John 4:5-42
March 12, 2023
I never got to meet my sister’s
mother-in-law before she died. When we visited Greece several years ago, we
didn’t get very far out of Athens. That meant that we did not make it as far as
Karditsa, the village where my brother-in-law grew up and where yiayia lived.
I regret not meeting her though.
From my sister’s description, she was a small woman but stronger than you could
ever imagine. She had survived wars and oppression and occupation. And she just
worked hard all her life. One of her daily chores for many years was bringing
water in buckets from the well.
I think yiayia carried water using a
wooden yoke across her neck and shoulders with two buckets balanced on either
end. It’s no wonder yiayia was strong! Carrying water like that every day would
make you strong. But yiayia hauled her water that way for years, not as part of
a workout routine, but because she had to. So did this woman from Samaria.
The Samaritan woman would come to
the well everyday to gather water for the daily needs of her household. But
unlike the other women of her village, who would probably come to the well
early in the morning to avoid the heat of the day and for the time to talk
together and hear the news of each other’s families and of the town, the woman
in our story came to the well alone. She came at noon when the heat of the day
was peaking.
One of my friends and colleagues in
our weekly lectionary group said what would it be like if we could come to this
text without any preconceived ideas about this Samaritan woman. What if we read
these verses with completely open minds, with only expectations of what the
story would reveal, not assumptions about what is there? If we could do that,
we would find that there is really no criticism of this woman to be found in
the text. Traditional interpretation and scholarship have speculated that the
woman came to the well alone at the heat of the day and by herself because she
was an outcast among her people. She would have been an outcast among outcasts.
We learn from Jesus in later verses as to why she might be an outcast, but if
we look at this text with new eyes and open minds, all we know about her so far
is that she is a woman, a Samaritan, and that she came to draw her water from
the well at noon.
When she gets to the well, she is
not alone. Jesus is there. We may know who Jesus is, but to this woman he is a
stranger. But this stranger is thirsty – after all he is clearly traveling, and
he must be hot and dusty and thirsty. So, Jesus, this stranger, asks her to
give him a drink. We can assume that the Samaritan woman did just that, but she
doesn’t do it without asking this question.
“How is that you, a Jew, ask a drink
of me, a woman of Samaria?”
Jews and Samaritans were bitter
enemies. That enmity is the reason Jesus’ parable about the Samaritan
who helps a stranger on the road to Jericho would have shocked and dismayed the
Jews listening. The Jews and the Samaritans were bitter enemies. They shared a
common ancestor; after all the well where Jesus was sitting and where the woman
came to draw water was Jacob’s well. But religious, social, and cultural
differences had kept the Jews and Samaritans apart for centuries.
Jesus, when he spoke to this woman,
when he asked her to give him water, and the fact that he was in Samaria at
all, was crossing boundaries and lines that were not supposed to be crossed. He
was a man alone speaking to a woman alone. He was a Jew speaking to a Samaritan.
And the woman clearly understands all of this, which is why she asks the
question of him.
“How is that you, a Jew, ask a drink
of me, a woman of Samaria?”
Jesus responds in typical Johannine
fashion.
“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.”
At first. the woman takes his words
literally. You don’t have a bucket. The well is deep. How would you give me
living water? Where would you get this water? Are you greater than our ancestor
Jacob was? He gave this well to us, and he and sons drank from it. They watered
their sheep from it.
But Jesus responds to her with a
deeper meaning to his words. Everyone who drinks from this well will be thirsty
again. But those who drink from the living water that I offer will never be
thirsty. The water that I offer becomes a gushing spring of eternal life in
those who drink it.
At this point, the woman still takes
his words literally. Sir, please give me some of this water, so I don’t have to
keep returning to this well; so I don’t have to keep carrying these heavy jars
back and forth.
And then we come to the moment in
the story when our preconceived notions about the woman kick in. Jesus tells
her to go and call her husband and bring him back with her. But the woman tells
him that she has no husband. And Jesus said to her,
“You are right in saying, ‘I have no
husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your
husband. What you have said is true!”
