Texts: Psalm 96; John 4: 5-30

When I was ten years old I went with my parents on a family vacation to St. Augustine, Florida. As most Americans, having been raised on the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock and Jamestown stories of how the brave English weathered the storms of Virginia and New England to plant the seeds of what became our nation, I remember my surprise when I learned that St. Augustine had been the site of the first permanent European settlement on the North American continent. Established in 1565, it predated Jamestown by forty years. As English settlements in America moved farther south, conflicts began to arise between the Spanish colony and the English ones exacerbated by old hatreds based on religion and conflicts back in Europe. The fact that Florida sheltered escaped slaves provided they declare themselves Catholics only threw more fuel on the fire. The new county to the north saw its opportunity in a weakened Spain after the Napoleonic Wars and purchased Florida and in exchange agreed to honor the boundaries of New Spain in the West. Like many other treaties the United States has had, it was honored more in the breach than in the doing.

Spain had entered the American Revolution as an ally of France and, thus, of the patriots against the British. The Hispanics covered the western and southern front against the British. Ranchers began to settle in Texas during the 1820s and finally created a so-called war of independence from Spain, which the United States joined. Is this beginning to sound familiar? Sam Houston led the settlers to victory in 1836 creating the Republic of Texas and the United States began a war against Mexico to annex Texas and other portions of the southwestern United States. Mexicans were seen as nothing more as another form of Indians. We did a good job on them, too. Why do I say we have the Samaritans in our midst? Because there is little difference between the way we have treated Mexicans and Indians and the way that Samaritans, seen as the population that remained during the Exile, were treated by the orthodox Jews.

Last night I watched Exodus, a film that was decidedly Zionist in its approach. There is no question that the world owed the remnants of European Jewry a place to call their own; however, when Jews began to find Samaritans in their midst, namely the non-Jewish Palestinians whose land they ultimately took, conflict obviously emerged. Exodus as a film points out that the only way to live together in harmony is to live together in harmony, to uproot the plants of suspicion and hatred, to share the resources of the land long occupied by many peoples. Unfortunately, that is a lesson that has been lost on both sides of what seems to be a terrible divide, one that has brought a great deal of anguish to the land flowing with milk and honey. When the state of Israel was created, its theocratic framework destroyed the possibilities of real cooperation. Israelis have Samaritans in their midst and the problem becomes how to erase over sixty years of destructive anger in order to have a truly multi-religious state.

We here in the United States in some ways have had a similar history. We have displaced the indigenous populations who were here long before we were; we have relegated certain kinds of people as Samaritans. Perhaps the question we should ask ourselves before looking at those who occupied the land before as the other is how is it we characterize ourselves in terms of other people in a broader sense. Jew or Arab, Christian or Muslim, Anglo or Hispanic, native or immigrant.

In this morning’s reading Jesus passes through Samaria on his way back to Galilee from Judea. He meets a woman drawing water at a well. In this passage, Jesus radicalizes the vision of God. First, he speaks to a woman. This was contrary to all practice in his time. Even the disciples ask Jesus why he is talking to a woman. Second, he speaks to a Samaritan woman, one of the despised remnant that did not go into exile, a people who worshipped God -- the same God -- in a slightly different way. Hm-m-m…. this is really beginning to sound familiar. Third, and most important, he tells the woman that there will come a time when the particularities of worship do not matter because we will have internalized our experience and worship so that it reflects all the ways that God is experienced.

In some sense, John’s Gospel reflects the letter of Paul to the Galatians in its radical statement that there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, but that all are equal in Christ Jesus. As Christians we must eradicate the idea that there are Samaritans in our land to be treated differently; we need to recognize the worth of every human being no matter the race, gender, nationality, immigration status, disability, or sexual orientation. And John’s Jesus as well as the Jesus presented in the other gospels does not just tell us that agreeing to radical equality, to a new vision of God is enough. Faith requires action, changed behaviors, a turning about -- a metanoia -- of our own selves.

We are called as Christians to be open to the world as was the One we call Lord. Openness is not easy; in fact, it’s pretty difficult, but we must still work to be open to the world in new and challenging ways. We are challenged every day here in Monmouth County and in our Nation. The question for us is how we faithfully respond so that no one is a Samaritan, an outsider among us.

Let us pray: You, O God, who created humankind in your image, to reflect your wondrous infinitude, open our hearts and minds to the world around so that no one is set apart on the basis of externals. Amen.