So our teaching scripture this morning comes from John chapter
4, beginning in verse 7 all the way through to verse 30.
The scriptures say this, 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, and 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. And Jesus answered her, If you
knew the gift of God and who it is as asking you, give me a
drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you
living water. The woman said to him, Sir, you
have no bucket, and the well is deep, where do you get that
living water? Are you greater than our
ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his
flocks drank from it? And Jesus said to her, 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 to him, Sir, give me this water, so that I
may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.
And Jesus said to her, Go call your husband and come back.
And the woman answered him, I have no husband.
And Jesus said to her, You are right and 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.
The woman said to him, Sir, I see that you're a prophet.
Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain.
But you say that the place where people must worship is in
Jerusalem. And Jesus said to her, Woman,
believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father
neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
You worship what you do not know.
We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews, but
the hour is coming and is now here, when the true worshippers
will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father
seeks such as these to worship Him.
God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in
spirit and truth. The woman said to him, I know
that Messiah is coming. He was called the Christ, and
when He comes, He will proclaim all things to us.
And Jesus said to her, I am he the one who is speaking to you,
Jesus. Then just then his disciples
came, and they were astonished that he was speaking with a
woman. But no, no one said, what do you
want or why are you speaking with her?
And 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.
This is the word of the Lord Good.
Morning. When you preach at 37 weeks,
they get you a stool. I have a strong disposition
toward media that makes me feel good.
I'll take a happy go lucky musical over a sad and dramatic
play any day if I can avoid it. I will never watch a war movie
because my tolerance for violence is extremely low.
There's enough real tragedy and horror in the world that I just
have no desire to imbibe an entertainment, however formative
and well done, that draws me toward fictional disaster.
I feel it's so real sometimes that I accidentally start
praying for fictional characters and their circumstances.
To put it plainly, I just get carried away.
Perhaps no more than in a romance, though I can tell the
difference between the masterful poetic elegance and a tender
romance or a sophisticated and uplifting drama, which I do
enjoy. I can also go for the cheese in
an OG Hallmark movie. I have a remarkable ability to
suspend reality while the president's daughter sneaks away
from her staff, only to fall for the undercover secret servant
agent who's actually being paid to protect her while she ditches
her protection. I have opinions about fictional
love triangles, whether we're talking Gilmore Girls, Dean and
Jess, Twilight, Edward and Jacob, PETA and GAIL of The
Hunger Games, or this past summer, latest embodiment of the
trope, Conrad and Jeremiah Fisher of the summer I turned
pretty. These observations of my own
preferences are not value statements, like whatever kind
of movies you want to like. But there is a way in which the
romance stories I'm talking about, deep and serious,
realistic and hopeful or dumb and cheesy, touch on and craft
our imaginations. They form the vocabulary and
expectations we have for romantic experiences, and not
all but many of them draw our attention in circling tightly
around a couple as if nothing else exists.
Desire gets cast as all consuming, even redemptive, but
only for the two people at the center.
And even then we usually only glimpse it through one person's
eyes, leaving the rest of the perspectives to the shadows.
There's something dangerous about that.
And the problem isn't desire itself or its intensity.
We are in a series on the passions, a term rooted in the
ancient church's vocabulary used by people of prayer and
contemplative completion to describe the inner movements
that can cloud discernment and pull us from the freedom of life
in Christ rather than toward it. The ways, desires, thoughts, and
ideas can pull us into the world in a way that's detached.
When we speak of understanding the passions, we seek to
understand how and why these movements occur, what is at
their root. Last week Jared introduced us to
the passions, and today we'll take a closer look at one in
particular. Not that heavy, a bit abstract
of a concept for US 21st century Western people.
Lust. The conventional Bible passages
that we might spend our time with today include what is
perhaps the most famous power trip and dalliance of the Old
Testament, David and Bathsheba. The tale of a lustful king who
uses his power and position to impregnate a married woman who,
at least to the according to the written story we have in
Scripture, had very limited agency within power dynamics
entirely tilted in the King's favor, and in an effort to cover
up his indiscretions, David had the woman's honorable husband
murdered at war. Of course, there's also the
Pauline letters in the New Testaments where on more than
one occasion Paul critically calls out sexual indiscretion.
Sometimes this happens through a kind of general instruction, but
then in places like First Corinthians 5 he gets very
explicit and he rebukes the church for tolerating incest.
And then there is Jesus himself in the Sermon on the Mount who
declares if your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out
and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one
part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into
hell. And if your right hand causes
you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.
