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“Starting a Conversation”, Jeff Wright, 3/23/14

Starting a Conversation

A sermon preached at

Heart of the Rockies Christian Church

(Disciples of Christ)

Fort Collins, Colorado

March 23, 2014

Some of my friends who aren’t Christians think that Christians are insistent and demanding and intruding, but that isn’t the case. Those folks are the squeaky wheel. Most Christians have enormous respect for the space and freedom of others; it is only that they have found a joy in Jesus they want to share. There is the tension.

Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz

Texts: Psalm 95:1-7 & John 4:5-42

For some of us, it’s hard to believe that last week marked fifteen years since the shootings at Columbine High School. Not long after the tragedy, a few pastors met with Don Unger, then-superintendent of Poudre School District. We wanted to offer ourselves and our congregations to the district as a way to develop relationships with the district’s staff should Fort Collins ever experience a “Columbine.” Superintendent Unger was receptive. He asked both of his vice superintendents to attend the meeting. All three were eager to explore ways that faith communities might partner with the schools. Faith Volunteers in Poudre Schools – the program in which our church partners with Laurel Elementary – came about as a result of that meeting. But it didn’t happen overnight.

As Unger and his colleagues anticipated, our proposal was met with opposition. Some on the board questioned our offer. Others said that it would be a violation of the “separation of church and state” clause. One school board member – sure that our purpose was to witness to kids – was adamant about not letting it happen. At first. But in subsequent meetings and by way of a Memorandum of Understanding, folks were assured that we simply wanted to go where invited and take on any ordinary tasks that teachers and staffs might want us to do.

I’m recounting this history not to question the hesitation and suspicion on the part of the school district. I’m thinking instead about the church. How have we led our culture to believe that followers of Jesus are just out to serve ourselves, to tell the rest of the world how to believe and behave? How did it happen that a local school board thought it had to protect its students from the local church?

In his book, The Church on the Other Side, Brian McLaren writes about speaking to a group of visiting scholars from the People’s Republic of China. He was given the topic, “The Existence of God.” McLaren didn’t expect many to show up at his University of Maryland lecture, but the response pleasantly surprised him. He tells how he had re-titled the lecture, “How to Think About the Existence of God.” He presented a series of questions a person would have to consider in a search for God. He offered some of the possible answers to these questions, shared the Christian approach, told a personal story of how his faith had helped him cope during a particularly difficult time in his life and then invited questions. McLaren writes:

A distinguished gentleman stood, with Asian respect, to ask his question: “Sir, I do not have a question, but I wish to thank you on behalf of all of us. You have helped us a great deal. Instead of telling us what to believe, you have told us how to believe, and this is very good for us.”

Then a woman stood and said, “Yes, I agree with my colleague. You see, in my country, whenever anyone tells us what to believe, we know he is lying. The harder he pushes, the more we disbelieve him. Your approach is very helpful for us.”

The scholars’ responses got McLaren thinking about how the church has carried on its conversation with the world. Far too often, it’s been a one-way rant. We’ve been combative, defensive, and judgmental without being self-critical. Sometimes, we’ve abandoned the public conversation by being too easily distracted by what McLaren calls our “chasing field mice” instead of “hunting tigers.” “Is the earth ten thousand years old?” is a field mouse question. “Is there meaning to life?”: that’s a tiger question.

And too often the Church has exaggerated our claims to the point of dishonesty.

“The Bible has all the answers to all of life’s problems!”

“Believe in Jesus and all will go well in your life!” 

“Believe now, because the world is going to end next month!”

McLaren calls it false advertising. No wonder the world is suspicious and dismissive.

Turn now to the conversation Jesus had with the Samaritan woman, how he began not by telling the woman who he was, or how she had to get her life together or else. No, picture Jesus at that well, simply asking for a drink of water. Amazing.

Amazing on several levels. Amazing that he speaks to the woman in the first place. There was a saying that any Jew who receives help or accepts a favor from a Samaritan delays the coming of the kingdom. Jesus asks a favor anyway. It’s even more amazing. It isn’t just that she’s a Samaritan. It’s that she’s a

she. A lot of Bible commentaries go as far as to suggest that she was a loose woman. But they overlook the realities of her day: a social system through which women by death, divorce or indifference were passed from man to man in a pattern that ended with this woman no longer enjoying what little protections marriage might have afforded her.1 She was an outcast. John says that when Jesus’ disciples return from their errand they’re astonished. That’s the word John uses: astonished.

So much of what we take from a text has to do with what we bring to the text. This time around, when I read the account of this conversation, I was thinking about our church board’s encouraging Melissa and me to spend more time in the community. And I was thinking about our community – largely disinterested in the church, even adverse in some quarters. So it’s not that Jesus initiates a conversation at the well that strikes me, not this time. Nor the substance of their conversation. Not even the startling conclusion this woman is led to – that Jesus may be the Messiah. This time around, it’s the manner in which Jesus engages the stranger. He begins by asking a favor. He invites a conversation. It strikes the woman as amazing, too. Jesus lets her lead the conversation. By the end of it, she knows that Jesus knows her, cares about her. According to John’s telling of the encounter, this seems to be all that Jesus wants out of

the conversation – for the woman to know that he knows and that he cares. That and a drink of water.

