Today I preached my first sermon as the Interim Senior Minister of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in downtown Fort Worth, Texas (you can learn more about this new role here).
Sermon
My message, “Living Water is for Every Body” is based on John 4:1-42.
You can watch the sermon below or read the manuscript.
Excerpt
Jesus is taking a trip. He’s heading from Judea to Galilee. For those of us who are accustomed to travel by car, this would be quite the walk. Depending on the route we choose, the journey will be somewhere between 70 and 90 miles. This makes for a long walk; it means several days of putting one foot in front of the other.
John tells us that Jesus had to go through Samaria. Well . . . that’s not literally true; Jesus had other options. John wants us to know that Jesus did not select the shortest path because he wanted to get there as quickly as possible. Instead, Jesus opted for this direct route because he wanted to go through Samaria.
In the world Jesus lived in, boundaries were everywhere: religious boundaries, cultural boundaries, gender boundaries, and moral boundaries. Everyone knew where the lines were drawn.
For those of us trying to make sense of it all two thousand years later, some historical context will help. In the first century, Jews and Samaritans didn’t get along. They had many reasons to dislike and even to distrust each other.
So, as a faithful Jew, Jesus would have been expected to avoid Samaritans, to keep his distance from those seen as religious outsiders. And even if he did travel that way, since it was the most direct route people would expect him to pass through quickly and avoid any real contact.
Jesus, however, won’t be limited by the cultural expectations of his day. He often crosses boundaries. Sometimes he breaks them.
It isn’t lost on me that this morning’s Gospel reading went on and on. Its length is part of its beauty. Of all the people Jesus talked with in Scripture, his longest recorded conversation is with the woman at the well. This starts with a shocking scene. . .