3 Lent A – March 23, 2014
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie Guengerich Hutson
Exodus 17: 1-7 + Psalm 95 + John 4: 5-42
Grace and peace to you from the One who meets us at streams of water, and who is the living water. Amen.
If I were to describe this neighborhood to you, could you tell me where I was? There are houses, some big and some small. There are a couple of apartment buildings and there’s a wonderful bakery. Oh, and there’s a park with a playground. Do you know where I am? No? Well, let’s try this. Let me tell you who some of the characters are in this neighborhood and see if that’s helpful. There’s Oscar, and Bert and Ernie, and Grover and Zoe. (Big Bird, Snuffleupagus, and Cookie Monster). Yes! We’re on Sesame Street. And apparently Sesame Street is like any other neighborhood until you consider what makes it unique…the neighbors found there.
In many ways, our Gospel readings during this season of Lent are introducing us to the people Jesus is meeting as he is walking through the neighborhood. Last week, you might remember, Jesus encountered Nicodemus, under that darkness of night. And in today’s reading from John’s Gospel, Jesus is in the Samaritan city of Sychar, near Jacob’s well.
While he is at the well he encounters a woman there. She is nothing like Nicodemus, in fact she is his opposite in every way – She is a woman and he was a man; she is unnamed and he is named. Nicodemus was a Jewish insider, a respected religious scholar and ruler; she is a Samaritan, which makes her a religious, political and ethnic outsider. Nicodemus only asks one question of Jesus, and he cannot understand the answer he gets; the woman engages Jesus in a complex theological conversation, the longest recorded in the entire Gospel of John. Nicodemus speaks to Jesus first, he initiates the conversation; Jesus opens the conversation with the Samaritan woman by asking her for a drink of water.
The writer of John’s Gospel has gone to great lengths to help us understand that in every way, in every respect, this woman Jesus is engaging at the well is an outsider. As a Samaritan, she is as unclean to the Jewish people as if she were a leper or a corpse. Samaritans, although they claimed Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as their ancestors and accepted the Torah, as did the Jews, Samaritans worshipped on a different mountain than the Jews. And there were other significant differences as well. Jews looked for the Messiah to come from the house of David while Samaritans looked for a prophet like Moses.
Under normal circumstances there would be no way that a Jew, like Jesus, and a Samaritan would speak to one another. And if we need to understand this more clearly, it would have been culturally unacceptable for a man to speak to a woman. No, John is clear, Jesus has no business speaking to this woman. Except that he does. There at Jacob’s well, with the disciples off buying food in town and with no one else around, in the heat of the noon day sun, Jesus and the unnamed outsider dive deeply into the water of life.
In the Gospel of John, nothing is accidental…no detail is too small….no portion of the story is without meaning. Every element of the story is important to what we are meant to know. To uncover them all would take many sermons and much more time than we have this morning. So let’s look at just a few pieces of this encounter between Jesus and the unnamed woman of Samaria.
One of the first things that stands out is that Jesus initiates the conversation with the woman. He breaks convention first with his simple request: “Give me a drink.” And there are two ways of thinking about this. One is, as we so often do, to place ourselves in the part of Jesus in the story. And because Jesus is talking to an outsider, because he is breaking the conventional customs of the day, it’s worth asking ourselves what it takes for us to reach across the barriers of custom and be the first to speak to an outsider.
If I were preaching this sermon in the American south, I probably wouldn’t need to mention this point because southerners will talk to anyone. When a group of southerners gets on an elevator, by the time they arrive at their floor they are all best friends, calling out to those exiting You don’t worry about that doctor appointment one little bit…you hear, sweetie?
But when you get on an elevator in Seattle. Everyone looks down. At their phones or their hands or their watches. But never….ever….at one another. And the thought of speaking to one another? Oh my. So what would it be like then if we were to reach out and establish a connection with a neighbor we do not know or a neighbor who speaks another language? If you’re looking for a place to try this out…come to the Giving Garden someday when the gardeners are working. A few of them speak no English, yet I once watched two of them carry on an enthusiastic exchange, not understanding one another’s words, but understanding their common endeavor.
And what would it be like to let Jesus speak to us first? I have said before that too often my prayers are like a wish list. Good morning, Jesus…here’s what I’d like to pray for today…for these people, for this situation, ok. Amen. What would it be like if after Good Morning Jesus, we just stopped to listen, to hear what Jesus is speaking to us? What would it be like to place ourselves in the position of outsider and find Jesus asking us to share a cup of water with him?
Next, I think it’s a vital piece of the story that the woman is not afraid to be open with Jesus. In fact, she gives as well as she gets with him and while a few of her answers might appear to have a sharp edge, I think they suggest her vulnerability. I believe that the unnamed woman at Jacob’s well has had a difficult life. What else are we to conclude from the fact that she’s had five husbands? The custom of the day only allowed a widow to remarry once, perhaps twice, but no righteous woman in that society would have five husbands and be living with one who was not her husband. What possible explanation could there be for this? Was she five times a widow? Imagine the grief. Did men divorce her because she didn’t bear sons? Imagine the shame of such barrenness in a culture that imagined the future depended upon sons to perpetuate the family.
And why is she at the well in the heat of the day rather than the cool of the morning or evening, when women customarily came for water. Did the other woman shun her? Did they condemn her?
I wonder what it is that makes us imagine we are not acceptable to Jesus? What pain in our lives, what shortcomings, what failures, real or imagined or imposed upon us….what do we become defensive about?
When Nicodemus came to Jesus under the darkness of night, Jesus already knew him. Jesus knew what struggles and questions he had. And Jesus loved him.
And when Jesus approached this woman there at the well, he knew her. He could just have easily avoided the encounter. And for me, this is a critical piece. Jesus did not have to engage her. He could have gone into the town with the disciples to get something to eat. He could have stayed off by himself. But Jesus chooses relationship with a person that his heritage, his culture, and his religion would tell him was persona non grata.
Why do we imagine that he will do any less with us? Why do we think that we cannot bring the brokenness of our lives, the sorrows of our hearts or the secrets we try to keep hidden into the light of day, to the one who is the living water?
“The woman came to the well seeking water to satisfy the needs of the day. Jesus saw a deeper need, a thirst for real life, abundant and free, and offered her living water. Jesus offers the living water to all who come: male and female, insider and outsider”, gay and straight, rich and poor, those with homes and those without, “righteous and unrighteous, those who come by night and those who come by day.” [1]
And in the end, the woman’s actions remind us that we cannot keep our encounters with Jesus to ourselves. She went to her neighbors and said to them: “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!” And with her we might utter the unspoken conclusion: “And he loves me anyway.”
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
I invite you to remain with me in a brief time of silent meditation; we will sing the Hymn of the Day when the worship leaders stand.