Sermon "More Than Damaged Goods"
Rev. Lonnie Richardson
Sunday, March 7, 1999
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More Than Damaged Goods
Ever seen one of these? It's a damaged can of soup. I've seen plenty of them, especially in my first real job at a grocery store my grandparents owned. Trucks brought in hundreds of boxes of food every week and we had to unpack them and put the stock on the shelves. Almost every week, however, we would open a box and find that some of the cans or cartons had been damaged. Some of the cans, for example, looked like this. They lost their labels, had dents, were crushed, and sometimes so badly that some of the contents had come out.
My grandmother told me not to put these on the shelves because no one would buy them. So, we often would place them in a large basket in the front of the store. On the basket was a large sign that read, "Damaged goods. Cheap." But not very many people bought them. Most just ignored them. Often we ended up sending them back to the manufacturers.
It seems to me that a lot of people, more than you might think, feel like this damaged can. Whatever the reason, things they've done, things life has done to them, things beyond there control, have made them feel like damaged goods...bent out of shape, crushed, of little value to themselves or anyone else.
Just this week I happened to notice a woman being interviewed on television. She was a single parent - two children - been divorced several years. She was being asked what it was like being a single parent and if there was any romance in her life now. "I look at myself," she said, "as damaged goods." She did not think anyone could love her again. Her sense of worth was zero.
I wonder if the woman at the well felt that way about herself? Damaged goods...valued by no one... ignored by many...maybe looked down on by the rest. To lots of people, and probably even to herself, she had strikes against her.
She was a Samaritan - the lowest of the low to most Jews. Jews and Samaritans had hated one another for more than four-hundred years. The Jews saw Samaritans as half-breeds, as racially impure. Though they had common ancestors, they were deeply divided religiously, with the Jews claiming that you could only worship in Jerusalem at the temple and the Samaritans saying that you could only worship in their temple on Mount Gerizim. No Jew would ever think of associating with a Samaritan. In fact, many Jews, if going to Galilee, would not even set a foot in Samaria, instead going out of their way to go around it, for to even touch the soil was to be soiled yourself.
Jesus was sitting there at the well when she walks up. Perhaps he was sitting on the ground and she didn't see him until she reached the well, else she might have not come to it at all. But she gets there and there he is. She gives him a nervous glance and hurriedly takes out her animal skin bag and rope to use it to draw up the water. Jesus looks at her, being thirsty himself, takes the initiative and says, "Give me a drink of water."
"Give me a drink of water." Six little words. Simple. Logical. He had no bucket to draw the water himself. Jacob's well is still there today and it's over one-hundred feet deep. So, such a request makes sense. It's expected, at least to our way of thinking.
But not to this woman or to most anyone else in those days. For a Jewish man and certainly a rabbi or teacher would never speak to a woman in public, especially a Samaritan woman. It would hurt your own reputation, and he certainly would not have asked her for something to drink. As we saw in our reading, to drink from their cup was to make yourself unclean, that is, unfit to worship God in the temple at Jerusalem.
But there's something else going on in this simple request. There was a very common custom in those days in regard to the giving and receiving of water. If a person offers another a drink of water, and its accepted, this gift becomes a social contract of friendship for one year. So the woman is absolutely astounded that Jesus speaks to her in the first place and what he says, that is, asks her for a drink of water, for in asking that she heard Jesus really saying, "I would like to be your friend."
Here, at this well, she met a person who didn't ignore her, to whom she was not invisible, who didn't look at her with a critical eye. He spoke to her and continued to do so. He treated her like a human being, with dignity and respect. He spoke to her as if she were a person of worth, of value, like valued goods, not damaged ones.
He offered her what she thirsted for far more than the water of that well - the love, forgiveness, friendship of God. Yes, when he spoke to her those simple little words, "Give me a drink of water," this life-giving water began to seep into her life, so much so that she could rush back to the town, leaving her water jar behind, to tell the people she usually tried to avoid, "Come and see this man who knows everything about me. Can he be the Messiah?" And through her this life-giving water begins to flow into the lives of people around her, who were not so different from her after all, for they, in their own way, were just as thirsty.
Jesus knew her pain. Her thirst. He knew she thought of herself as damaged goods. And he knows us, our secrets, our pain. He knows that far too many of us see ourselves as damaged goods. But that is not how he sees us! And if we'll let him give us his water, what only he can give, we will not see ourselves or anyone else that way either.
Back to the grocery store. Most people never looked at the basket we marked as "Damaged goods. Cheap" but there was this one woman, her name was Alice Short. Alice was a regular customer who lived next door. She would always go to the damaged goods basket and buy several items there. I asked her one day why she did that when most other people didn't. She said, "Nothing's really wrong with these," holding up a can that had part of the label gone and several dents. "It's just bent up a little. On the inside it's as good as the ones on the shelves, and it's what's on the inside that counts, isn't it?"
There is another, whose always on the lookout for damaged goods. It doesn't matter to him how bent out of shape, how damaged they are, for he looks at the inside. You might seem as worthless as damaged goods to others or in your own eyes, but not to him. To him, you are of worth. You are valued goods, so valued that he has purchased you with his very own life. So, come out of that damaged goods basket. That's not for you anymore. You've been bought with a price.
Prayer:
Lord, we thank you that you have revealed to us, as you did to that woman of old, the fountain within, the place of significance. The place of renewed love, of cleansing, refreshing, washing again. Teach us to drink frequently all through the day, as many times as we need, of this refreshing fountain: that we will not have to run after empty cisterns but drink deeply of one who has come and has proven himself in our own lives. Amen.
