John 4:5-42
March 8, 2026
When Brent and I were dating, he
told me that when we don’t allow someone to do something kind for us, to do
something generous for us, to help us in some way, that we deny that other
person a blessing. Letting someone else help us, letting someone else do
something kind for us is making room for that person to receive a blessing
along with the blessing we receive from being helped.
Some of you may remember when I
broke my right wrist three years ago. When you lose the use of a limb, asking
for help at times becomes necessary. This was a hard lesson for me to learn,
and I had to relearn that when I broke this wrist in 2023. I had to relearn
that because, unfortunately, that wasn’t the first time I broke it. I broke the
same wrist back when Phoebe and Zach were in early elementary school. With that
break, I required surgery, followed by a eight weeks wearing an intense cast
with an external fixator to keep the bone in place.
I went back to the pulpit about a
week after my surgery. I wasn’t allowed to drive, so I was grateful that my
parents lived nearby because my dad drove me everywhere. My parents drove me to
church that first Sunday back in the pulpit – and for many Sundays after – and
after church we went out to eat. I was in a lot of pain, and I was worn out
from preaching and leading worship that morning. I started to feel sick and
woozy. I needed to go home, so my family dropped me off at the house and then
took the kids for a while to give me some quiet time. I knew that I would need
to take a pain pill when I got home, but I didn’t consider the fact that I
would not be able to open the pill bottle by myself. I tried everything I could
think of to open that bottle. I tried to brace it against the counter and open
it with my left hand. That didn’t work. I tried to wrench open the top with my
teeth. I realized the only thing that would do was break a tooth. I even
thought about stomping the pill bottle with my foot, but that would create a
mess I didn’t want to clean up. I needed help. This was in the days before
everyone had cell phones, so I couldn’t reach my parents because they were
still out, away from their landline. I tried my next door neighbor. They
weren’t home. The ground was covered in snow and ice, so was afraid to walk
around looking for someone and risk falling again. Then I thought about our
friends who lived on the street behind us. Maybe someone was home at their
house. I called and Ericka, my dear friend, answered. By this time I was in so
much pain, I was getting sick. I was crying from pain and frustration. I was
embarrassed. When she answered, all I could say was, “Ericka, I need help.”
She was at our house in a matter of
minutes. She got me my medication. She got me water. She helped me get settled.
She offered to get me anything else I needed. She offered to stay with me. I
told her I would be fine and thank you and I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry for
calling her, for bothering her. I was embarrassed that I couldn’t do for
myself. She kindly but firmly told me to knock all that mess off. She was glad
to help, and I would have done the same for her. And I would have. But that
didn’t make asking for help any easier. Yet, when we deny someone the chance to
help us we deny them a blessing.
I wonder if Jesus knew when he sat
down by that well that he would have an opportunity to give a blessing to
someone else. I don’t know. John’s gospel implies that Jesus knows what and why
he’s doing something at all times. So, maybe he knew this Samaritan woman would
come along or maybe he didn’t. I don’t know. What I do know is that Jesus
needed help.
The sun at noon would have been
scorching. We know from the text that Jesus was tired from his journey, which
is why he stopped and rested by Jacob’s well. His thirst must have been
intense, and it could also have been dangerous. Dehydration could happen fast,
and it was not something you took lightly. Jesus needed help.
But he was at the well at the wrong
time of day. Carrying buckets of water was labor intensive; most women would go
to the well early in the morning to get their water for the day, rather than
wait until noon when the heat was at its most intense. But as Jesus was resting
there, a Samaritan woman came to draw water from the well.
Jesus needed help. He needed water
and he asked for it. This woman saw a stranger. The text does not say that she
draws water for him, but we can assume that she did. But she does not do it
without asking this question.
“How is it that you, a Jew, ask a
drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”
Jews and Samaritans were bitter
enemies. Their enmity was centuries old and deep-rooted in both cultures. That
enmity is why Jesus’ parable about a Samaritan helping a man robbed and beaten
by the side of the road was so scandalous and shocking to its original
audience. Jews and Samaritans were bitter enemies.
