Do we have any romantics here this morning? Any lovers of love, poetry, romantic comedies, tragedies, maybe even a little romantasy? Ah, wonderful! Me too. So just for fun - or maybe because Bridgerton Season 4 went down as fast and easy as one of Queen Charlotte’s Belgian bonbons and I want more! - let’s play a little game.

I’ll read out a quote and you call out the title, ok? And I’ve got hints to help, so don’t stress. I really want this to be fun. We’ll start off with some classics and then move farther afield:

“Parting is such sweet sorrow.”

“That which we call a rose By any other word would smell as sweet.”

“But, soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun…”

~ Romeo and Juliet!

Good. See, even if you thought you weren’t into romance, you can still play this game. Case in point:

“Here’s looking at you kid” - Casablanca. Nice.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”  - Pride and Prejudice

“Farm boy, fetch me that pitcher.” …“As You Wish.” - The Princess Bride

“You had me at hello.” -Jerry McGuire.

“I wish I knew how to quit you.” - Brokeback Mountain (Hint: Ang Lee won the Oscar for best director in 2005)

"Love is patient, love is kind, love means slowly losing your mind.” Hint: James Marsden says this to Kathryn Heigl in a movie where she is always a bridesmaid never a bride - 27 dresses

"Me? I'm scared of everything. I'm scared of what I saw, I'm scared of what I did, of who I am, and most of all I'm scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I'm with you.” (Hint: she said this before her dad tried to put her in the corner…but nobody puts …baby…in the corner) —Dirty Dancing

"Some people are worth melting for."

(Anyone with kids who couldn’t “let it go” knows this one)  —Frozen

"The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return."—Moulin Rouge by way of Nat King Cole’s “Nature Boy”

"Kiss me and let us both be damned.” I finally went to see it this weekend. - Wuthering Heights

Well done, First Churches. You all know a little something about love, so lets’ kick it up a notch. We are going to shift gears a bit, so imagine this as less of a game show and more of an English class. In terms of the genre, what are some of the elements you need for a good romance?

I’ve got a checklist, so let’s just see how many we can come up with. Let’s begin with the obvious. First we need, what?

• Characters: Two people. Two leads (A Tristan and an Iseult, a Gentleman Jack and her Ann Walker, a pride and a prejudice). Two reasonably attractive people…who, while they are falling in love will need someone to process all this with, so we also need…?

• Sidekicks, right? Like a gay best friend, an older sibling, a teammate, an incredibly resourceful butler (you know the drill)

• And of course it doesn’t hurt to have extras such as: a huge family, co-workers, townspeople or what not, to add local color, flesh out the story, and help the leads figure out what we’ve known all along…that these two star crossed lovers are meant for each other.

Excellent, that covers characters. What are some other things we need? Where will all this happen? We need a setting!

• We need a place for them to meet cute or not so cute… preferably in an…

• An interesting, iconic, or aspirational setting (like they do in “The Holiday,” with Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet. Though let me say they did too good a job in that one because pretty much every woman I know would trade in Jude Law for that cottage in Surrey in a heart beat. Can I get an amen? Good, because this is still technically still a sermon.)

We need a plot, which typically requires an impediment to this ever working out, a central misunderstanding or some external pressure that places the relationship in jeopardy in order to create dramatic tension like, say, what:

• Two people instantly offended by each other

• A love interest born on the wrong side of the tracks

• A fish out of water scenario

• An ugly duckling in need of a glow up

• A  mistaken or obscured identity

And finally we need a finale, a denouement with a

• A big reveal of true identities or motives or feelings

• A big gesture or a light bulb moment, some climatic scene where the characters suddenly realize or profess their love.

• If it a comedy we’ll get a  wedding. If it’s a tragedy, a drawn out death scene that ends in tears.

But one way or another, if you round all this out with a montage, some snappy dialogue, perhaps rain, a survivable accident, running to catch a place or a train, and/or a really cute kid in need of one more adult in their life, then you’ve got yourself a romance.

So now that we’ve refreshed our understanding of the genre, let’s take a look back at our bible reading for today, because I think in order to understand this story, we are meant, at least on some level, to read it through a romantic lens.

And if you think I’m little off my rocker, I want you to know that if you flip back a chapter, you’ll find none other than John the Baptist - hardly the world’s most eligible bachelor with his camel hair and cricket breath - John the Baptist of all people, setting up such expectations like a first century Lady Whistledown.

We never read this part in church, so don’t feel bad if you have no recollection of him saying this, but immediately preceding this story, John’s disciples come to him all upset because Jesus is getting so much attention. But John plays it cool and says that the time has come for him to fade into the back ground so the main character can take center stage.

8You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, “I am not the Messiah…He who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. For this reason my joy has been fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease.’ (3:28-30).

At which point we cut to the bridegroom in question: Jesus, our leading man, walking along the dusty road to Galilee all hot and sweaty and single, his long hair flowing in the breeze. He’s flanked by his 12 besties when what do they come upon but a well. And you all know what that means, right? A well?!?

Okay maybe not. Nowadays this detail goes right over our heads. And it doesn’t help that everything - from water to wine - has a double meaning in the gospel of John. But If you were amongst those hearing John read out his gospel for the first time and you heard that Jesus had stopped at a well you’d all be buzzing, because wells were …like… the masked balls of the ancient near east… the book stores or intersections where the Beatrices and Benedicts, the Harry’s and the Sally’s of the world were most likely to meet up and meet cute.

