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Pastor Glenn McDonald: High Noon

George Fritsma


 

Schools are constantly changing.

 

Every few years kids are drawn to new fashions, new pop stars, and new definitions of what is cool. Old Math gives way to New Math which ultimately reverts to Old Math. Educators adjust what rightfully belongs to the core curriculum, and school board members adjust to the latest budget shortfalls.

 

But one reality never changes.

 

In the cruel subculture of most schools, there are always kids who are relegated to the social periphery.

 

You can see it at recess. Or in the locker room. Or at high noon during lunch. For many kids, those are the loneliest hours of the day – the moments when you find out if you have friends. And everybody else finds out if you have friends, too. 

 

But every now and then something miraculous happens.

 

Someone from an established circle of friends approaches someone who has been left out and says, “May I sit down?”

 

Somewhere in the background, the friends of that brave person are whispering: Don’t do it. She’s not worth it. She’s beneath you. Yet it happens anyway. And a moment like that may save the entire semester for a lonely kid.

 

But make no mistake: It costs something for the person who has friends to lose.

 

During most of its history, the Middle East has been an honor-based culture. Honor is everything. It’s better to die than to lose your honor, or to cost your family its public standing.

 

Honor was a limited commodity in the time of Jesus. There was only so much to go around. If one person gained honor, somebody else had to lose theirs in order to balance the accounts.

 

In the Gospels, Jesus seems oblivious to such unwritten rules. At the beginning of an extended conversation in John 4:1-26, he sits down in the presence of a Samaritan woman who has come to fill her empty bucket at the local well. He even initiates a conversation with her. What is he thinking?

 

The religious establishment considered Samaritans racial half-breeds and theological heretics. The dirt of Samaria was deemed unworthy for the soles of righteous feet.

 

Furthermore, this woman has been married five times – and five times her name has appeared in the newspaper under Filed for Divorce. Now she’s got a live-in lover. Her neighbors apparently treat her like trailer trash. No rabbi comforts her. According to the theology of the day, she is unworthy of God’s kindness.

 

According to John, Jesus meets her at “the sixth hour.” That’s high noon. She’s come to draw water at the hottest time of the day, which is almost certainly the hour when she’s least likely to experience the judgmental stares of her neighbors.

 

Her public honor savings account is bankrupt. She has nothing to give Jesus. But he has a lot to lose. Every time Jesus goes into the house of a tax collector, or touches a leper, or pays attention to a prostitute as if she is a real person and not just a dirty object, honor flows from his account to their accounts. The most amazing thing about the Gospels is that God drops his stock in order to raise ours.

 

Notice how the scriptwriters of the Jesus bio series The Chosen depict this scene: Jesus and the Woman at the Well (John 4).

 

They have chosen to fill in the blanks with dialogue that doesn’t appear in John’s account, but which helps us comprehend the woman’s transformation. She says, from the depths of her unworthiness, “You picked the wrong person.” Jesus replies, “I came to Samaria just to meet you. Do you think it’s an accident that I’m here in the middle of the day?”

 

I once heard a teacher provide this summary of the Samaritan woman’s experience: 

 

She had come with a bucket. He sent her back with a spring of living water. She had come as a reject. He sent her back being accepted by God himself. She came wounded. He sent her back whole. She came laden with questions. He sent her back as a source for answers. She came living a life of quiet desperation. She ran back overflowing with hope.

 

Every now and then something miraculous happens. 

 

A brave person whose bucket is full chooses to bless someone whose bucket is empty. And the world becomes a little more whole.

 

You can be that person today.

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