This is a particularly direct moment for Jesus.
All great passages, worthy of study and with the help of the
Spirit, are due contemplative consideration.
And that's not where we're going to go today.
I'd like to call our attention to a passage often given little
consideration in relation to the topic of lust.
And if I'm being honest, the little bit of attention that it
sometimes does get is a bit off base.
But if we can hold back a little in our initial suppositions, I
think it's worth turning to today.
I say this because today's primary passage, alongside a few
others that we'll look at along the way, challenges us to
consider the shape of the passions hold on us and the ways
that it is made visible not just in a singular relationship, but
in the wider pattern of our lives.
It is my hope that with this wider angle view, we may move
beyond the two-dimensional image of lust in 50 Shades of Grey, a
raunchy teenage comedy in the fear based, behavior focused
purity culture of the late 90s and early 2000s.
And instead we would come to see the passion of lust for what it
is in its fullness and the ways in which it takes hold in our
lives. And that in that we would also
receive the gentle embracing invitation of the Spirit for
true healing. And that we would be met with
the love of God as Jesus met the woman at the well.
In John chapter 4, Jesus is leaving Judea and traveling back
to Galilee, and to do so he travels through Samaria.
The text actually says that he had to go through Samaria, which
is something of a statement because the norm would have been
for Jewish people to entirely avoid Samaria.
The people shared a long history of animosity towards one
another. Despite some shared history
traveling through the region, Jesus came to a Samaritan city
called Sicar near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to
his son Joseph, men whom both the Samaritans and Jewish
communities called an ancestor. And it is there that he needs
the Samaritan woman. Beginning in verse 7A, 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.
The woodwind said to him, Sir, you have no bucket and the well
is deep, where do you get that living water?
Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the
well and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?
Jesus said to her, Everyone who drinks of this water will be
thirsty again, but those who drink of the water I will give
them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will
become to them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.
The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water so that I may
never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.
They are gathered at Jacob's Well.
For a man and a woman to meet in that place would have carried a
certain weight to an ancient reader.
Just by setting assumptions would form, much like the ones
my friends used to make spotting first dates at MA Moon's Falafel
in New Haven. Cheap, tasty and crowded with
students and young professionals, it was
practically shorthand for casual Internet date.
Now certainly not every two person meet up there was a first
date, but for a people observer to figure that the meetups they
observed around them was that was was never a bad 1st guest.
By contrast, when Tom was proposed to me in January 2018,
we went to the Restaurant Barcelona, a fancy tapas place
in town that seated guests very close together.
We are right next to a couple who were clearly on a first
date, and while we celebrated our engagement, they awkwardly
Shank fish shrank back into their uncomfortable date.
The difference was obvious. Mamoons equals first date.
Barcelona equals engagement celebration, and our close
proximity to the other couple somehow somewhat comically,
exacerbated this point. Place carries meaning, and it
shapes the story before a word is ever spoken.
And that's why Jesus is meeting with the Samaritan woman at the
well is so striking. It's a confounding scene
throughout Scripture. Wells are often places where men
would meet their future wives. Jacob met Rachel at the well.
Moses met Zipporah at the well. Isaac's marriage to Rebecca
begins with a servant finding her at the well.
A well was a betrothal sight. Against that backdrop, Jesus
meeting a Samaritan woman at the well is evocative.
If a waiter at Barcelona had been only half paying attention,
he might have already put in the order for the comped celebratory
dessert. But here's the thing.
As true as it is that's evoked betrothal imagery, it's also
true that that's not what's going on in the story.
The whole encounter is full of striking contradictions.
Jesus shares in a one-on-one private conversation with a
woman whose socio cultural identity is widely perceived as
at odds with his own. Apart from any of the baggage
that may or may not be associated with this woman and
her five previous husbands, which we'll get to in a minute,
it may be helpful to know that the Jews perceived Samaritan
women to be perpetually impure and and that and that not just
in the encounter, Jesus would have incurred defilement.
The Bible scholar Jonathan Borgel explains that Samaritan
women were perceived in a perpetual state of
uncleanliness, making them, the men around them and all their
possessions impure. And so in this image, there is a
disruptive picture which Jesus engages by saying to her, go
call your husband and come back. The woman answered him, I have
no husband. Jesus said to her, you're 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 said is true. The woman said to him, Sir, I
see that you are a prophet. Now, a lot of hay has been made
out of this portion of the passage, and it's worth
lingering for a moment to consider what's being said,
what's being implied, and indeed what may be improperly overlaid
on this text. After speaking with the woman
about living water and eternal life, Jesus instructs the woman
to fetch her husband's. In some ways, this kind of makes
sense because they were at the well.
