Our Story as God Tells It

Sermon for the Third Sunday of Lent (Lent Sabbath Challenge Preaching Series)

March 12, 2023

Deuteronomy 5: 12-15

Psalm 95

John 4:5-42

Sometimes, the stories that others tell about us aren’t true. 

In high school, I had a guidance counselor named Mr. Erasmi. (I called him “Mr. Harass Me,” but I digress). Mr. Erasmi decided that I was not a very bright student. He looked at my standardized test scores, and he looked at my grades in math and chemistry, and he predetermined what “kind” of student I was. He didn’t consider that I might have undiagnosed ADD, or perhaps a learning disability that prevented me from flourishing in every subject. What he saw when he looked at me was someone of mediocre intelligence. Someone who shouldn’t waste his time applying to first-rate universities (because he wouldn’t be accepted). Someone who should set his sights a little lower, who should probably consider one of the many community college options available to him instead.  

This is what Mr. Erasmi used to tell me. It was a story about me he believed to be true. 

And the sad thing is, he told it to me so many times that I eventually believed it to be true about me as well. I started to believe that I wasn’t intelligent. I started to believe that I would never get into a good university. I started to believe that I shouldn’t set my sights too high. 

Now, decades later, I realize that Mr. Erasmi was not a good guidance counselor. He told himself (and me) and story about me that wasn’t true. A story that taught me to see myself in certain ways. That served to imprison me in the expectations he had for me, rather than what I was genuinely capable of. There are days, even now, when I struggle to master something or feel incompetent at something, when I still hear his voice ringing in head. When I still wonder, what if Mr. Erasmi was right? I have to confess, I’ve often wanted to send him copies of my diplomas… from the University of Virginia, from the University of Chicago, from Yale. But that would just be ostentatious!

The point I’m trying to make is that sometimes, people tell a story about us that isn’t true. They think they know us. What we’re capable of. The “kind” of person we are. The have us pigeonholed. Or they assume that the way are we are is the way we’ve always been, and the way we always will be, like a broken record on repeat forever. And sometimes, if we aren’t careful, we can believe their story ourselves. We can believe that it’s true. And the story they tell can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

In different ways, both of our readings this morning, from Deuteronomy as well as from John’s Gospel, are about people about whom others had told stories that weren’t true. Our first reading is the Sabbath commandment, the fourth commandment from the Ten Commandments. There are actually two versions of the Ten Commandments in the Bible, one in the book of Exodus, and the other in the book of Deuteronomy. The version we hear this morning is from Deuteronomy. And there, the primary reason that the Israelites remember their need for the Sabbath is their experience as in Egypt. 

“Remember,” the commandment says, “you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.” 

Now in Egypt, the person who told a story about the Israelites that wasn’t true was Pharaoh. As you may remember, the story that Pharoah told about them was that they were slaves. That they belonged to him, and no one else. That they were not, nor would they ever be, free. The story he told was they had to be controlled, lest they become too numerous and powerful, and take power away from Pharoah. The story he told was that they were only worth how much they could produce for Pharaoh’s empire—how many bricks they could make. The story he told was that they were lazy for wanting to step away from their work and make sacrifices to their God. 

This is the story that Pharaoh told about the Israelites. The story he believed to be true about them. 

And after a while—generations of being enslaved by Pharoah—it’s a story that the Israelites started to believe was true about themselves too. Maybe this is who we are, they began to believe. Maybe this is the way things will always be. Maybe what Pharoah says about us is true. 

Which is why, of course, they needed someone to deliver them—from slavery, and from the false story that Pharoah told about them.   They needed someone who could remind them of their true story. They weren’t an enslaved people. They were a free people. They weren’t just worth what they produced. Their worth came from their being made in the image of God. They weren’t Pharoah’s people. They were God’s people, a people God had chosen. A people God loved. A people whose story, whose true story, was known by God, not Pharoah. 

And after fleeing Pharoah and Egypt under Moses’ hand, and spending forty years in the desert—for many of them, in withdrawal over not having to work all the time—they slowly begin to see this. They slowly begin to see who they really were. And they slowly began to believe the story that God told about them, and not Pharoah’s lies. So important was their knowing this story about themselves that it appears in the Ten Commandments, in the Sabbath commandment we hear today!

Again, “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.” They are to remember their time in Egypt, but most importantly, they are to remember that God had liberated them from enslavement to work, and that they are free. And it was practicing the Sabbath that would help them to remember this about themselves. They were commanded to rest so they would never forget it. 

