Third Sunday of Lent
Sunday 27 March 2011
Out of the Depths/Forgiveness
A sermon by Revd Katherine Hedderly
Readings: Exodus 17.1-17; John 4.5-42
‘Out of the depths I cry to you O Lord. O Lord hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the
voice of my supplications! If you Lord, should mark iniquities, who could stand? But there is
forgiveness with you…’ Psalm 130
Our theme for this Lent, out of the depths, our focus this morning, the loving forgiveness of God.
In two weeks time we will be sitting here in church with the art installation Victim, no resurrection?
suspended above the altar, artist Terry Duffy’s huge crucifix over 4 meters high, created as a
response to the Toxteth Riots in Liverpool in the 1980’s. An angry violent scream of a piece, it
shouts out beyond the confines of the shape of the cross, resonating with the injustice of violence in
all places of our world and with those in the depths of the experience of the cross in their own lives.
I think we will hear the voice of it, a voice from the depths, as well as seeing the image.
With that cross in front of us I think it will be hard to think about God’s forgiveness. How can God
forgive the acts of violence and injustice and the causes of suffering that take place daily in our
world and at the same time be with those who are living through them with their own stories that
long to be heard.
Just this week a woman I have been accompanying showed me a letter to her housing department
from her legal aid lawyer appealing against being made homeless now that her appeal for asylum
here in the UK has been granted. The letter describes the human rights abuses she has suffered in
her own country, the experience of multiple rape and the pain she now lives with through the
dislocation and confusion of post-traumatic stress. Back home she worked as a nurse, her only
crime to speak up for other women who have been through similar experiences.
Who is this God who both meets this woman and calls her out of the depths of the violence she has
experienced, to bring healing and freedom, love and peace in her life and also offers forgiveness to
the perpetrators of that crime, who have sunk into the depths through their own actions?
Out of the depths I cry to you O Lord, O Lord hear my voice!
But there is forgiveness with you…
We are drawn closer to understand that response of offering the hope of healing as well as
forgiveness through the Gospel for today as we see Jesus drawing both love and sorrow from the
deepest place in the life of the Samaritan woman whom he encounters at the well. It is a beautiful,
engaging and rich conversation, the longest of any reported in the Gospels.
What starts with a simple request for water, ends with this woman’s life flooded to overflowing with
the possibilities that Jesus offers her, of mercy and forgiveness, so much so that she rushes off to
share her experience with others. Not just water to quench her thirst in the hottest part of the day,
but the living water of Christ’s life and forgiveness and peace for the dry and thirsty parts of her life.
What she first takes at face value as an opportunity to never know physical thirst again – ‘Sir, give
me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water’ - is soon
taken to a deeper level as Jesus touches on the part of her life that is most in need of refreshment, a
complicated set of relationships that sound like they need unravelling.
Jesus takes her request for water and leads her deeper not with any sense of condemnation about
her marital status; he does not judge her. He goes beyond the surface level of her words to arrive at
the truth about her life, perhaps a tangle of sorrow and hurt. And this awareness that he knows her
sets her free. We don’t know how her life changes but her first reaction is to share the life she finds
overflowing within her with others. ‘Come and see…’ the same invitation we hear Jesus give to
John’s disciples when they follow him and ask where he is staying earlier in the Gospel. Her sense
of freedom bringing life and belief to others.
In order to reach her deepest need Jesus goes against social customs, conventions and the
prejudices and hostilities between Jews and Samaritans. He treats her as a whole person in her own
right, not as an outsider or inferior or an enemy but someone who has every right to receive this gift
of the life of God. He gently draws her to see who it is that she is speaking to. I am he…the living
water, the one who knows you in your deepest need. The woman’s reaction is not to cover up or
hide or be ashamed at her life. Instead she is overwhelmed by Jesus’ knowledge of her as he speaks
the truth to her.
It is impossible to disentangle the sorrow or shame at being seen for who she is in the complications
of her life, from the joy of knowing she is loved. Like the woman granted asylum, the sorrow about
what she has suffered, is mingled with the love needed for healing. God’s forgiveness for those who
do violence, comes from the same source as the love that sets the victims or survivors of those
abuses or injustices free.
God’s loving forgiveness is there on offer for all of us if we have the heart to see it and recognise it
and receive it. So often we stay on the surface, like the Israelites who journey with Moses in the
wilderness, who have known God’s mercy time and time again, and still grumble and cry out ‘Is the
Lord among us or not?’, instead of drinking deeply. Receiving God’s mercy is sometimes the
hardest thing to do.
Lent is a time to be aware of our own longing or thirst for God in our lives, and to drink deeply,
aware that he is very much ‘among us’. It is a time for this kind of conversation of our own at the
well, where we reveal to him the parched places of our lives and experiences. The complicated,
tangled parts, the things we hide or brush over that draw us into the depths, where we need to know
his forgiveness, as well as the hurts and injustices that we live with, that are particular to us and
make us cry ‘out of the depths’.
Julian of Norwich who we are journeying with throughout Lent in our Education Course wrestled
with the reality of the pain and suffering of her own time. It is in her contemplation out of the
depths of Christ’s agony on the cross that she recognises that same mingled sorrow and love of God
and the hope and affirmation of his love for each one of us.
Julian sees our natural state as being at one with God, always connected to that source or ‘living
water’ of his unconditional love. There is nothing that can take that from us. Nothing we can do
that can set us outside his love. For Julian there is no need of God’s forgiveness because has already
forgiven us. Our journey is to find our way back to that unconditional love, when we have turned
away or put ourselves far from him through our actions and failures - our falling and failures
becoming the way in which we learn more and more of the life he offers us, the fullness of his love
for us. The hardest part – that we wrestle with and Julian struggled with in the injustices of her
own time – is that that is the same love that calls back those who have fallen to the very lowest
depths, even those who have wilfully placed us there.
Worship is the natural response of our journeying back to God. Sometimes that worship is an
awareness of our sorrow and need of forgiveness; sometimes it is the exuberant joy of knowing
unconditional love, just as we are. Worshipping in spirit and in truth is the way to live in the
endless love of Christ who forgives us and frees us and brings us home to his love. Standing and
falling, forgiving and forgiven we are always drawn to the source of his love for us, his act of selfless
love on the cross, where his love and sorrow for victim and perpetrator meet. And that is the place
of endless refreshment. A place where Julian says;
‘Our soul rests in God its true peace, our soul stands in God its true strength, and is deep-rooted in
God for endless love.’
Out of the depths I cry to you O Lord. O Lord hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the
voice of my supplications! If you Lord, should mark iniquities, who could stand? But there is
forgiveness with you…