Scripture readings: Psalm 8: 1-5; John 4:1-21, 39-40
The gospels are full of meals. Meals, feasts, celebrations: Jesus’s ministry even begins at a wedding, changing water into wine in Cana. (John 2: 1-11) The author of the gospel of Luke actually points out in chapter 7 that while John the Baptist fasted, a respected devotional practice, Jesus ate and drank and feasted and was “seen by people as ‘a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners’.”[1] His behaviour unsettles precisely because he sits as a friend with those considered impure or unwelcome due to their social status or physical circumstances. This is why feminist theologian and scholar, Rosemary Radford Ruether, describes these celebratory meals as part of the “distinctive character of the message of Jesus.”[2]
Time and again we read how Jesus doesn’t merely dine with the marginalized: he seeks them out and explicitly offers them the opportunity to extend hospitality. To accept food or drink from someone was a gift to the giver, not just the recipient, a sign of mutual respect and trust. Consider how he calls Zaccheus, the disliked tax collector who collaborates with his own community’s oppressors, down from the tree, telling him, “we’re eating at your house.”
In today’s gospel reading, we heard about Jesus and the Samaritan woman at a well. It’s important to understand the relationship between the Jewish peoples of Galilee and Judea, such as Jesus and the apostles were, and the Samaritans, a marginalized ethnic group who lived on what was considered the traditional land of the patriarch, Jacob, in what is now part of the Palestinian West Bank. Though the Jewish communities and Samaritans had ancestors and a distant past in common, their religious differences put them at odds. They did not associate, did not share space or food or drink.
This is why this episode at the well—where Jesus is not only travelling through Samaria, but has his longest conversation in the scriptural record with this woman—is so important for understanding the Kingdom of God as Jesus lives it: one of overflowing, “scandalous grace,” as Shane Claiborne puts it.[3]
The Kingdom is here and now
And to be in all the ages to come
God is the making
all verb no noun made fresh made after– Anthony Oliveira, dayspring
Jesus speaking to any woman while alone is itself notable, as common social norms kept unaccompanied men and women apart. Cultural boundaries would keep a Jewish person far from any Samaritan. Jesus isn’t merely willing to disregard that the woman is Samaritan: he asks to share her water, to drink from the jar from which she herself has assuredly drunk, dismantling the human barriers between them as man and woman, as Galilean and Samaritan.
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, a contemporary and fellow of Rosemary Radford Ruether, notes that the author of the gospel of John positions the Samaritan woman in the same sort of apostolic role as Mary of Nazareth (Jesus’s mother) and Mary of Magdala, the first disciple to bear witness to the risen Christ.[4] Each, in her way and in her circumstance, recognizes Jesus as Messiah. Remarkable as it is to feature women’s narratives and voices to the extent that the gospel of John does, the inclusion of a Samaritan woman—her witness, her voice, placing her in equal footing to the mother of Jesus and one of his closest friends—makes this passage revolutionary, as Catholic priest, Angela Nevitt Meyer, argues.[5]
The author of the gospel of John also notes that this woman is drawing water at the heat of the day, an odd and uncomfortable time to do this work. Is she unwelcome among the other women of the village and so has avoided the cool of early morning when they would have visited the well? Do her many marriages have something to do with her noonday visit? We don’t know; what we do know is that the author and the text’s later editors chose to include these details, and likely for a purpose. Considering all this, we begin to see that in engaging with her, Jesus welcomes into his company a woman who, for various reasons, the world would expect a Judean rabbi to avoid. The world that Jesus repeatedly upends is one that takes a human view of belonging, one that excludes—in fact, it insists that we exclude.
Too often, the church has assisted, positioning ourselves apart from supposedly “worldly” things, twisting Jesus’s prayerful description of himself and his followers not belonging to the world into a command. (John 17:16) Alongside those words, though, Jesus also declares that he stands solidly in the world, and that we do, as well. The gospels are proof, his sandaled feet dusty from countless kilometres of roads walked, even into forbidden territory, like Samaria. The Kingdom of God as Jesus lives it is expansive.
Many years ago, I had the opportunity to spend time with activist and author and all-around lovely person, Shane Claiborne. We, too, shared a meal (pizza). Shane engages in a profoundly authentic, self-effacing life of service and mercy. He describes the Jesus we see in scripture as one who “abhors both passivity and violence, who carves out a third way that is neither submission nor assault.”
“‘Believers are a dime a dozen in the church…But lovers are hard to come by.”
– Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution
Jesus offers something else, a middle and yet far more radical way: shalom. Though the Greek translation of shalom is rendered eirene or “peace” throughout the text, Dr. Nicholas Wolterstorff of Yale University points out this translation falls short of the nuance and depth of what shalom really is. A better word would be “flourishing”, the flourishing that only comes from being in right relationship with others, with God, and with ourselves, and of taking joy in that relationship.[6]
It is in right relationship that we find wholeness. Schüssler Fiorenza writes that Jesus’s message is, overwhelmingly, one offering wholeness, and the holiness that comes from—and manifests itself in—human wholeness.[7] That wholeness is only possible when we—as individuals, as a church, as humanity itself—appreciate ourselves to be assembled into the entirety of creation. She also argues that the test to any reading of scripture is that it must promote the “dignity and rights of self and others,”[8] that it contributes to—not diminish—human wholeness.
