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Last week, I looked in my files in my computer curious about what I had preached on this gospel text three years ago when it came up. I knew that three years ago around this time, we had gone into the lockdown and, sure enough, this was the last Sunday we met in person in the sanctuary. As I skimmed what I had written, I was transported back to that time and felt a tingle in my spine: "We had hoped," I reflected, "that the kids would only be out of school a few weeks. We had hoped that we would be back to church by Easter." None of us had any idea what was before us on that Sunday three years ago. And as I thought about that for a moment I had goosebumps.
There are studies that show that when you feel goosebumps or a tingle the chills that they come when you feel this heightened sense that you are joined with others in community or that you share a common experience. Evolutionarily, there are some essentials we have as mammals. Right alongside of the need to eat and keep our oxygen at the correct level, we have to keep our body temperature in the right range in order to survive. Not to hot or cold. There are some mammals that are highly social, like some dogs or wolves or primates and humans that, when they get too cold: they huddle. The very first physical response social mammals have when it gets very cold is that our hair stands up so that our skin bunches up so it’s less porous to the cold. This, then, signals to others to draw near and even embrace, which releases oxytocin, a neurochemical that rushes through the body and makes us more open to others. Neuroscientists say that the sensation of goosebumps unite or connect us with others as we try to make sense of these big unknown things before us.
When our ancient mammal relatives came up in front of vast mysteries, and even dangerous ones: their hair stood up and they found this warmth and strength in drawing closer to each other. What were vast unknowns or mysteries for these ancient relatives? a roaring waterfall, a powerful thunderstorm, a massive canyon, wild gusts of wind.
Our bible doesn’t talk specifically about chills or goosebumps. It also wasn’t written in the verbose times we live in now where we record every minute detail. There is so much left to imagination and interpretation. But the bible does have some stories of people who, in the face of vast mysteries open up to each other and this fits with the neuroscience like a glove. There are a lot of stories about mysteries and epiphanies and how they change us, but today’s is about a Samaritan woman that Jesus encountered at a well.
In this bible story of The Other Good Samaritan Jesus and the woman have a taboo conversation it’s taboo for a lot of reasons. Not only is there the male/female thing happening, Jesus and the Samaritan woman are also on two sides of a deep divide. In their day, the Israelites and Samaritans were enemies, but not distant, “out there” kind of enemies. More like “in my back yard, looks a lot like me but is different in all the wrong ways kind of enemy.” Their religion agreed on some key points but diverged around a couple of details that were significant enough to make them hate each other. The set up of this encounter between Jesus and this woman is immediately tense in the minds of ancient people. These two have no reason to interact or get to know one another, but Jesus asks something of her anyway. That’s the first mysterious thing.
The scripture does not say this, but I have to wonder if she had chills when Jesus asked her for a drink of water. We don’t know this, but again, neuroscience tells us that when people feel that profound human connection that causes a tingle in the spine or goosebumps, it releases oxytocin and it makes us more open to others.
With that question that reached across the breach, they were immediately stepping out onto a limb. The conversation continues.
History has not been kind to the Samaritan woman around the issue of her five husbands. We have no idea what her story is, but there are a number of choice words and phrases that have been tagged to her over the centuries. Folks say she was “no angel” had a “checkered past” was a prostitute and was “living in sin.” There’s no biblical basis for any of this. Just cultural…
Honestly? We could easily guess she had been widowed. Or maybe she had been divorced because she couldn’t conceive a child and her husbands divorced her because of it. We don’t know why she had been married so many times. But husband after husband divorced her or died until she was finally left with the brother of her late husband who basically took her as a pity-wife because the law said he had to.
In their conversation, this woman shares her truth with Jesus and admits that she has no husband. That's bold. She could have just ignored him. It was a moment of taking off the mask and sheer honesty. She meets him halfway. Mysteriously, Jesus fills in the gaps of her story and then meets her at the other half tells her his truth. He is the great I Am. In that mysterious moment, it was like goosebumps radiated up and down their arms and they drew close to one another. You can see this image of the two of them on the front of your bulletin meeting each other in the middle with true honesty. She shows us how to be completely and fully honest and known before God.
Face to face with the messiah, you really know who you are: the good, the bad, the embarrassing, the hopeful, all of it. It is the mystery of being fully known, seen and understood. There is no hiding here, no hiding the parts of ourselves or the parts of our lives that we would just as soon forget.
In the gospel of John, to be a disciple of Jesus is to be in relationship with God. It doesn’t necessarily mean “to follow” the way it does in our other gospels. And that’s okay, Sometimes, I think this idea of “following” makes it seem like we can’t question anything or interrogate anything. It is an image of sitting, like this cover shows eye to eye, heart to heart with Jesus.
What does it look like to be in relationship with God? Last week, I met with an old friend who was in town for breakfast. He has a current mantra He’s working on, he told me. “Don’t criticize, complain, or condemn.” Apparently, it’s loosely related to the philosophies of addition and recovery that he’s involved with.
This is good solid advice, but I happen to know that this person periodically changes their mantras, breathes them, repeats them throughout the day, writes them on the corner of pieces of paper laying around, and I’d say prays them, until they weave themselves into his being.
What would be the mantra that you need to pray continually? What is your honest truth that only God knows and the prayer that lifts out of it. What is it that you must cultivate more of in your heart? More grace or mercy towards people who “aren’t getting it right?”Less cynicsm? More tenacity? Less knee jerk judgement and more openness? More generosity towards people who have less than you? More compassion for our bodies that are thankfully less than perfect? Less-self doubt? More appreciation of the beauty you run across in your daily life?
The spiritual growth that we crave and long for must be cultivated beyond a visit to church on Sunday morning.
If believing in the gospel of John means to be in relationship with God: to let ourselves be fully and honestly known. We must be honest about where we’re cracked and crumbling and to quietly, slowly let God work on us. Sometimes it is these daily quotidian habits that slowly deepen our connection to God over time.
Lent is a time where we open our hearts so that God can prune away the old habits and patterns that should be cut back. Then, we fertilize and cultivate the areas that need to grow. God does this all with the aim of greening our souls. In the profound gift of being truthful and being known by God, may we draw closer to and be shaped by the one, who is, who was and who will be.
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