Not Your Father's Story at the Well Lent 3A

 

Not Your Father’s Story at the Well

A man and a woman at a well. For those who read the Bible, this is a familiar story; a familiar set-up. One returns or sends a servant to their hometown well to find a wife. That’s where Isaac found Rebecca. That’s how Jacob found Leah and Rachel. Now Jesus is at Jacob’s well in Samaria! Jesus sits down. He’s thirsty. A Samaritan woman comes along. He asks her for a drink of water. As it turns out, the story is about water – living water. [John 4:5-42]

 

“How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” The narrator John adds context. (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Not even a water bucket or dipper. It has been this way for nearly 700 years when the Northern Kingdom of Israel was taken over by Assyria. Much of the population was deported and replaced by people from other territories the Assyrians had captured – the strategy being there would not be enough of the original tribes to mount an insurrection. Both Samaritans and Jews use the same Torah, but there are disagreements over where it was proper and holy to worship: Jerusalem in the south, or Mount Gerizim in the north? Both locations claim to be where Father Abraham set out to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. This is geography freighted with meaning.

 

It’s Noon. Jesus answers 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.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Suddenly, this Samaritan woman becomes more of an insightful theologian than Nicodemus was a few nights ago in Jerusalem. Or, is this some kind of clever flirting at the well? And why is she at the well in the middle of the day, in the heat of high-noon? All the other women in town fetch the day’s water in the cool of the morning?

 

Jesus is obviously impressed. He says, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but 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.” Now he is no longer talking just about at all, but about eternal life: living life, here and now in the presence of the love of God! The woman has never heard anything like this, and immediately replies, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” Again, the invitation to ‘eternal life’ is accepted, unlike poor Nicodemus, an expert in the Torah texts who was unable to comprehend what Jesus is talking about. The contrast cannot be any greater.

 

The Samaritan woman has her entire world-view rewired! This Jewish man not only talks to her, but he ignores the standard gender and ethnic barriers in initiating a conversation with her. He recognizes her as an equal, as a human being, not as a despised enemy. Jesus raises the position of women in society! Though she does not fully understand “living water,” she must be moved to be included in the kind of conversation that typically only occurs among men. This is no idle chat. This is no minor topic. Her life is being changed just by being in his presence.

 

Then comes a new direction in their conversation when Jesus says, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answers him, “I have no husband.” Jesus says 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!” Which may explain not drawing water in the morning when other women might comment about her relationship issues. It is often suggested that with five marriages perhaps she is somehow morally loose. We need to remember, women were typically married off to much older men. Men who could die. Or, in the case of Levirate marriage which requires a man to marry a deceased brother’s wife if there are no children, anything can happen. Surprisingly to her, we imagine, Jesus knows about her past, and yet does not condemn her. Leading her to identify him as a prophet. “Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain” she says,, “but your people say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Rather than hurt feelings, she surprisingly takes the conversation to another level. Surely this man can tell me where to worship.

 

His answer is equally surprising! “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.”  Jesus says to her, “I am; the one who is speaking to you.”

 

“I am.” The inscrutable name YHWH shares with Moses at the burning bush. This Samaritan woman is the first to discern to whom she is speaking. This is the heart of the Good News. She has been waiting for just this moment, but wow! She who has had five marriages has met the Christ, the great I Am,  for whom she has been waiting. The One for whom she and her people have been waiting. In the presence of Jesus, suddenly all barriers have fallen. Samaritan and Jew no longer matters. Men and women are no longer to be segregated. Where one worships is no longer an issue. That this conversation even takes place ushers in a new era, a new reality of inclusiveness heretofore unimaginable. God is Spirit; pneuma; ruah! God is truth. And all is One.

 

Seven hundred years of animosity and bickering and disagreements on how one is to serve the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is wiped away. Note the utter astonishment of the disciples when they return from their lunch run and see him talking with, gasp, a woman! Not only a woman, but, gasp, a Samaritan woman. They had never imagined let alone seen such a thing. With Jesus the walls come tumbling down! In the best of ways. The utter inclusiveness of it all is difficult to comprehend. Yet, Paul understood what Jesus was all about. Martin Luther King Jr understood what Jesus was all about. This story means to ask us just when we might drop all the barriers? Can we ever get past red and blue states? Can we ever get past intractable left and right politics? Can we no longer segregate ourselves male and female, slave and free, black and white, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jew?

 

The disciples ask Jesus if he wants something to eat. “I have food to eat that you do not know about,” he says. “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work.” Which is to drop all barriers and welcome a new era of inclusiveness. We are, after all, all in this together.

 

The result? The Samaritan woman becomes the first evangelist as she goes back to town and tells everyone what she has seen and heard. Many Samaritans go to see for themselves. Once they see Jesus, they tell her, “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.” Yet, who could imagine? Samaritans declare a young Jewish man to be the “Savior of the World!” The sweeping, inclusive character of Jesus’s mission is a note that needs sounding again and again today. Rebuilding walls seems so much easier than tearing them down. For just that reason, the iconoclasm of this text cannot be ignored. Oh, that we might live up to what happened that day by a well in Samaria. There was no marriage sealed at the well, people who had not spoken with one another for 700 years were reunited in Christ, if only just for that moment. Now what about that secret food Jesus has? Are we ready to do the will of Him who sent Jesus to sit at the well in Samaria one day long ago?