A lot of my life, and even sermon preparation is tied to the computer. I’m no tech whiz by any stretch of the imagination and had to say I found it amusing that I was finally shamed into joining an online community called Facebook because Ken, our semi-retired bookkeeper had more or less shamed me into it. Yet, one of the things I’ve come to learn when I have problems figuring things out – getting things to print, or figuring out my connectivity to the internet, is to check the cables. Seems like a remarkably simple answer but in the whirring and the burring and the troubles of trying to figure out what’s wrong, it is easy to miss the obvious in trying to get connected.

Diana Butler Bass gives us a brief history of the missing the obvious in the getting connected with God. You know, the last ½ dozen generations of the church have been some of its finest thinkers ever. And in the last half of the last century, we really let the rubber hit the road with using our heads to understand our faith. We have had excellent exegesis and wonderful moments of brilliance in beginning to understand that God can’t and certainly doesn’t act differently in this time than God has in any time…this use of our heads, our God given heads has transformed our understanding of scripture and the church. And I’m grateful for it…it has been that rationality that has been the forerunner of what has welcomed me, as a gay man into the church – I’m not just grateful for it…I’m dependant on it. And so what I’m about to say is not said lightly. I think we’ve got to get past it and make that move 18 inches from our heads to our hearts. We have if we want to be healed and healers. We have, and by we, I don’t mean Trinity United Church in particular or exclusively, but we have as the churches on the left with these wonderful things we’ve learned, we have a problem with our connectivity, and it’s a good time to check the cables to restore our hook up.

Jesus deals with the out of the loop, those disconnected, those who are not allowed to be part of the harmony as Diana Butler Bass refers to it. Going to the lame, lepers, demoniacs those on the outside is Jesus specialty. Today’s story and setting are clear examples of this. Jacob’s well is probably one of the few ancient biblical sites that might, just might have a shred of historical merit in terms of geographic location in terms of finding the well that was revered as such in Jesus day. It is helpful that there were already two religious communities venerating it at the time of Christ. Christian crusaders seized the site centuries ago, and in the middle of the last century a church was built around the ancient well. As you enter it, you are struck by the topography. As you drive towards Nablus, Mt. Jerezim is on your left – you can see a couple of buildings where the remnant of the ancient Samaritans still live…their numbers have dwindled to less than 700 on the mountain, and most also own homes down in Nablus. The mountain is forbidden to all who live in Nablus who are not Samaritans by the Israeli army, even though Samaritans live in Nablus. Beneath the hill is a refugee camp – for Palestinians who were driven from their homes in 1948 where Israeli soldiers enter daily and where we met a boy who’d been kept awake all night because the soldiers had come to his house looking for his brother who I guess is involved in the resistance. His tired eyes ached for healing from the terror of the night. And down deep to the right, beneath the road, is the very grand cathedral style church with lovely art. As you get near the altar, a very small stair case leads you down further and deeper to a small, and more ancient cavern. And there is the well. We were the only visitors that day, as it is next to impossible for tourists to get into Nablus. And so, we were permitted to draw water, and the Christian man who is the caretaker of the church even let us have a photo. The water tasted sweet and pure as the rope sunk deep, deep down, spinning the wheel on the well around and around. The bucket went down on a long rope, you could pull back…an ancient form of the cable that connects you to life. And turning with some difficulty for our women, we hauled the water back up, from the deep, deep place.

The marvel of this…the hill with the Samaritans on the top, the roadside with the refugee camp and the church beneath the road, the cavern beneath the church and the well to the deepest core is probably lost a little on those who see it every day. So I’d imagine was the feeling of the woman who came to the well and saw Jesus sitting there. She came at noon, after all the other women had hauled their water. So what if they talked about her for being lazy. It was better than hearing their opinion of her many husbands to her face or feeling the threat of a stone. What did they know about her really? They knew her to jeer her only. Perhaps she sighed when she saw the Jew sitting by the well. Would he too start yelling at her that this was his not hers to be drinking from? Why does everything in this place have to be about politics?

Asking her for a drink must have startled her. She’d have never expected him to speak to her; he must be defiling about a dozen rules, and so she asked how he came to be asking her, a Samaritan for a drink? And he offered her a drink – what was he talking about…even if he got a bucket you need a good rope/a cable to connect with that water…it’s a long way down. And he offered her, gently, living water, from which she’d never thirst again. She must have thought of the climb, and the scraping and the times she got half-way up and spilled the whole bucket as she laughed out that she’d like to have this water.

Go, call your husband and come back.