But Jesus needed help. When he spoke
to this woman, when he asked her to give him water, 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. The woman understood all this, which is why she asks her question
of him. Why was he, a Jew, speaking to her, a woman of Samaria?
Jesus responds to her question 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.”
The woman takes Jesus’ words
literally at first. You don’t have a bucket. The well is deep. You asked me for
water, but you want to give me living water. Where would you get this water?
Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob?
But Jesus’s response reveals the
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.
The woman still thinks he is
offering her literal water. Sir, please give me this living water, so that I
don’t have to keep coming back to this well. Give me this water so I don’t have
to carry these heavy buckets anymore.
This is the moment when all the
preconceived notions and interpretive misunderstandings about this passage and
this woman kick in. Jesus tells the woman to go and call her husband and bring
him back with her. But the woman responds that she has no husband. Jesus says,
“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.”
This statement of Jesus, this
moment, has influenced centuries of misinterpretation. This woman has had five
husbands and now 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 is Jesus condemning her? Is
he calling her a sinner in need of forgiveness? There is nothing in the text to
suggest that. He is just stating a fact about her. She has had five husbands
and she is living with a man who is not her husband. If there is condemnation
there, it is because we have added it.
This woman, like every other woman
in that time and place, would have had not control over her marital status. It
is possible that she was married to five brothers in secession, each one dying
and passing her to the next brother. This was a condition of the Levirate law.
Perhaps she was divorced from one of these husbands, but that divorce would
have happened to her. She could not have instigated a divorce. And there is
nothing in the text to suggest that she was living with a man who was not her
husband for an immoral or sinful reason. It was quite possible that she was
living with a man for protection. A woman was vulnerable. And a woman had
little or no power. Men and marriage were protection.
All we know at this moment is that
Jesus shows the woman that he knows her. He knows her life. He knows her story.
He is, as preacher and teacher Fred Craddock said, alerting her that in meeting
him she is encountering the transcendent. He is alerting her to the truth of
him by telling her truth. She is encountering the transcendent, and he offers
her living water. He offers her salvation. He is the messiah that the woman
says she knows will come.
What the woman does next is
powerful. She leaves her water. She runs back to the city, calling the people
to “come and see,” just as the first disciples did just 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 the people believed her! She was
not dismissed or ignored. Her words and her witness were not written off as “an
idle tale,” as we read in Luke’s gospel when the women tell the disciples about
the risen Lord. The people believed the woman and they believed in Jesus. They went
to see Jesus for themselves, and they invited him to stay with them for two
days. They got their own taste of the living water and they believed.
Jesus needed help. He asked for help.
In asking the Samaritan woman for help, he violated social mores and crossed
social and religious boundaries that were not supposed to be crossed. But Jesus
also opened the door for that woman to receive a blessing and to be a blessing
– to him and to everyone with whom she shared the good news. She was a helper
and she was helped.
How often do I read these stories
from scripture seeing myself only as a helper, only as the person on the top,
only as one who is called to serve and not the one who is served? And yet Jesus
repeatedly and without fear or shame willingly shows his vulnerability. Jesus
is fully human and to be fully human is to be vulnerable. To be human is to
need help, to ask for help. Jesus needed help. He needed water, and he asked
for it. And blessing upon blessing upon blessing ensued. It sounds so simple,
but it must not be because so many of us have a hard time asking for help.
Maybe because we think that asking
for help makes us look weak or needy. Maybe asking for help reminds us of our
vulnerability, and that scares us. Yet Jesus was not afraid to ask for help.
Jesus was not afraid to be vulnerable. To ask for help is to open the door for
blessing – for the person helped and the person doing the helping.
In this season of Lent, we are
reminded of our vulnerability. We are reminded of our humanity. We are reminded
that we all need help. And I think, if we allow ourselves to be helped, we are
better helpers as well. If we allow ourselves to be helped, we give blessings
as well as receive them. If we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, to be fully
human, than we might be able to see the humanity in others, even those who are
supposed to be our enemies.
May we be helper and helped. May we
be blessing and blessed. May we be willing to ask for help, to ask for a drink
of water.
Let all of God’s children say,
“Amen.”
Amen.
