One reading was
Romans 5:1-11.
The gospel was John 4:1-42.
As
we begin today’s gospel reading, we’ve jumped from last week’s encounter
between Jesus and Nicodemus in Jerusalem over some time that Jesus and John
spend in the Judean countryside baptizing folks. In this part that we miss, John reminds some of his
followers that he is not the Messiah, but instead has been sent ahead—to
cultivate the field, sow the seeds, as it were. Then we pick up the story today.
1Now when Jesus learned that the
Pharisees had heard,
“Jesus
is making and baptizing more disciples than John”
2—although
it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized—
3Jesus
left Judea
and started back
to Galilee.
4But
he had to go through Samaria.
Jewish
people like Jesus and Samaritans, living in Samaria, were linked through their
ancestors. According to Jewish New
Testament Scholar Amy-Jill Levine, “Samaritans are descendants of two distinct
groups: the remnant of the ten tribes associated with the Northern Kingdom of
Israel who were not deported when the Northern Kingdom fell in 722 BCE, and
foreign colonists from Babylonia and Media brought by the Assyrian conquerors
of Samaria.” Typically, though linked through their ancestors, Jews and
Samaritans were not on good terms and would avoid each other whenever
possible. So for Jesus to be
compelled to go through Samaria, it’s a bit scandalizing.
5Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar,
near the plot of
ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
6Jacob’s
well was there,
and
Jesus,
tired
out by his journey,
was
sitting by the well.
It
was about noon.
Wells in biblical tradition have a special
role: they are a place of courtship. In Genesis Abraham’s servant finds Rebekah
at a well as a wife for Isaac, their son Jacob then finds Rachel at a well. These stories and this tradition would
have been very familiar for the first hearers of the gospel, so this encounter
would be filled with visions of courtship.
Unlike Nicodemus, a named man who is a
religious leader, who seeks Jesus out in the hidden anonimity and mystery of
night, this chance encounter happens in the bright heat of the noonday sun—in
the open for all to witness. And
it happens, as we will soon find out, with an unnamed woman who is a Samaritan.
7A Samaritan woman came to draw water,
and Jesus said to
her,
“Give
me a drink.”
8(His
disciples had gone to the city to buy food.)
9The Samaritan woman said to Jesus,
“How is it that
you, a Jewish man, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”
(Jewish
people do not share things in common with Samaritans.)
As we know, Jews and Samaritans come from
the same lineage, at least in part, yet like many half-siblings, there is a
great distrust and even enmity between these cultural groups—an understood
divide that no one expects to be bridged.
It no longer feels like there is anything in common between these
peoples.
10Jesus answered her,
“If you knew the
gift of God,
and
who it is that is saying to you,
‘Give
me a drink,’
you
would have asked him,
and
he would have given you living water.”
11The woman said to Jesus,
“Sir, you have no
bucket,
and the well is
deep.
Where
do you get that living water?
12Are
you greater than our ancestor Jacob,
who
gave us the well,
and
with his children and his flocks drank from it?”
Jesus, as he did with Nicodemus, brings
the conversation to a level deeper than either Nicodemus or the woman are ready
for, bringing confusion to them both.
Jesus brings up the gift of water and life from God and we can hear the
incredulity of the Samaritan Woman, who can’t figure out how this Jew without a
bucket is going to get her any sort of living—or flowing—water.
Owning her lineage, tracing her ancestry
back to Jacob, the common ancestor of Jews and Samaritans, the woman, seeks to
understand this bizarre thing that Jesus is saying even as she embraces the
cultural perspective she brings to their conversation.
13Jesus said to her,
“Everyone who
drinks of this water will be thirsty again,
14but
those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.
The
water that I will give will become in them a spring of water
gushing
up to eternal life.”
15The woman said to Jesus,
“Sir, give me
this water,
so
that I may never be thirsty
or
have to keep coming here to draw water.”
As Jesus dives into the living
water—floods of God’s mercy and grace that we encounter in baptism, the Samaritan
Woman hints at her reluctance in coming to this communal place to draw
water. For most women in the
community, gathering water in the morning before the sun gets too overwhelming at
midday is also a social affair—a time to catch up on each other’s lives and the
goings-on of the community. Yet
this woman comes at the heat of the day, when she is almost guaranteed not to
encounter anyone—and is pretty eager for a way to avoid this well
altogether. What is it that makes
her avoid the crowd?
16Jesus said to her,
“Go, call your
husband,
and come back.”
17The woman answered Jesus,
“I have no
husband.”
Jesus
said to her,
“You are right in
saying, ‘I have no husband’;
18for
you have had five husbands,
and
the one you have now is not your husband.
What
you have said is true!”
19The woman said to Jesus,
“Sir, I see that
you are a prophet.
20Our
ancestors worshiped on this mountain,
but
you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.”
Over the years as we’ve heard of and read
about this encounter, we’ve wondered many things about this woman. In following the custom of engaging
with a male head of household, Jesus names her reality. She has had five husbands and the
current one is not her husband. So
often this fact has been used to denigrate her—to call her promiscuous, to
condemn and dismiss her, but that is not what Jesus does. Jesus knows that women have virtually
no say in marriage or divorce—that these five husbands could be due to death,
an inability to have children, domestic abuse, adultery, or even boredom.
Jesus doesn’t place any moral or ethical
judgment on this woman—those judgments are only from us and our own
theological—and patriarchal—ancestors.
