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NBC's television comedy, The Good Place opens with a young woman named Eleanor shellstrop waking up in a nondescript waiting room looking at a huge sign that says welcome , everything is fine. She's greeted by Michael,

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played by Ted Danson, who ushers her into his office and explains that Eleanor has died. He opens a file into her life and it shows she spent her life doing charity work, living with the poorest

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of the poor giving of herself constantly, and the world of the Good Place, once after death, faint is determined by a point system of good deeds . One is done on earth. Each action is

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assigned a point value Ending slavery gets you 814292 points , Maintaining composure when in line at a water park in Houston gets you 61 points, poisoning a river , makes you lose 4000 and 10 points, rooting

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for the new york Yankees makes you lose 99.15 point . Eleanor realizes immediately there's been a terrible mistake. She's never helped the poor or even traveled to another country. She's the type of person who gets drunk

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before happy hour. If it's her turn to be designated driver so someone else will be forced to drive . She ruins her roommates close heckles. Environmentalists, abandons a dog for a weekend to go to a

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concert. Later in the series, she refers to herself as a trash bag from Arizona. That's not about Arizona, that's about her in case any of you are from Arizona. Yeah, she doesn't belong

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in the good place. Her file must have been confused with someone else's being a trash bag. She decides to pretend to be this other Eleanor, Let's see what happens. She soon introduced to chitty anna

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gagne her soul mate, Chiti was born in Nigeria and then moved to Senegal and later Australia. He's a cultured professor of moral philosophy, he's brilliant and kind Chiti knows everything about how to be a good

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person. Ah We think Chiti will save her. Eleanor thinks that too and bullies him into giving her lessons and moral philosophy and ethics. Yeah. Nicodemus is not a professor of moral philosophy but he is

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a pharisee. A highly educated teacher deals with moral questions. Nicodemus has bona fides. If he was presbyterian, he would definitely have spent summers at more ranch and gone to Austin College or Whitworth and you'd

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own at least one kilt. He had qualifications and power. Nicodemus believes jesus is special, but Nicodemus also has a social position and responsibility to the institution he represents. He wants to vet jesus without drawing

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a lot of attention, so he goes to visit jesus at night, they have a deep conversation about being born from above. Nicodemus has a hard time understanding jesus despite asking good questions, Jesus then goes

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into a long speech about how God has sent jesus to save the whole world, presumably sometime during that speech, Nicodemus slips away. In any case we don't hear from him again until he argues with other

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Pharisees that jesus should get a trial and after jesus death he brings more and aloe for jesus burial. Academia is drawn to jesus but we don't get evidence that he's able to make the leap into witnessing to

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our following jesus. He stays at remove, helpful but not transformed. Nicodemus loves God but can't fully trust this new expression of God. He spent his life serving Td and Gonyea has a hard time trusting

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new things. Too cheating knows so much, almost too much. His head is so full of moral constructs that ends up being stricken with paralyzing anxiety, unable to make decisions, he can't make the leap

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into living a full life. We get flashbacks of his life where he alienates nearly everyone in his life because his indecisiveness is so crippling, he can't show up for his girlfriend or his best friend because he's

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so busy weighing the moral implications of everything. He dies in the middle of an indecisive moment on a sidewalk when an air conditioning unit falls on his head , chidi and Eleanor become an interesting pair As he

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teaches her, she starts to make new connections and transform her character and through their friendship, he begins to open up and take more risks, predictably, they become love interests. Now Nicodemus does not have

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a love interest, but wouldn't the new testament be improved with like a little more romance? But the author of the Gospel of john does pair Nicodemus story with a contrasting story of a powerful woman willing to

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defy convention. She is decidedly not a trash bag , but she is an outsider with a really sketchy relationship history. After jesus big speech about God saving the world, he and his disciples go into the

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countryside of judea to preach and baptize. Then the text tells us that Jesus had to go through samaria to get back to galilee. Now Caroline lewis, the homily ethics professor from Luther Seminary, argues that

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Jesus absolutely did not have to go through samaria for geographic reasons. She argues that most jewish people would cross the Jordan and travel around samaria so they wouldn't have to encounter any Samaritans. And yet the text

