September 6, 2020: Third Way

John 4:5-26
Rev. Dr. Rhonda Blevins

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 worshiped on this mountain, but you  say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21 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 worshipers 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.”

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Once upon a time there was a church, let’s call it “Chapel by the Tree.” The church had a big decision to make. You see, the old carpet was worn and tired. It was unraveled in places and had lots of stains from the prepackaged communion juice spilling out when people tried to open them. Even Stanley Steamer couldn’t get the stains out. So the church needed new carpet; on that, they agreed. But the agreement stopped there. Some in the church wanted to replace the carpet in kind with the deep, red plush carpet that once looked so beautiful and regal. “We’ve always had red carpet,” said one of the matriarchs of the church. “It’s our tradition!” But some of the younger people in the church wanted something fresher and more contemporary. “Red is so dated,” one of the young women commented to her friend. “Blue carpet would complement the wood features and get us out of the 1950’s.” Tension grew. Team Red began casting aspersions on Team Blue and vice versa. Then came the business meeting. “You don’t respect the rich tradition that red carpet represents!” accused members of Team Red. “When we were married here 50 years ago, I walked the aisle down RED CARPET to meet my husband!” said the matriarch. Another member of Team Red said, “I was on the building committee that chose RED CARPET because it represents the blood of Jesus. You must not love Jesus if you don’t want RED CARPET.” Members of Team Blue were offended. “You must not love young people if you don’t want BLUE CARPET,” said one young person. “You just want everything to stay exactly the same. You don’t even want us here.” They threatened to leave the church if blue wasn’t the choice.

Near the back of the room sat a stranger. No one had seen him before. He looked a little rough around the edges, like he didn’t belong in a church and certainly not in a church business meeting where only members could vote. “Excuse me,” he said politely. “I’m not a member here, but I have a thought,” he said, his voice humble, diminutive. “I hear you guys arguing about the color of the carpet,” he proceeded, “but I’m sitting here thinking how nice tile might look. And easier to clean when someone spills communion wine. That’s all.” The stranger sat down. The members of the church sat in stunned silence. Married couples exchanged approving glances. A couple of awkward moments passed. The matriarch stood to speak, “Yes, I can imagine that tile might look very nice.” Team Red nodded in agreement. Team Blue acknowledged their approval. “Yes, tile will look very nice,” said one of the younger members. Within months, the church installed a beautiful, neutral-colored tile.

In case you’re wondering, we’re not having any conversations about carpet or tile these days here at Chapel by the Sea. The moral of this story, if you’re wondering, is that sometimes we get so locked into binary thinking—where we only see two options—that it’s hard for us to see a third way. We attach ourselves to our opinions, we can get so entrenched into that way of thinking, that we begin to view those with different ideas in pejorative ways, like the gentleman suggesting that there was no way those who wanted blue carpet could love Jesus since red carpet, in his mind, represented the blood of Jesus. Conflict grew as people dug in their heels. It took an outsider to show them a third way, out beyond red and blue carpet, a completely different floor covering that they had never even considered.

Jesus was a master of this “third way” thinking. In the Gospel of John, we find a tired Jesus resting by a well. He encounters a woman there, a Samaritan woman. He breaks all social convention by speaking to her, first because she’s a woman and good Jewish men don’t speak to women out in public like that, and secondly because she’s a Samaritan, and good Jews don’t speak to Samaritans. As the conversation unfolds, this woman tries to draw Jesus into the binary conflict of the day, which was over the proper place for worship. She lays out the conflict for him, asking him to pick sides, “Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Which side will Jesus choose? Will he side with the Samaritans or with the Jews? If he sides with the Samaritans, he rejects his own people. If he sides with the Jews, he’s at odds with this woman and with her people. She offers him a lose-lose situation when she asks him to pick sides.

This isn’t the only time in scriptures where Jesus is presented a conflictual, binary, lose-lose situation. You may remember the story of the Pharisees and Herodians trying to trap Jesus by getting him to pick sides over a debate about taxes. “Jesus, should we pay taxes to Caesar or not?” they pressed. If he says “yes,” he upsets his Jewish companions. If he says “no,” then he upsets Caesar’s loyalists. They present a binary—a lose-lose situation. Which side will he choose?

Like Jesus, there are forces trying to pigeon-hole Christ-followers to choose sides. The argument is no longer “Worship here or there?” nor is it “Pay taxes to Caesar or not?” In our context, our primary fault lines, our binary . . . can you guess what it is for American citizens?

That’s right; it’s Coke vs. Pepsi! How many of you are Team Coke? Team Pepsi? If you go to a restaurant and you order Coke and the server says, “Is Pepsi OK?” what’s your response? As a member of Team Coke, I used to say, “That’s OK. I’ll drink water,” making sure the server recognized my displeasure. These days, I’m much more spiritually mature and I’ll simply say, “That’s fine,” with a smile on my face, while throwing up inside my mouth a little bit.

