Scriptures: Exodus 17:1-7; Romans 5:1-11, John 4:5-42
This week’s reading is the 2nd of two stories of
Jesus in John’s Gospel that are as different as night and day. And I mean that quite literally – the first –
the story of Nicodemus’ meeting with Jesus, which we read last week – took
place at night, under cover of darkness, while the second – today’s reading
about Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well – took place at
high noon, in broad daylight. But there
are other contrasts – Nicodemus, a respected religious leader, comes to Jesus
with great self-confidence and on hearing Jesus’ words is reduced to confusion
and silence. Jesus comes to the woman asking
for hospitality, in the form of a drink of water, and as their conversation
runs its course, the woman is liberated to invite everyone she sees to come
meet Jesus. We may notice other
contrasts as well, as we consider today’s
reading.
Some geographical and historical background: Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus took place in
Jerusalem, while Jesus had gone south from his home in Galilee to Jerusalem in
order to celebrate the Passover. In today’s
reading, Jesus is on his way home, back north to Galilee. Between Jerusalem in the south and Galilee in
the north, however, was Samaria. Samaria
represented the remnants of the former Northern Kingdom of Israel, which had
been conquered by Assyria many centuries before. The Assyrians had exiled the elite of the
northern kingdom of Israel to Assyria, and had settled people from other
countries in their place, with whom those left in the Northern Kingdom of
Israel intermarried. The Samaritans were
the descendants of these mixed marriages.
While Samaritans shared some religious traditions with Jews – both Jews
and Samaritans worshipped the same God and shared the first five books of the
Bible in common - Jews looked down on Samaritans as being not fully
Jewish. There were differences in
religious observance as well; Jews believed God was to be worshipped in
Jerusalem, while Samaritans believed God was to be worshipped on Mt. Gerazim, where
their own temple stood. This painful
history resulted in generations-long feelings of hostility between Jews and
Samaritans, and this history plays out in the conversation between Jesus and
the Samaritan woman.
So Jesus and his followers were on their way home from
Jerusalem, and had arrived at a Samaritan city named Sychar. Jesus had sent his disciples into town to buy
food. Meanwhile, Jesus himself was worn
out and needed to “set a spell” – and so he rested himself at Jacob’s well,
which was not only a place to draw water, but a place of religious significance
to Jews and Samaritans alike. We’re told
it was about noon, and Jesus was alone…..
….But not for long.
Along comes a Samaritan woman to the well, with a jar with which to draw
water. While we’re told why Jesus was at
the well at high noon, it would have been odd for anyone else to be there;
women usually came to the well in the morning, when it was cooler, to draw
water – in that society, drawing water was definitely women’s work - and also
to converse and catch up on the news of the day. Earlier that morning, many woman would have
been there, getting water for their families and socializing. Now, in the burning noonday heat, ordinarily
nobody would be there. Except today,
Jesus was there…..and now, this woman who for some reason preferred to draw
water when nobody else was at the well. At
this point in the story, we’re left to wonder why she would have wanted to come
to the well when nobody else was there.
So the Samaritan woman comes to the well, hoping to be left
alone, and ….drat! – there’s a man there.
A Jewish man, yet, one of those who had always looked down on her and
her kind. Jews normally wouldn’t give
the woman the time of day, but this Jewish man was asking her for a drink. And so she responded, “How is it that you, a
Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”
And here’s a bit of ironic contrast with last week’s reading: in last week’s reading, Nicodemus, a revered
teacher, accustomed to instructing others, before Jesus was reduced to
silence. Here, this Samaritan woman,
with no official standing whatsoever, acts as a kind of teacher to Jesus,
several times reminding Jesus of the differences between their traditions,
including, in this case, reminding Jesus that as a Jewish man he was more than a
bit out of place in asking a lowly Samaritan woman such as herself for a
drink. Jesus responds to her words by
making an offer to her of living water.
Once again, the woman acts as a kind of teacher, reminding Jesus that he
has no bucket, and reminding Jesus that they shared some religious traditions
by asking if Jesus is greater than her – and Jesus’ - ancestor Jacob, who acquired the well and
whose descendants had drunk from that well through the centuries. Jesus again makes his offer of living water,
saying, “Everyone who drinks of this water – that is, the water from Jacob’s
well – will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water I will give them
will never be thirsty. The water I give
them will become a spring gushing to eternal life.” The woman takes Jesus’ words at face value,
and takes him up on his offer of living water.
When the woman takes Jesus up on his offer of living water,
Jesus responds by becoming a bit personal, as he tells the woman, “Go, call
your husband, and come back.” The woman
responds, “I have no husband.” Jesus
responds, “You are right in saying you have no husband, for your have had five
husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you say is true!”