What a great lesson in evangelism. A lot of people are put off by the word

evangelism. In too many instances we’ve experienced it as a telling not a conversation, insistence not invitation, a sales job not a gift. The root of the word, evangel, means good news. But for many in our culture the way Christians have evangelized is bad news, intrusive and intimidating. Jesus doesn’t consider the woman an outsider, doesn’t judge and dismiss her. He sees her as an equal. This may be the most important learning in this passage. Jesus engages the woman – a Samaritan woman, a woman with no social standing – and treats her like an equal.

But there’s more. Jesus begins by expressing his own need, his own vulnerability. He’s tired and thirsty. He asks for a favor from the stranger. When she takes up the conversation, he refuses to be distracted by the “field mouse” question – where a person worships God – and focuses instead on the woman’s thirst, her isolation and how he can help her overcome it. He invites her into a relationship.

Colorado Public Radio is carrying a lot of stories about the consequences of our state having approved the sale of recreational marijuana. Jenny Brundine did a story last week about kids who are heavy pot users – missing more school, getting lower grades and struggling with how to stop – and how one school is addressing the problem.

2 At Adams City High in Commerce City, when kids are caught high in school, instead of suffering suspension administrators offer them an opportunity to enroll in a unique program. There are many features to the new program. Therapist Erica Hermann spoke of one that caught my attention. She said, “Some kids aren’t ready to quit marijuana. They aren’t [aware that they’re] experiencing any problems in their lives, so they think, ‘Why quit?’” So Hermann meets them where they are. “If we push the kids to change, they just shut down.” You know what she does? She starts a conversation. She lets the youth lead the conversation. She listens carefully for little discrepancies about where the teens are now and where they say they want to be. If they say they won’t be smoking when they’re 30 with a family, Hermann asks, “Why?” The youth talk about things that apply to them now: wanting their own kids to be motivated and focused, for example. “If you join them,” Hermann said. If you join them. If you listen, if you make yourself available…The report called it “a ground-breaking approach.” Being available. Having a conversation. Sharing back and forth. Wow, when did that become ground-breaking in our culture?!

John recorded his Gospel, his account of the Good News of God’s loving care, as a series of conversations. Recall some of the more familiar: Jesus’ discussion with Nicodemus who comes to him in the dark of night; his conversation with the scribes and the Pharisees, scribbled on the ground and spoken aloud, when they brought to him the woman caught in adultery, and after they turned and walked away his short but blessed exchange with her; his conversations with the man who had been born blind, and with Martha when her brother Lazarus died; the long conversation he had with his disciples on the eve of his crucifixion; his exchange with Pilate; after his resurrection, his breakfast conversation with Peter.

If our culture’s defensiveness is, in part, our fault, there are some things we can do to ease our neighbors’ mistrust. Like Jesus, we’ll have to create some safe spaces for vulnerable conversation. We’ll have to risk having conversations with those who are wary, those who are

impatient with us, defensive, even those who may despise us – in the confidence that there’s a place in many of them that would welcome a genuine conversation.

This summer, it’s our hope to start some conversations. We’re planning on the church going back to New

WestFest in August. Melissa and I hope you’ll join us in working a confessional booth. That’s right, a confessional booth – something like they have in the Catholic Church. We’ll register for NewWestFest, get some of our carpenters to build the booth, and set it up in the space we’re assigned. Then we’ll invite folks in for confession. This isn’t our idea. Donald Miller came up with the plan. He writes about it in his book, Blue Like Jazz. When Miller first suggested to his prayer group that they set up a confessional on their university campus, they thought he was crazy. But they hadn’t let him finish explaining.

He went on to say that when students would come to find out what the confessional booth was all about, they’d be told that Don and his bunch weren’t receiving confessions. Instead, they wanted to confess to their fellows students. They’d talk about how, through the ages, the church has done some terrible things – burning so-called heretics at the stake, the crusades, witch hunts, that kind of thing. We won’t take responsibility for the entire history of Christianity’s messes. It’ll be a more personal confession. Each of us who’ll work the booth will come up with our own stuff. For example, even though I believe in a God who loves everybody, I’ve too often played favorites, judged and excluded folks. Jesus teaches me to pray for those who persecute me, but instead of praying I often lash out when my ego is challenged. As a Number Three on the Enneagram, I tend to exaggerate so folks will like me – not a very convincing witness to the Way, the Truth and the Life. Maybe I’ll tell folks that, as a pastor, it’s easier for me to preach about the poor and marginalized and tell others to get out and work to change the systems that lead to poverty and marginalization, than to go myself. I expect that there’ll be Christians there, whose theology and understanding of the faith are far from my own; I’ll have to apologize for distancing myself from them.

Then we’ll listen and we’ll respond as best we can. I’m sure it’ll start some conversations. New

WestFest is a three-day festival, so I hope we’ll get ten or fifteen or twenty of you to participate. You think you can’t do this. You think you’ll be embarrassed. You think folks’ll think you’re crazy. You’ll be right on two out of the three.

Here’s a curious thing, from the text this morning. John says that Jesus had to go through Samaria to get from Judea to the Galilee. Jesus could have taken a more direct route. A safer way. Instead, he went out of his way on his way back home. He entered unfamiliar and hostile territory. Turns out, he had a pretty remarkable conversation.

— Jeff Wright

1 Thomas Long, Whispering the Lyrics, p.35

2 The program is Encompass. The Colorado Public Radio report can be found here: http://www.cpr.org/news/story/marijuana-addicted-teens-one-colorado-school-trying-groundbreaking-approach