There is an
advantage to preaching about once a month, one really gets to walk with a
Gospel reading. I have the luxury of
sleeping on it, relating it to current events and asking questions, more than I
will ever answer.
The first
question that came to my mind is why there is this separation between the Jews
and Samaritans. We hear the disdain in
the parable of the Good Samaritan and we here it again this time from the woman
at the well. The Samaritans are
perceived as an impure group. They were remnants
“of the native Israelites who were not deported at the fall of the northern
Kingdom on 722 B.C.”[1]
who married foreign colonists and refused to worship at Jerusalem. The
Samaritans also hold a belief that they maintain true Judaism from before the
time of exile as they remained in the land during that time. So one can see
where contempt may come from.
Then Samaritan
woman were looked upon with suspect as well.
They were considered ritually impure. Interesting note, at least for me,
is that Herod’s mother was a Samaritan woman.
There seems to
be a reconciling between the followers of Christ and the Samaritans. Jesus
first tells the disciples not to be concerned with the Samaritan city in Mathew
10 and in Luke a Samaritan village rejects a request for Christ to pass
through. (Luke 9) Then of course is the
parable of the Good Samaritan and the healing of the ten lepers and only the
Samaritan comes back to praise God. By
Acts Samaritans are being preached to and baptized in the spirit.
I titled this
sermon “I have come to abolish the Binary Code”. Who here knows what Binary code is? A binary
code represents text or computer processor instructions using the binary number
system's two binary digits, 0 and 1.”[2] It
is a dualistic system that breaks everything down to one or zero. Who remembers the movie Tron and the
character Bit? All that it can say is “yes” or “no”. Many of
us still live in that world.
We live in a
world which is either this or that, us or them, me or you. There is no room for shades of grey, there is
no room for fluidity and there is definitely no room for compromise. Richard Rohr
in a recent daily meditation speaks on what he refers to as dualistic thinking;
Dualistic thinking,
or the egoic operating system, as Cynthia Bourgeault calls it, is our way of
reading reality from the position of my private ego. “What’s in it for me?”
“How will I look if I do this?” This is our preferred way of seeing reality. It
has become the “hardware” of almost all Western people, even those who think of
themselves as Christians, because the language of institutional religion is
largely dualistic itself. It is a way of teaching that has totally taken over
in the last five hundred years. It has confused information with enlightenment,
mind with soul, and thinking with experiencing. But they are two very different
paths.
The dualistic mind
is essentially binary. It is either/or thinking. It knows by comparison, by
opposition, by differentiation. It uses descriptive words like good/evil,
pretty/ugly, intelligent/stupid, not realizing there may be 55 or 155 degrees
between the two ends of each spectrum. It works well for the sake of
simplification and conversation, but not for the sake of truth or even honest
experience.
Actually, you need
your dualistic mind to function in everyday life: to do your job as a teacher,
a doctor, or an engineer. It is great stuff as far as it goes, but it doesn’t
go far enough. The dualistic mind cannot process things like infinity, mystery,
God, grace, suffering, death, or love. When it comes to unconditional love, the
dualistic mind can’t even begin to understand it. It pulls everything down into
some kind of tit-for-tat system of worthiness and achievement, which is largely
what “fast food religion”, teaches, usually without even knowing it.[3]
Listen to that,
the dualistic mind, the Binary code is necessary as part of our existence as
humans to function in the everyday world and yet it doesn’t allow us to seek
the mystery, grace and Love of God. It
will not allow us to go beyond ourselves and “pulls everything down into some
kind of tit-for-tat.”[4] We, each and every one of us are guilty of
this. We hear it today from the woman at
the well. Jesus addresses her and her
first reaction is one of them versus us response; “you’re a Jew. How can you
ask me, a Samaritan for a drink?” (John 4:9)
How many times
have we ourselves been victims of this kind of thinking? How many times do we still hear stories of
the Binary? You know our world is
changing right before our eyes. Daily
there is some news of a victory in the movement towards equality. Yet every day there is some news of a
backwards bill or threats to safety of people. Just this month two young women
were murdered they had been dating for a few months. Then there is a story of
Marcel Neergaard.
Marcel started
as a regular blogger on the Huffington Post at the age of 11. He started the
petition against the “don’t say gay bill” in Tennessee. He left school and went to be home schooled
just to save his own life. Here is an introduction to this fine young man. Marcel NeeGaard. That
was from June 1st of last year. He has since written 5 articles with
comments like; “In July, I witnessed a room of LGBTQ activist campers become a
room of anti-hate activists. I realized that we should not be fighting for
rights for different groups, but we should be fighting for rights as one
community. All of us should be equal.”[5] Do
you hear that move away from dualistic thinking?
