The people of Israel grumbled. They complained because there was no water. They were hurting. They were thirsty. They were in need. It made them question if God had forgotten them. “Is the Lord in our midst or not?” Perhaps something similar happened to you. Have you ever been hurting so much you felt abandoned by God? Maybe you were overwhelmed with grief at the loss of a loved one. Try as you would, when you sought consolation none came. Grief can make one wonder, “Is the Lord in our midst or not?” Or perhaps family troubles seem to be more than one can bear: relationships ruptured, abuse occurring, finances failing, resentments resulting. Troubles can make one wonder, “Is the Lord in our midst or not?” Or maybe it’s something personal: loneliness, sickness, shame, guilt, addiction, affliction, doubt, worry, anxiety. Those kinds of things can make one wonder, “Is the Lord in our midst or not?” When we ask that question it’s almost as if we expect that when the Lord is in our midst, things will go well. When things aren’t going well we ask, “Where are you, Lord?” However, the Biblical pattern is different. God wasn’t only with Israel when things were going well – God was with them all the time. As a matter of fact, during times of chastisement God seemed closest to the chosen people. God wasn’t only with Jesus when he was curing the sick and raising the dead. God was with Jesus in Gethsemane and on Calvary’s hill. Our task this morning, then, is to look at the biblical evidence to learn how to recognize that God is in our midst both in the good times and in the bad times. Happily, we have a prime example of what it is like to have God in one’s midst in the story from St. John’s gospel of Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at the Well. We can look at the ways he was with the Samaritan woman back then to learn how he is with us right now.
First of all, notice that when Jesus was with the Samaritan woman he asked something of her: “Give me a drink.” We should not be surprised that God in our midst asks things of us as well. We recognize some of things God asks us: to pray, to keep the commandments, to be good stewards of our time, talent and treasure. But we can also find in Jesus’ request another way that God is with us. Remember the words of Jesus that the least of his brothers and sisters, those who do in fact thirst and hunger, those who are sick or in prison, are how he is with us today. We have an opportunity to give Jesus himself a drink whenever we serve someone in need. We discover the Lord is in our midst when we hear the cry of the suffering. There is a famous incident in Elie Wiesel’s book about his experience in the concentration camp, Night. The prisoners were forced to watch a young child being hung. It took more than a half-hour for the child to die. Wiesel writes: “Behind me, I heard the same man asking: ‘For God’s sake, where is God?’ And from within me, I heard a voice answer; ‘Where is He? This is where – hanging here from this gallows…’” God is in our midst when we are in solidarity with those suffering in this world. The Lord hears the cry of the poor. Can we do no less?
The story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman also illustrates that God is in our midst when we face up to “everything I have ever done.” As a matter of fact, according to the gospel story, it was because Jesus confronted her with what she had done – lovingly, gracefully confronted her – that she was able to recognize that in her midst was a prophet, the coming Messiah, the Christ. Perhaps one of the reasons we have a difficult time realizing that God is in our midst is due to our inability to confront everything that we have ever done. We live in an age of excuses, of what the law calls mitigating circumstances. I had a bad childhood. I am going through a rough time. I was depressed. I have a bad self-image. Those people disrespected me. And because of those circumstances we excuse our unkindness, our cruelty, our selfishness, our greed, our anger. But the woman at the well didn’t make excuses. “Yes, that’s who I am. I did it.” That ability to accept honestly her own culpability made it possible for her to see Jesus for who he was. If we are to see Jesus in our midst we must also unblinkingly examine our own lives in light of the gospel. Unless we are willing to acknowledge who we are, even with our faults and failings, we’ll never become who God wants us to be. Once we do make a fearless moral inventory we’ll find, like the woman at the well, that God is in our midst, that Jesus accepts us just as we are even as he calls us to a more holy and godly life.
Finally, we discover that God is in our midst when we worship God, as Jesus said to the Samaritan woman, “in Spirit and in truth.” We live in the age of fake news and alternative facts. But God is the God of truth. And the truth is that there isn’t anyone out there that isn’t made in God’s image and likeness – no matter their income, race or immigration status. The truth, Jesus said, is that both Jew and Samaritan, both men and women are children of God. The truth is that the more inclusive we can be as a church, as a community, as a nation the greater awareness we’ll have of what it means to say that the Lord is in our midst.
St. Paul says “hope does not disappoint.” Our hopes for love and acceptance will not disappoint because Jesus is in our midst as we worship in spirit and truth. Our hopes for peace and unity will not disappoint because Jesus is in our midst as we tend to those who are thirsting and hungering. Our hopes for happiness and joy will not disappoint because Jesus is in our midst inviting us to get out of that place we are stuck and move into life, life to the full. And with that hope, we, like the people of the Samaritan town, will be able to say: “We have heard for ourselves, and we know that Jesus is truly the savior of the world.”
