SERMON
by Reverend Judith Alltree, delivered on Sunday March 27, 2011
at the Church of the Holy Spirit.
Third Sunday in Lent
“The Politics of Exclusion”
Have you ever been “on the outside”? Were you the last person chosen for team sports as a child? Were you the person who moved here from another city or another country, and didn’t know the local culture or rules? Were you the one who looked different, either by your skin colour, or your way of dressing or speaking or acting? Were you someone who desperately sought a way in, to be accepted and thus to disappear into the crowd; or were you someone who determined early on that there wasn’t a way in, and so found your own way, whether that way was part of the acceptable “norm” or not?
Human beings have a way of developing institutions that, rather than becoming inclusive and all embracing end up being bastions of exclusivity. I think we are well meaning, but over time, things and people change, so the nature of the institution, at its heart, changes and adjusts and becomes something very different from what it was originally intended.
Certainly the church is one of those institutions. Jesus didn’t come to found a “religion” or a “church” but to reinforce our relationship with God. To show us how to live, according to what God’s will is for us. Over time, however, we have formed specific ideas of what God’s will for us looks like, of how we are required to worship, and so on, so that the original idea has been somewhat warped to fit into a concept that is not perhaps recognizable as what Jesus’ original vision for us was or is today.
In very subtle ways, this story elaborates that concept. It shows how Jesus breaks down the cultural and religious institutions and their rules, not just in his day but in ours as well. For Jesus, there are no outsiders.
Some of you know that I’m a big movie buff. One of my favourite movies is particularly appropriate for this time of year. “Chocolat” continues to delight me every time I see it, but I recently watched it through the lens of this particular Gospel story, and saw it with new eyes.
The story takes place during “the Holy Lenten Fast” when an outsider moves into a small French village and opens a Chocolaterie. We come to see, however, that there are many outsiders in this story: the unmarried Vianne and her young daughter; the severe and devout Mayor, whose wife left him months before but he pretends she’s on vacation; the abused wife of the local tavern keeper who finally runs away from her home; the young priest who struggles to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor’s fifty-year incumbency, and to balance the demands of his role as village pastor with the Mayor, who feels it’s his duty to provide pastoral care for everyone.
Vianne’s shop opens at the beginning of Lent, and the villagers are greatly tempted by her luscious sweets. As they succumb to temptation, the Mayor sees his control slipping away and declares ‘a Holy War’ on the chocolate shop. Into this mix comes several river boats full of Irish gypsies, even more outside the village culture. With this new threat to his control, the mayor demands the villagers “Boycott Immorality”, and ostracize the gypsies.
In the end, it is the quiet voice of the young parish priest who brings both sanity and the love of Jesus Christ to this mix. On Easter Day the young priest stands in the pulpit and declares to his congregation that he doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t want to talk about the Lord’s divinity, but about his humanity, about how he lived his life on earth. “Here’s what I think”, he says to his astonished parishioners, “We can’t go around measuring our goodness by what we don’t do, by what we deny ourselves, by what we resist and who we exclude. I think we’ve got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create, and who we include.” (“Chocolat”, dir. Lasse Hallstrom, 2000)
The Jews are the “Chosen People”, through whom the salvation of the world would and has come, for us, in the form of Jesus of Nazareth. Yet, before Jesus’ birth, Judaism became an exclusive institution with more rules and regulations than you can “shake a stick at”, as they say. There were very specific rules, for instance, about excluding Samaritans, and more about excluding women, whether Samaritan or Jew or Gentile; after a while, the rules were overwhelming. Then comes Jesus, whom God sent because “God so loved the world” – the entire world, which would include Jews, Gentiles, Samaritans, men, women, children – to reconcile us in our relationships with God, to teach us how to love one another.
In this story, Jesus engages the unnamed Samaritan woman in conversation, breaking all the social and cultural conventions of the day. He even shocked his disciples who were “astonished” that he was speaking to a woman. Jesus opened her eyes to him, he confirmed her belief in the Messiah by telling her that it was he in whom her belief rested. She, in turn, leaves her bucket by the well, and rushes back to the city. “Come and see!” she excitedly tells her neighbours; “He can’t be the Messiah, can he?” She’s not looking for refutation; she’s hoping for confirmation. “Come and see!”
Jesus did not condemn her for her lifestyle, having had five husbands and currently living with a man to whom she was not married. He treated her with respect. He did not reject her, but included her. And she in her turn became a witness to Jesus, and to the living water he offered her.
The greater lesson, of course, is for us. How do we treat the outsiders in our midst, and there are many. Do we welcome them in? Do we embrace or reject them? Do we deny and resist or do we include? I think one of the things we have learned as a congregation is just that: how to welcome, how to include. As a congregation of many cultures and ethnicities and origins, it makes no sense to start drawing lines around ourselves, to include some and reject others. Someday we could find ourselves becoming “River Rats” – the rejected people, outside of society, and then how would we be treated? You’ll remember that Jesus had some pretty specific ideas about that as well.
The nature of Christianity is about relationships, with God in Jesus Christ, as well as with others. Christianity is about inclusivity, and the story of the Samaritan woman at the well embodies this. Although she represents everyone and everything that is on the outside of what is accepted as normal and good, Jesus included, embraced and welcomed her, and gave her the opportunity to witness to the whole world what she had learned from him. In her conversation with Jesus, she was not criticized but cared for. She was loved, because God so loved the WHOLE world – which includes first century Samaritan women and everyone else – that God sent us Jesus. To you, me and to Samaritans everywhere.
If we welcome everyone, absolutely everyone, in Jesus’ name, then we are doing exactly one of the things that God sent Jesus to teach us to do.
There are no outsiders here
AMEN.