An unearthly shade of green

      In the musical Wicked, one of the songs notes 'The baby's coming'. It is the impending birth of Elpheba, who as it turns out is an unearthly shade of green. Uck! But like Jesus two thousand years ago, the message is being retold and re-imagined in this play. Forget about what you expect, what you have been taught and the correct place to play, pray or find redemption and goodness. Elpheba is no wicked witch at all.

         I really love this passage of Scripture. It is chock full of so many revelations about what Jesus' message is really about. The message of a real radical. Speaking with a Samaritan (say it isn't so!) Speaking with a woman! (a woman?? a harlot??) Not just speaking, but speaking as an equal, a conversation, a discussion (what could she possibly have to say?). And then Jesus drops the real bomb. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. As if to say, all the "holy places" and all the rules and rubrics and traditions are all bull shite! God wishes his children to worship in spirit and truth. Wow indeed. 

          I am not trying to diminish holy places. I will say that there are many thin places that are not holy places or places so designated. In fact, the religious elite by some of their actions make some so called holy places an ugly contortion of what God really intends.  Those rules and rubrics do little to foster faith but rather are designed to control.  Jesus knew as much two thousand years ago. 

         We are reminded of it again now. Elpheba, that wicked witch is not the evil we all believed she was. What surprises await us if we open our eyes to faith and love? Who will we find ourselves talking to? What unholy places will we find ourselves in that sheds the light of wisdom and God's love for all? 

John 4:1-26

Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, ‘Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John’— although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— he left Judea and started back to Galilee. But he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’ Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’

 Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’ The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’ The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am he,the one who is speaking to you.’