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This particular day she encounters, at the well, a man. No doubt she probably tries to keep her head down and her eyes averted, but this man – Jesus – speaks to her! "Will you give me a drink?" She's astonished; this shouldn't be happening. She says to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" Now it's not that she's unwilling to help him – she can see that he's tired and hot and thirsty. But there are some bigger issues at work here.
As she said, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan...." Not unlike the infamous Hatfields and McCoys, there had been a long-standing feud going on between Jews and Samaritans...a rift over culture and ethnicity...ancient history about intermarrying and who could live and worship where. (Hmmm...and we thought that kind of thing only happened in our world today!) Jews and Samaritans just didn't mix. Yet...here was Jesus, a Jew, openly asking for help from this woman.
See, that's another issue. A Samaritan woman. If it's surprising that a Jew would ask hospitality of a Samaritan, it's equally surprising that a man would ask hospitality of a woman. It was considered improper for a man, especially a rabbi – a teacher – to initiate public conversation with a woman...especially one he didn't even know! Either Jesus didn't know the "rules" – which I doubt – or he wasn't willing to play by hateful and unnecessary rules with people anymore.
His response to the woman is that him asking her for well water was nothing. If she understood who he was, she could get a kind of spiritual water from which she would never thirst again. Of course, like most people – us included – she was only thinking about the literal, physical, tangible things of her little personal world. And she edges a little toward defensiveness, saying, "You don't even have a bucket and the well is deep. Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us this well...?" A sort of, "Now just who do you think you are?"
Jesus tells her, "...whoever drinks the water I give will never thirst again." "Whoever...." Samaritan? So. Woman? Who cares! "Whoever drinks...." "...whosoever believes shall have everlasting life...." The very last chapter in the Bible, Revelation 22, says that "the river of the water of life [flows] from the throne of God." And God's Holy Spirit says, "Whoever is thirsty, let them come; and whoever wishes, let them take the free gift of the water of life." Jesus offers this spiritual thirst quencher to the Samaritan woman...and to all of us...and to anyone who wants it. No bucket needed...no restrictions imposed.
"Oh, yeah!," she thinks! And she says to Jesus, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water." But then something happens that makes her uncomfortable. Jesus sees beyond the symptoms of her spiritual thirst and down to one of the very root causes. He asks her to bring her husband. When she admits that she's not married, Jesus acknowledges that he knows: she's been married five times already and now is living with a man to whom she isn't married.
Now oftentimes when people read this text, they tend to "see" some things that aren't really there. One is that Jesus is rebuking this woman somehow, shaming her or pointing out her sin. Another is that this must be an immoral woman. Certainly the women in the town must have thought so; why else did they snub her and drive her to come to the well all alone when the sun was so high and hot? But just because we think we see something doesn't mean it's really there.
A few weeks ago, on Ash Wednesday, I had a small scare and was reminded of a big truth. The Sunday before, I checked in the altar supplies cabinet upstairs to be sure we had ashes on hand for the service. I looked in and saw the small plastic bag, coated with dark ashes; it appeared to be full, so I knew we were O.K. But come Wednesday, at 6:00 p.m. as I was preparing for the 7:00 service, I opened the bag and tried to dump the ashes out. The sides of the bag were indeed coated with ash residue, but as far as substance went, there was about 3 forehead's worth of ashes in my little bowl; I would have needed a miracle along the lines of the loaves and fishes to stretch that for 100 people!
After some quick, shallow breaths and whispered words of concern (O.K., hyperventilating and cursing under my breath!), I went back upstairs praying for miraculous intervention. Praise God, I got it! After finding a second ash-black but empty bag, I finally found a third bag that contained the quantity required. But I had an important lesson reinforced for me: just because you think you see something doesn't mean it's really there!
That certainly holds true in this story today. You see, contrary to popular perceptions, neither the text nor Jesus indicates that this woman was an immoral person. What if each of those marriages ended when the husband died? She would have buried five husbands. She would have gone through five funerals. The pain and the suffering and loss in her life would be great – perhaps too great for her to commit herself in marriage to another man.
