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Sermon by The Rev. Deena M. Galantowicz
Today’s Gospel message reminds me of a certain place.  It is in Tipperary in Ireland.  There is a massive island of rock.  On it stands the ruins of a cathedral, a monastery, and a round tower.  Obviously ancient.  It looms over the town beneath it, and the green countryside stretching far away from it.  It is called The Rock of Cashel.  For me, to view the Rock of Cashel evokes a sense of awe, of wonder, of sort of asking…What’s it all about, Alfie??  What’s it all about? 

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​Our Gospel reading this morning raises some intriguing questions, at least for me.  A man who was been born blind is all at once given his sight.  Is there no one even curious about what that experience was like for him?  Is there no one to really celebrate this new gift with this man?  Instead, a debate breaks out about healing on the Sabbath, and who is at fault for his blindness in the first place, and was this man really the man who was born blind or an imposter.  Since the man who was born blind was basically invisible in his society, no one could remember what he really looked like … they had to ask his parents.  

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This morning we are taking some extra ordinary steps to combat an extraordinary disease: the CORVID-19 coronavirus.  Although we have just a few people in our pews this morning, we are practicing “social distancing,” and we are recording this service so that members of the St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church community, and others, may participate with us in our worship and prayers from the safety of their homes.

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Some of the stories in our Bible have as much written between the lines as in the text itself.  This story of the woman at the well is one of them.  The story happens in Samaria … an area that we know now as the West Bank.  It happens at the well in Sychar … a very special well in the faith journey of the Jews.  And, it happens with a woman in the middle of the day … another story written between the lines that indicates that this woman was both marginalized and vulnerable.

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​In the first twelve chapters of the Book of Genesis we hear the stories of the Creation, Adam and Eve and the Temptation, Noah and the Ark … now on the big screen starring Russell Crowe … and the Tower of Babel among others.  Then the text turns away from these mythic tales to the epic story chronicling the beginning of monotheism … the story of Abraham and Sarah and their descendants.  The storyline follows Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel. Jacob and Rachel had twelve sons, one of whom was Joseph … the one sold to slavers and taken to Egypt.  This brought the Israelites to Egypt to escape a famine, but generations later they lived under the oppression of the Pharaoh.  Then there was Moses who led the Israelites out of Egypt to a land of milk and honey where eventually judges and kings ruled until Jerusalem fell to the Assyrians under Solomon, King David’s son.  After exile and return the Israelites struggled in their homeland, oppressed for centuries by one empire or another.  And then Jesus, one of their own … a descendant of Abraham and Sarah … began his ministry in a little backwater region of the Promised Land.  But let’s go back to the twelfth chapter of Genesis.