Maybe you had your attention gripped last weekend by the same picture I saw on the front page of the Saturday New York Times. Those of you who were born in the past 25 years or so might not have even known the man in the picture. And in fact, even if he had been a familiar face to you years ago, as he was for me, time has been very hard on him, and you might not have recognized him. It was George Wallace, the former governor of Alabama and presidential candidate, and more notably even than that, one of the most visible opponents of the movement towards civil rights in the 1960s. The occasion for this photograph was a reenactment of the famous civil rights march to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965, thirty years ago. Thirty years ago, George Wallace was in the vanguard working to stop that march with police and dogs and violence. Now, thirty years later, here is another picture, of Governor Wallace, no longer resisting the march, but sitting in his wheelchair, silently clasping hands with the veterans of that march. Too old and sick and deaf even to speak himself, an aide of his thanked the marchers and paid a quiet tribute to the people he had once made a political career of resisting.
According to the story, some of the marchers who were there took Governor Wallace’s change at face value, and embraced him as a lost brother. Others were more suspicious, thinking that he was simply trying to clean up his record before his trip to the pearly gates. Perhaps both are right. In a way, it doesn’t matter what they thought. Old and sick and suffering, he seems to have undergone some sort of mystery, a transformation so out of the ordinary that no one except him really knows what it is all about.
How do we feel about transformations like this? Maybe a little cynical, like the one bystander. It’s too neat. It won’t last. Or, if we’re less cynical, more likely we feel a little distant from it. Someone making a clean break from the past seems to have acquired some sort of unusual strength, they no longer care about the world’s opinion, they only know what they have to do. We don’t usually see changes like this in people, and more importantly we have probably stopped asking for changes like this, in other people, or in ourselves. Mostly, we focus what we want in terms of relief from all the cares and troubles and sins that oppress us — but becoming a completely new person goes way beyond that. So many failings and sin in ourselves seem so insoluble, so much suffering in our families and in the world simply never goes away, we are who we are, after all; we come to assume that it is not on God’s agenda to remake us, or anyone, into something different.
Over the next few weeks, today and the two Sundays afterwards, we are going to hear three long readings from the Gospel of John – today’s story of the woman at the well, then next week the man born blind, and the week after, the raising of Lazarus – these are the three great gospel stories all about complete change and transformation, from sin to living water, from blindness to sight, from death to life. They are all dramatic stories, the common element is long encounters with Jesus. And if there is any message common to them it is that reminder that dramatic transformation in our lives is what he is here for. Talking with and being near him brings transformation.
These readings are good to read and reread during Lent, they are powerful stories that draw us into them again and again, and they are here to remind us that what we are after is some real transformation in us and everything around us, not just a little fine tuning or some spiritual feelings, we want liberation from ills and sins that oppress us, we want violence and death taken away, we want the truth, we want, as the woman at the well says, some of that living water. We forget how much we want it. These readings remind us that that is what Jesus is here for.
If you are wondering about whether transformation like that is really possible in our ordinary lives here, perhaps what’s next will be a hint to you that it is. In a few minutes, we are going to see an old tradition reenacted involving our parish’s candidates for baptism and confirmation at the Easter Vigil. Baptism is a complete change, in the life of the church it is the most radical change we can see, as close as we’ll get to real living water, and we have people here among us who are ready to make it. We call them forward today in the first of three rituals called a scrutiny, but it is not we who are scrutinizing them, trying to find out if they are worthy. We know they are. Instead, we are going to ask God to take away everything that stands in the way of what our old tradition calls their purification and enlightenment. We want every evil and obstacle and discouragement that stands in the way of their transformation to be taken away so that they can experience new life. As we wait for their transformation, let’s also ask to see the makings of our own.