Thirsty?

(Scriptures: Exodus 17:1-7, Romans 5:1-11 John 4:5-42)

Today’s reading from John’s Gospel is the second in a two-part series comparing Jesus’ meeting with Nicodemus, which we read last week, and his meeting with the nameless Samaritan woman at the well, which was the subject of today’s reading. By setting today’s reading about the Samaritan woman right after the reading about Nicodemus, John is linking the two stories together. The two readings are family portraits of a sort, not unlike a religious painting or icon we might see in a museum in which portraits of two different saints are framed together, side by side. Because the placement of these stories is not accidental – John very much wants his readers to understand one story in light of the other.

The two encounters contrast in every way: Jesus meets Nicodemus by night, after which he meets the Samaritan woman by day – not only by day, in fact, but at high noon, in the heat of the sun. Nicodemus is a leader of the religious establishment, a man of power and means, one of the ultimate insiders of his society. The woman, by contrast, is powerless, an outsider several times over – a woman in a male-dominated society (we don’t even learn her name), a Samaritan – considered by Jews a foreigner, someone whose family and national heritage was considered corrupted by the intermarriage of Jews with hostile Gentile invaders, someone not even worthy to be spoken to – and a woman with, shall we say, an interesting family and marital history. And – perhaps the greatest contrast – Nicodemus, the powerful religious teacher, does not fully comprehend or respond to Jesus’ words, but basically departs from Jesus literally and figurative under cover of darkness, in a state of confusion, mostly keeping his questions and his hopes to himself until after the crucifixion. Essentially, the teacher Nicodemus is portrayed as a slow and inarticulate student. The nameless Samaritan woman, an outsider with no religious credentials and indeed a questionable personal history, by contrast, winds up being a teacher and evangelist to the Samaritans, bringing countless Samaritan people to faith in Christ. In a sense, these two stories, set side by side, act out some of most difficult of the words that open John’s Gospel, in John chapter 1, verse 11-12: Jesus came unto his own, and his own received him not. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he became power to become children of God, born not of blood or the will of the flesh or the will of man, but of God.

As the story unfolds, Jesus, having thrown the money changers out of the Temple and having met with Nicodemus in Jerusalem is on his way back home. As John’s Gospel notes, to get from Jerusalem in the south to Galilee in the north, he had to go through Samaria, which lie smack dab in the middle. Some history that will help us understand some of the conversation between Jesus and the woman: many centuries before, just after the death of king Solomon, the united kingdom of the 12 tribes of Israel governed by Solomon, split apart early in the reign of Solomon’s son Rehoboam. The split occurred for a reason that seems very modern - a dispute over taxes – Solomon had taxed heavily, and all the tribes asked Rehoboam for, in modern language, tax cuts. Rehoboam not only refused their request, but in crude language promised a whopping tax increase. At this, ten of the twelve tribes split off to form what was called the northern kingdom of Israel, while the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin remained loyal to Rehoboam, under the name of the southern kingdom of Judah. The ten tribes of the northern kingdom not only rejected Rehoboam’s political authority, they rejected Solomon’s Temple and Jerusalem as a holy site of worship, instead setting up their own temple on Mt. Gerazim, which had its own sacred history, having many centuries earlier been a holy site shortly after the crossing of the Jordan into the promised land. The books of 1st and 2nd Kings and 1st and 2nd Chronicles tells of the increasing corruption and falling away of the ten tribes, who were eventually conquered by the Assyrians. The Assyrians exiled many of the members of the ten tribes, and settled foreigners in their place. The Samaritans were considered to be the descendents of the mixed lineage of the remaining members of the northern kingdom who had intermarried with those settled by the Assyrians. Their worship was a mixture of many of the early traditions of the Jews together with various local customs, but completely rejected the sanctity of Jerusalem or Solomon’s temple. By contrast, the Jews of the Southern kingdom took great pride in preserving the purity of their bloodlines and the integrity of their worship even through their own exile in Babylon – and they looked down on the Samaritans, whom they saw as having compromised their religious heritage. In modern day terms, Samaria is situated in what is now the disputed West Bank area, so even now the area knows no peace.

So, anyway, with all this religious and historical ugliness lurking in the background – Jesus is heading home, through hostile Samaritan territory. He’s sent his disciples off to buy food. It’s hot, the journey has been long, and Jesus is tired. He sits by Jacob’s well to rest. It’s high noon, and the sun is baking.

And along comes a woman of Samaria to draw water. In itself, this is a bit odd. Normally, women would have come to the well in the cooler early morning hours, to draw water and maybe share some conversation. This woman came at high noon, in the heat of the day, when she expected nobody to be around. Given what we later learn of her personal history, perhaps she had feared that if she came when others came, she’d wind up being the topic of conversation, and not in a good way.

