in the fountain in the rain

where my sorrows still remain

The Holy Gospel according to St. John!

Me and the fertilizer plant moved into Burlington around the same time. 

*Lest you think I brought it with me, just know that I beat the plant here by about a year!

The thing is though, when I first came I was relatively young and healthy. So I didn’t need a doctor. But I kept being asked who my doctor was. 

So, after a year or so, I figured I should finally get one. 

But by then, Burlington was bulging with transplants working at the plant. And I assume those workers were also filling the doctors’ appointment books, because all the offices I called weren’t taking any new patients!

I had to call three different offices before I finally found a doctor who was willing to just consider taking me!

They asked for my health information, and told me I’d get a call later that week to let me know if I’d been accepted. After a few days I got a call back telling me I’d been accepted as a patient. So I scheduled a routine physical to get to know my new doctor.

On the day of my appointment, though, as I sat in the waiting room, I looked around and couldn’t help but feel like I didn’t belong…

Eventually my name was called and I went in and had my physical, with no issues. And as I was checking out, I asked the receptionist if I could have one of their business cards for when I was filling out forms asking for my primary doctor. 

She handed one to me, and there I read “Larae Stemmerman; gynecology and family medicine.”

(*Keep in mind, I was single then! I didn’t meet any of the criteria!)

Okay, that’s a funny story; but have any of you ever been there? Have you ever been somewhere and thought, “I don’t belong here”? Or worse, been told you don’t belong?

We all have. And we all hate it. 

We do anything we can to avoid being in that position; finding out we don’t belong… 

Because folks like us, we’re used to being in one place or another by our own merits. Aren’t we? Of stepping into a room, and knowing we’ve done whatever it takes to know we belong…

And sadly, that’s even how it goes when it comes to worship, too.

We’re here because for one reason or another we’ve determined we belong. 

We’re in the Lutheran church for a reason. And we go to this service for a reason, too…

And it’s always been that way, too. 

Folks like us, we want to know we’re supposed to be here. We do all we can to make sure we have the right credentials before we set foot in here. Whether those credentials be showing up on time, looking just so, having our life together, or what have you. 

We all have this list of boxes we like to have checked off before we get here, so we can know we belong…

And that’s what’s going on with the woman’s seemingly out of nowhere reply to Jesus, after he tells her everything she has ever done, too. 

It’s all a question of belonging

The woman is a Samaritan. And as far as the Jewish people of Jesus’ day were concerned, they didn’t worship in the right place. The message was the Samaritans didn’t belong. They didn’t belong in the very temple Jesus had just come from! 

So when Jesus comes waltzing up, asking this woman for water; she can’t help but balk. What’s a Jewish guy like him doing, consorting with likes of her.

“You all think you’ve got dibs on God’s real-estate down there in Jerusalem,” she says. “So what are you doing, slumming it with the likes of me, who goes to church on the wrong side of the tracks each Sunday.”

Its always been this way when it comes to worship, we want to know what it takes to belong. 

…But Jesus won’t have any truck with that!

Instead, Jesus tells her God isn’t interested in any of that. That what God is really after, are those who worship in spirit and truth…

Nothing about doing it right. Be it location or otherwise. Nothing about have the right merits. Nothing like that. Instead, just worshipping in spirit and truth…

And here’s the thing about worshipping in spirit and truth, it doesn’t depend on what state you’re in. It depends on the state of your heart…

And if anyone knew what that was like, to go to worship with nothing more than the state of your heart, it was her. 

That woman at the well Jesus searched out that day…

Not that she was hard to find, either… 

Because everyone knew she fetched her water at high noon. 

But not because she wanted to. I mean, who would want to get their water at the hottest time of the day?

No, this woman went to the well at noon because if she went when everyone else did, they they’d just scatter from her presence the way they always did.

This woman is an outcast, among outcasts! 

Samaritans, who Jewish folks wouldn’t consort with, they won’t even stoop so low as to consort with this woman!

So this woman knows what it’s like to go somewhere and know you don’t belong…

Now John doesn’t tell us what exactly made this woman out of place everywhere she went. All we know is that, five times she placed her hopes in one relationship or another, only to be let down. 

And eventually, everyone just made a habit of avoiding her. 

As if they were afraid that they would catch her misfortune by mere proximity…

Each week as the woman schlepped her bucket to the well by herself at noon, she learned the hard way what it was like not to belong. Why, that was the story of her life. Everywhere she went, she knew didn’t belong.

She had no dibs anywhere. Everywhere she went, all she had to bring with her was the state of her heart…

And it was her, that woman, Jesus searched out that day…

And what Jesus told her was having a place in God’s church doesn’t depend on what neighborhood you come from of having your membership in the right congregation. Rather, it hinges on worshipping in spirit and truth.

Psalm 51, that penitential psalm we begin Lent with, describes the proper worship Jesus talks about. And it doesn’t have to do with location, it has to do with the heart.

“You take no delight in sacrifice,” the psalmist confesses. “A burnt offering would give God no pleasure,” they say. Rather, what experience has taught the psalmist is, what God is after is a “broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart God will not despise.”

That’s what makes for proper worship: a broken spirit, a contrite heart.

And that woman, as she went to the well by herself, she brought exactly the offering God was after. That’s why Jesus had to go to Samaria as he left Judea. Because as he tells her, “for the father seeks such as these.”

God seeks out such as these. These who come to worship with no merits, but rather a broken spirit, a contrite effort. 

And we’ve all had weeks like that, haven’t we? Weeks when you come here and, as everyone else boldly sings the hymn, you can’t help but look around and think; “I don’t belong here.” One of those weeks when something from your past keeps insisting you don’t belong.

We’ve all we been here when, just like the woman, all we have to offer is a broken heart, a contrite spirit. 

And we hate it when that happens, don’t we? We we come here and all our boxes are left unchecked. We hate that. But we shouldn’t.

We shouldn’t, because God loves to use those weeks. 

Those weeks when we come here with nothing more than our empty jars. Those weeks when Jesus must go through Burlington, too. 

For the father seeks out such as these!

Such as these who have had life tell them, in so many ways, they don’t belong. Because it is such as these, that are most ready to receive what Jesus has to give. Broken hearts ready for healing! Busted up spirits ready for resurrection!

This is what Jesus’ mission is; not to get us to finally get it right, but to give us what he has to offer. His living water that gushes up within us and fills the cracks of our broken hearts. 

Do you have a broken spirit? A shattered heart? Do you worry you don’t belong? Well think again, because the healer of our every ill is seeking out such as you out!

We’re so used to stepping into rooms certain that we belong. We do our best to avoid feeling out of place. But when we lose all that, we have everything we need to know we belong!

When you’ve had one of those weeks, when you come here with a contrite heart, a broken spirit; it is then that you most belong. 

And not just because that is when we most need to be here; true though that may be. 

No, it is then that you most belong because, when your spirit is broken, your heart contrite; God seeks you out. God sends Jesus to take your broken heart and in turn give you his sternal life. 

And when that happens, so does true worship.

So take heart, bring your spirit; and offer them up to God. We’re about to sing a hymn, and trust me, you have everything you need to know you belong, you have exactly what God is seeking out.

Let’s sing!