The encounter of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well
of Jacob in John 4 is the longest recorded discourse of Jesus with a person
that we have The story starts with Jesus approaching a Samaritan woman at a
well.
Who Jesus approaches is important
It is the last person we would expect him to pick and offer
his generosity to, his love, his spirit
A Samaritan
A Samaritan woman
A Samaritan women who has had multiple divorces (or
relationships) and is living with a man, not her husband.
A woman who is going to the well at noon, when no one else
is around - most of the women went in the morning – and the men gather in the
evening -- A woman who went to the well when there was
no one there.. a symbol of her isolation, her rejection.
But Jesus engages that woman. Jesus offers HER the totality of his
resources, the spring of living water, the Spirit
This reminds us that Jesus was always "unraveling the world view" of those he encountered.
Transcending what the culture taught as natural boundaries between male &
female; "chosen people" and "rejected people". Modeling the fact that God's transforming
grace is available to all.
Let’s face it! Jesus
broke the rules. He essentially said that the rules were less important than
love. Less important than compassion. He went outside the box, and in doing so he
illustrates that love is the most important thing
The second important element in this story is the discourse
itself, and in particular there is the odd discourse about the woman’s husband Study the history of this text, read the
commentaries, listen to the interpretations and you will learn that most commentators
think this woman’s life was marked by promiscuity. The evidence? Five spouses
and now living unmarried with a sixth man. We don’t know the full story… What
we can assume is this woman has been through relationship hell. She has looked for love, perhaps in all the
wrong places. And now here she is, five
men later, with yet another man. I can’t
help think of all those women who go from abusive relationship to abusive relationship. And here she is Isolated.
Probably ashamed…and hiding.
Getting water in the heat of the day.
When she will have to face no one.
The hiding makes sense.
Who, with so many skeletons in his or her closet wants to be exposed? Who wants the worst things about them brought
to the surface? And in that, she
probably mirrors our own lives. We too are people with a past, people with a
history. We are all Samaritan women. People who have things we would prefer to
hide.
Jesus finds her in the heat of the day, and he doesn’t let
her hide. With this woman Jesus forced self-perception. With one question he brought out the hidden,
the real person. So it is with us. When we spend time with Jesus he brings
self-perception upon us, the self-perception we’ve lacked for years just
because we’ve preferred to be without it, as he puts any number of questions to
us:
“Go call
your alienated child.”
“Produce
your income tax return.”
“Show me
the lonely person needing comfort for whom you gave up leisure time.”
“What do
you do when no one is looking”?
Unfailingly Jesus directs our attention to that area of our
lives that is dry and brittle. That
place we would just as soon no one see.
That area is that is the desert part of our lives.
NOW - People like her, people like us, people with a past,
often live in fear of being found out.
We are so afraid if people know us, really know us, they will reject us,
judge us, find us wanting.
And this is a sad place to be. Because we really want to be loved for who we
really are. We all thirst to be seen and
to be known at a deep intimate level, seen with all our warts, and flaws, and still
be loved.
When Jesus asked that woman that question about her husband
he was inviting her to let herself be known.
And that was risky. Being known
she risked rejection.
But that is not what happens. Jesus in this dialog does an
amazing thing. He strips off the
façade. He penetrates the walls around
this woman. He exposes her, for who she
really is…Jesus goes into the depths. He brings forth the real her…AND He
accepts her anyway
Indeed he not only accepts her, but he offers her a great
gift. The gift of Living Water
The lack of which, was of course, the heart of her problem
anyway. She was dry. She sought relief for that dryness in many
wrong places.
This is the way it is for most of us. We are dry.
And in our dryness we all go down
to some well. For some, like the Samaritan woman, it is the relationship well.
For others it is the well of perfectionism. Others will draw from the well of
power and control. Too many will drink from the wells of addiction. Many live
at the well of busyness and denial.
Others go to the well of rigid religiosity.
We could each name the wells from which we drink. Day after
day, month after month, year after year we go to the same well to drink. We
arrive hoping our thirst will be quenched. We leave as thirsty as when we
arrived only to return the next day. For too long we have drunk from the well
that never satisfies, the well that can never satisfy.
But Jesus offers the gift of another well.. It is the well of
the Spirit. It is the well that washes us clean of our past. This is the well
from which new life and new possibilities spring forth. It is the well that
frees us from the patterns and habits that keep us living as thirsty people.
“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.” This is the living water of new life,
new possibilities, and freedom from the past. This living water is Jesus’ own
life. It became in the Samaritan woman “a spring of water gushing up to eternal
life.” She discovered within herself the interior well and left her water jar
behind. She had now become the well in which Christ’s life flows.
This is the final point
The Spring of living water
As people with flaws
As people not at ease with ourselves, we live in a state of
dis-ease
Afraid we will be found out
Afraid we will be judged
Afraid that there will not be enough
Enough intelligence, power, resources, love
To make it through life
Not only afraid that if we are open we will be found out
But afraid that if we are open, and more, give
We will run dry
Be taken advantage of
Be left without enough
Empty.
But with the spring of living water there is always enough
of God in our lives
Always enough love
Always enough Spirit
The Amazon River is the largest river in the world. The
mouth is 90 miles across. There is enough water to exceed the combined flow of
the Yangtze, Mississippi and Nile Rivers. So much water comes from the Amazon
that they can detect its currents 200 miles out in the Atlantic Ocean. One
irony of ancient navigation is that sailors in ancient times sometimes died for
lack of water... they would get caught in windless waters of the South Atlantic
they were drift, helpless, their stores of water depleted
Sometimes other ships from South America who knew the area
would come alongside and call out, "What is your problem?" And they
would exclaim, "Can you spare us some water? Our sailors are dying of
thirst!" And from the other ship would come the cry, "Just lower your
buckets. You are in the mouth of the mighty Amazon River." The is fresh water right below you
This story says that God’s Spirit is always there. Always there inside us. The power is there. The love is there. And not just in limited quantities, but
there, in a limitless manner. It is like
a spring of water, welling up. Always
fresh. Always powerful. Always renewed. We just have to lower the bucket.
All we have to do is go to this well. Go to
the Spirit
Sometimes we forget it is there
Sometimes we lose sight of the spirit and its power
And so there we are, dying of thirst, and the solution is
right there, available
But we have a River of Life, welling up in us
And if we drink it we will thirst no more