It would be anachronistic to say that Jesus was feminist, or queer-affirming. In the first century, those ideas, those words hadn’t been conceived yet, so a Jesus who was could not have identified as any of them. But if we believe in a risen and living Christ, as we do, then Jesus still is. And further, we, the church, call ourselves the Body of Christ. Alive. Reformed and always reforming. When I think, and act, and speak as a feminist, when I think, and act, and speak in queer-affirmation, or even pluralistic welcome, I do not contradict my Christian faith: I fulfill my faith by living Jesus’s scandalous grace. These are ideologies of inclusion, welcome, and love. These social movements tell us to look at those the world tells us to see as Other and instead to see fellow humanity, to see value, and to embrace it.
When a woman touches Christ’s cloak to heal her menstrual hemorrhaging, she breaks ritual purity laws, but Jesus offers only welcome and grace. Jay Hulme, a Christian queer, trans poet in the United Kingdom resituates this story in his poem, “Jesus at the Gay Bar.”[9] It’s one of my favourites; I have a signed copy on the wall next to my desk. The poem reimagines the frenzy of the crowd as the revelry of a dance floor, Jesus in the midst of it, dancing. The menstruating woman is now a boy, at war with himself over his queer identity, approaching Jesus, begging—as Jay writes—“to be anything other than this.” And Jesus tells him, “My beautiful child, there is nothing in this heart of yours that ever needs to be healed.”
I find astounding witness in the defiant, resistant faith of the Christian queer and trans communities. Theirs is a faith that rejects exclusion, including their own, their faith too often in spite of—and not because of—church actions.
Sasha Allen, a trans singer-songwriter, says that when God made him trans, she gave him a gift, a half-finished work of art, and allowed him to complete it. There’s a lesson there for us all. We are all of us in a perpetual state of becoming, of filling in the gaps. Adding shade and shadow and highlight—I don’t know. Ask Glynis: he’s the artist. God gives us a partial canvas, brushes, and paints, and puts us in the world, telling us: “Go. Make yourself beautiful.” The world tells people like Sasha he is wrong, that he is broken. He pushes back: no; my soul is wonderfully made in God’s image.
And He will reach his arms out,
sweat-damp, and weary from the dance.
He’ll cup this boy’s face in His hand
And say
“My beautiful child
there is nothing in this heart of yours
that ever needs to be healed.”– Jay Hulme, Jesus at the Gay Bar
16th century Sufi scholar, Maybudi, renders the psalm we read today as a dialogue. God’s answer to David’s existential question? I made everything because “I loved to be recognized.”[10] What a wonderful way to consider existence. All of it—each and every one of us, every animal, every plant—an opportunity to recognize the glory of God. Every creature, every thing, a tiny reflection of God’s beauty. Namaste, an ancient Sanskrit greeting, expresses, “the divine in me recognizes the divine in you.” Rabbi Danya Rutenberg writes that we are all—regardless of tradition—pursuing “the Big Bigness”[11]: the incomprehensibly great I AM. (Exodus 3:14)
The gospels provide example after example of Jesus showing us that much of what we think matters, what we think divides us or distances us from each other or from God is of no great importance at all. Reverend Doctor SC Williams notes that one of the ways that Jesus defeats sin during his own ministry is by welcoming those who were excluded[12]. Jesus doesn’t merely bridge the gap between heaven and earth: he shows us that the gap was never there at all.
In three weeks’ time, Ottawa will be alive with the Pride Festival. For one week, central Ottawa will become an energetic space of queer inclusion, of celebration as well as protest, because the work toward justice continues until everyone is free and welcome.
If you travel up and down Bank St. between Slater and Gladstone you will see banners, adorned with rainbows, hanging from lamp posts, and emblazoned with the words:
“Love Lives Here.”
These words are a declaration, an invitation. And they are a challenge, to accept the opportunity to recognize the love and beauty of God in the world. In every face. In every soul, being precisely who God made that soul to be, even in defiance of a world that would condemn them.
This is the flourishing that Jesus helps us to recognize through his ministry of scandalous grace.
Not separate. Not divided. Whole. And holy.
Amen.
[1] Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her : A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins, with Internet Archive (New York : Crossroad, 1983), 119, http://archive.org/details/inmemoryofherfem0000schu.
[2] Rosemary Radford Ruether, Women and Redemption: A Theological History (Fortress Press, 1998), 16.
[3] Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical (Zondervan, 2006), 278.
[4] Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, 327.
[5] Angela Nevitt Meyer, “The Woman at the Well: The Radical Revelation of John 4:1–42,” Medium, May 17, 2015, https://amnevitt.medium.com/the-woman-at-the-well-the-radical-revelation-of-john-4-1-42-7aa3470f1b18.
[6] CCT CCT, “The Gospel and Shalom: A Better Translation,” Biola University Center for Christian Thought / The Table, June 5, 2017, https://cct.biola.edu/gospel-shalom-better-translation/.
[7] Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, 120.
[8] Elizabeth Richardson, Resist! – Emmanuel ChurchEmmanuel Church, July 21, 2019, https://www.emmanuelboston.org/sermons/2019-sermons/resist/.
[9] “Jesus at the Gay Bar,” Jay Hulme, October 4, 2021, https://jayhulme.com/blog/jesus-at-the-gay-bar.
[10] Paraphrased from William C. Chittick, Divine Love: Islamic Literature and the Path to God (Yale University Press, 2013), 19.
[11] “The Point of It All,” Life Is a Sacred Text, June 19, 2023, https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/the-point-of-it-all/.
[12] “Rev Dr SC Williams (@pastor_sc.Williams),” TikTok, accessed July 31, 2026, https://[fdbd:dc53:36:604::17]/@pastor_sc.williams.
An abridged version of this sermon was delivered at
St. Andrew’s Church, Ottawa, August 2, 2026