The woman reveals that she has no husband.
Jesus affirms that's true and basically reads the woman's mail
back to her. You've had five husbands, and
now you're with a man who's not your husband.
She's astonished by the knowledge.
It's here in the text that we start to get something of a
grounded picture of who this woman might be.
Certainly 5 husbands does not suggest an easy life, though.
We don't know the story here. We don't know what loss and
grief she may have experienced in death.
We don't know the ways in which she may have experienced
abandonment. We don't know what role she
played in beginning and ending each of her five marriages,
though we do know that the Samaritan people embraced
embraced the Torah and its laws. And that means that she was not
the power broker in any of her marriages that may have ended in
divorce, as women would not have had that right.
One can't help but wonder about what socio economic factors may
have been at play in this woman's life, how she navigated
the instability implied by 5 marriages, what choice she may
or may not have had in them if her life was affected by
poverty, something like alcohol abuse, we don't know.
But 5 marriages suggests some kind of instability and
vulnerability. And there are a lot of
questions, not too many concrete answers.
In some readings of this text, the woman is quickly and
dismissively looked at with disdain, an archetype in
contrast to Jesus himself. And there certainly is something
extraordinary in Jesus lingering in conversation with this woman.
There certainly is contrast. But that contrast isn't like
that of the late Maggie Smith as a Dowager Countess in Downton
Abbey, responding with pitiful and compassion to Ethel, the
housemaid who conceived a child outside of marriage and took to
sex work on the streets to survive, to secure basic
sustenance for her and her child.
No, the extraordinary part is that Jesus is in Samaria in the
1st place, and that he sits at the well with a Samaritan woman
and not a woman of standing or honor, Not the equivalent of the
mayor's wife, respected by her community through her proximity
to power. She is instead a woman whose
life bears the marks of instability and loss, and who
has survived that. Perhaps her own consuming lust
shaped parts of her stories, though what seems very likely,
based on the fact that she lived in 1st century Samaria and had
been married five times, is that she was not the primary author
of lust, but its object. In lust there is pleasure
detached from compassion and sexual desire directed in
opposition to people and relationships.
These definitions from the Catholic ethicist Jason King
create the framework wherein it is possible to conceive of a
particular 3 dimensional forms of lust that animate our psyche
and redirect our will, turning us from what we say we love and
cherish and toward a consuming, covetous captivity to the self.
A handful of weeks back I preached on Exodus 20 where God
gives the Israelites 10 commandments to the Israelites.
God declares you shall not covet your neighbor's house.
You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, male or female,
slave, ox, donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
And I talked about how coveting isn't simply envy.
It involves an attitude of wanting, but also the action of
taking that it is a propulsive relationship, wanting to
seizing, desiring to acquiring. It lets loose with the Bible,
Scholar Walter Brueggemann calls the unrestrained, addictive
pursuit of commodities which, set in motion, blurs our vision
like a mirror and a funhouse, eventually making our neighbors
imperceptible to us in the goods, in our hands, larger than
life. Lust is a particular form of
coveting. Augustine, the North African
Bishop, writing in the Forming shadow of the Fall of Rome,
described it as a lust to dominate.
Lust shows itself in personal relationships when the focus
bends back toward the self, even when both parties consent to
their mutual undoing. And lust shows itself on the
scale of nations and empires, where myths of greatness and
destiny become masks for what King calls the raw drive for
control. In both cases, in the bedroom
and in the empire, desire becomes covetous, care and
hospitality are cut off, acquisition is set into motion,
and people are diminished, reduced, and coerced.
We know this lust to dominate when we see it in relationships.
It looks like a partner who treats intimacy as conquest,
where the other becomes a trophy rather than a person.
It looks like situations of manipulation where love is
twisted into leverage. Sometimes it even looks like two
people caught in what they both call love but is really mutual
self destruction. Passion detached for compassion
and desire cut off from care. Every fall, R as gather the new
students on their floor at college campuses across the
country and instill in their freshman the gospel of
enthusiastic consent. And that's something.
College campuses are sites of sexual harassment and assault.
May every action to stymie and stop that violence prosper.
And hear me when I say that mutual consent can still be
destructive, still be covetous, still set us on the cycle of
desiring and acquiring for our own benefit and casual disregard
for our neighbors. The affected individuals are not
only the participants involved in the hookup in question, their
relationship with friends, family and people around them
are affected as self focus. Indulgence shapes and reshapes
their lives. Because how we're formed in one
discreet part of our lives never stays just in that corner.
