Lent 3

The story of Jesus’ meeting with the unnamed Samaritan woman at the well is a landmark.  It is the longest conversation that Jesus has with anyone in the Gospels and it’s among the most important. 

Many of us have heard sermons that dwelt on the short exchange between Jesus and the woman about her multiple marriages.   They cast doubt on her virtue. Why had she been married five times? Why was she coming to the well alone and at noon instead of in the coolth of the early morning? Was it because other village women shunned her? 

I’m afraid I preached at least one of those myself. 

Laura Holmes, Wesley Seminary New Testament Professor, set the record straight. She noted that in Hebrew scripture wells were important meeting places of “Israel’s first families”.   Notably Jacob met his wife Rachel at a well, and at noon (Genesis 29:1–20).  Moses met his wife at a well, too. (Exodus 2:15-22).  It means that to first century Jewish audiences, Jesus’ meeting with the Samaritan woman at a well could have honorable—even romantic—associations. 

As for the divorces, women simply did not have the authority to divorce their husbands.  Instead, Holmes wrote, the Samaritan woman “most likely had [lost] five husbands due to tragedies, either death or being divorced or both.” 

What’s important in their brief, pivotal exchange is the woman’s realization that Jesus is no ordinary man, but “a prophet”.

Let’s turn to this remarkable story.

Jesus is seated by a well, waiting alone while the disciples have gone in search of food.  The Samaritan woman approaches the well, and Jesus asks her for a drink. Surprised at his speaking to her, she answers by clearly stating the boundaries that kept Jews and Samaritans apart. Undeterred, Jesus presses on with a baffling statement: “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.”  (In Greek, the word here translated living water, also meant a stream or river—so it could be taken literally.)

Jesus’ behavior borders on inappropriate and his speech is strange.   In her place what would you have done?   She could have turned away, but she stands up to him. She notes the practical fact that Jesus wants a drink but has no bucket. And she challenges his authority.  “Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob?” Jesus goes on to make the cryptic, but compelling promise: “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 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.”   

Her heartfelt reply: “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

Having realized that Jesus is a prophet, the woman takes the lead in the conversation. She goes directly and deeply into matters of faith. She had mentioned their common ancestor, Jacob.  Now she brings up the beliefs that divide Jews and Samaritans. 

Jesus offers a vision of faith that transcends every division, “God is spirit, and those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth.”   In other words, God isn’t defined by places or ancestors or practice. God is spirit. God welcomes all who worship in spirit and truth.

The woman follows, “I know that Messiah is coming….When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.”    

Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

“I am he”.

You recall that “I AM” (ἐγώ εἰμι (egō eimi) are the very words that God uses to name God’s self to Moses in Exodus 3:14.    This is the first of the IAM statements that are unique to John.  While they all allude to Jesus’ identity with and in God, only here is Jesus explicit. 

 I AM the Messiah, Jesus declares—not to his disciples nor a close friend, not to the Pharisee Nicodemus who had visited Jesus at night in the episode before this one, but to a foreign woman, an outsider, a complete stranger.

It’s a quick, astonishing turn of events.  Their dialogue transforms the woman—and Jesus.  Her intense engagement, her questioning, her pursuit of truth led Jesus to his momentous declaration.

She rushes back to share the news with her neighbors.  The woman’s water jar was a precious possession.  Her leaving it behind is symbolic, an important sign of her conversion.  In the short time of their encounter, she has moved from being an ordinary woman to a seeker to a disciple to an evangelist.  She has become the first apostle—the first sent out. And she is arguably the most successful apostle in the gospels.  After all, her witness led to the conversion of a whole Samaritan city.

What does this story mean today for us as people of faith?

I think it’s the lesson that Rev. Carter gave us in his moving sermon last week: we are called to share our faith. 

“Evangelize?!!”

Never for the Frozen Chosen!  When I was growing up Episcopalians were discrete, reluctant to “impose” their faith. Then many leaders in politics, business, and society were Episcopalians.  That was in the 50s-60s--when almost “everybody” went to church.  Mainline, moderate denominations ruled the cultural perception of the Protestant church: us, Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, American Baptists, United Church of Christ.

People of my generation quit going to church in droves. We probably thought that the church didn’t need us, that the loving God, the compassionate, inclusive Jesus we knew from our prayers, our hymns, our communities didn’t need us. 

We were wrong.   It’s clear that as membership in the mainline denominations declined, other, very different visions of Jesus rose to fill the vacuum in the culture at large.  The Jesus of love was eclipsed by an angry God of fear. 

I’m learning more about this from the Substack posts of people “in recovery” from that vengeful vision of God.  Like The Rev. Beau Stringer. Now a Methodist minister, Stringer grew up and became a pastor in a strict, closed evangelical tradition.  There, he says, he heard 100 sermons on hellfire for every one on the Beatitudes or on the commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves. Now “Becoming Mainline”, he celebrates the loving Jesus we know from the Gospels. And he revels in the freedom we have to question, to discuss, to challenge, to grow and to change—as the Samaritan woman did.

In a podcast this week Diana Butler Bass echoed Rev. Carter’s call.  She was impressed with James Talarico, who shared his faith in a loving Jesus as he campaigned to be the Democratic candidate for Senate in Texas. Bass urged all of us “quiet Christians” to follow suit, to speak up gently, authentically about the Jesus we know. “If faith is one of the things that drives you,” she said, “tell people about it. Tell them why.”  When we do, she noted “a different Jesus comes up: one who wants justice, goodness, compassion, care for the least of these, who sets a big table and feeds everyone, bringing love and healing, not exclusion, violence, and hatred.”

God knows—we all know—how much the world needs tenderness, love, and care.  So let each of us speak up about the goodness of God that we know from scripture, from our prayers and songs, from our community here at Emmanuel, and in places we serve, like the MLK Center.   

Let us do that: for God’s sake and for the sake of this beautiful, broken world.