Or what if each of those marriages ended when an abusive husband got tired of her and threw her out of the house and divorced her? In those days, men could divorce their wives for any reason at all; it was not unusual, and as a woman, she had no rights. Maybe, having been victimized and abandoned so many times, she had become too distrustful of marriage to go through the ritual again.
Whatever her story was, Jesus wasn't bringing it up to express his disapproval; he was simply showing her that he knew all about her – perhaps a good way to really get her attention so he could make her understand who he really was. We make the same mistake about ourselves. You see, Jesus knows all about each of us, too – even those things we have successfully hidden from the rest of the world, protecting ourselves against the prying eyes of others. We assume, too often, that what Jesus knows Jesus will condemn. Perhaps the good news is that what Jesus knows – which is everything – Jesus will understand and even want to be a part of with us.
At any rate, just like most of us would do, when the conversation became personally uncomfortable, the woman changed the subject; she turned to a less personal but equally controversial topic. "I can see that you are a prophet," she said. "So tell me this: you Jews say we all ought to worship in Jerusalem but our temple is on this mountain here. Which do you think is right?" No doctor goes to a dinner party without being asked at least one medical question, no lawyer makes it through a wedding reception without someone asking for just a small word of advice...and no religious teacher or leader has a conversation of over 3 minutes with someone they've just meet without references to church doctrine or disputes coming up; trust me on this!
Controversies in the church are nothing new; they've been going on for 2000 years now. In the book of Romans, the apostle Paul addresses many controversies that existed among the people of the church. But ultimately he writes, "Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord [of all]. You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your sister?"
Jesus certainly wasn't going to get into that old "where should we worship" debate. He made it quite clear: "...a time is coming and [in fact] is now here when the true worshipers will worship God in spirit and in truth." Where you are when you worship doesn't matter. The order of worship and the style of music don't matter. It's what's happening inside of you when you worship...and as you live...that matters.
The Samaritan woman is starting to catch on; she knows the Messiah – the Christ – is coming and will be able to explain everything. Jesus makes it clear for her: "I who speak to you am that One."
What then became of the this woman who had been so alone just a short time ago? Now she rushes back to the town and, simply by telling her story – by talking about her life-changing encounter with Christ – she persuades others to come and meet Jesus and know him for themselves. This woman is far from an ideal candidate for evangelism. Not only is her character questionable to people but also her understanding is far from complete. Nevertheless, she bears the incomplete witness given to her, inadequate as she may be, and it is enough. This one woman brought more people into relationship with Christ than his long-time disciples had. End of story.
So what do we learn from this story? Well, it's not so much important what we learn from the Samaritan woman as what we learn about Jesus: Jesus clearly disregards social conventions, customs, and expectations for the purpose of redemptive involvement in the lives of human beings. Jesus simply disregards the centuries-old impass between Jews and Samaritans and the social taboo against rabbis having lengthy conversations with women in public. He doesn't base his acceptance of this person on the basis of how moral she may or may not be, and he couldn't care less about church doctrine – he only cares about people and their spiritual connections with God. He enables even those whose formal knowledge is limited to give a powerful witness to His presence in their lives. Jesus doesn't judge...Jesus simply loves and reaches out – to anyone, to everyone.
We know from the Gospels that Jesus was often criticized for his public behavior which frequently offended religious and social sensibilities. The question for us today is: how willing or ready are we to cross barriers that have been artificially erected by our society and culture? In subtle -- and not so subtle -- ways, the world teaches us to make judgements about people based on race, ethnicity, culture, gender, economic status, physical appearance and mental abilities. We make some strange judgements, based on sometimes foolish criteria, about who can and cannot adequately and successfully serve God. We here, of all people, make moral judgements against one another for all kinds of reasons...often when we don't even really know what's what.
Church, our personal and, sometimes, corporate judgements are holding us down and holding us back. We are called to follow the example of Jesus and, to do that, we must stop living in judgement! Stop...for the sake of hurting people. Stop...for the health of your own soul. Stop...in the name of love! Amen.
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