And we know this lust to dominate when we look at
empires. Rome called it peace, but it was
really the crushing of nations under military power.
Modern societies may call IT security, prosperity, even
freedom, but often it is simply domination by another name.
Whole peoples treated as expendable land and resources
consumed without limit. Myths of greatness are spun to
disguise the reality of self indulgence.
If you need a way to bring the empire as less metaphor closer
to home, consider how it might show up on a Tuesday at work.
An office is full of competent, gifted employees whose
dedication drives the company's success.
But a manager pits them against one another to test loyalty and
push productivity, and the response is ruthless.
Relationships become tinged with jealousy, alliances form and
fracture, and competition is baptized as a healthy American
spirit. Yet underneath the surface is
the lust to dominate, Co workers reduced to obstacles, clients
and vendors treated as a means to an ends.
The mirror torrents inward, and people are formed against
relationships rather than for them.
Lust is multidimensional, it's reformational, and it leads to
cut off. There are two New Testament
couples who illustrate this point brilliantly, and they are
in many ways the opposite of one another.
Consider the couple of Acts chapter 5, Ananias and Sapphira.
But a man named Ananias with the consent of his wife Sapphira
sold a piece of property with his wife's knowledge.
He kept back some of the proceeds and brought only a part
and laid it at the apostles feet.
Ananias, Peter asked, Why has Satan filled your heart to lie
to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the proceeds of the land
while it remains unsold? Did it not remain your own after
is it was sold? Were the proceeds not at your
disposal? How is it that you have
contrived this deed in your heart?
You did not lie to us, but to God.
Now when Ananias heard these words, he fell down and died,
and great fear seized all who heard it.
The young men came and wrapped up his body and then carried him
out and buried him. After an interval of about 3
hours, his wife came in. Not not knowing what had
happened, Peter said to her, Tell me whether you and your
husband sold the land for such and such a price.
And she said, yes, that was the price.
Then Peter said to her, How is it that you have agreed together
to put the Spirit of the Lord to the test?
Look, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the
door, and they will carry you out.
Immediately she fell down at his feet and died.
When the young men came in, they found her dead, so they carried
her out and buried her beside her husband, and a great fear
seized the whole church and all who heard these things.
This is a devastating story. Amidst the new life and what is
being formed as the Church moving in the power of the Holy
Spirit shortly after Pentecost, we are met with death.
The married couple, Inanias and Sapphira, conspired to withhold
a portion of their wealth and when confronted, they lied about
it publicly. This is the square privileging
of their own lives and livelihoods above that of their
community. The theologian Willie Jennings
point out that they have turned inward as though they, the
couple are the hosting side of their own discipleship, claiming
sovereignty over life together with the Church.
And in this we glimpse the hiring picture of what Jason
King calls the dissipating form of lust, here extended from the
realm of private desire into shared life of the community.
Desire collapses inwards, Pleasure loses depth as those
whom Ananias and Sapphira are called to commune with as
neighbors and friends become obstacles to their own
accumulation of wealth. Instead of deepening in love and
relationship, Inanias and Sapphira experience what King
describes as the thinning out of joy that comes when connection
is neglected and the good of another is no longer grasped.
Their story shows us not less thrill but its erosion, how it
Withers community, leaving not abundance but absence.
Consider how this story contrasts with what Willie
Jennings calls a new kind of couple, Priscilla and Aquila.
This refugee pair from Rome took up their mallets and owls as
talent makers alongside the Apostle Paul, joining him in
what Acts 18 calls the way of God.
When Paul moved on, they became teachers to Apollos, the
Alexandrian eloquent Zelius, but also in need of guidance.
Priscilla and Aquila took him aside and explain the way of God
to him more accurately and later commended him to other
disciples. Where Ananias and Sapphira
turned inward, Priscilla and Aquila opened outward.
Their shared discipleship was not a possession to protect, but
a gift to give, multiplying life in the church.
In their story, we see no dominating lust, no dissipating
lust. Instead, there is forward moving
discipleship rooted in mutual love and care, lived out amid
real vulnerability. These were refugees and by
vocational pastors who had endured persecution and threats
of violence. And yet, as Jennings notes, they
are not consumed with self preservation but live a shared
life that yields to the Spirit. Jason King also names a third
kind of lust, truncating Lust, which cuts life off from broader
relationship. Think of the couple who dates
and loses touch with all of their friends.
