Sermon:
April 19, 1998

Scripture:
John 4:1-15

Every now and then a verse of Scripture sort of takes you by the hand and leads you someplace that the original writer may not have intended at all. One has to be careful with that, of course. There has been a great deal of misunderstanding and no small number of denominations that have come out of that approach to Scripture. But if one is careful about it, it can be a way of listening to the Spirit - rather like what happens when the preacher says something and your mind takes the thought and does its own thing with it, whether that is what the preacher intended or not. We preachers have to live with that possibility all the time.

The fourth verse in the lesson for this morning did that with me. It probably doesn't really matter to you, but the phrasing that triggered this was from the old King James Translation, which reads: "He must needs go through Samaria."

Now, I know that nobody talks that way anymore. "Must needs?" When was the last time you used that expression? Never, right? Me either. But I was working on a series of sermons on `Journeys' and for some reason that verse came to mind. That was the translation that I grew up on. Maybe I heard a sermon on it when I was kid. Who knows? Anyway, the passage wouldn't go away. So for a few minutes this morning, you are stuck with it, too.

I looked it up in the Revised Standard and the New Revised Standard and James Moffatt and the New International and the New English and J.B. Phillips and even the Living Bible and, as you might expect, none of them said "must needs" - but they all kept the imperative about this journey. In one form or another, they all have John saying that when Jesus went from Jerusalem to Galilee he "needed" to go or he "had" to go through Samaria.

And sure enough, if you look at a map of the Holy Land, and draw a line from Jerusalem to Galilee, that line runs right through Samaria. I even checked it on my computer Bible Atlas program, with the little box at the bottom of the screen that lets you move the pointer from one place to another and tells you have far it is - thirty miles from Jerusalem to Sychar in Samaria and fifty miles on to Galilee. Ah, the marvels of modern technology! Fascinating!

But so what, you say? So he had to go through Samaria. What is the big deal about that? But bear with me. The verse had the bit in its teeth and was dragging me along now. What it seemed to want me to note was that what is true in geography is often true in the journey of life. You may have noticed that - how you often have to go through one place to get someplace else. You have to go through infancy to become a child. You have to go through childhood to become a teenager. You have to go through adolescence to become an adult. Most have to go through college or maybe graduate school or an apprentice program or a training school or some on-the- job experience of some kind to get to a career with any future in it.

There may not be anything all that profound in that observation, but it is a fact. Like the map shows, that is just the way it is. We may wish it were otherwise, but at times that is the way the road runs: you have to go through Samaria to get to Galilee. That is the first page on this TripTik.

The second page is the reminder that Samaria was not a fun place for Jewish people to go through in Jesus' day. It is said that when a Jew passed through a Samaritan village, the villagers would sometimes follow along behind, dropping handfuls of straw in the footprints and setting the straw on fire to purify the dirt of their village street. Rather insulting and demeaning, to say the least. And sometimes the animosity was more than symbolic. Many had been attacked and beaten, and such a journey could be downright risky.

In case you don't already know it, I might point out that much of what was then Samaria is part of what we now know as the West Bank. Ring any bells? The prejudices and hatreds that tear that land apart today have deep roots, back to the aftermath of their civil war following the death of Solomon. Samaria had been the name of the capital of the Northern Kingdom and it became the name by which the northern region of the country became known. The people of Judea claimed that the blood lines and the worship practice of the northerners had been corrupted over the years and that they were no longer true people of God. And the Samaritan people, as the woman of Samaria said to Jesus, believed that the Temple was supposed to be on Mt. Gerazim instead of Jerusalem. It was like a Yankee in Alabama or a Southerner in Boston following the War Between the States - or the Civil War - depending on whose history books you read. Are you getting the picture? It was not a pleasant journey.

Again, a parallel came to mind. Sometimes it is necessary to go through some unpleasant places in order to arrive at where you want to be. Just growing up can be that way sometimes. I suspect that few people remember adolescence as their favorite years; certainly not while going through them. But then, certain stages of parenting can be tough going, too. One of our nieces tells about the time she took her four year old son grocery shopping. Going down one of the aisles, Kyle dropped a jar of pickles. Susan went to the office and told them where the mess was and, using their p.a. system, they sent a stock clerk to that aisle to clean it up. A few minutes later, he knocked over a stack of canned goods. Again, she went to the office to report it and again the clerk announced the aisle over the p.a. Before they left the store there was a third mishap and when she reported this one, the lady at the desk announced, "Kyle is now in aisle five." They checked out, and as they were leaving the store, Susan heard the woman announce the all clear, saying, "Kyle and his mother are leaving the store now."

