“The Long Bag We Drag Behind Us”

Presented to Warners Bay Uniting Church 8.3.2026

Focus text: John 4:5-42

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Two thousand years ago, a Samaritan woman came to an ancient well. It was an ordinary well, on an ordinary day, in a very ordinary life. But on this day, a stranger is there, Jesus. She doesn’t recognize him at first, as he begins talk to her. “Give me a drink” Jesus says. Now asking her for a drink of water was nothing short of scandalous back in those days. The disciples had left Jesus by the well to rest while they went to fetch food and provisions for their journey. Had they been there, they would have gotten Jesus water and had he still insisted on speaking to the Samaritan woman, the disciples would have been aghast.

Certainly, the woman is taken aback, that a man--and a rabbi at that--would speak to her, and his words to her are filled with grace and revelation. In this case he turned everything upside down: He sidestepped the boundaries and spoke with an outcast; he suggested to her that he might serve up the water rather than be waited on by her. He confronted her with her past, the knowledge of her secrets, but rather than condemning her, he used her own difficult story to help her discover who he really was. She asked for this water; and in the conversation that followed, he peeled back the layers of her life right before her eyes. Moving boldly into the secret places of her heart. He knew! He understood!

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This is the simple point that I believe John was making in today’s Gospel. Namely, we are all like this woman. John was holding up a mirror for us, helping us to see that we too stumble along through life, we too have our own triumphs and our own failings. Most of the time, we keep this suppressed, and we don't have to deal with it. But then, Jesus suddenly appears in our pathway, and he tells us everything we ever did, and our carefully constructed inner world falls apart. Because we recognize that He knows. He "gets" us. And, still, he loves us – such are the depths of the living water he has to offer us today.

If we cast our minds back to the first reading we heard from Exodus today – we find Moses leading the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and they’re en route to the promised land – toward something better. The people had their hangups, most, if not all of them were really fed up with how life was turning out for them, and so they begin to complain, they begin to lash out, they begin to wonder where God is and go into overwhelm, catastrophizing their current situation and romanticizing their past – wishing they could go back, even though they were in a much more dire place. God was in the process of bringing them out of their suffering, and amid that process they still ask the question, “is the Lord among us or not?” – sound familiar?

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Each one of us here today has been on a similar journey as the one Moses led the Israelites on. Because it’s a universal experience. We may not be out in the middle of a literal desert, but certainly we have known metaphorical ones. Certainly, we have known what it is to be defeated, to feel like all hope is gone, to feel like God has deserted us.

 

The people quarreled with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” 3But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” 4So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” 5The Lord said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” (Exodus 17:2-6a)

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The harshness of the desert experience cannot be underestimated – and into this situation of harshness God offers living water so the people may drink. A key theological point here that you’ll notice is that it’s not that God can take them out of their desert experience, but that God journeys alongside of them providing little signs of hope and refreshment along the way as they journey toward the promised land.

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I think this is a very apt metaphor for life and also the purpose of the church. Church is a place to come to receive some living water, some refreshment along the way. Church is not about believing that God can and will make life a bed of roses – that’s not the point at all. The Church exists to be the water that Moses strikes out of the rock today. The Church exists to bring comfort, refreshment, and hope to the people. It is a place you can come and ask the questions like, “why did this or that have to happen?”, “how do I make sense of my life?”, “What should I do?” “How will I get through this?”, “Can God ever forgive me? Can I ever forgive myself?”

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Church provides the sacred space to bring the big questions of life to the fore and to begin to honestly engage them in the context of our prayer and worship life. I once had a member say to me that one of the things she really appreciated about coming to church is that in her life so much was disordered that when she came into a church she found through the worship and the prayerful spirit of the service itself, a sense of order which gave her hope and nurtured her soul in such a way that she was able to drink it all in and go back for another week in a disordered world. You might think of other reasons why you are here today. Whatever the reason, the church exists so that our lives and faith may be strengthened and deepened, that a framework for hope and a connection with God can help us stay the course amidst the desert experiences of our own lives.