Only a few lines after our reading today, Deuteronomy tells the people to recite this story to their children. To talk about it when they are at home, and when they are away, when they lie down and when they rise. To bind it as a sign on their heads, to fix it as an emblem on their foreheads, and write it on the doorposts of their houses and on their gates. You are a free people! Created in God’s image! Chosen by God, and loved! Don’t ever forget it! 

Then there is our Gospel story this morning, this poignant story about Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman at a well. 

We know virtually nothing about this woman. The writer of the Gospel story doesn’t even give us her name! All we really know about her is that she is a Samaritan, and also what Jesus says about her—that she has had five husbands and that the man she is currently with isn’t her husband. 

Now, I don’t know, but I imagine that other people might have told a particular story about this woman. The people around her in the city. Her neighbors. Perhaps, in their eyes, she is a woman with past. Perhaps she is “that woman”—the one who has been married five times, and is now living with someone who isn’t even her husband! Perhaps they think they have her all figured out. 

“Oh yes,” I imagine them saying to themselves. “We know all about her.” Perhaps they see her as “damaged goods.” Perhaps, in the story they tell about her, her failures loom large. Perhaps there is doubt about whether she is worthy of love or capable of loving others. 

And perhaps she’s gotten so used to the story others tell about her that she’s just accepted that it must be true. That she has failed. That she is somehow “damaged.” That she isn’t worthy of others’ love or capable of loving others. And maybe she’s playing these old tapes about herself in her head one day on her way to the well just like she does every day. Not expecting anything to be different. Only it turns out that today isn’t like other days. Because today, when she gets to the well, there is a man there, a man who isn’t like any man she’s ever met before. He’s a complete stranger to her. Different from her in pretty much every way.  

For one thing, Jews like him and Samaritans like her didn’t mix. And certainly not Jewish men and Samaritan women! It would’ve been scandalous to say the least, for someone like Jesus to ever come into contact with someone like her, and even more scandalous to ask her for a drink of water! Yet, it’s almost like he was here by the well waiting for her. 

But there’s something else about him. She can’t put her finger on it at first, but then, but after a little while, she realizes what it is: this man already knows her. Somehow, he knows her story, all of her story. And he tells it to her. But it’s not the same old story she’s used to hearing about herself. The one about being a failure. Or damaged. Or unworthy of love. The one full of shame. No, this time, the story is different. It’s the story of her life as Jesus sees it—and as Jesus tells it. Yes, the regrets and the failures are there. But this isn’t the heart of her story, not as Jesus sees it.  And this isn’t the end of her story, either, not as Jesus it. 

And when she hears her story, her true story, told to her by this man who looks on her with the greatest tenderness, the greatest mercy, the greatest love, something amazing happens: she is set free from the old story. Like so many others who’d encountered Jesus and heard from him their true story, she is set free. Free to follow him. She runs into the city and she tells everyone about him.  “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!” she proclaims. And in an instant, she is transformed from a nameless woman imprisoned by her past into a disciple of Jesus Christ. And her story is transformed from a place of shame into a place of conversion for herself and for others. “Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me everything I have ever done.’” 

I want to invite you to imagine yourself for a moment as the Samaritan woman. Imagine yourself encountering Jesus as she did. Imagine yourself in his presence. Imagine him looking at you, beholding you, all of you. Seeing who you really are. Perhaps, if you have a hard time imagining yourself speaking to a man by a well in ancient Samaria, you might imagine Jesus as someone in your life. Someone who knows you. Someone who really knows, and yet who still loves you. 

Imagine yourself in that person’s presence. Imagine them seeing you with so much tenderness and love that you almost want to look away. And imagine them turning down the volume on all of the stories of who others say you are. And imagine them telling you your true story. What does Jesus say to you?  Is his version of your story the version that you were expecting? Is it the version you’ve heard a thousand times? The version where people have you all figured out, and where you don’t change? The version you’d long accepted as true? 

Today, Jesus longs to give you (to give all of us) a great gift. It’s the same gift he offered to the woman at the well. It’s the same gift that God gave to God’s people when they had long accepted that they would be always be slaves to Pharaoh. It’s the same gift he offered me when I accepted Mr. Erasmi’s story about me: It’s the gift of knowing who you really are. The gift of knowing your story, your true story, as only God can tell it: That you are created in God’s image. That you have been chosen by God, and are precious in God’s sight. That you are no slave—not to your past, not to other people, not to your work. That you are loved. 

These things have always been true about you, and about me. Now it’s time that we believe them. Amen. 

—The Reverend Edmund Harris