SERMON Lent 3 (Year A)  27 February 2005 

May our hearts be open to your voice, O God of compassion. Amen. 

‘We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbours as ourselves’. 

The French cartoonist, Claire Brétecher, has drawn a magnificent strip cartoon showing how the whole course of French history could have been quite different. The cartoon is about Joan of Arc.  In the first few frames we see Joan as a young girl going about her chores. God is gently tapping her on the shoulder but Joan simply does not even notice. Then God gets a bit more insistent – still no response. And so it goes on, until eventually God is standing right in front of her with a huge brass band behind him, shouting ‘Joan, Joooooaaaaaaaannnn’. And still she does not notice. Eventually God just gives up and goes away. 

Joan does not realise that God is calling her to a transformed life, which in turn was to transform the life of others. In this Brétecher’s Joan is utterly unlike the Samaritan woman in today’s Gospel who is confronted by the truth about herself and the truth about Jesus and experiences the freedom that comes with such truth. 

In this one, quite short passage, we have the story of a remarkable encounter. The Samaritan woman is at the well at midday. Although the text does not explain why she would be there alone in the heat of the day, scholars believe that she was shunned by the other townswomen because of her colourful sexual history: 5 husbands and a lover. In approaching her and asking for a drink, Jesus broke through many taboos – Jews did not ask such things of Samaritans, men did not ask such things of women unknown to them, and indeed, were doubly reticent if they suspected that the woman was of ill repute. But Jesus engaged her in conversation and revealed to her his identity as the Messiah. Her shame forgotten, she went back to the city to tell the people there about Jesus. Her transformation from scarlet woman to herald of God happened in the space of time it would take us to eat lunch. The encounter with Jesus, and his knowledge and acceptance of who she is, enabled her to take a new place in her society. In one of those delicious ironies, she, the outcast, becomes the one by whom many are brought into the kingdom of God.  

The Samaritan woman was, it seems, surprised by truth. She was not expecting to be so deeply known by someone who appeared to her as a total stranger.  

But we are privileged observers of that scene. We know who Jesus is and that every fibre of her being is known to God and loved by God. There is nowhere to hide from God’s gaze. Nor is it surprising to us that the encounter between them turns her life around. The whole thrust of the Gospel stories is of transformation, of people being brought to wholeness of body, mind, spirit and relationship through their encounters with Jesus and his teaching. The world was changed forever by the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus. 

All the more remarkable then, that we so often seek to hide ourselves and our sins, both from ourselves and from God. What is there to fear? Are we afraid of the condemnation that, in our heart of hearts, we feel is our due? Are we perhaps afraid of unjust condemnation from someone who doesn’t understand all the ethical intricacies of the situation in which we have found ourselves? But surely God’s track record is better than that.  

The General Confession and Absolution offer us, week by week, a place where we can pause, search our souls and seek the transformation offered by God’s acceptance and forgiveness. The fundamental criterion against which our thoughts, words and actions are measured is contained in the central section of the Confession: ‘we have not loved you with our whole heart, we have not loved our neighbours as ourselves’.  

These two lines are, of course, adapted from the answer Jesus gave when he was asked about the greatest commandment of them all. Rather than picking one of the ten given to Moses, he used Scriptural text to reach to the heart of the principles involved and, in so doing, neatly pulled the rug out from under the people who were trying to trick him.  

The commandments to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbour as ourselves, are at the very core of the Christian ethic. They point to a trinity of loving relationship – with God, with those around us and with self. These relationships underpin who we are, what we do, what we say.  

And they are tough, very tough. In fact, they make the 10 commandments look like a walk in the park. Most of the 10 commandments tell us what NOT to do – not to steal, make graven images of God, murder, commit adultery, covet our neighbours’ possessions and so on. The Two Great Commandments demand much more of us. 

Let’s explore them one by one. Loving God is challenging enough. But at least we can feel that God merits our attention and will return our love. However, more is asked of us – we are to love our neighbours too. It is not enough to do no active harm to them – we are to love them, even if they are our enemies. In this we are commanded to love as God loves – profligately, without expectation that our love will be returned, rewarded or even understood (except, of course, by God).  

And neatly tucked in at the end, like the sting in the tail, is the implicit commandment to love ourselves. If we do not love ourselves as we should, then we will not love our neighbours as we should. A healthy self love is something many of us struggle with. Somewhere in between the poles of self-hatred and outright narcissism, obsessive self focus, is an attitude towards self which acknowledges both our strengths and our weaknesses, which is secure in the knowledge of God’s love and which provides a solid platform for relationship with others. It is to this that God calls us: a love for self which insists that we accord ourselves the care and attention that we give to others.  

My experience is that most people struggle particularly with one or more of these relationships. There are those who find God too remote, too awe-inspiring, to be lovable – an object of fear, perhaps, but not love. Most of us, if we are being truly honest, would admit that our love for those around us is both selective and finite. We define the word ‘neighbour’ much more narrowly than God would define it. And our love towards those who do fall within its limits is so often conditional on their behaviour towards us. There are also many people whose self regard is unhealthily out of whack – whether it be towards the pole of self-hatred or the opposite pole of narcissism.  

It is of some consolation that the General Confession assumes that we have failed to live up to these commandments. It is a bald statement: ‘we have not loved you with our whole heart, we have not loved our neighbours as ourselves’.  There is no conditionality at all, no ‘if we have failed to love you with our whole heart and our neighbours as ourselves, we repent’. It is taken as read. When I am downcast at my continuing failure in this regard, it is reassuring to know that I am not alone. Clearly, these commandments are so tough to live up to that no one, in their heart of hearts, can reasonably think that they have managed to crack them.  However, we can expect that, inasmuch as we are able to live these commandments, our lives will transform the lives of those around us. 

So these lines sit there, each week, waiting to challenge us, calling us to a rigorous honesty, but always against the background of God’s knowledge of us and unconditional love for us. There is nothing about ourselves that God does not know before we say it, nothing that is hidden behind the walls of our hearts and minds that is a surprise to God – to us, maybe, but not to God.  

The Samaritan woman found transforming truth and acceptance in her encounter with Jesus. As we come today to share in the bread and wine of his body, may we open our hearts with honesty and find transforming truth and acceptance in our encounter with Jesus.   

Merciful God, our maker and our judge,
We have sinned against you in thought, word and deed,
And in what we have failed to do.
We have not loved you with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbours as ourselves.  Amen.  

Sarah Macneil 

February 2005