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tells us it was necessary for jesus to travel through samaria, Jesus had to travel through some area for theological reasons, not geographic ones. Jesus had to meet the woman at the well, he had to

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meet this woman who was, in every way the opposite of Nicodemus. This woman was completely outside the power structure of Jerusalem. She wasn't even jewish, her personal life was scandalous, she wasn't qualified for

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any kind of leadership position in jewish society. Their encounters are contrasted to well. Nicodemus comes to jesus in the dark of night. Jesus approaches the woman at the well and bright noon sunlight. Jesus says

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mysterious theological things to the woman, just like he did to Nicodemus. The topic is different living water instead of being born from above. But the ideas he presents are similarly opaque. The woman at the

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well has questions to, but she keeps engaging with jesus and making connections. She knows where Jesus is supposed to worship, She connects their common histories with her reference to Jacob's well. She engages deeply with

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Jesus and expresses her deep desire for the living water that he is offering. And then she runs off to bear witness all Nicodemus stays hidden. The woman at the well puts it all out there, no

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matter her reputation. Come and see this man who has told me everything I've ever done. He cannot be the messiah, can he? Yeah, the samaritan woman becomes a witness, the most faithful thing

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you can be in the gospel of john john tells us these two stories together so we can more deeply understand the new thing God is doing. Dr K . Higuera smith was with us for the has said

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lectures this weekend. She preached about the Kingdom of God, reminding us that the greek and hebrew words for the Kingdom of God were not masculine. She argues that three qualities that marked this new reality or

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empathy, hospitality, and purity, but not purity . The way we hear that word with the creepy images of teenage girls and white dresses, making promises to their dads. She gave us the image of

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Herod's temple gentiles. The least pure could approach the outer ring, Jewish men and women who are considered more pure could enter the 2nd ring. The 3rd ring was reserved for Jewish men. And of course

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, only priests could go into the inner sanctums where it was most pure closest to God and Herod's temple purity was a big deal. And there were any number of conditions that could exclude you from that.

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Temple Higuera argues that purity was extremely important to jesus , but not in a way that excludes While most people think of impure things, coronavirus, of having the power to defile pure things us. Obviously,

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uh, Jesus used his power to heal people who would have been excluded from the Temple courts. He reverses this, he heals lepers and bleeding women and those who can't walk, restoring them to their ability

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to worship God, Jesus brings that purity of God out from the center of the temple, through the men, through the women, through the gentiles, out into the world. In the same way Jesus

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brings us transforming message to Nicodemus but doesn't stop there , Jesus message is for everyone including impure Samaritans, Jesus expands our idea of who is good enough, who is deserving of being part of God's kingdom through

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his encounter with the samaritan woman, without spoiling too much of the series, Eleanor and chidi end up fighting to redesign the entire point system. When the moral philosopher and trash Baghdad get together, they begin

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to understand that no set of rules or moral philosophies can solve the human condition. Human beings need greats unfortunately for them there's no jesus in their framework. So take six seasons and thousands of lifetimes for them

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to sort it out and the endings only. So , so satisfying, thankfully, Jesus offers us radical grace. No matter how far from the center of the temple we are, Jesus will come looking for

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us, whether will the ultimate insiders get to wear purple robes or people who have never seen the inside of a church, jesus is for us and we , as the church, get the honor of bringing

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jesus out into the world, offering his healing to anyone who wants it. There is no one so far outside the church that jesus isn't willing to travel to meet them. One of the pleasures of seminary

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life is getting to see hints of you helping jesus travel, I know you're preaching and homeless encampments, I say the posts of you cooking dinner for food , insecure people life in the city. I know

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you're loving teenagers through a rash of suicides at their schools. I've heard stories of how you stopped and befriended every busker in South africa. I hear you're out in the world convincing people that they are worthy

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of a seminary education and that the church needs them . We have to make sure we own a good suitcase and some hand sanitizer because God will make it necessary for us to go out of our way to

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travel through places we never thought we'd travel to, Minister to, people would never choose to meet like presbyterians and to bring jesus with us when we do it. And of course there'll be time we arrive

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and we realize we've got everything backwards and those we thought were Samaritans actually have a firmer grasp on jesus than we do, and those moments will receive the healing for Pharisees and moral philosophers need jesus, just

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as much as Samaritans and trash bags from Arizona do