Thirsty?

Scripture:        Exodus 17:1-7,   Psalm 95,  Romans 5:1-11, John 4:5-42

This week’s reading is the 2^nd 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 descendents 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.   As the old song says, money can’t buy you love.  All the gadgets the advertisers on TV try to sell us can’t buy us love.  Indeed, true love, true acceptance, true community cannot be bought.  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.

We also poison our own wells.  If today you can safely drink what comes out of your water tap at home, count your blessings, because fewer and fewer can.  It is a telling symptom of how sick our American society has become that, in the name of profit for a wealthy few, American communities are losing access to clean drinking water, a basic necessity for survival.  Think of the folks out in Flint, Michigan, with lead in their drinking water.  Or communities like Sacramento suffering drought, where water rights have been sold to large bottling companies like Nestle, leaving little for folks who just want to be able to drink what comes out of their water tap.  Is that too much to ask?  But you don’t have to go that far.  Here in Pennsylvania, fracking and construction of pipelines to transport oil and natural gas has made the water of many Pennsylvania residents undrinkable.  You’re not supposed to be able to light water on fire, but lots of folks in rural areas of Pennsylvania who live in fracked areas can do just that.  And many of the pipelines being built across the country – many of which will end here in Philadelphia, are being built to transport fuel for export.  So the fuel being transported in these pipelines won’t even go to benefit Americans.  The jobs promised by the companies building the pipelines are only short-term – and often to out-of-state workers.   Too often, the rosy promises made by the fracking and pipeline companies are lies.  Many suffer, so that a wealthy few can profit. 

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.  And on a national level, government and corporate decision makers often try to hide what they are doing, making decisions without input from the public.  But, as the saying goes, sunlight makes the best disinfectant.   Jesus invites us, as individuals, as a church, as communities, as a nation, 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.