.  So we have no ground for imagining that we are more enlightened or unprejudiced than the folks of the first century.  

What we do have is the relentless witness of Jesus, who keeps taking us by the hand and pulling us (sometimes kicking and screaming) into new places, across old boundary lines, and into relationships with the very people we had taught to fear or look down on, only to discover that they have been claimed and loved by God, too, just as we have.  When we take that seriously, it will change every interaction we have with every other person we meet.

How might it shape the conversations you have... today?

Lord Jesus, take us by the hand, and then take us where you will, even if that means going with you to cross boundaries and meet new people beyond our comfort zones.