Talkin’ to Strangers
There is an unwritten code of conduct on Chicago’s El trains. I didn’t know it when I moved there in 1981, but I learned it very quickly. “Don’t talk to strangers.” Not only “Don’t talk to strangers,” but “Don’t even make eye contact with them.” It is politically incorrect to do so. Eye contact makes people uncomfortable. Conversation convinces them that you are crazy… on drugs… or that you have had too much to drink. Who else would presume to enter their personal space? Now, don’t get me wrong. You can stand as close to them as the situation dictates. Everyone is equidistant but, during rush hour, when the trains are very crowded, your bodies can touch from the shoulders to the knees and no one thinks anything of it. But don’t speak to the person you are glued to… if you don’t know them. And don’t make eye contact. That is presumptuous.
It is absolutely amazing how far total strangers are willing to travel with their body parts touching, but not engaged in any conversation or eye contact. I guess people believe that, if you don’t acknowledge that the other person exists, then the elbow that is poking you in the ribs or the hip that is jammed into the small of your back also does not exist. With stoic fortitude, these people accept their fate and travel silently, with eyes staring at nothing, like sardines packed into tiny little tin cans, scarcely breathing until they finally reach the stop where enough people disembark to make life quasi-normal again. The ones who are good at it can actually loop an arm around a pole, squeeze their briefcases between their knees, and read the Sun-Times or a book while standing in the aisle of a moving train. Reading, you see, takes care of the need for any conversation or any eye contact, without forcing the traveler to stare at the ceiling or one of the thousands of advertisements posted inside these trains. Me? I would stare out of any portion of a window that I could see from where I was standing… even if it was just a one-inch square of empty sky. I got to the point where I could tell where we were by seeing one brick in the wall of a building we were passing by.
I rode the El to and from my workplace in downtown Chicago for six years. The rules never changed. Similar rules exist for travel in elevators, but that travel is usually for a much shorter period of time… especially here in Stephenville. There were only a few times that I saw those rules broken… and that was when something unexpected interrupted the normal operation of the El train or the elevator. If the train came to a stop on the tracks between stations… or an elevator stopped between floors… then all rules of conduct were suspended automatically. Total strangers would talk to each other like old friends. Jokes would be told. Laughter would fill the car. Speculation on the cause of the interruption would dominate the conversation. But the minute… the second… that normal operation resumed, the silence would descend and the rules ruled.
Jesus spoke to the woman at the well. He broke all the rules. Men were not supposed to speak to women… even their own wives… not in public. And he, a Jew, spoke to her, a Samaritan, one of the enemies of the Jews, a lower class person, a woman… and a woman of questionable virtue at that. Even his disciples questioned his actions. Of course, she was breaking rules as well. She came to the well at noontime… not the normal time for drawing water. Most folks came in the cool of the evening. But perhaps she came at noontime to avoid the judgment she encountered from the other women who may have shunned her for her lifestyle or her loose morals. She also responded to Jesus when he spoke to her… though she would have been within her rights to ignore him… and his request. After all, he was a stranger.
He asked her for water… and then he offered her a different kind of water. Living water. Her curiosity was piqued… and she struggled to understand. Living water usually meant water that came from a stream… and not from a stagnant pool. Living water… running water… was usually clean… pure… but to drink it and never be thirsty again? What was he talking about?
There is a river in northern Thailand that runs through the heart of the city of Chiengmai where I grew up. It is the Mae Ping River and every year in early November, there is a Buddhist festival that is a joyous celebration. People come to the river with little boats that they have made. Most of the boats are made from banana leaves held together with toothpicks in the form of a lotus blossom. On the boats, people put food… money… incense… and other gifts… and every boat has a candle. As the people light the candles and release their boats into the running water of the river, they pray that all their sins will be carried away with the boat down the river… out of sight… and out of memory. The sight of thousands of little candles floating down the river at night is one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen.
Living water. That is what Jesus promised this woman. Living water. Living water that would carry her sins away… like the swiftly flowing water of the Mae Ping River. Living water that would live in her like a spring of water gushing up to eternal life. But she still didn’t understand.
