Jesus doesn’t go around things, does he?

Samaria should have been one of those places to go around. Jews didn’t associate with the Samaritans, who once were God’s chosen people along with the Jews, but who now had beliefs that separated them from good Jews.

So many good Jews just went around Samaria.

In John 4, though, it says that Jesus “had to go through Samaria.” Not because there wasn’t any other way. Not because it was the only way. Many times in the gospels, these words clue us into the fact that God has something in mind. Jesus had to go through Samaria, not around it, because it was God’s direction for him.

How provocative! Go right into the traitors, the half bloods, the brothers and sisters who had left the true path. Go right in among those who didn’t believe the right things about God. Go right in among those who question everything that is held dear to the Jews.

Don’t go around, go right into Samaria.

Think of all the ways Jesus condemned the seemingly good practice of “going around” people who were in the wrong. Think of all the ways Jesus challenged those who ignored other human beings in the name of staying pure, of separating one’s self from evil.

Jesus brazenly walked right through Samaria, and intentionally looked for relationship with a woman who was living in sin.

Another time, Jesus told a story where a Samaritan was a hero. The bad guys in the story–the priest and the Levite–they were “bad” precisely because they “went around” on the other side of the road and didn’t offer help to a wounded man.

Jesus criticized the Pharisees for spending all this time keeping the letter of the law at the expense of people, all this time going around and avoiding the “unclean”. Jesus said the very act of “going around” people was what made them whitewashed tombs, made them people who looked ok on the outside but were dead on the inside.

How does this challenge us? How does this affect the way we live our lives as Jesus’ followers?

Following Jesus will mean raising eyebrows and putting ourselves in danger of scandal, maybe even danger of physical harm, by deliberately going where the outcasts live.

Following Jesus will mean not going around; it will mean looking others in the eye, and speaking the truth to them in love.

We will need to find the strength to do so by worshiping God in Spirit and in Truth.

I love this story.

I love it on a personal level, what it tells us about Jesus and his amazing ability to love anyone. I love how the woman is changed profoundly, which leads to an entire town being changed. I love how much the disciples don’t get it, how Jesus is constantly pushing their boundaries and their horizons.

But when I think about who we are as the church in America, when I think about our regular, comfortable, familiar patterns as followers of Jesus…in my best moments, this story challenges and humbles me. In my worst moments, I wish this story would just go away.

Because we as a church, and me as a person, we go around people all the time. We assume that because whole groups of people don’t believe the right way or do the right things, that God wouldn’t want us to be around them.

We “go around” groups on all ends of the spectrum, depending on our point of view: liberals, fundamentalists, homosexuals, Democrats, Republicans, activists, drug addicts, the poor, sexual offenders…we all have our lists of people we want to go around.

I am so blind to people all around me, people in poverty, people suffering, people wounded, people crying out for the love of God. I walk around them, literally and figuratively, far too often…because I’m going about the “business of God.” Jesus reminds us what God’s business truly is: connecting with people in need.

What happens when we think of Jesus’ actions as a model for the church?

What happens to our plans, and our practices, and our habits, and our routines, if we look at what Jesus did and said to this untouchable Samaritan woman?

It forces us to stop going around. Going around isn’t an option. Compelled by Jesus’ example, obedient to the Spirit of life and truth, we will boldly go right in.

We’ll go right into places where “good people” don’t belong. We’ll intentionally engage people who not only grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, but whose track record in life clearly demonstrates their lives are not being lived for God.

We’ll confront the untruths in other people’s lives with the loving acceptance of Jesus. And we’ll throw wide open the gates of access to the real God, who is worshipped in Spirit and truth.

This woman and the Samaritans resented the fact that they weren’t welcomed by the Jews.

They didn’t feel that they were given access to true worship, to God, because of the Jews’ insistence on a place of worship.

When Jesus says there’s a time coming where the place of worship won’t matter, he’s doing more than setting aside cultural and religious differences.

No, says Jesus, a time is coming and is now here when EVERYONE, absolutely EVERYONE, will have the gates of heaven thrown wide open in front of them, and they will be welcomed to walk right into the presence of God.