And it is this one statement by
Jesus, this one moment that has influenced interpretation of this story for
centuries. This woman has had five husbands and she is currently living with a
man who is not her husband. That must mean that she is a fallen woman! That
must mean that she is a terrible sinner and an outcast among outcasts. But does
Jesus condemn her? Does he criticize? Or does he just state this as the facts
of her life?
In truth, this woman like any other
woman in that time and context would have had no control over her marital
status. It’s quite possible that she was married to five brothers in secession,
each one dying and passing her to the next brother – which was part of the law.
There is nothing in the text to suggest that the man she was currently living
with was there for anything other than protection. There’s a reason why widows
and orphans are lifted up throughout scripture for special care. They were the
most vulnerable in society. A woman needed a man, in some fashion, for
protection.
All we really know about this moment
is that Jesus shows the woman that he knows her. He knows her life. He knows
her story. As preacher and teacher, Fred Craddock, wrote,
“All we know is that Jesus, as is
his custom in John, reveals special knowledge of the individuals he encounters
and alerts them that in meeting him they may encounter the transcendent.”
Jesus alerts this woman that he has
special knowledge of her and in their meeting, she is encountering the
transcendent. He is alerting her to the truth of him by telling her her truth.
He offers living water. He offers salvation. Through him, worship of God will
not be focused only in one place or another. Those who truly worship God, who
is spirit, will worship in spirit and truth.
The woman tells him that she knows
the Messiah will come, and Jesus responds,
“I am he, the one who is speaking to
you.”
And what does this woman do? She
leaves her water, and she runs back to the city calling the people to “Come and
see,” just as the first disciples did a few chapters earlier. Come and see this
man who told me everything about my life. Come and see this man who knows me.
He cannot be the Messiah, can he?! Come and see!
And they did.
They went and saw. John ends this story by saying that many people believed in
Jesus because of the woman’s testimony, and many more believed after they saw
and heard Jesus for themselves. Jesus was invited to stay with them two days,
and people flocked to him and they believed. They got a taste of the living
water he offered, and they believed.
Even when this woman believed Jesus
and ran back to the city to tell others, she may still not have fully
understood what he was telling her, what it meant for him to be the Messiah,
and what this living water actually was. As Fred Craddock stated, her question,
“He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” was not exactly an Apostle’s Creed style
statement of faith.
But the woman knew that she needed
something more than just water to quench her thirst. She knew that she needed a
Messiah, someone to quench the thirst of a heart that has long been parched.
She came to the well for water. She left the well believing in the Word that
became flesh and dwelt among us.
Maybe we are more like that woman
than we realize. Maybe we don’t fully get what we need until Jesus tells us our
truth and offers us a drink of living water. Maybe many of us have felt at some
point in our lives that we are looking for something, but we don’t know what
that something is. So we look for it in our jobs, in our relationships, in
anything and anyone other than the one who offers living water.
Yet, this season of Lent is the time
when all that clouds our vision, all that keeps us from seeing the one who
offers us living water is to be pruned and pushed away. This season of Lent
shows us what we are really searching for. This woman from Samaria did not know
that she needed anything more than her daily water. But when she answered the
need of a stranger who was thirsty, she learned she was speaking to the
Messiah, the one they had all been waiting for.
I could end the sermon there. But I
want to say one more thing about this woman. This story has power and meaning
simply because of this woman. It is good and it is right to lift up a woman who
through her testimony brought a city to the feet of Jesus. It is good and it is
right to lift up this woman who held no special status, who had lived a life
that some would find offensive and wrong, and who managed to survive in spite
of having no social or political power. It is good and right to lift up this
woman, who had the longest recorded conversation with Jesus in all of the
gospels. It is good and right to lift up this woman who may have never felt
encouraged or empowered to speak, and yet she courageously and joyously used
her voice to share the good news.
If you take nothing else away from
this sermon this morning, remember that this is a story about a woman whose
testimony furthers the sharing of the good news of the gospel. That knowledge
makes me glad, and it makes me grateful. May it also be true for you.
Let all of God’s children say “amen
and amen.”
