The three Scripture readings for today all have a little nugget or in some cases a real jewel for us in the work we have been called to do.
In Exodus, the Israelites quarrel with God. They have been brought into the desert, but there is no water. They complain – for neither the first time nor the last – but God ultimately provides. Moses had the unenviable task of attempting to lead folks who did not want to be led.
In the letter to the church in Rome we hear the familiar passages about pain and suffering and what they lead to in our spiritual journey. But we are also brought back to the reality that we have been saved by grace and not by what we do or how we have suffered.
The Gospel narrative from John probably has the real jewel in it in the story of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well. We are reminded that it is the water of life that truly matters.
Quarrels with God
I suspect each of us has quarreled with God at some point in our lives. Life doesn’t always bring us what we think we ought to have, so we take it up with God…..or we may even think we are taking it out on God! Our ministry in the crisis of HIV/AIDS has given us more than enough reason to quarrel with God. The first is the “why” as to the very existence of the virus and the epidemic it began. Then we could go through a litany of all the issues we have faced during the pandemic: death of friends and loved ones; inaction on the part of governmental and medical resources at the beginning of the epidemic; large portions of the greater faith community turning its back on those who became infected as well as those who sought to minister to them; death of friends and loved ones. Yet we have learned that God did not send the virus to infect and inflict us or kill us.
We have learned that God does not willingly inflict those whom God has created and loved. God has provided, despite our quarrel. God has provided water in the desert where we have wandered even if it was just the water of walking with us on our journey. God is big enough for us to argue with and even sometimes to blame.
The passage from Romans troubles me in some ways because it can be and has been misused to support suffering as the pathway to salvation and to God. Those who use those words in such a manner have taken them out of the context of the complete narrative. Ultimately, as we believe, we are saved by grace alone and by nothing else. Jesus invites us into relationship and we accept. Jesus’ love and salvation has been poured out for all, without reservation, without restriction, without qualification.
It has taken me….and I suspect some of you….much prayer, thought and time to reach the point where we come close to understanding that despite any suffering we might endure, it is the grace of God in redeeming us through Jesus Christ that has saved us. We may never completely comprehend such a phenomenal possibility….perhaps we still balk that God would find us worthy of saving. And we might even buy into the notion that we have to suffer in order to obtain salvation.
I doubt that there is any one of us among this our small band of missionaries, who has not endured all of the levels and forms of suffering that Paul lists. Yet that has not been the source of our salvation. Faith in the grace of God has been what saved us. Some of the other may have brought us to a realization of how we are saved, but it did not save us.
Jesus at the Well
Turning to the Gospel, John relates to us one of the few times mentioned in Scripture where Jesus has managed to wander off by himself without his often dense and troublesome followers trailing behind. Although even in this story, once they find him, they behave in their usual predicable manner, missing the point of what he was trying to teach. They do seem to have had the good sense not to ask about his encounter with the Samaritan woman. They somehow think Jesus is hungry and he probably shook his head as he attempts to explain what he is really discussing.
Prior to the disciples catching up with Jesus, Jesus finds himself at a well in Samaria and so unfolds for us the familiar encounter with a person who is supposed to be an “untouchable” to Jesus. Saying that Jews and Samaritan’s did not share things in common is a very polite way of describing the relationship! In a twist of the ordinary, Jesus asks the Samaritan woman to give him a drink of water. If Jesus had been following the script, he would have ignored her at best or maybe even belittled or humiliated her. Jews and Samaritans did not share……almost sounds like two children in a sand box, one in each corner, refusing to share toys or even common ground. It went further than our English words imply.
Jesus tells of the future when those who worship God will not have to worry about being in Jerusalem or on a mountain….it will not matter where they worship because God will be there….in spirit to be worshiped in spirit and in truth. It is a fore telling of the way we have come to relate to God, although I sometimes wonder if we haven’t created little Jerusalem’s and little mountains to which we cling and claim that God is only there.
The waters of Samaria are the embrace of the outcast by Jesus. He simply asks for water in the beginning and then proceeds into a lengthy and rather intimate conversation with someone he should have crossed the road to avoid. He knows the woman’s past. He knows her present life. He knows her. And he is not repulsed by any of that or the fact that she is an outcast as well. We do not hear words of condemnation for her having had several husbands, nor for her current situation….one we might call “shacking up.” The Samaritan woman even becomes the first evangelist! She goes back into the town and tells the story of Jesus to the others in her village. They are skeptics at first, but ultimately they also believe.
