Sermon

February 27, 2005

A Sermon Preached at St. Stephen’s on February 27, 2005, by the Rev. Cork Tarplee

“Whatcha got in the bucket?” The old man asked as the child struggled over to the beach blanket, hauling a heavily loaded plastic pail. “Got the ocean,” said the kid. “Nah,” the geezer pointed to the Atlantic stretching to the horizon, “the ocean goes from here to France .” The child put the bucket down with a slosh. “This is much as I could carry.”

The grace of God is like that. It fills the space from here to heaven and then some, but in an individual lifetime, moment by moment, we only get as much as we can carry. Make no mistake about it, however, this little bit we experience moment to moment is the real deal, grace itself and grace abounding.

Jesus has a chance meeting in this morning’s Gospel in the course of an ordinary business day. In it he shares a drink of water, a little bit of acceptance, a little bit of understanding, a little chance for someone to participate in something bigger than herself. It is a little bucket of grace he offers, but it is the real deal, grace itself and grace abounding.

The first thing to notice about this meeting is its ordinary setting. Drawing water for her household is just one of many ordinary household tasks Palestinian women did every day, and for Jesus, walking from town to town, stopping for a drink of water at a public well was as common and as necessary as our rest stops on the interstate. The next thing to notice is that Jesus and the woman at the well meet at the level of a mutual need. They both need the water in the well—and though the woman doesn’t recognize it at first they both need each other. Jesus has no bucket to draw water with, and so begins by asking for the woman’s help.

Next I think we should notice the barriers that are overcome in this meeting. In a rigidly sexist society men had no social dealings with women. The disciples are amazed that Jesus is even speaking with a woman. Moreover, the woman is a Samaritan; Jesus a Jew. As the woman herself notes the two peoples hate and fear each other. And more than that, the woman has a shady past and a troubled reputation—one more reason a rabbi might ignore her. But in spite of all these barriers, Jesus takes her seriously.

More than just asking for her help and taking her seriously, Jesus actually gets to know the woman. She has had a series of broken relationships and losses. Going through five husbands involved pain and heartache. Jesus knows it and offers no reproach or rejection. Finally, in addition to asking for her help, taking her seriously in spite of barriers, and knowing all about the unhappiness of her life, Jesus gives the woman a chance to belong as one of his disciples. Commentators note that this woman is the first evangelist. She goes and tells her neighbors about the man she met and brings them to him with her enticing suggestion: “Could he be the Messiah?”

This Gospel story is a little outline of our encounters with grace. The most moving encounters most of us have with the goodness of God happen in ordinary settings. In spite of tremendous odds we meet someone who cares for us. By strange coincidences we get a job we did not expect. We pluck up our courage to talk to a teacher or a co-worker and find empathy. Most people don’t find God in church or on religious retreats. Most of us find God in the ordinary places of our lives.

The most grace filled meetings in our lives happen when we meet others at the level of mutual need. Out of the destruction of the tsunami in South Asia have come stories of chance encounters: neighbors and strangers working together to cope with disaster, Out of mutual need comes a chance to recognize our common humanity—and to break down the barriers that separate us.

Grace happens, too, when we are known. You know you are loved when someone knows about your shady past and about your sorrows and longings and stands with you in solidarity. And grace happens when we belong, when there is important work for us to do that has a purpose greater than ourselves.

Taken one at a time, moment to moment, these experiences of grace are each just a bucketful—only as much as we can carry at one time. But together they point to something vast that stretches from here to heaven. Missionary Donna Sinclair writes of a visit to Kenya . She stayed for several days on the edge of the desert in a tiny village called Dumbeni where she encountered more difficult conditions than she ever imagined. For ordinary nutrition and hygiene the women of the village had to carry water from a well a long way away, and for every fire to cook food or heat water they had to gather firewood piece by precious piece. And yet throughout her stay Ms. Sinclair says, each morning when she went to the bathhouse she found a large basin of hot water waiting for her in which she could wash away the dust of a hard environment. “Every basin of water,” she writes, “represented hours of work. The women who did this did not count those hours. They referred to us as sisters.” And she concluded, “Although I did my best afterward to tell their story as clearly as I could, as often as I could, I cannot measure up to this love. Which is, I suppose, like the Holy Spirit itself: free grace, undeserved. Generous love, unconditional.”

We cannot know the full meaning of the chance meetings that fill our ordinary days. Even an ordinary experience of kindness, understanding and acceptance can be an experience of the grace of God. May we so order our lives that we may be vessels of grace, and for all the times we have ourselves received grace, may we be truly thankful. AMEN