Sent Out Beyond

John 4:5-42 and Go to the Limits of Your Longing by Rainer Maria Rilke

Sunday March 8, 2026

Third Sunday in Lent

What a joy that we got a little winter! I feel so grateful to see all of you today. Thank you for springing forward! Thank you again for the privilege of your time. I invite you now to take some deeper breaths as you are moved, to let yourself arrive a bit more fully, tuning into whatever word God has for us today. And I offer this prayer rooted in Psalm 19.

God of Love and hope, may we each hear whatever we need to today and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Regularly I am brought inside the cell of Folsom State Prison where Dennis lives. Before that he was at San Quentin in the San Francisco Bay Area and that’s where our family first met him. He was matched with my husband Jeremy as part of a program connecting prison inmates who did not receive regular visitors with volunteers in the broader community. And since our daughter was a toddler, Dennis has been a part of our life. When we lived in California, we visited him in person when we could. Sometimes, all three of us went, sharing popcorn in a small room that we turned into a time outside of time, with a restless little one, catching up, sharing stories. Now we are pen pals, hanging on through the bureaucracy of the California Department of Corrections, managing to find each other as he has been moved. The best we can do now is send quarterly care packages, letters, pictures, photo calendars, and we spill out our lives in cursive over lined pages. Being in Dennis’s life, often pushes me to the limits, to the edge of what is familiar and comfortable. I will never forget the first time our family showed up at San Quentin. Our relationship has forever changed me. He is on Death Row and will likely never see freedom beyond the bars of his current existence, but he is fierce about scraping every surface he can find for goodness, squeezing whatever joyful juice he can out of what is around him. 

The last letter was a detailed description of how he managed to make an apple pie- often his letter recount how he cooks with what he’s given. Recently, he spoke of spending days saving Pink lady apples left on the trays from those who didn’t eat theirs at lunch, gathering up those little cups of margarine, using the jar of cinnamon from the package along with sugar packets to make a pie filling in a bag, using the jar itself as a rolling pin, hoping the shared microwave works this time. Dennis’s mini bakery behind the bars of Folsom. In his world, there is nothing easy. There is nothing comfortable. There is nothing convenient. He doesn’t really live with a sense of justice, but he still does try to live. 

Crossing all of the barriers to be given a glimpse into his life has compelled me to see things differently, expanding my heart in ways I can’t entirely explain. And it has made me wonder if we humans need proximity to the lives of others to live out the kind of love to which we are called as Christians. I wonder, do we actually need to be pushed into other people’s worlds to really understand? Or to at least have the answers we had formed before questioned by our encounters? Because otherwise, in my experience at least, we are only able to see things from where we are, we are only able to see the world as we are, and our love then can be limited by our own experience, which leaves entire fields of human living out of our purview and therefore sometimes out of our sense of seeing them as our neighbor.

So it seems that often to reach the higher levels of living from love, we need to be in the words of the poet Rilke, out beyond our recall, to the limits of our longing, to the edge of our familiar.

In this story that we heard from the Gospel of John, Jesus is tired from his journey and stops at a well for water around lunch time when a woman shows up to get water too. And here, in this context, this is unprecedented. Because they aren’t seen as the same. They aren’t supposed to interact. She is one of “those” people and in their First Century manner the writers go out of their way to let us know that, even saying that Jews and Samaritans do not share anything in common, just to be clear- not words or water.

Throughout the story she is referred to as “the woman.” Her colorful past is highlighted, as Jesus brings up her 5 husbands and the fact that she is still coming alone to the well. She is seen as an outsider. As scholar Deborah Kapp writes, the Samaritan woman is, “A woman in a man’s world, a stranger to Judaism, and the practices and geography of faith, conventional morality, and the gospel…in the eyes of the Gospel writers this woman is a nobody. She does not even merit a name, and her gender, religious orientation, social standing, and personal habits distance her from Jesus and her community.”

Before this moment at the moment at the well, they were both living in the story handed to them…and then suddenly there they are, unfamiliar and new territory for both of them- out beyond what they had known before, pushed to the limits, to the edge of their familiar, in a situation they did not expect.

What was true in the bigger world, was no longer true in their small world- the nameless woman is now being seen and heard. She is not invisible or helpless or useless or unworthy. The story is a ko-an of sorts, as the metaphor for Jesus as living water is shown to be thirsty himself, seeking nourishment from someone whom the culture had labeled as outside of goodness and worthiness and righteousness.

Professor of New Testament, Osvaldo Vena writes, “As a Jewish male, Jesus is in a position of advantage over the woman. But as a thirsty and tired sojourner, he is obviously in disadvantage, for he is a foreigner and does not have a bucket to draw water. After the woman’s initial surprise, Jesus invites the dialogue by becoming vulnerable (“Give me a drink”) which is kind of rude, and by allowing the woman to exercise some power over him (she is the one with the bucket!)” 

Allowing barriers to be crossed to be given a glimpse into her life…

Was he compelled by his own need? Was he so thirsty, he gave up all convention? Did he intend to traverse these boundaries? Was he experimenting with his new ideas of radical love when few would see? Or was his human heart open and love crept in that moment to expand it? I do wonder if it was his proximity to her that changed him? I wonder if it was his closeness to her and her story that allowed him to be open?

In this time, I feel out beyond my recall, out beyond what feels familiar, in a territory that I did not expect and don’t always know how to navigate. I am hearing that from others of you too. It feels important to note what is good here, in this unfamiliar territory. I am remembering that it is in places where we are thrown off of what we know that we really grow. This is where can be expanded, deepened, able to see things beyond the small worlds we inhabit. This is where our love then can be widened beyond the limits of our experience, allowing things to shift in our wider world. 

I believe those of us who are moved are called out beyond our comfort, even people in this room need to hear they are somebody. Who needs to hear this? Who can cross barriers to say this to someone else? I believe more of us open hearted souls are needed to say yes to being sent out beyond. There is wisdom here, in this place outside of what is comfortable for us. New skills. New views. New love for the life that is ours. This is a time of being out beyond what we have known. And it’s not easy. It’s not comfortable. It’s not convenient. But there are good things here. Thanks God we are here together.

Is there a part of your life right now where you feel “out beyond your recall” and out of your comfort zone? If not now, have there been other times? What wisdom was there for you?        

I do believe this time is calling on us to challenge barriers and cross them over. Where are we called to get closer to who and what makes us uncomfortable so we might grow deeper in love? Where are we called to the edge of our familiar? Where are we called to say yes to being sent out beyond what we have known? Beloved of God, we are called together to the edge of our familiar. Amen.