love, solidarity, and beloved community

October 23, 2022 • Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
Reading: John 4:1-14 (The Voice)
Rev. Jeff Wells preaching

[You can view the full worship video recording at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhRQw-qSRlo

I love this version of the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman. It comes from a paraphrase Bible called The Voice, which puts into explicit contemporary language what is sometimes implicit or obscured to modern readers in direct translations from the Hebrew and Greek. In this instance, the passage makes clear that there were walls that Jesus and the woman had to pass through or climbing over. According to conventional barriers, prejudices, and taboos of their time, they shouldn’t even have been talking to each other! 

First, it was taboo for a man and woman who were strangers and not related to each other to have a private conversation. Moreover, he was a Jew and she a Samaritan. While these two peoples had common roots in the people of ancient Israel, centuries of divergent pathways and conflict had created a deep animosity – even hatred – toward one another. The prejudice was based on differing beliefs, rituals, worship styles, and understanding of how to connect with God. We might compare them to prejudices between Jews and Palestinians today or between Russians and Ukrainians.

As usual, Jesus was intent on undermining long-held prejudices in order to foster deep human connection. And the woman was a bit of a rebel and an outcast in her community, so she was willing to engage in the conversation. The other powerful part of this passage is Jesus’ use of the metaphor of “living water.” The water from the well, he said, will quench your physical thirst for the moment, but you will have to keep coming back. I offer you a different kind of water – living water – which will quench a different kind of thirst in you and will satisfy it for the long run. 

The Church of the Village aspires to be what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called, “a beloved community” – one which brings together persons of diverse backgrounds, experiences, and histories to live together in a spirit of mutual acknowledgement, care, love, and solidarity. To be such a community demands confronting and working to dismantle white supremacy and racism, as well as other forms of oppression. Yet, the role of the church goes deeper than any struggle for justice. Of course, we support such struggles, but the church must act not merely to change laws and policies, but to recognize and celebrate the dignity and value of every person and every living being. We are attracted to and choose to remain in a community like ours because, at some level, we desire to be in a community in which folks mutually honor one another and build deep relationships of honesty, vulnerability, care, and compassion. Without such deep human relationships, there can be no justice and no true community. Community requires solidarity – and relationships, solidarity, and community are all, necessarily, grounded in agape love.

I was not always a partisan of the vision of beloved community or of agape love. In fact, for 16 years, I was a member a revolutionary socialist organization that looked on this vision as unrealistic and utopian. Contrary to grounding its actions in love, it based its work on hatred of the ruling class. It was not until I left that organization and found my way back to Christian faith that I realized that we were fighting for the right kind of society while standing on the wrong foundation. 

I didn’t fall in love with the vision of beloved community and gain a deeper grasp of its value until I went to seminary in the early 2000s. Yet, somehow, I recall that I was a conscious anti-racist from the time I was a teenager. I recall challenging my father not to tell racist jokes or used the term “colored” to refer to Black people. 

I went on major in history in college and got a good dose of liberal and left-wing perspectives on U.S. capitalist imperialism. Following college, the two things I value most about my 16 years as a revolutionary socialist are, first, that the organization helped me the terrible depth of racism and white supremacy in this country and, second, that I had the opportunity to be in an integrated organization and build deep relationships with persons of many colors, sexual orientations, and backgrounds.

Over the decades, I gained examples, role models, and even heroes – Black, brown, and white. Examples: Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, James Lawson, Ed King, Chaney/Schwerner/Goodman, Nina Simone, Pete Seeger. Also, many role models in the United Methodist Church. In 1963, four clergy members of the NY Annual Conference, traveled to Jackson, Mississippi at some risk to their lives to participate in trying to integrate Methodist churches in the city. They included Revs. Herb Skeet, Mel Williams, John Collins, and David VerNooy. Later, VerNooy served as the pastor of the Metropolitan-Duane Methodist Church from 1977-1986. I am so glad that we draw from the legacy of Rev. Finley Schaef and the Washington Square United Methodist Church, which was one of a very tiny number of congregations to pay reparations to address the legacy of white supremacy in the U.S. They gave a check for $15,000 to James Forman in 1972. That would be comparable to us giving a contribution of over $200,000 today. 

The reality is that a small elite of the wealthy and powerful – predominantly white people – has kept white supremacy in place and convinced a majority of white people that they benefit from it is patently untrue. As Heather McGhee tells us so powerfully, it’s not a zero-sum game where if black people win, white people lose. And, while people of color have certainly suffered more under this oppressive system, the majority of white people have been losers in this rigged game too. If the majority of lower-middle-class and working-class white Americans came to recognize the genuine common interests they have with people of color, especially Black Americans, and work together with them, everyone would benefit from the huge solidarity dividends this would yield. We would then have the real possibility of creating a system where everyone could flourish and have not merely enough to survive, but an abundance to thrive.

There is a fundamental commonality between all of us. Yet, we cannot ignore the terrible reality of racism and white supremacy. We cannot pretend to be color-blind because color-blind policies and practices end up being racist. So, we need strength and resilience to stay in the journey together, even when hurtful or shameful words or acts occur. So, we need a community – many communities – building deep relationships and practicing agape love and solidarity. 

I would never claim to have done any of my anti-racist thinking and practice without being wrong or hurtful or defensive plenty of times. Nor have I been a flawless leader in trying to live into being a beloved community. I can only claim that I have stuck to it. I have learned and grown and evolved along the way. And I am fully committed to building and promoting beloved community because I believe that communities like ours – along with integrated movements for social justice – are one of the few places in our society where people can learn how to practice agape love across multiple boundaries that separate us. I believe the Church of the Village community is committed to these things too. 

We can read the story of Jesus and the woman at the well as a parable of beloved community. The woman and Jesus both dared not to ignore past divisions and the harm done, but to reach through them to build a deep human connection and begin to create a new narrative, new possibilities. Jesus promised the woman that he could provide living water for her heart and spirit. Water that can heal. Water that can build connection. Water that can help us to swim through long-standing divisions, prejudices, and hatreds. We can be “living water” for each other. There is plenty to share in the Church of the Village. Friends, drink freely of this water as we strive together to strengthen the community we are and build the community we know we can be – through love, deepening relationships, solidarity, and grace.

I am convinced that among people in the U.S., millions are parched due to social alienation, isolation, and lack of community. Not only that, but I also believe that many thirst for community with persons who come from different backgrounds and experience than their own. They may not know the term “beloved community,” but they want the living water it offers.

So, I encourage us to holding fast to the vision of building beloved community. I believe the Church of the Village can be an important model and example for others who desire to be together – to live together – in honest, risky, vulnerable, and safe ways, characterized by mutual accountability, as well as plenty of grace. We can trust God’s divine light and love to lead us on this journey.

Copyright © 2022 by Jeff Wells
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