Marcel has since
returned to school with hope that the dualistic/binary thinking would have
ceased. This was unfortunately not the
reality. He writes of how difficult it
is returning to school as the new kid. “When
the school year started, it was not all rainbows and pink smiley faces. I had
trouble with sleep, schedules and people. Maybe I expected the stars to whisper
the answers to tests in my ear, or perhaps I thought the summer sun had
expanded my brain capacity.”[6] Such wisdom from such a young man seems so
rare these days I had to share his story.
Marcel goes on
to address some of the ignorant remarks he must tolerate. “People have a
tendency to forget the filter between their brain and their mouth. I told a
friend I went to the rival school in fifth grade, and the first word out of his
mouth was "traitor." But it's the comments about being gay that hurt
most. The everyday "fag" and "That's so gay!" almost go by
unnoticed because they are so common.”[7]
This reminds me of something that is at the bottom of every agenda at a sisters
meeting before you speak think…T= is it
true? H=is it helpful I=is it inspiring N= is it necessary and K= is it kind
Marcel goes on
to explain one of the hardest things, especially if you consider the work he
did against that don’t say gay bill.
The protection of
the classroom doesn't seem to extend to me. One day I was talking with my
friends about Zachary Quinto being gay. An otherwise supportive teacher stopped
me and told me "talking about being gay in the classroom is illegal in
Tennessee." I wanted to scream, "NO IT'S NOT!" I went home intending
to double-check my facts before confronting that specific teacher, but my
parents told me they would talk to the principal instead. I have found teachers
are quite confused because of Ragan's bill (the Don't Say Gay Bill). They're
too busy teaching to know if it passed, so they just try to be safe. Meanwhile,
I am not allowed to talk about myself with my friends.[8]
He continues to
speak about how kids ask him “who he turned gay for” or “how can you be gay if
you have never been on a gay date?” or as he says, the brilliant remark “your
gay cause you act gay!” This is that
Binary code in full swing it is still us and them. It’s still straight or gay. Yet Marcel’s fight isn’t just for the LGBTQI
community. You see he has gone beyond
that Binary code. He states; “It is
important to say students cannot be harassed, intimidated or bullied because
they are gay or perceived to be gay. The Dignity for All Students Act specifies
many other groups, like kids who are bullied because of their religion, race,
gender, gender identity or gender expression. It even helps the kids who are
brave enough to be friends with students who are ‘different.’”[9] His view seems to be one much wider, broader,
beyond the one and zero.
You see this
kind of broader thinking of looking beyond one’s self but seeing with the eyes
of the heart is what Jesus is telling the woman at the well. When Jesus speaks of the water of the well he
says you will be thirsty again. You will
have to come back for more. Your
thoughts, if I may make a big leap, will remain the same. The water of life, the water that Jesus
offers is moving, it is not stagnant it does not allow for us to continue in
the same way day in and day out it challenges us to move beyond the simple
dualistic thought. Jesus explains that
the water he offers will becomes springs within us springing up. There is an internal movement from us to God
then from God to us. Richard Rohr comments;
Look at the
unbelievably sad and even hateful divide between liberals and conservatives in our
church and in our country, and at both extremes I find totally dualistic
thinking. You can be dualistic as a liberal, and you can be dualistic as a
conservative. They are simply two different methods to be in control, two
different ways to be right and two different ways to look down on other people.
1 Dualistic or
divided people live in a split and fragmented world. Usually, they cannot
accept or forgive certain parts of their own destiny and experience. They
cannot accept that God could objectively dwell within them, as John’s Gospel
and Paul’s letters say over and over again. This lack of
“forgiveness-of-reality-for-being-what-it-is” takes the form of a tortured
mind, a closed heart, or an inability to live calmly and proudly inside one’s
own body.
The fragmented mind
and the egoic mind see in parts, and usually antagonistic parts, but never in
wholes, and then predictably create antagonism, reaction, fear, and
resistance—“push-back”—from other people. 2 It is a double whammy of despair,
and the saddest effect of all is that people living from this divided mind
continue to do what makes them so unhappy. Sin and addiction have many of the
same characteristics.[10]
So here is a
question if each one of us, children of God, have an opportunity to seek God’s
grace and living water, if each one of us can experience that movement towards
God and God’s movement back to us, why, why is humanity so broken? How can it be as Christians some of us rally
towards a world where love, equality and peace reigns and yet others don’t
really even seem to want to try. How do
we who have a radically new view of a Christian world make the world welcoming
for those who have been taught differently for so long and now are seeing their
world change?
Ironically what
has led me to this question was a posting on Facebook. Fred Phelps The founder and former head of
the Westboro Baptist Church was excommunicated back in August and placed in a
home and has since passed. The question
posted on Facebook was how would you respond or reach out to Fred Phelps. This is where that line is drawn. Listen to your initial reactions. I know there
is a part that is thinking, because I thought it as well, someday soon he will
know where he went wrong. He will know
the pain he caused.