And at this point, I think the Samaritan woman gets a really
bad rap. Judgmental sermons on this
passage through the centuries have painted the woman as a serial adulterer,
unfaithful to five husbands and shacking up with yet another man she hadn’t
even bothered to marry. And I think such sermons just plain miss the
point. Much more likely, the Samaritan
woman found herself in her situation through no fault of her own. We’re not told whether she had been widowed
one or more times, or whether perhaps she had been infertile and thus had been
divorced by one or more husbands. In
that patriarchal culture, a woman’s primary source of security was her husband;
put another way, a woman in that culture was one man away from poverty, even
starvation. For reasons unknown, over
the course of her life, she had been widowed or abandoned by five men, and was
living with a man not her husband, doing what she had to do in order to
survive. Of course, the woman was not
eager to share her painful story with a total stranger – in fact, she went to
the well to draw water at high noon, when nobody else was there, so that her
tragic situation wouldn’t become the center of community gossip – but Jesus,
the light of the world, brought her painful history into the light of day – not
to judge, not to condemn, but to empathize, to communicate his understanding of
her situation.
Of course, the woman is taken aback by Jesus’ words, and
acknowledges, “Sir, I see you are a prophet.”
And then the woman brings into the light a point of division between
Jews and Samaritans – we Samaritans worship here on Mt. Gerazim, but you Jews
say we have to worship in Jerusalem.
Jesus responds by saying that God doesn’t care whether we worship on Mt
Gerazim or in Jerusalem or anywhere else – and the day will come when neither
the temple on Mt Gerazim nor the temple in Jerusalem will be places of worship
but it matters how we worship, in spirit and in truth. The Samaritan woman responds, “when the
Messiah comes, he’ll explain it all to us.”
And Jesus responds by saying, “I am he, the one speaking to you.” The woman is refreshed by the living waters
of the Gospel that Jesus gave her – after all, she leaves her water jar behind
– and she goes back to her city, saying, “Come see a man who told me everything
I ever did! Could he be the Messiah?” Before, she had been wary of people learning
too much about her story; now, after a meeting with Jesus, she’s ready to share
it with everyone she meets. She becomes
an evangelist to her city of Sychar, and many of the citizens of that city come
out to see Jesus and come to believe in him.
Again, contrast with Jesus’ night-time meeting with Nicodemus: Nicodemus, the officially approved teacher in
Jerusalem, is brought to confusion and silence; by contrast, the Samaritan
woman, who had been forthright in proclaiming to Jesus her own religious traditions,
winds up becoming a teacher to her people, at least for a time.
Thirsty? The living
water Jesus offered the Samaritan woman is the living water Jesus offers
us. We’re all thirsty for something –
for love, for acceptance, for community, for healing, for connection. And our society has us looking for water in
all the wrong places. Like those against
whom the prophet Jeremiah preached, our society has forsaken the fountain of
living water, and we have dug out cisterns for ourselves, cracked cisterns that
can hold no water.
The Samaritan woman, abandoned by five husbands and
alienated from her people, became a teacher and an evangelist, leading her
people to the Lord. “Come and see a man
who told me everything I ever did!”, she said.
She has lessons to teach us as well.
All of us have parts in our lives that aren’t so pretty – Pastor Dave as
well. All of us have said and done
things we’d rather not see published on the front page of the Philly
Inquirer. But before Jesus, none of this
matters. Jesus invites us to come, just
as we are, warts and wounds and brokenness and sin and all. Jesus invites us to bring our lives, the good
parts and the not so good parts, into the light of day. For those of us who are thirsty for love, for
acceptance, for welcome, for community, for healing, for connection….Jesus
says, “Come, just as you are”. Like God
providing water to Moses in the wilderness, Jesus will provide living water to
us in the wilderness times of our own lives.
Come to the living waters. Come, and drink, and be refreshed.
When the Samaritan woman left Jesus, she left her water jar
behind. That heavy old water jar, that
she had carried back and forth from the well day after day, she left
behind. She left it behind because she
didn’t need it anymore. Jesus had given
her a spring of living water within her, so that she wouldn’t have to go back
to Jacob’s well. Jesus not only gave her
a spring of water, but she herself shared that living water with those in her
city. May we, like her, come to the
water and be refreshed and renewed. May
that fount of living water spring up in our lives, to refresh us when our
journey is hard. And may we, like the
Samaritan woman, share this living water with all we meet. May Emanuel Church be a place of renewal and
refreshment, for ourselves and our neighbors, and all who pass this way. Amen.
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