OK, the Cola wars isn’t the primary fault line in our country. It’s not the primary binary. What do you really think our primary binary is?

It’s our two-party system! It’s a binary built into our system. Every four years, tension rises, the two parties pick their representatives, and we must choose Team Red or Team Blue. (Yes, we occasionally have viable third-party candidates, but by and large, it’s a binary choice.) We choose our sides. We cast aspersions. “You must not love Jesus if,” we say. We threaten to leave if we don’t get our way. “I’m moving to Canada if my candidate doesn’t win.” We get sucked into the narrative. We have trouble seeing anything beyond the binary.

This is the system we’ve inherited from our forebears. Just like fish don’t know they’re in water, this binary is the air we breathe, and we don’t even recognize it. In this binary system, we live and move and have our being. And on or before November 3, I hope you’ll cast your vote. It’s our right and our privilege as citizens.

But here’s what I want to say today: let’s keep partisanship outside the church. Here, in this space (whether literal or virtual), we must strive to find a third way, a higher way. Not to be apolitical, pretending we don’t have viewpoints and ideologies, but transpolitical. If we’re transpolitical, we rise above partisan binaries. We can look at the binaries with a God’s-eye-view. And if we can bring that vantagepoint into our sacred space, we can begin to agree, recognizing that neither party has a monopoly on morality and neither party is perfect. No candidate is perfect. So, let me ask, can we agree on that? If we can agree on that, then there’s room to try to find our way to a more perfect way. A third way. A higher way.

In the months leading up to a presidential election, people are ginned up, entrenched, and skilled at casting aspersions on the other. And in a church like ours, we have members of both Team Red and Team Blue. It can be tricky to try to be church together with people so entrenched in binary political choices. I’m in dialogue with other pastors; there’s a phrase we use to describe churches like ours—the phrase is “Purple Church,” with a mix of red and blue voters. I like that phrase a lot. Purple may be a “third way,” beyond entrenched ideologies or partisan posturing.

Color, (red, blue, purple) by the way, is an illusion:

Color is a sensation created in the brain. If the colors we perceived depended only on the wavelength of reflected light, an object’s color would appear to change dramatically with variations in illumination throughout the day and in shadows. Instead patterns of activity in the brain render an object’s color relatively stable despite changes in its environment.[1]

Political ideologies, like color, are patterns of activity in our brains. When we’re engaged in higher way, third way, thinking, we can recognize that. Jesus was the master of third way thinking.

So when the Pharisees and Herodians tried to trick Jesus, “Should we pay taxes to Caesar or not?” Jesus tricked them right back. “Render unto Caesar that which belongs to Caesar,” he said to the delight of Caesar’s loyalists, infuriating his Jewish counterparts. Jesus appears to have taken a side. But wait! “Render unto God that which belongs to God.” This both/and approach leaves them gob smacked—they were amazed and perplexed by his wisdom. How did Jesus do this? Third way thinking! That’s the “mind of Christ.”

And then there’s the Samaritan woman at the well: “Is the proper place to worship here on this mountain like my people say, or in Jerusalem like your people say?” Both! “A day is coming and is now here when those who worship God will worship in spirit and in truth. Not either/or but both/and. Third way thinking! That’s the “mind of Christ.”

Keeping it real, like many of you, I worry about our country. I’ve never seen us so divided. Some say we’ve never been this divided since, perhaps, the Civil War. But here’s what I know—we have everything we need to rise up out of this divide—and if we’re going to do it, it’s going to require us to find a third way. Not a middle way, not a “purple carpet” compromise, but a completely different floor covering. A third way.

Pastor and theologian Cynthia Bourgeault writes: “Solutions to impasses generally come by learning how to spot and mediate third force, which is present in every situation but generally hidden.”[2]

Imagine what might happen if people of faith took this third way, Jesus-way, sort of thinking seriously, as a primary way to practice our faith? “We would avoid making judgments . . . set our sights higher than ‘winners and losers’ (or even negotiated compromise), and instead strive in all situations to align our minds and hearts with third force.”[3]

Not to say this is easy. We are wired toward the binary, toward either/or thinking. That’s why we pray, why we meditate. That’s why we engage in the spiritual discipline of attending church, particularly a church that doesn’t get sucked into the binary but seeks both to live and point people higher. And that’s the kind of church I hope we strive to be. We’re not perfect, we’ll never be perfect, but we spur each other on to attain this goal—to attain, ever more frequently, the “mind of Christ.”

Will you join me in this endeavor? Can we be a church that can rise above the fray, to find a more perfect way? This is way more important than discovering tile rather than red or blue carpet. Church, our world needs us to get this, and to lead in this moment fraught with division.

I close with the words from the Apostle Paul written when he was obviously animated by third way thinking, from 1 Cor 2:13-16:

This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.  The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord
    so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/illusory-color-andamp-the-brain-2008-05/

[2] Cynthia Bourgeault, The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three (Shambhala Publications, Inc.: 2013).

[3] https://cac.org/the-law-of-three-2018-06-05/