A Pocketful of Optimism - John 4:1-15

2023 Bavin/Johnstone House Chapel Sermon

Optimism is a choice that we make every day.

I was reminded of this old adage as I reflected on the theme of Optimism for tonight’s House Chapel. I admit, I was a bit surprised and thrown by the theme when The Felix’s told me about the choice of their theme. But the more I reflected on it, the more I saw what a valuable way of thinking it was.

See, too often we can reduce optimism to pithy clichés ‘the glass is always half full’ or simplistic understandings ‘always look on the bright side of life’.

But the reality is being optimistic takes work, some days we’ll find it easier than others. Some days we’ll be filled with an optimistic outlook. Everything is working out, we’re being productive and things are going our way. But other days, we can struggle to find even a glimmer of optimism, things don’t work out or something untoward happens that turns our day upside down. Optimism can be hard, but it’s something we should try for each day; however big or however small that moment of optimism might be.

I was reminded of that optimistic outlook when I listened to an ABC Conversations podcast interview with the English actor Richard E Grant. Some of you might have heard Grant speaking on his new book ‘A Pocketful of Happiness’. I’m yet to read it, but very keen to do so.

Grant wrote the book after his wife of 40 years was diagnosed with cancer and subsequently passed away. Grant details their life together, particularly through that incredibly difficult time. He takes his title from advice his wife gave him as they navigated this difficult period. She said ‘just try to find a pocketful of happiness each day’.

I love that attitude, because it reminds us that we don’t always need to be filled to the brim with optimism. Sometimes all we need to find is a pocketful of it. Yes, there’ll be days when we’re overflowing with a positive attitude. But there’ll also be times when we’ll struggle, and things won’t go our way. Finding that pocketful of happiness, that moment of optimism, in the midst of it all is vital. It helps us to remember that there are good things around us, even when we feel overwhelmed. And it helps to build resilience as we work through adversity.

I think tonight’s reading gives us a glimpse into what it means to find a pocketful of optimism in the midst of seemingly bleak or strange situations.

In this reading we find Jesus and his disciples travelling back to their home in Galilee, but to do so they have to pass through Samaria. In those times Samaritan land was seen a ‘foreign’ and second class and those who lived there were despised by Jesus’ kind, the Judeans. So, to find Jesus engaging in conversations with a Samaritan woman is scandalous. It breaks cultural divides as they come from two very different backgrounds. It breaks religious divides, and as such purity laws, and it breaks gender divides. It’s absolutely unheard of.

Yet here we are, we have Jesus sitting down at a well to drink and he asks the Samaritan woman for a drink. She’s astounded and questions why. But Jesus says, if only you knew who was asking you for a drink you would ask from them the ‘living water’ that they offer.

See in this encounter Jesus is noticing the innate humanity within the Samaritan woman, something most others would have ignored. He is asking her for a drink of water, but also offering her something much more refreshing and sustaining, the living water that comes from God.

See as Christians, we find our hope, our pocketful of optimism, from God and from Jesus. Jesus offers us this metaphorical living water which ‘gushes up within us into eternal life’. It gives us life, it sustains us and it encourages us. In Christ, we find our hope. In Christ, we find our pocketful of optimism.

In the next part of this reading, which we didn’t read, the woman is astounded by what Jesus is saying and notices something divine in him. He challenges her to go and speak to her husband, knowing all to well that she’s been divorced many times before; another thing that would have made her an outsider in her society. Jesus continues to encourage her and show her care and love which, in turn she responds with enthusiasm to follow Jesus.

See this woman had everything stacked against her in Jewish society of the time. She was female, she was Samaritan and she was divorced many times over. She would have been ostracised completely from her society. The very fact that she’s collecting water from the well in the heat of the midday sun, rather than in the morning when it’d be convention to do so, tells us that she was excluded from the groups of other women.

Yet, Jesus doesn’t notice or care about any of that. He meets her just as she is, just where she is. He offers her care and compassion and see’s the innate humanity and value within her. He doesn’t hold any of those so called ‘flaws’ against her. He just sees her as a human being, truly and fully loved by God.

It reminds us that God does the same for us today. Those things that society often characterises as ‘the other’ or those things that our world holds as reasons to divide don’t matter for God. Our gender, our cultural background, our sexuality, our previous history or our current circumstances are put aside, none of that matters for Jesus. Where society might use those labels as reasons to exclude, Jesus ignores all of that and sits down beside us and offers us a drink of living water. Offers us God’s love and embrace.

I think it’s through that that we can find our pocketful of optimism for the day. In fact, I think it’s through that that we can find an abundance of optimism. Whatever is going on in our day, whatever might be happening in our lives or whatever pressures might be being put upon us by society, God, through Christ, offers us this living water which sustains us, nourishes us and brings us into God’s loving embrace; no conditions, not buts, just love.

And that is more than enough to fill our pocketful of optimism for the day.