Marriage sometimes has a few detours and rough spots. Career tracks don't always follow the path you thought they would, especially these days. Some find that the handicaps or illnesses that they are born with or that they encounter in life are not very pleasant places to go through; but there are times when we have to go through them just the same. Cancer strikes and there is chemotherapy or radiation or both. Death takes away a companion or a child or a loved one or a friend, and no one likes to go through the city called Grief or the town named Loneliness, but the road goes that way and on beyond, and that is the way we have to go. Sometimes, to get to Galilee, we have to go through Samaria.

Again, I suppose this is not all that profound. A good reminder, perhaps, but this expression from the age of Shakespeare wasn't finished with me yet. "He must needs go through Samaria." It is true that when we travel we often need to go through one place to get to another; and it is true that sometimes the places we have to go through aren't all that pleasant. But I discovered that there are two other pages on this TripTik.

The truth is that in Jesus' day, most devout Jews did not go through Samaria when traveling from Jerusalem to Galilee. As I said, it was likely to be unpleasant and it could be dangerous. For most people, the preferred way to travel north from Jerusalem was to first go east, down to Jericho, across the Jordan River and into what is now the country of Jordan, and then north for seventy miles or so, crossing back over the Jordan River again and so into Galilee. It was a bit like going to Grayling by way of Lansing in order to avoid Flint, but that way you didn't have to go through Samaria.

So this word about Jesus needing to go through Samaria becomes more and more intriguing. Which brings us to page three: Some of life's most important journeys are determined by attitude and choice, not by geography and distance - and that is true whether you are talking about Jesus' need to go through Samaria or of other people's apparent need to go around it.

Would you consider the possibility that John's emphasis on Jesus needing to go through Samaria may have been to make the point that Jesus would have no part of the prejudices and bigotry of his time? The fact that John tells this story at all is significant. John devotes the greater portion of his gospel to the last week of Jesus' life and the resurrection appearances. This is one of the few incidents out the rest of Jesus' life that he chooses to write about; moreover, he spends more time on this story than any other incident. It is also interesting to note that John places a story about Jesus meeting with a Samaritan - a woman and a foreigner - at high noon, immediately following the story of him meeting with Nicodemus - a man and a religious leader - who came to him in the middle of the night. And the manner in which John tells this story suggests an imperative that has nothing to do with it being a little shorter this way. He says nothing at all about this being a rush trip. In fact, he tells us that Jesus and the disciples spent two days in Samaria. Everything about the story points to choice, not geography, as the determining factor; it suggests decision, not distance, lay behind this journey.

Do I need to elaborate the parallel very much? I think of Nelson Mandella's journey through the Samaria of South African jails in protest of South African apartheid laws. I think of Mother Teresa's journey from the streets of Albania to the alleys of Calcutta to follow her calling from God. I think of Rosa Parks' bus ride in Montgomery, Alabama. These, and countless others, have journeyed through Samaria on their way to Galilee, their imperative coming from the leading of the spirit through the twisted geography of the attitudes of the time.

Let us make a footnote before we leave this page of the TripTik. Jesus' visit with the woman at the well was a joy, not something to regret, and John tells us that many Samaritans came to believe in him because of that visit. Necessary journeys can turn out the same way. We may end up enriched and blessed more than we ever thought possible. The point of going through Samaria is not to satisfy some masochistic desire to suffer. The point of going to Samaria is that at that time, that is the way we need to go, whether pushed by circumstances or led by the spirit of God. It may, indeed, turn out not to be as fearful as we thought. God may have a mission for us there. That makes a lot of Samarias worth the effort.

Which brings us to the final page on this TripTik, namely the reminder that the road led to Galilee. It is interesting to note that Galilee is where John ends his Gospel, with that beautiful scene of the risen Christ coming to the disciples at sunrise on the shore of the lake. To get to Galilee that time he had to go through a Samaria called Calvary; but as we remembered last Sunday and sang today, that journey didn't end there, either.

In some cases, Galilee is arrived at sooner than others, but Galilee is where this road leads. Several years ago a couple sat in my study. Their marriage was in shreds. One of them had been unfaithful and the situation did not look very hopeful. I talked and prayed with them, individually at times and at times with both. A few months later they moved away, still together, but still in Samaria, as it were. Two summers ago they worshiped with us one Sunday morning. I didn't know they were there until they came through the greeting line after the service. They didn't stay to talk, but the way they smiled as they shook hands with me, I knew they wanted me to know that they had gone through Samaria.

Ultimately, a passage from the book of Hebrews came to mind. It was written about Abraham, who also traveled through Samaria. In the eleventh chapter, we read: "By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God." (Hebrews 11:8-10 NRSV)

So don't be afraid to go through Samaria. Sometimes the road leads that way; sometimes God calls us that way; but the road leads on to Galilee, and always - always - we journey with the Risen Christ who has already walked that road.

Thanks be to God.