Now that can play out as a light comedy and a 20 minute sitcom,
but it can also devastate real lives.
I once sat with a young person who had just discovered that one
of her parents maintained a secret family elsewhere, and
that revelation shattered their sense of trust and belonging.
And this young person was a casualty of truncating lust,
where another's desire narrowed the horizon and cut off
obligation and care beyond the relationship that is right in
front of them. Priscilla and Aquila embody the
opposite of this too. Their life together was not cut
short but extended outward, not closed in and on itself, but
open to Paul Apollo's, to the church.
Where lust narrows, severs, and collapses relationships, their
shared discipleship widened, multiplied, and bore life.
And so it is with this picture in mind that I want to take us
back to our primary text for today, the Samaritan woman at
the well with Jesus. She's a figure whose story
carries many unknowns, but also clear signs of hardship and
loss, and the very strong suggestion that her life was, in
the eyes of some, reduced to an object of lust.
Now, the kind of lust that touched her life may have been
dominating, dissipating, or truncating some mix of all
three. As the wife of five husbands who
is currently with a man who is not her husband, she was almost
certainly affected by lust in its sexual sense, but also in
its wider disfiguring forms, where someone else's covetous
behavior left her isolated and cut off.
She was alone at the well at midday, after all.
And she says to Jesus, our ancestors worshiped on this
mountain, But you say that the place where people must worship
is in Jerusalem. Jesus said to her, Woman,
believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the
Father, neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
You worship what you do not know.
We worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews, but
the hour is coming and is now here, where the true worshippers
will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father
seeks such as those to worship him.
God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in
spirit and truth. The woman said to him, I know
the Messiah is coming, who is called the Christ.
When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.
And Jesus said to her, I am he the one who is speaking to you.
Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was
speaking with a woman. But no one said, what do you
want or why are you speaking with her?
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 went on
their way to him. The disciples are shocked to
find Jesus not only talking with a woman, but to this woman and
in this place, a meeting no one would have imagined.
The disciples return at the conclusion of what would become
the longest recorded dialogue that Jesus shares with anyone in
the Bible. Think about that.
This theologically dense conversation is not with Peter,
James, or John. It's not a conversation that
Jesus shared with all twelve of his disciples.
It's not even a public conversation that Jesus has with
someone in a crowd while he's teaching.
Jesus tells this woman directly that he is the Messiah, the one
whom they, the Samaritans, have been waiting for.
And at this revelation, the woman leaves behind her water
jar and goes back to the city. She seeks out the people in the
city and declares. Come and see the man who has
told me everything I have ever done.
That's not what a person crushed by the weight of stigma or shame
shouts. And while we don't know how the
woman related to her relational history or circumstances prior
to her conversation with Jesus, the one can certainly imagine
some challenging baggage and emotional weight.
We do know that she left a one-on-one theological
conversation with a Jewish rabbi at a well without shame, fear or
suspicion. His knowledge of her and her
life is comforting to her, and she discloses his knowledge to
her to her Samaritan people in the city who come out to see the
man that they have been led to believe is the Messiah.
Revelation serves as invitation. The woman who had been reduced
to an object of lust is now received, named, and embraced by
Jesus. Where lust isolates, cuts off,
and collapses relationships inward, Jesus opens outward
toward community. She who once came alone at
midday now runs back to the city carrying the good news.
This is the opposite of what lust does.
Lust to sorts desire into covetousness.
Jesus restores desire by directing it toward life, with
God, and with others. The very place where she had
been diminished becomes the place where her voice is lifted
up. There's healing in this move,
and there's also an invitation to bring before God the places
where our desires have been twisted, where we recognize in
ourselves the ways our own covetous desires have narrowed,
distorted, and harmed others, and where we have been cut off
as the object of lust. Wherever shame has marked us,
wherever isolation has closed us off, the Spirit meets us not
with condemnation, but with healing love that restores us to
one another and helps us see rightly.
This morning, Jared concluded our time of silence with a
liturgy that we are holding with us for the duration of this
series. As we prepare to move toward
ministry time, I'd like to invite you to return to that
liturgy with me. I'd like to invite you actually
to stand and invite you to read with me.
I am infinitely loved by God, and God's infinite love is in
the process of healing everything in me that clings to
false things. The invitation of God to me is
to allow God to be the divine Physician.
The medicine of God is God's own love poured out into my heart
through the Holy Spirit. Amen.