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This morning, we are invited to meet this God here in this place, and like the woman at the well to encounter the same one who told her everything she had ever done and loved her just the same. To bring to Christ all that we have ever done. Both the light and dark side of the human soul is another gift of the church today to help people work through their sorrows and failings, and to be encouraged that all is not lost, but that in Christ we find ourselves again, but this time as people of inherent worth and purpose. Robert Bly, a poet and a writer on mythology and spirituality wrote a book called, “The Long Bag We Drag Behind Us”. In it he talks about how we are all like the woman at the well. We are all in a sense the scandalous ones, we all have our inner failings and into a long bag we cram much of what we have been ashamed with all our lives and we carry it around with us everywhere we go, and it starts at a very young age.

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Bly observes, “When we were one or two, one day we noticed that our parents didn’t like certain parts (of what we did). They said things like, “Can’t you be still?” or “it isn’t nice to try and kill your brother.” Behind us we have an invisible bag, and the part of us our parents don’t like we, to keep our parent’s love, put in the bag. By the time we go to school our bag is quite large. Then our teachers have their say, “Good children don’t get angry over such little things.” So we take our anger and put it in the bag. Then we do a lot of bag stuffing in high school. Different cultures fill the bag with different contents. In Christian culture, sexuality goes into the bag. With it goes much spontaneity.” He concludes, “We spend our life until we’re twenty deciding what parts of ourselves to put into the bag, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get them out again.”

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His point here is that in a very real sense, we are each of us a collection of all our experiences, those lived out and those repressed. We cannot help but interact with the world through the specific lens we have learned to see the world through. We might like to think of some of the parts of ourselves we have put into our own bag. What are the unlived parts of our soul that perhaps rages on in the background, demanding acknowledgement, yearning for expression? And how might we honour these unlived parts in such a way that leads us more fully deeply into life?

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For Jesus, he saw the woman at the well completely. He didn’t just see the parts of her she wanted others to see, her public persona as it were. He saw beyond the surface, he saw and acknowledged the long bag she had dragged behind her all her life. Filled with grief, shame, and exasperation, and he acknowledged it was there, gave some insight into what she was carrying, and invited her to bring it out of the shadows and be freed. “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done.” she said to the people as she left her water jar behind. Interesting that she did that. Could it be the water jar represented on some deep level, her bag, her sense of duty, her burdens that she had carried all her life up until that moment?

 

There is an honesty in the woman’s encounter with Jesus today that lays open her past, yet she is no longer bound to it, she is in fact freed from her identification with it altogether and through this encounter she drinks the metaphorical living water Jesus offers and her soul comes back to life again.

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The story tells of the dramatic transformation of the woman. She begins her story as an outsider and ends up becoming a disciple. So she becomes a model for other outsiders, people who feel like nobodies, or people with a troubling past to bring all who they are and all that they have done to their encounter with Christ and know as Paul reminds us that there is now nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’

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As you make this journey through Lent, you might like to reflect upon what’s in the long bag you drag behind yourself? This morning, Jesus comes to us as he did the samaritan woman and he looks into our eyes as well and sees everything we’ve ever done and invites us to attend to some of the things we have kept hidden in the shadows, those aspects of ourselves that are long repressed and trapped in that bag. This might mean taking up a new spiritual practice, talking to a therapist, creating a new ritual for life, connecting with nature or expressing yourself through creative arts, it might mean starting to come along to church and exploring all of these aspects more deeply in community.

 

Next Saturday, we’ll begin a new program here at the church called “The Greatest Story”, a monthly exploration of the Bible brought to life through the creative arts and conversation around the great stories of Scripture and how they can help inform us to live a more meaningful and purposeful life today. These sessions are all self contained, so you can come to just one or all of them. You are welcome to just drop into any session and you’ll be warmly welcomed. We will meet here on the 2nd Saturday of each month from 10:30am. There is more information in our monthly newsletter which you can take on your way out today.

 

Years ago, we might well have been told that we were not athletic enough, pretty enough, serious enough, respectable enough, and all of this happens on a deeply unconscious level. We’ve also done this to others without realizing it with our expectations and assumptions of how things should be. However, Jesus comes to us this morning as he did that woman at the well with a look that reminds us he knows the real you and loves you more than we can ask or imagine, because he sees the real person underneath the bag you carry. This morning may Christ fill you with that living water that overflows with abundance as you set down that long bag here in this place, and find your life renewed.