I’ve seen the sign on the
left-hand side of the Harper’s Ferry Road: “Frog Hollow, the Moonshine Capitol
of the World.” I think it’s a bit tamer
down in the Hollow these days than it was during the height of Prohibition,
when a man would sit watch on the bridge on a summer’s night in case a revenue agent
came creeping down the road with an axe and an ultimatum from the IRS.
Until it burned down a
few years ago, though, the center of community life in the hollow was the Mad
Dog Saloon. They say the floors were
dirt and they traded in canned beer out of a Coleman cooler, when the locally
produced wares weren’t being passed around.
Saturday nights were punctuated with ambulance calls, when one of the
hollow boys was wont to get a bit dramatic with the cue stick. I lived for two years in Sharpsburg, just
five miles away. But I never had the guts to cross the threshold of the Mad Dog
and see if all the stories were really true.
They were hellraisers
down in Frog Hollow. That’s what my
grandmother would say. Foul-mouthed,
hard-drinking, suspicious of outsiders, the kind who threw fists and asked
questions later. There aren’t any
churches in Frog Hollow, or Rotary meetings, no afternoon teas to talk over rose
varietals. People in the surrounding
communities knew to keep their distance.
“He’s from Frog Hollow.” That’s
all that needed to be said to take the measure of things.
Jesus “had to pass
through Samaria,” Saint John tells us, as he made his way back home to
Galilee. Jesus had made his first foray
to Jerusalem, a thoroughly disappointing venture. He had been scathing in his attack on the
corruption at the temple, and his sermon to one Nicodemus, “a teacher of the
Jews,” had left the poor fellow quite baffled.[1] There was only really one way back to
Galilee, through the Samaritan territory, inhabited by the Jews’ ancient
cousins, with their heretical beliefs and strange customs.
Jesus had to pass through
Samaria, but surely, he didn’t have to stop in Sychar. The name of the community meant either “the
town of the liar” or “the town of the drunkard.[2]”
I wonder how it ended up with that name.
The settlement was just over the hill from Shechem, recorded in Genesis
as the site of a rape followed by a grisly mass murder. When the disciples had gone off to look for
some food, the local welcoming committee came out to meet Jesus: a notorious
woman, the wife of five men in turn, now living with a sixth. Sychar: the Frog Hollow of Palestine.
In the way Saint John
unfolds the Gospel story, by this point Jesus is a prophet with one miracle to
his credit and only a handful of followers.
He’s coming off a failed debut in the holy city. If there was ever an unpromising place to
start up a spiritual conversation, Sychar would be it.
But of course, Jesus
engages the woman at the well, asks her for a drink. And then He probes deeper, speaking of a
thirst of the soul, a desire to know God, to experience His love, to obey Him
with joy. We all have this thirst and
spend a lifetime looking for ways to slake it.
And God has sent me, Jesus tells her, to bring living water, a fountain
gushing up deep inside you that never fails.
“Do you want this living water?” He asks her. Can you recognize that I am the Messiah, the
Christ, the Redeemer promised long before?
And of course, the woman
does want the water and she can recognize Him, and she responds to His word
with a bold enthusiasm like nothing Jesus had seen before. Nathanael wants to know Jesus’ qualifications
before he will meet with Him.[3] Nicodemus is just confused. But this woman of Sychar runs off to tell
everyone that she has met the Christ.
She calls all the neighbors to run and meet this man who has revealed everything
to her. And they also want to hear more
from Jesus, they beg him to stay for two days.
“We too have come to believe, they say, “and we know that this is,
indeed, the Savior of the world.”
The fields are white for
harvest, Jesus told the disciples when they returned to find Him speaking to
the woman. God has prepared those who
will hear us in advance, and some who will hear us most clearly and respond
with the greatest courage are those we would never have expected. In the Holy City they turned their backs, but
here in the “town of the drunkard” faith abounded. A commentator described it this way: “It
seems that our Lord never slept in Jerusalem, but he tarried two nights in
Sychar. Jerusalem excommunicated and
outlawed Him, Sychar kept beseeching Him to abide there permanently…The
Samaritans prove to us that we may find a great opportunity to sow for Christ
among people whose receptiveness we would never suspect.[4]”
Let me tell you about the
one family in Frog Hollow I came to know when I lived in Sharpsburg. Both of them had grown up right in the heart
of the community. One of Helen’s[5]
relations had run the local store back in Prohibition days, the one
investigated by the police because it sold astounding amounts of sugar. You wouldn’t believe how many pies these
women bake, her grandfather had assured the sheriff, surely not an ounce is for
whiskey. Harvey[6]
had been a regular hell raiser back in the day.
He could tell stories about cars that ran like greased lightning and
taken his share of bruises. He’d broken
plenty of hearts before his eye fell on Helen, who by some mercy of grace had
taken to singing in the choir at Saint Paul’s on a Sunday morning.
The rather imperious
priest refused to marry them until after Harvey had been instructed in the
faith and baptized. He’d hardly darkened
the door of a church in his youth, had certainly never considered the claims of
Christ and the new life He brings. But Harvey
listened to the man, and something in those words took root in his heart.
If you go to Saint Paul’s
this morning, I can guarantee you that Harvey and Helen will be in their
pew. They’ve held the congregation
together for generations, served in turn in nearly every role. You couldn’t find people more honest,
reliable, or generous. Harvey has served
as a crucifer for as long as anyone can remember, though he doesn’t think
himself worthy to handle the chalice.
I’ve hardly seen a man more naturally pious and reverent, gazing with
love at the Altar, clasping those rough hands in prayer. He knows the joy of forgiveness, and a peace
unlike what the world can give.
They still live right in
Frog Hollow, almost in shouting distance of the Mad Dog Saloon. But in their hearts they belong to the Savior
of the World, precisely because someone had faith enough “to sow for Christ
among people whose receptiveness we would never suspect.”
As we’re exploring in the
adult forum this Lent, there are challenges in sharing the Gospel with the
millennial generation, whose strange ideas and odd social customs confound many
of us. We live in a community that has
experienced significant demographic change, full of people who aren’t like us.
They didn’t have the advantage of solid Christian upbringings, some seem to
live only for the pleasures that money can buy.
God only knows what happens when they lock those gates at the end of the
driveway at night.
But Jesus made an
evangelist of the most notorious woman in Sychar. He made a crucifer of a Frog Hollow
hellraiser. And I expect He has more
than a few surprises in store for us, when we go out to labor in the fields
white for harvest right out those doors.
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