Friends
Peace be with you.
I was thinking about ways to modernize my homilies. Fifteen years ago, I heard about a Protestant pastor who would show cute videos as part of his sermon, but none of the six churches I pastored at the time had a TV or a video screen in front so I missed that opportunity. Ten years ago, I heard from a Catholic deacon with a projector and screen in the front of his church using Powerpoint to highlight the main points of his homily and I thought that it seemed like a boring adaptation of what that Protestant pastor was doing five years before. So, here’s what I’m thinking: let’s call it homily scrolling. I’ll start a homily and if anyone finds it boring, you can stretch out your arm directly in front of you and move your finder up, like you do on YouTube or Instagram or TikTok or any of those other video streaming platforms. You scroll past a video you don’t want to watch by swiping at it and the video changes. If I see a finger swipe the homily and I’ll know it’s time to change the topic.
So let’s get started. This passage reminds me of an experience I had when I was in seminary….and I see someone has swiped up because they’ve never been to seminary so they don’t find it relatable. Okay…This passage reminds me of the movie Good Will Hunting…I see another swipe up because I’ve preached too often about movies recently and even fairly recently preached about Good Will Hunting. To understand this gospel you really have to understand women’s role in society at the time of Jesus…I see two people swiping up, one because the message is too sociological instead of theological and another because it’s obviously too controversial. At this point, I’m going to have a yellow lab come running from the side of the church and jump into a pile of leaves because everyone loves that…except someone swiped up because they got bit by a yellow lab. So, I’m going to have a shirtless buff dude and a bikini-clad woman come out and reenact this gospel passage, which I expect people would immediately swipe up on but for some reason it takes a lot longer than the other attempts at a homily but eventually someone did. Next, I talk about the first reading and the idea of God being a rock and immediately someone swipes up because Peter is the rock and I clearly don’t know what I’m talking about. So, I have a police officer come out and try and arrest someone who is a sovereign citizen and the two argue about whether the police officer has the right to pull over the person until the police officer pepper sprays the guy and pulls him out of church. At first, no one swipes anything but eventually we do hoping that the shirtless dude and bikini clad woman could come back because we felt something with that one different than we did the others.
Now, I’m obviously being facetious here. You can “swipe up” all you want to but I’m not going to change the topic of my homily but I do hope that it illustrates something that is common in contemporary culture. Today is Safe Haven Sunday, a time for us to reflect upon how we can keep ourselves and our families safe from the serious sin of pornography. There are a lot of statistics I could throw at you about why it is sinful and unhealthy for people to engage with pornography. But the biggest reason for me can be seen in the gospel for today.
Jesus is in Sychar, the capital city of the region referred to as Samaria. Unlike most Jews, who walk around this area to the East along the Jordan River, it says Jesus had to go through this place. He sends his disciples off to get some food and then stays by a well. A well, at the time of Jesus, was a place for what today we would call hook-up culture. If you wanted to meet someone for what we euphemistically refer to as a “romantic encounter”, you would meet them at a well. This is probably because it’s one of the rare times when a woman would be by herself away from her husband or father. This woman approaches and seems kind of harsh to Jesus. Part of that is because there was a lot of enmity between Jews and Samaritans but part is revealed by Jesus when he says she has had five husbands and the one she is with now is not her own. A woman cannot divorce at the time of Jesus so that means this woman has been married five times and, each time, her husband has divorced her. It’s possible that this woman is harsh because the last person she wants to talk to right now is some Jew who has come to Samaria looking for a clandestine romantic encounter. The whole reason she’s gone out in the middle of the day is to avoid having to talk to people. If she went in the morning, all the people of town would be there and they’d be judging her for whatever reason they heard about her being divorced and for living with a man who is not her husband. She’s probably got a reputation and she thinks that’s why this Jew sent his friends away so he could be alone with her.
But Jesus isn’t interested in romance, he’s interested in love. And he knows it has to start by removing shame. Shame gets in the way of love. Shame comes from having to hide our activities away from people with whom we should be transparent. Some people think that the best way to get rid of shame is to live and let live. I’m not going to judge you and you're not going to judge me regardless of what we do. However, we can’t deny that morality matters. Even the biggest live-and-let-live person has a problem with child pornography and human trafficking, which a lot of pornography involves. And there are definitely adverse health effects to exposure to pornography that a lot of psychologists are discovering that have made them throw up red flags.
When it becomes clear to the woman at the well that Jesus is not there for romance or religious debate, she becomes intrigued and calls him a prophet. Jesus shows how compassionate he is by inviting her to salvation. He says, not that she needs to go worship in the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, but that God will come to her in Spirit and truth. And she realizes that God HAS come to her in the person of Jesus and that he knows what she has done but that he’s still offering her forgiveness and mercy. That’s why she celebrates that Jesus told her everything that she has done, not because she’s proud to be a sinner but because Jesus says, in effect, you can be free from this sin if you come to know him.
If you feel trapped by shame surrounding pornography or other sexual sins, it’s important to bring it to the light in a way that will help you be free. There are materials on the back counter of the church with resources such as website blockers and online counselors that can help. Joining an SA group can help. Having an accountability partner can help. Giving me a call to talk about your problem can help. The biggest thing is to know that God doesn’t want you or your family to be trapped in a hidden life of shame or in some morally relativistic life where we pretend objectifying people is healthy or natural. God wants us to know that he knows everything that we have done and he still loves us. He wants us to know true freedom. He wants us to see each other the way he sees us, not as objects to be exploited but as brothers and sisters with the dignity of being created in his image and likeness. Swiping in search of stumbling onto a tantalizing video may provide short-term pleasure but it cannot give us the true joy that God’s freedom alone can provide. Can we stop swiping long enough to allow God to tell us what we’ve done so we can find the joy of true freedom?