But what if her last statement points to the reason she is an outcast in
her community?
Rev. Allison Unroe points out that this
woman bravely names the metaphorical elephant in the room. Some traditions name this Samaritan
Woman Photina, which means “the luminous one” or “light bringer”—she brings
into the light of the noonday sun, the conflict that goes unnamed between these
cultures and people that once were one people and now feel so far apart.
What if her community has cast her out for
her willingness to tell the truth about their reality? Not only to name openly the divide
between Jews and Samaritans, but to name the other problems that they face as a
community? What if she is
ostracized precisely because she persisted in truth telling?
21Jesus said to her,
“Woman, believe
me,
the
hour is coming when you will worship the Father
neither
on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
22You
worship what you do not know;
we
worship what we know,
for
salvation is from the Jewish people.
23But
the hour is coming, and is now here,
when
the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth,
for
such worshipers the Father seeks.
24God
is spirit,
and
those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth.”
25The woman said to Jesus,
“I know that
Messiah is coming”
(who
is called Christ).
“When
he comes,
he
will proclaim all things to us.”
26Jesus said to her,
“Here I am, the
one who is speaking to you.”
Here Jesus acknowledges the divide that
this woman has brought to light and points to the third way—the way that leaves
neither Jews nor Samaritans to claim triumph over the other. Jesus’ hour—his time, God’s time—is now here. The new Way of worship—through the
living waters of baptism into new and abundant life—is coming to be in Jesus
who is, as he reveals to the woman, the Messiah (who is called Christ).
Then as this encounter, this courtship to
faith, builds, it is abruptly cut off.
27Just then Jesus’ disciples came.
They were
astonished that he was speaking with a woman,
but
no one said,
“What
do you want?”
or,
“Why are you speaking with her?”
28Then the woman left her water jar
and went back to
the city.
She
said to the people,
29“Come
and see someone who told me everything I have ever done!
Can
this be the Messiah?”
30They
left the city and were on their way to him.
The disciples return, presumably with
food, and a LOT of awkwardness. Their silent astonishment speaks
volumes. The absurdity of
encountering Jesus, this Jewish Rabbi—leader—talking casually with a Samaritan
woman at a well silences the disciples—they know the stories, they know what
wells are for. Though I can
imagine the scandalized looks passing between themselves as the woman leaves
her water jar behind. So caught up
with the new life, the living water, Jesus offers, she is filled with a new and
different purpose that compells her back into the community she had avoided.
The very bluntness with which she names
reality and which has pushed her out of the community becomes her key tool for witness
as she preaches the Good News of how Jesus knows her—everything she has ever
done! The suffering she has
endured in her exclusion from community is being transformed, as Paul states in
today’s reading from Romans, into hope, “5and hope does not disappoint [her], because God’s love has been poured into
[her heart] through the Holy Spirit that has been given to [her].”
While last week Nicodemus’ big question
was one of logistics, asking Jesus “How can this be?” the Samaritan Woman asks
of her community, with hope and longing in her voice, “Can this be the Messiah?”
And in response to perhaps the shortest,
most effective sermon ever, the crowd goes with her, returning to the well and
to Jesus.
31Meanwhile the disciples were urging Jesus,
“Rabbi, eat
something.”
32But Jesus said to them,
“I have food to
eat that you do not know about.”
33So the disciples said to one another,
“Surely no one
has brought him something to eat?”
34Jesus said to them,
“My food is to do
the will
and accomplish
the work
of
the one who sent me.
35Do
you not say,
‘Four
months more, then comes the harvest’?
But
I tell you, look around you,
and
see how the fields are ripe for harvesting.
36The
reaper is already receiving wages
and
is gathering fruit for eternal life,
so
that sower and reaper may rejoice together.
37For
here the saying holds true,
‘One
sows and another reaps.’
38I
sent you to reap that for which you did not labor.
Others
have labored,
and
you have entered into their labor.”
While the Samaritan Woman is preaching the
Good News to the community, Jesus is reminding the disciples of the work—the
ministry—they were just doing with John before this in the Judean
countryside. God was at work
sowing seeds for the harvest through John and his disciples—laying the
groundwork so that Jesus and his disciples can reap what was sown—gathering the
fruits of the labor. And as
evidence of what Jesus is saying, we read on.
39Many Samaritans from that city believed in Jesus
because of the
woman’s testimony,
“He
told me everything I have ever done.”
40So
when the Samaritans came to Jesus,
they
asked him to stay with them;
and
he stayed there two days.
41And
many more believed because of Jesus’ word.
42They said to the woman,
“It is no longer
because of what you said that we believe,
for
we have heard for ourselves,
and
we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”
This encounter in the brightness of day
between one Jewish man and one Samaritan woman, two people who have every
reason to not even talk to each other, let alone engage in deep, honest
conversation, leads to a new faith for the whole community of Samaritans. This woman’s courage to name what
others may have avoided is both a curse, casting her out of her community and the
exact gift that God uses.
Jesus
shares with her the gift of God’s loving grace and the Holy Spirit runs with
this preacher, bringing new life to the whole community through her one
witness. In this one day, the Holy
Spirit works in her new life—a radical change—that she never could have
imagined when she woke up to begin her day. That is the power of the Holy Spirit in her life and in
yours. Are you ready?