This kind of thinking
is still in that dualistic mind and it causes harm to our own spirit to think
this way. Richard Rohr explains;
You cannot sincerely
love another or forgive another’s offenses inside dualistic consciousness. Try it, and you’ll see it can’t be done. We
have done the people of God a great disservice by preaching the Gospel to them
but not giving them the tools whereby they can obey that Gospel. As Jesus put
it, Cut off from the vine, and you can do nothing’ (John 15:5). The ‘Vine and
the branches’ are one of the greatest Christian Mystical images of the
nonduality between God and the soul. In and with God, I can love everything and
everyone – even my enemies. Alone and by myself, will power and intellect will
seldom be able to love in difficult situations over time.[11]
We need to seek
out the source that is that living water within each one of us in order to
respond to the other in a loving way. We
need to practice stillness and centering so we can learn to find that God self
that is in each of us. When we do that
we can move beyond our self and respond with Gods’ love in a way that is only
possible through God.
“The disciples,
returning at this point, were shocked to find Jesus having a private conversation
with a woman. But no one dared to ask” (John 4:27). The disciples are caught off guard as Jesus
has gone beyond boundaries. Jesus has
reached out not only to a Samaritan but to a woman but what is more important is
what has happened since Jesus decided to go beyond that which the “Law” may
have forbid. The woman ran off to tell
her whole village.
I find it
interesting that the woman ran off to tell her village but it says “She left
her water jar behind. This is “Johns way of emphasizing that such a jar would
be useless for this type of living water that Jesus has interested her in”[12]
In the same way once we even get a glimpse of how God can work in us we seek
more. Once we find that living water
which cannot be contained, we have an actual need to move away from our daily
Binary thinking to move to a place that can encompass more.
In February we
had a guest preacher, the Rev. Elder Douglas Graves from the Community of
Christ. Now I want you to understand that for him to bear this title just
became a reality in his denomination back in April. So recently he was relaying a story of how he
was invited to preach at a church where he was not part of the congregation, as
a guest preacher, same as he was invited here. The difference was not all in
this congregation were, shall we say, of the same mind. He telols the story of
how he is all proud of the passage of rules that made his reality possible and
yet, as he approached the pulpit and looked out upon the congregation he
realized, just as his world had changed for the better, for others, they were
mourning the loss of a world they knew, a world that had been a constant. He realized, then and there, that there needs
to be care for those people as well.
There needs to be care for the ones who see today’s reality as a reality
they never expected therefore never needed to try to understand.
How many times
have we said, when speaking of marriage equality, heck when speaking of being
able to come out that “I never thought I’d see this day?” Or “twenty years ago
we could not even dare to imagine this.”
Well once we get beyond the; us vs. them thinking, the black and white
thinking, the dualistic/binary ego centered thinking, we realize we need to
care for the other. You see for every
victory we celebrate and embrace someone is mourning the loss of a world they
once knew.
The woman at the
well knew one world, new one kind of water and yet at the end went running back
to tell her whole village of what Christ had taught her and brought the village
to Christ. She went on to become a Saint in the orthodox tradition and
sometimes considered the first to preach the Gospel. Again going beyond ancient teachings and
traditions and ways of thinking, a woman of Samaria preaching the Gospel of
Christ and tradition has it all the way to Rome and Nero himself.
Once we move
with living water there is no more room for us vs. them it is world where
victory and failure are one in the same but, our eyes are wider, our hearts are
bigger, and we move, not in our own direction but where we are lead by spirit,
by truth, by love, by compassion this is at the center of the living water that
is Jesus Christ. Amen.
[1]. Raymond
E. Brown, The Gospel According to John, The Anchor Bible 29-29A (Garden
City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966-70), 170.
[2].
Wikipedia, Binary Code, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_code (accessed
March 17, 2014).
[3]. Richard
Rohr, e-mail message to revjshoregoss@gmail.com, Monday, March 17, 2014.
[4]. Ibid.
[5]. Marcel
Neegaard, A Night of a Thousand Candles,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marcel-neergaard/george-zimmerman-verdict_b_3831764.html
(accessed March 17, 2014).
[6]. Marcel
Neegaard, Different,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marcel-neergaard/lgbtq-teen-story_b_4934806.html
(accessed March 17, 2014).
[7]. Ibid.
[8]. Ibid.
[9]. Ibid.
[10]. Richar
Rohr, e-mail message to Joseph Shore-Goss, 3/17/2014.
[11].
Richard Rohr, The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See (New
York: Crossroad Pub., 2009), 127.
[12]. Brown,
The Gospel According to John, 173.
