Lord of the Streets, Houston
March 8, 2026
3 Lent
Exodus 17:1-7
Psalm 95
John 4:5-42
Don’t you just love it when your enemies get what’s coming to them? It’s like a delicious meal of deserved justice served with vengeance pie topped with self-righteous ice cream. It’s great. I love it when the bad guys fall and the really terrible people get exactly what they deserve. Enemies getting their comeuppance makes my little black heart sing.
Then, the rest of me starts feeling pretty rotten, actually. That part of me that sings at other people’s misfortune ends up making the rest of me rather sick. Rejoicing at my enemies’ downfall may feed my cold little black heart, but it feeds my heart poison and grows in me like a cancer.
It’s said that we are what we eat, and that is true of our spiritual food as well. Junk food and desert taste great, and when that’s all we eat, our bodies suffer. They stop working well. We end up with diabetes, and cancer, and heart disease, and even depression and anxiety can get worse from a bad diet.
When we feed our hearts and souls with junk food, our hearts and souls become unhealthy as well. Vengeance, delighting when our enemies are hurt, that’s like really bad junk food for our souls. Think about what that diet really looks like: anger; rage; happiness that others are hurting, that’s cruelty. We can’t really be healthy and happy people when we feed ourselves on cruelty. We can’t be healthy and happy people when we delight in people’s suffering, even the suffering of our enemies.
See, the more we eat of people’s suffering, the more we want that food, which means we end up wanting people to suffer. So, even though our enemies might deserve suffering, when we delight in their suffering, we end up becoming cruel people.
Another problem with delighting in our enemies’ suffering is that we let ourselves focus on them, rather than ourselves. If they are bad and are getting what’s coming to them, I don’t need to look at ways I harm people. It’s still there, though, festering and eating us up from the inside. So, it grows in the dark, like mold, like fungus, rotting us from the inside.
So, Jesus offers us different food. When he met the woman at the well, he told her he would give her water welling up within her to eternal life. Then Jesus talked to his disciples, telling them that the food he has to eat is doing the will of God.
Well, what was the will of God that Jesus kept doing throughout his ministry? Healing people. Healing communities. Showing people a better way than the way of vengeance, a better way than the way of fighting and being against one another.
When the woman at the well asked Jesus which mountain was the correct one to worship God, he told her, neither was the correct mountain. The time is coming, Jesus said, when people will worship God neither on one mountain or the other, but they will worship God in spirit and in truth.
So, what’s with the two mountains? They were the mountain on which the temple was built in Jerusalem and mount Gerizim in Samaria. The people of Israel and the people of Samaria were bitter enemies, so the argument over which mountain was the correct place to worship God was really an argument about which people God loved and which people God didn’t love.
So, when she asked which mountain was the best mountain, Jesus told her that folks would worship God neither on the mountain in Samaria, nor the mountain in Jerusalem. Instead, people would worship God in spirit and in truth. That sounds to me like all people get to worship God, regardless of which nation you belong to. That sounds to me like no more quarreling over whose mountain is correct, and if they stopped fighting over which mountain was correct, then they’d no longer be enemies. They’d no longer delight in one another’s suffering
The food that Jesus offers is for each of us as individual people, and the food that Jesus offers goes far beyond individual healing. Jesus offers food that grows into healing among communities and even healing among nations. A community and a nation full of peaceful, loving, compassionate people is a community and a nation that will spread that same peace, love, and compassion to others.
Now, this is not about turning a nation into a Christian nation. Jesus wasn’t preaching to kings and rulers. Jesus wasn’t calling for a religious conversion of governments. Jesus wasn’t talking about forcing his way on others. Jesus was speaking to a woman at a well and to his disciples. Jesus spoke to the masses, to the people. Jesus met with religious leaders. Jesus wasn’t taking over a nation’s government to force change from the top town. Jesus healed and taught people the way of love to change lives and communities from the ground up. That’s things grow after all, from the ground up.
The food that Jesus offers feeds us in ways that lead away from bitterness, anger, and cruelty and into peace, love, and compassion. The food of taking delight in our enemies’ suffering, decays our bodies and souls, making us bitter, angry, and cruel. The food Jesus offers feeds our bodies and souls with eternal life, making us peaceful, loving, and compassionate.
A community and a nation full of peaceful, loving, compassionate people is a community and a nation that will spread that same peace, love, and compassion to others. That peace, love, and compassion doesn’t spread through force feeding it, but by offering it and living it. When Jesus offered this food & water to the woman at the well, she wanted it.
She ran to tell others to come and see a man who, “who told me everything I’ve ever done.” All Jesus actually said was that she’d had five husbands and the man she was with wasn’t her husband. Rather than dismissing this woman as sinful for having five husbands, let’s ask ourselves, “Why?” Only men could sue for divorce, so she hadn’t left her husbands; they had dismissed her. Why?
Well, we don’t really know why five husbands had all sent her away, but we can guess that it left her feeling hurt and ashamed, probably bitter and resentful too. It could be a shameful thing to be dismissed by one husband, others wondering, “What’s wrong with her?” She’d been dismissed by five, so it’s a good bet she felt deep shame, like she was no good and unlovable.
Then, Jesus talked to her, not like damaged goods but like a fully important, beloved human. “If he only knew,” she probably thought. Then, she found out that he did know, and he wasn’t shaming her or treating her like a lesser human. That was healing for her. That was the food and water Jesus offered, welling up in her to eternal life.
The woman went from eating the bread of shame, bitterness, and resentment, to eating and drinking the love of God, the eternal life given by Jesus. Peace, love, and compassion was the food Jesus gave her, revealing the truth of her life, so she was no longer bound by it. There she was, fully exposed, and God was still calling her beloved. That’s being naked and unashamed, as we were created to be in Eden, in the beginning.
From there, the woman spread his message to others, bringing them to Jesus so he could feed them as well, the food Jesus offers growing from the ground up. That what Jesus calls us to do, to offer the same bread and water of peace, love, and compassion, to offer the same healing and eternal life we have be given to others. We’re reminded again and again to stick to this diet as well.
As much as delighting in our enemies’ downfall is juicy and delicious (and it is delicious), it is also cancerous, harmful food which rots us from the inside out. Set aside that food. Offer it to God. “Here, Lord, accept my offering to you of my anger, fear, resentment, desires for vengeance. Accept my offering to you of the cruelty in my heart. Then, please feed me with your peace. Feed me with your love. Feed me with your compassion. Amen.”