Like a knife to her deepest core, he knew. How could he know. She’d seen him arrive as he traveled in as she’d scraped her way down over the hill. She knew the Jews who were around here…he wasn’t one of them, and he spoke with the accent of a Galilean. How could he know? And then he told her more as tears came down her face, and offered her the living water again. Not rejecting her. Not ignoring her because she was a woman. Not discounting her because she was a Samaritan. Not condemning her for her past or even making the offer conditional on her marrying or leaving the man she was with. Nothing, just keeping talking to her. Connecting with her. The messiah, he must be…speaking to her. Connected with her. She had a better way now to get to the living water even than the good cable to get to the water in Jacob’s well. Connected. Cables strong. She could carry this news…she couldn’t stop spreading it. She couldn’t be the same person with the world, avoiding it that she was before. She had connected.

So it is for us. Here’s a question I’d like to ask you just to think about for a second?

Why are you here this morning? What do you want? If you haven’t noticed, there are other things to do on Sunday morning. I personally like Coronation Street for example, or time at home or a nice walk…or a nap. And not only have you come, most of you come and offer your gifts of money here…very generously from what I can see. And more precious many of you give your gifts of time in meetings and planning and presence. But leaving aside the thing you do here – what is, as my spiritual director puts it…what is your heart’s deepest desire?

I think most of us come to church, as I have seeking that connectivity with God…and how we’d phrase it is different for sure. Someone here now probably has something in their body plaguing them with pain or illness, perhaps something that will carry them away. Someone else here carries here the pain of a broken relationship with a lover or a child. Someone else just is lonely…terribly lonely. For those of us feeling for Harold this morning, his coming to church in weeks to come will be seeking that God who cares yet, who like him remembers the young Lillian and understands Harold’s pain. I’m not clairvoyant and God’s not magically whispering this in my ear televangelist style…it’s just the way it is because I have the privilege of listening to you. This is the kind of longing for healing, for harmony, for connectedness which folks tell Jack and I about. Let me read you a portion of an email I received a couple of weeks ago from someone I used to know from my legal practice days. I used to work with this person’s spouse and I guess it is well known in that group what I did with my career after I left. They write:

Now........ how I've been trying to get in touch with you and why. I was lying in bed one night last week wondering, wondering, wondering who I could turn to for help and your name popped right into my head

No, it's not a legal matter in any respect for which I am seeking help.
It's I guess in the matter of my belief. I have an extreme emptiness
within. I reject what I was raised to believe in that you have to come
to Jesus and be 'saved.' I cannot accept that Mary was a virgin, Jesus
was born in a manger, crucified on a cross, raised from the dead, etc.
etc. However, I haven't found anything to replace that belief system
which was instilled in me as a child. It leaves me full of fear; full of emptiness; nothing to give me any security..

These are the manner of things that we bring to this ancient well. The stuff deep deep down, beneath the mountain above it all, beneath the busyness of the street level, even beneath our quiet spaces and friendships, we come seeking God…seeking the supernatural. And we in these kinds of churches, the kind Diana Butler Bass speaks of are called to receive folks like my friend…to allow them to have questions even if we don’t have the same questions as they do…And as we do, we work together on our common quest to find salvation, to find healing, to find harmony with all of the universe…to get connected, to check the cables to God. You know one of the things that amazes me in the age we’re in – its getting quite common for people to decide that they are willing to trust physical healing to a naturopathic concoction of ragweed and beaver snot, but we still find it somehow hokey, even in church to trust our bodies and souls to the divine – to the rediscovery of the holy in our midst. To divine healing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking beaver snot. I’m just saying that the ancient message of the church – the message of Jesus - is that we have water that goes down deep to satisfy our souls. That we pray for the sick. That God cares intimately about YOU in a way that when you know it, transforms how you see the world and how you act in the world…We need to check our cables. The message of the church is that we are called to pray for healing for each other, not in a way that leaves us only with a relationship that’s all about me and Jesus, but one which transforms our relationship with the universe. Like the Samaritan woman, we are transformed in our healing to be better for the world.

In this service, we invite you to shed off a little of your sarcasm as the woman at the well did…we invite you to shed off a little of your fear that you might be seen as foolish…we invite you to let God’s restoration flow to you – to do the obvious and check your cables with God. As we come to the common feast of the Lord, and after we receive communion, we’ll have two prayer stations – with John Lochhead, Gail Summers, Jack and myself. And for this, you can feel free to go to the person you feel most comfortable with – the goal here is for you to feel blessed. You are invited to come for prayer, blessing and anointing with oil. If you don’t want to speak your prayer to us, just fold your arms over your chest or hold out your hand and we’ll anoint your head or your hand. We invite this to be a moment, where you let someone else pray for you your deepest longing…for restoration of a relationship, for the healing of your body, for a deeper faith, for forgiveness, whatever’s on your heart in that deepest place in your soul.

By the well a thirsty woman found the life that God could give

As we sing, let us call to mind what we bring from the deep places to God. Let’s sing and allow God to touch those deep places…to restore us, to make sure the cables are fine…to heal us, and give us a touch of that living water…as we sing MV 117

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