Moses and Zipporah? Met at a well.

Isaac and Rebecca? All started with a well.

Jacob and Rachel? Friends, they met at the very well where Jesus - after conveniently sending all of his friends into town to find food - has decided to rest…alone.

When who should come along but a woman… and not just any woman, but a Samaritan woman at that.

Our Romeo might as well have sat down at the well of a Capulet. Our Tony is about to meet his Maria - right? - because you all know that the Jews hated the Samaritans as much as the Samaritans hated the Jews.

There was so little love lost between their people that it’s shocking Jesus would talk to her at all, let alone ask her for water. Furthermore, as I explained to the children, she’s not just a Samaritan, but obviously a pariah even amongst her own people or she wouldn’t be out there on her own in the heat of the day doing a chore the women would have done together at dawn.

So of course, by the rules of the genre… they’re perfect for each other. Mysterious stranger. Misunderstood outcast. A well! Cue dialogue and the game is on. Note that she’s immediately suspicious of him, and yet irresistibly intrigued. He chats her up and they instantly misunderstand each other. But Jesus, undaunted, presses closer offering her living water. They spar and banter and gradually - I say gradually because this is the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone in all of the 4 gospels -  gradually she comes around.

And so, dear reader, do we!

I mean tell me if I’m wrong, but I think it is undeniably poignant to see this woman who has been beaten down and cast aside by so many, come out of her shell. I feel nothing but tenderness for her as she is drawn out by the simple fact that someone is actually talking to her for once.

You can feel her guard dropping and her hopes rising as this gentle man does nothing more than treat her with respect. Jesus shows a genuine interest in her thoughts, in her opinions, in her as a person, and she responds in kind.

So much so, that when Jesus finally offers her living water, this poor woman is so hungry for love that she throws caution to the wind, puts herself out there as vulnerable as can be, and says:

‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water from this well.’

And then, out of nowhere, the hammer falls.

‘Go, call your husband, and come back,’ says Jesus, and the recoil is instantaneous.

I hate this part. It’s like he’s thrown the cup of cold water she was timidly holding out her hands for, right in her face. If she’d come to the well in a carriage it would now be a pumpkin. Whatever self respect she had left is now nothing but rags.

‘I have no husband.’

‘You are right,” says Jesus, “for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.

It turns out she is not what she seemed, or at least not who she wanted to seem to Jesus and now they both know it. She braces herself to be turned away by him, just like she has been turned away by everyone else. She’s not smart or lovable or worthy…she’s a fraud, a misfit, an outcast, and he’s just going to hurt her like all the others.

“What you have said is true! 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.”

Translation: She gets it. This is not meant to be. How could she have been so stupid? Now she realizes that he has been mocking her this whole time, leading her on not just to humiliate her, but because his people believe that her people are nothing but reprobates, as compromised and disgraceful as she feels right now.

This man isn’t here to find a bride. He’s just here to hurt her and her people. You can feel her pulling away when out of nowhere Jesus declares that nothing she has said or done is a deal breaker.

“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.”

Meaning that a time is coming when all that separates your people from mine, and you from your people, won’t matter at all because people will finally understand that God loves all of us, including you, beginning with you. “Woman, believe me:” what God truly longs for, is a world where all people learn to love one another so fully that they can worship God together in spite of their differences, worship not just in spirit but in truth.

The woman says, ‘I know that Messiah is coming…When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’

And then, out of nowhere, having revealed her true identity and declared it anything but a deal breaker, Jesus reveals his own. He knows her secret and isn’t turned off. Now he wants her to know his.

Jesus says to her, ‘I am he, the one who is speaking to you.’

His declaration would have taken her breath away. She is the first person Jesus comes out to as the messiah: just a boy, standing in front of a girl, asking her to love him.

I mean they are having a moment, people! A MOMENT! When, right on cue, the disciples arrive and break the spell. At which point her light bulb goes off.

She drops her water jar and (cue montage) runs back to the village to tell everyone from the butcher to the baker to the candlestick maker, that the messiah, the heavenly bridegroom, has not just come with a proposal for her, but with a proposal for them all.

It turns out that Jesus hasn’t come to the well for a wife, but for a witness; someone with the courage to proclaim that God desires to be united in love not just with one kind of people but with all kinds of people, not just the right sort of people but all sorts of people (1).

In this woman, Jesus has found someone willing to partner with him in tearing down all of the taboos and traditions, the grudges and enmities people create in our misguided attempts to mediate, control, or withhold love - our love and the love of God- from others…but most especially the other.

And isn’t that, ultimately the truth at the heart of every romance? That in spite of all the obstacles, love wins? That getting in loves way leads to ruin? That all the rules and expectations we come up with to rationalize why some people are okay to love and others are not, is nothing but a lie…a lie that leads to tragedy and tears when we believe it or comedy and joy when we expose it?

So I don’t know my friends, but I think God might be just be a romantic too. I believe God wants love to flow and flow freely. This word for living water, literally means flowing water, like you find in a stream. When you try to contain or confine water, it turns brackish, it goes bad, but when you let it flow, it leads to life…a good life…an abundant life!

And the same goes for love. So let it flow, flow like an ever-flowing stream, flow into us and through us toward all that you and I and all of God’s children …might live happily ever after. Amen.

1. Karoline Lewis  https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-in-lent/commentary-on-john-45-42-2

   http://chqdaily.com/2018/06/lewis-tackles-sexist-interpretation-of-samaritan-woman/