Then, he showed her that he knew her… intimately… and she was stunned. She had never seen him before and yet he knew everything about her. He was a stranger… and yet, he wasn’t. He knew her… and everything about her… even her reputation as a loose woman … and yet, he accepted her… and spoke to her. It confused her. Confronted by a situation she did not understand, she threw out an obstacle for him… something to keep him at a distance. It was the old argument that divided the Samaritans from the Jews… the argument about the correct place to worship God.
You see, for generations, the Samaritans had clung to the Pentateuch and the words of Moses that guided them to claim Mount Gerizim… the mountain that towered over this well in the valley… as their holy place. They never accepted any other books in the Hebrew Scriptures except the Torah… and they never acknowledged Jerusalem as the city of God. Their dispute with the Jews over the differences in their religious beliefs often degenerated into bloodshed. This man, Jesus, spoke the truth… the uncomfortable truth… about her… about her life. Now she wanted to see whether he would speak the truth about God. And his answer left her breathless. “Woman,” he said, “the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.” “True worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. For God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
In this brief conversation, Jesus simultaneously accomplished two things. He openly accepted this woman… spoke to her… and, in doing so, freed her from the bonds that society had placed upon her… bonds that were confining… constricting her existence. At the same time, he openly defied religious convention of the times… rejecting the worship of God in only one holy place… freeing God from the bonds that society had placed upon God. God was no longer bound to a single holy place… neither Jerusalem nor Mount Gerizim. God was free to be God… a spirit… worshipped by all who worshipped in spirit and truth wherever they might be. And the woman was freed… freed to be the woman that God called her to be.
And what did God call her to be? A witness. She was called to be a witness … a witness to the entire town from which she came… a town that had not heard the good news… a town that did not know the presence of the Messiah. And, dropping everything, she went… and witnessed to what she had seen and heard. And, it says in verse 39, many Samaritans from her town believed in him because of her testimony. They accepted him because of her!
Isn’t that what we are called to do? Isn’t that what we are called to do… to go out and tell the story of what we have seen and heard? God does not call us to defend our Christian doctrine against those who would battle us over ever comma… over every period. God calls us to witness to what we have seen and heard… so that many will come to know the One whom we know… the One who came to us… the One who changed us… the One by whom we are saved… and given eternal life. How often have we used the doctrine of the church to divide us from our neighbors… instead of binding us together as Christians? How often have we used it as an excuse for our own actions? How often have I heard, “Don’t invite them… they’ll never come. They’re Baptists… or Church of Christ. They’re different… they’re not like us?” Yes, the Samaritans were different. They had different beliefs… but they still believed in the one God, the Holy One of Israel. And they were descendents of the twelve tribes of Israel. But their differences over where God should be worshipped… each rooted in scripture… had so deeply divided them from the Jews that there was often bloodshed.
Then, Jesus broke the rules… he spoke to a stranger. And, when he did, he didn’t talk about how the Jews were right… and the Samaritans were wrong. Instead, he talked about God and the living water he could give her that would fill her so she would never thirst again. Instead of an argument, he gave her a vision… hope of something new. Lord Lindsay, the son of a Scottish pastor who became Chancellor of Keele University in England, once said these words to an audience of clergy at Oxford University: “You ministers,” he said, “are making a mistake. In your pulpits you are arguing for Christianity. And no one wants your arguments. You ought to be witnessing. Does this thing work? Then share it with the rest of us.” Does it work? You tell me. Better yet… do what the woman at the well did… tell others… lots of others.
Talk to strangers… defy the rules… witness to the wonder of what you have seen and heard. Jesus did. The woman at the well did. And so should we… every day… in everything we do… tell the story… spread the news. Does this thing work? Then share it.
We are called to be witnesses… not only to our own… not just to people who are like us… but to those who are different… to those who do not know the story… to those with whom we have deep dividing differences. Why do we focus on our differences? Why do we focus on our differences, when God has given us a story that will bridge the chasm between us? Focus on the vision… living water that springs up to eternal life! Focus on the vision… a boundless Love that offers limitless grace! Focus on the vision… a story of hope for all people. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.” Talk to strangers… tell the story. Amen.