Part of the reason that Jesus doesn’t go around places or people or hard things is because that is what God is like. God pursues us with a love so intense that nothing can separate us from it!

It’s human nature to accept God’s love for ourselves, and then make it a little harder for the others who come after us.

Jesus, especially in John, opens up access to God to all kinds of people who had been shut off by the Jews. The blind, the lame, the handicapped, the sinners, the women, the Samaritans…they were all shown by actions and words and beliefs that they did not belong in the presence of God. Yet those were the ones to whom Jesus said, “Come on in!”

A time is now coming, and is now here, Jesus says, “when all true worshippers will worship in Spirit and in truth. And I’m the one who’s bringing you the key, the living water, the freedom, the ability to worship in both Spirit and truth.”

Worship, being in God’s presence, encountering God… it doesn’t depend any more on who you are, what you’ve done, on being the right kind of person, on where or how you worship.

Worship in Spirit means all that is thrown aside. It’s a different way of connecting with God. It’s a real, mystical, intimate connection with the God of the universe.

It’s wide open to all.

No one is excluded from the possibility to worship in Spirit But true worship must also be “in truth.” Just as Jesus won’t “go around” Samaria, just as Jesus won’t “go around” or ignore this woman with a reputation, Jesus also won’t let her “go around” the truth.

He brings her face-to-face with her own wrong and immoral choices. He doesn’t go around them or ignore them, he confronts them and brings them in the open.

And Jesus brings her face to face with the essential part he himself plays in all of this. I am he! I am the one who will explain it all to you, and give you living water that will sustain you forever, and give you life with God forever.

Worship in Spirit is a sign that the presence of God is now open to absolutely anyone, regardless of how they worship or where they were born or what they have done.

Worship in truth is a sign that our wrong choices matter and must be faced, and that Jesus himself is essential to the equation of encountering God.

As we sang last week, let’s celebrate the love of God!

Yes, Jesus’ example is challenging to me and to us. It’s challenging to wonder how we will find the strength to live as he lived, to be so willing to cross the lines that divide us and open-handedly extend God’s grace.

Yes, this is hard for me and you to do.

But thank you, Jesus, thank you that you are this way!

Because it means that I am never excluded from God. It means that I can join the Samaritan woman and receive worship in Spirit and truth. It means that I can be accepted and joyfully shout with the people of this small Samaritan town, “You are the Savior of the World!”

And today I can shout, “You are my savior!”

I literally laid on the floor of my office this week, and accepted the deep love God has for me. In brokenness, in weakness, in fear, in tiredness, I experienced worship in Spirit and truth. Nothing in life is better than that experience!

God’s grace and love and acceptance are wide open to me and to you! “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life. God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.”

And what greater, tangible picture of that than Jesus with this Samaritan woman at the well?

Because Jesus, the messiah, has come, how and where we worship, what we have done or where we were born, nothing can serve as a barrier to keep us from the presence of God.

Instead, because of Jesus, the gates are thrown wide open, and he walks to us and invites us in. He confronts us with truth; we must face our wrong choices in life, regret them, and want our future choices to be different. We must face the truth that Jesus is central, that it’s all from him.

But what a great, loving, accepting God we serve!

So friends, going around is no longer an option.

There’s no going around Jesus. We must face him, face his infinite love and his call to truth, his ability to see inside us and call out the things we hide the most to wholeness. Will you and I worship in spirit and truth?

There’s no going around the impure, unworthy, “outsiders” any more, either. It’s not ok any longer to create separate, “pure” spaces, and go around all those who are outside the lines of purity we draw.

There’s no going around people who need the same open embrace of God that you and I so desperately need as well.

I think the power to stop going around others comes when we stop going around Jesus. I think when we accept and experience Jesus and his love for us, it will change us as it changed this woman and this town. When we really experience God, we will see the world through Jesus’ eyes.

We’ll see the harvest Jesus talks about. We’ll see the people we’ve been walking around, we’ll see them as people desperately loved by a self-sacrificing God, a God who sent his son to die for them.

Going around is no longer an option.