So she makes her solitary journey in the burning noontime heat to the well, and finds…oh, crud, she’s not alone after all. Not only is she not alone, but one whom she recognizes as a Jew is sitting by the well. The disrespect of her Samaritan neighbors would be nothing compared to the utter contempt she could expect from this man. She had no reason to expect this encounter to end well.

But she needed water, so she kept a stiff upper lip and went to the well. And then the man had the nerve to ask her for a drink. Surprised that he even condescended to recognize her existence, the woman asked how he, a Jew, could ask her, a Samaritan, for a drink. Relations between Jews and Samaritans were so hostile that one could not expect even simple hospitality, in a land where hospitality was a life or death matter.

The man answers by telling her that she should have asked him for a drink of living water. He’s got no bucket that she can see, but he tells her that if she drinks of the water he offers, she’ll never be thirsty again. The conversation is becoming decidedly strange… but it’s a burden coming to this well every day, so she’s willing to play along: “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

The man then tells her to call her husband and come back. Now he’s getting a bit too personal. If Facebook existed back then, she’d have listed her relationship status as “it’s complicated”…..and there’s no need for him to know all the gory details, so she tries to leave it at “I have no husband” – which in that society is a difficult enough admission to make, as widows and unmarried women were very vulnerable. But Jesus bores in still closer, affirming that what she said was true – so far as it went – as she’d had five husbands and was living with a man not her husband. Whether she had been widowed multiple times or not, we don’t know, but hers was not a pretty story – and this man knew all about it. He was getting way too close for comfort, so the woman tries to change the topic to the main religious dispute of the day between Jews and Samaritans – should God be worshipped in Jerusalem or Mt. Gerazim – and Jesus says that the day will come when the Father will be worshipped on neither mountain – the day will come when the labels and ethnic identities will fall away - as true worshippers worship God wherever they are in spirit and in truth. The woman says that she knows the Messiah is coming, and Jesus says “I am.” The woman departs, leaving her water jar behind – evidently she no longer needed it, having been refreshed by the living water Jesus offered – and went home to start tell everyone about the man she’d met at the well. Because of her words, more Samaritans came out to meet Jesus, and he ended up staying another two days. Of course, the guys try to have the last word, as guys then and now tend to do, telling the woman, “it is no longer because of what you say that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

Again, last week’s Gospel and this week’s Gospel are a study in contrasts. When Nicodemus approached Jesus, Nicodemus’ status, the things he thought he knew, only got in the way, and Nicodemus remained stuck, responding only slowly and tentatively over time to Jesus’ words. When Jesus approached the woman at the well, her lack of status left her wide open to the truth of the Gospel, and she spread that truth everywhere she went. As the old song goes, it only takes a spark to get a fire going – and the conversation with Jesus lit a spark in the woman that led many of her neighbors to salvation.

As I look out at our congregation, I suspect there are more Samaritan women than Nicodemuses among us. We’re a church with a tall steeple, but we’re not a tall-steeple church in the sense of being a prestige parish. Once upon a time, we may have had some movers and shakers in the congregation, but most of our members these days are “just folks”. And, while our life stories may not look exactly like that of the Samaritan woman, I think everyone here has encountered enough potholes and speed bumps on life’s journey – me too - to know how the Samaritan woman felt when she realized that Jesus knew who she was and where she’d been – and accepted her anyway.

It’s not always easy to tap into that well of living water. God continually calls us to leave what is safe and familiar to set out on the journey of faith. God may lead us out of our comfort zone, into unfamiliar territory. The road is dusty and hot, and the journey is long. Like those in our Old Testament reading – that other story about water we heard earlier this morning – it’s tempting to join those Moses led in the wilderness to complain to God, “where are you taking me, God? Where are you leading us? Have you forgotten us? What are you trying to do to us?

Perhaps it would be better to ask, “what is God trying to do with us?” The children of Israel were forever marked and shaped by their forty years in the wilderness. And during our times in the wilderness, God will not abandon us. The life experience of the Samaritan woman – difficult as it was – prepared her for her encounter with Jesus. Her life was never the same again, and her story led many to Jesus. During our own times in the wilderness, God may be shaping us, preparing us for an experience of God’s love that will flow out from us to our friends, our coworkers, our neighbors, all those with whom our lives come in contact.

God’s saving love – can become a spring of living water bubbling up in us, offering refreshment to us and those around us. In the words of the gospel hymn:
I’ve got a river of life flowing out of me.
Makes the lame to walk and the blind to see.
Opens prison doors, sets the captive free
I’ve got a river of life flowing out from me.

May the living water of God’s saving love flow out from Emanuel Church, to refresh our neighbors, in Bridesburg, or with all with whom we come in contact. Amen.
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Please join us on Sundays at 10 a.m at Emanuel United Church of Christ. We're on Fillmore Street (off Thompson). www.emanuelphila.org