Lent 3

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Lent 3
PROPER: A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: March 7,1999

TEXT: John 4:5 - 42 - The Samaritan Woman at the Well
Jesus said to her . . . "The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life." . . . . . .They (the men) said to the women, "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."

ISSUE: The meeting of Jesus and the Samaritan Woman is a rich and deep story of transformation. John's Gospel account reveals Jesus reaching out to the impure and polluted. He claims the both women and the bastard Samaritans as worthy of God's salvation. He is the saving water to accept and cleanse them. The woman becomes catechized and transformed. She becomes an evangelist. The developing initmacy of the scene makes the outcasts a new fictive family.
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During several of the weeks of Lent our readings shift from Matthew's gospel account to a series of stories from the Gospel of John. The Johannine Gospel is the last of the gospel accounts to be written. It is written to a community of people who were facing persecution. They were being thrown out of the local synagogues. It was also a time when most of the eyewitnesses to the life and ministry of Jesus were gone. They'd deceased. John's Gospel then calls for the community to believe, to trust, to trust that truly Jesus was the Son of God, the world, and especially Israel's savior.
In this story that John relates he tells of an encounter between Jesus and a Samaritan woman. It was and is in deed a most scandalous story. Jesus arrives at Jacob's Well in Samaritan territory. It was noon. A woman comes to the well to draw water and a conversation begins. To us this is quite innocent. At the time it was scandalous. Men in this time did not talk to strange women in public, the community well being a public place. What's more Jews, which Jesus was, did not speak to Samaritans. Samaritans were considered half breeds, and therefore impure and polluted. They had abandoned worshipping at Jerusalem. The very idea that Jesus would speak to the woman, and that she would reply is outrageous. Jesus asks her for a drink of water. To think that a Jew would drink from a vessel that belonged to a Samaritan, and a woman was unheard of.
It is also thought to be quite significant in terms of heightening this scandalous scene that the woman comes to the well at noon day. Women came to the well in the early mornings and later evenings to draw water. They did not appear in public much during the day. The idea that the woman comes at noon day suggests to biblical scholars that she was being shunned by other women in the community for some inappropriate behavior, which might have been related to her having had five husbands, and living with one who was not her husband. Her impurity is heightened. (As a side note, the Samaritans had on occasion worshipped a variety of pagan gods over the years, which was seen as a form of religious adultery.)
The woman is stunned that Jesus would speak to her and ask her for a drink. He retorts, "How is it that you a Jew, would ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" And Jesus replies to her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is say to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." The exchange of question and answer is a catechism lesson and the woman in the process of the ongoing exhange becomes increasingly enlightened to a deeper understanding that this is a Jew, a teacher, a rabbi, a prophet, and ultimately Savior of the world.
The woman then becomes a disciple and an evangelist by going to the city market place to begin giving a testimony of what had happened to her and had she had met The Messiah. Women did not go to the market place to talk with men in those days. This action again is unheard of. The men fascinated by the witness that she gives themselves go to Jesus and become believers and ask him to stay with them several days. They hear from him themselves - they couldn't just take the word of a woman - and become believers.
What is John saying to his community. First that Jesus is the cleansing water that washes away the impurity and the pollutions of God's creation. He is new life. Water is life. Baptism is immersion in the life giving water of God in Christ. Jesus is the rescuer of all bastards, which is what Samaritans were thought to be. Second the early church had a whole new place for women that previously had not existed. The woman is catechized, ordained as disciple and becomes a masterful evangelist of men. She becomes a believer through her ongoing catechesis with Jesus. In the Hebrew Scriptures this morning the Jews were wandering in the wilderness with Moses, and they raised the question, "Is the Lord among us or not?" John's gospel responds with a resounding, "YES." Jesus is God with us. He is the living water, the one who gives real life in our human experience. God's healing and redeeming grace comes through Jesus Christ, embrace it and believe.
As outrageous as it appeared - Jesus talking with the Samaritan woman, and his staying with and relating to the Samaritan men - you see in the passage the development of an intimacy. What Jesus is doing is talking to the woman not like she is an alienated Samaritan, but as family. A man would talk with a woman at a well if she were family. The woman in turn goes to the men in the city, presumably at the market place, and gives testimony as if they were family. There is developing a closer and closer intimacy between Jesus and the woman, the woman and the men to which she seems to become almost an equal, and the Samaritan men with Jesus. God's family in Christ is being born out of the living water. Transformation and enlightenment are taking place. Jesus claims all Samaria as part of God's family and as part of the New Israel.
It is also interesting to be aware of the fact that several of Israel's greatest leaders met their wives at wells. Abraham's servants find a wife Rebekah for Issac at a well. Gen. 24:11f) Jacob meets and falls in love with Rachel at the well. (Gen.29:1f) Moses sat beside the well at Midian and meets his wife Zipporah. (Exodus 216f) It is as if Jesus is the Bridegroom at the well who seeks to be wedded to a world that needs new hope, acceptance, love, transformation, and salvation.
This passage is a wonderful story for the world today as it tells how God in Christ seeks to reachout to the world. He comes to the world as a free gift of grace. He has the life giving water, spirituality that is often lacking in human life. We go through life wanting food and water but are never truly satisfied. We try to buy up everying thing we can and surround ourselves in material goods. We are often estranged from one another through prejudice and old hatreds and misunderstandings. We are sometime caught in poor self-esteem created by our shortcomings and our afflicted humaness. We get so afflicted by our addictions to violence, cruelty, drugs and alcohol in some instances. Life can feel dry, and become a daily drudgery without much purpose or meaning. We can be impure and polluted, and pollute the world. Yet God in Christ seeks to embrace us and call us into his refreshing presence: "Come to me all of who travail and are heavy ladened, and I will refresh you." Matt.9:28)
Many of us probably saw the Monica Lewinsky interview with Barbara Walters this past week. In her story I could not help but feel that we saw much of the human condition laid bare. She came across as spiritual bankrupt. She revealed all her flaws, impurities, pollutions, her immaturity. She is in a sense also a victim of a society that just throws things away that are inconvenient, her abortion. She sought power and flirted with the most powerful person in the world. But she has been left high and dry with total uncertainty about her future. She is maybe something of a microcosm of us all. We also have our flaws, our infatuations with the world, and are so empty. We thirst for the stuff that lasts that gives us hope, love, forgiveness.
If we knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to us, 'Give me a drink,' we would ask him, and he would have give us living water.