Giving the Water of Life
We have engaged in vocations, created ministries, advocated for and tried to give the water of life to outcasts in our various ministries. We have engaged with and on behalf of the Samaritans who are infected and affected by HIV/AIDS. Those first infected with HIV were all outcasts in some way. Gay men, IV drug users and prostitutes were easy to identify as outcasts. The very name the medical condition was first given – gay related immune deficiency or GRID – politicized a medical condition with a direct connection to a group of outcasts in our society. So much for IV drug users and prostitutes, they were already on the fringe. Haitians were different and foreign and had black skin, so they too were easy targets. And even those with hemophilia suffered from being outcasts because they represented damaged goods in a society that values health and looks over the substance that is each human being, placing superficiality above what is in the heart and soul.
None of us had to lift a finger to help someone with HIV/AIDS. We could have joined what seemed like a majority who found those with HIV/AIDS as dispensable in our society.
We could have ignored the needs of the suffering and focused our eyes and our energies elsewhere. We did not. We understood that the faith and the beliefs that emerge from that faith would not allow us to ignore a child of God who was in need. We didn’t engage in our ministries to participate in suffering to enhance our salvation…..though God knows if suffering were a prerequisite to salvation, we have experienced our share.
We knew, at some level, that our faith and not our works or our suffering is the source of our salvation. But that faith did demand action on our part on behalf of the least among us.
God provided water in the desert by directing Moses to strike a rock. The water flowed and the people were satisfied….at least for a few minutes. I challenge this board to lead the way in striking rocks in search of the water needed to drown this pandemic. Follow the urging and nudging of the Holy Spirit. Follow your new leadership. If you think the wrong action or path has been taken, offer a solution, offer an alternative. Don’t just follow along because it is the path of least resistance. And don’t complain unless you can provide a suggestion. I challenge the new leadership to seek out new ways of looking at old issues, those that have never gone away. Don’t just focus in one direction. Remember the origins of this illness and take care not to follow the paths that led nowhere.
Jesus drank the water from a Samaritan well handed to him by a Samaritan woman and brought the good news even to the outcast. The Samaritans of today can teach us to truly understand being an outcast. The Samaritans of today can offer a glimpse of grace that comes from living with the shadow of HIV/AIDS that is always with them. Listen to them.
Call to Action
Be prophetic in working to prevent a repeat of how AIDS exploded upon the world’s stage nearly thirty years ago. The same who were cast out thirty years ago remain on the edges, remain among the outcasts. The same stigma exists that existed thirty years ago. Don’t be seduced into some misguided notion that finds some necessity in the stigma and suffering as a means of achieving salvation. Work to end the suffering and the stigma. Work toward seeing the face of Jesus in everyone you meet, especially those who are outcasts because of HIV/AIDS. Raise some holy hell on behalf of those who have no voice and those whose voices have been silenced by prejudice, fear, stigma and ultimately the death that comes from being silent. Be a holy thorn in the side of the church and make yourself heard and felt.
Sometimes we really have felt like we had been breaking rocks to get water, yet our thirst was ultimately quenched by the water we shared with the outcasts to whom we were called to minister. Pray that the waters that flow from the rock will fill our Samarian wells until not a single child of God is thirsty. Amen.
Bruce Garner
NEAC Board Meeting
March 2011
Maritime Institute
Baltimore, MD
Readings: RCL, Second Sunday in Lent, Year A
Exodus 17:1-7
Psalm 95
Romans 5: 1-11
John 4: 5-42
Bruce Garner has been living with HIV for nearly 29 years. He has been a member of the NEAC Board of Directors on two different occasions and has chaired the board during both terms on the board. He is also active at all levels of The Episcopal Church, currently serving as Liaison from the Executive Council to that council's Committee on HIV/AIDS. He chairs the Commission on AIDS for the Diocese of Atlanta and serves on the Planning Team for the annual Province IV Network of AIDS Ministries HIV/AIDS Retreat at Kanuga, NC. He has served on the boards of directors of numerous HIV/AIDS and LGBT organizations in Atlanta. He retired in 2008 after 35 years with the Social Security Administration. He is on staff at All Saints' Episcopal Church in Atlanta as Head Verger.
