John 4:
Jesus and the Woman of Samaria
4 Now when Jesus[a] learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John” 2 —although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— 3 he left Judea and started back to Galilee. 4 But he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9 The
Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of
me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with
Samaritans.)[b] 10 Jesus
answered her, “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.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 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.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you[c] say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I am he,[d] the one who is speaking to you.”
27 Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” 28 Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 29 “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah,[e] can he?” 30 They left the city and were on their way to him.
31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. 36 The reaper is already receiving[f] wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
39 Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the woman, “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.”
This week has been a veritable smorgasbord for pastors.
There is just so much I could talk about...
That missing plane? -- Could they please just find that plane?
The death of Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps?
How Russia has taken over Crimea?
Mega-Church evangelical Mark Driscoll and accusations that he not only plagiarized his book but also bought up a bajillion copies so that it would soar to the top of the best sellers lists?
The billion dollar settlements for Toyota and GM recalls?
Or how Russell Crowe’s new movie, “Noah” has Christians all with their undies in a bundle?
Or maybe we should just marvel in amazement at Kevin Bacon’s reenactment of Footloose on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon...
Nope. Today, guys. Guys.
Guys... You’ll never guess what just happened to me. I met a guy who knew EVERYTHING about me! He knew that...
Sometimes I text in traffic. And he knew that when I was eight, I played “soap opera” with my cousin. And this guy knew that when I was ten I deliberately tore up my sister’s art work because I was so frickin’ mad that she’d copied me. And in college, I broke off a relationship via email. And he knew that once I picked up my son’s binkie from the floor of a McDonald’s and popped it right back into his mouth.
And...he knew that I’ve taken my kids to McDonald’s...
He knew everything about me. Isn’t that...awesome?
And he could know everything about you, too. Doesn’t that just make you want to skip across the Birmingham Bridge and shout “hallelujah!” from atop its cables? Doesn’t it just make you so excited? Doesn’t the idea of someone knowing everything about you make you want to share that person with everyone else?
No?
Well, maybe not unless that just made everyone else look as sad and corrupt and flailing and sinful as you do...
I don’t know about you, but honestly, the idea of someone knowing EVERYTHING I have ever done doesn’t comfort me at all. In fact, it gives me the downright heebeegeebies. Like Santa, who “sees when you’ve been sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!” Or that crazy stalker song by Sting - “every breath you take, every move you make, every step you take...I’ll be watching you.”
So isn’t it weird? Isn’t it strange? This woman’s response as she leaves the vacant well in the heat of the day, to run and tell others the story of whom she has met?
This woman who is -- a woman. This woman who has had five husbands and is living with another man. This woman who comes to the well alone, when the ritual of water-fetching was a daily communal event. This woman who is a Samaritan - a kind of Jewish/Gentile hybrid who was scorned by both races. Who comes at the heat of the day, when surely, most would be resting in the shade, not gathering to draw water from a deep well as the sun beats down upon their heads.
And Jesus asks her for water. For a drink.
Can you see what is really happening here?
This is the cultural equivalent of how some people might look at the transvestite cross-dresser who is addicted to heroin, turning tricks under the bridge because the local motel won’t let her in anymore. In today’s context, it’d be like Jesus came up to her at the 7/11 and asked for a drag of her cigarette, or a swig from her 40.
That’s the social equivalent of what’s going on in this text.
And Jesus tells her everything she has ever done:
You’ve lied. You’ve cheated. You’ve been hurt and taken advantage of. You slept with that man for forty bucks, and then smoked it down under the 10th Street Bridge. You’ve accepted the beatings from the jons because you thought you deserved it, and you’ve been so hungry that you’ve dug through the dumpsters behind the Giant Eagle for a few Twinkies and a half a bottle of red pop. You’ve gotten so high that you were shaken awake by a police officer on the sidewalk at three in the morning. You’ve spent so many nights in jail that you’ve lost count, and you know that your mom still wants you to come home, but you refuse.
How? How could hearing all of this be something OTHER than disparaging and berating?
I don’t know. All I know is that SOMEHOW Jesus tells this woman at the well all that she has ever done, and she leaves, seeking others with whom to share in her story. This lonely woman, in the heat of the day, scorned from society, used as a pawn in relationship after relationship, runs back into the city and invites all she encounters to “Come and see a man who told [her] everything [she] had ever done.” And many Samaritans end up believing because of her story.
And so they go to find out for themselves. And then they meet Jesus. And they are known by Jesus. And then they believe. They believe because of their own encounter with this man who knows everything they have ever done.
Now this is really important:
It’s not because Jesus is a mindreader or a clairvoyant or a practicer of magical arts that this woman’s life is changed.
If someone came up to me and rattled off all the bad things I had done, even if it had somehow happened supernaturally, I certainly wouldn’t leave amazed. I certainly wouldn’t want anyone else to know that there was someone out there who knew how very much I’ve screwed up. And I definitely wouldn’t want those who have berated me, who have abandoned me, who have isolated and castigated me to find out that there is a guy out there who knows exactly all of the bad things I have done.
Unless. Unless, somehow, I was changed by the encounter. Unless, I was somehow made more whole by the interaction and by the telling of my own story.
Jesus tells her everything she had ever done. And she leaves -- whole, renewed, hopeful, ready to re-enter a society that has been harsh and abusive and judgmental.
A friend of mine was homeless in New Orleans for about three months. And he said that the most difficult thing about the whole experience wasn’t the pangs of hunger in his stomach, it wasn’t the leaking tarp during the summer rains, or even the humiliation of standing in the soup lines; it was that people stopped looking him in the eye as he walked down the street.
I think that Jesus has looked at this woman in the eye - when no one else would.
I think that he has told her her story in a way that she had never heard it before.
I think that Jesus asks her for something. He needs her. He needs water.
And she has a pitcher.
She has something to give him.
She has something for Jesus - something he needs - something she doesn’t have to be ashamed of.
I think that Jesus was thirsty, and needed water. And he needed her to get it for him.
I think that Jesus needed her, just as she is, full of mistakes and missteps and failures and stubbornness. Just as she is, a victim of her society, kicked around from one man to the next, judged by her community, forced to come to the well alone during the heat of the day.
She has been both - victim and perpetrator; she has been screwed and has screwed up.
And here is Jesus. In the heat of the day. Asking her for a drink. Being thirsty with this woman.
See, he knows we’re all thirsty. And he won’t let us be thirsty alone.
He’s there and he is thirsty, too.
He is thirsty for his children to become whole again. Thirsty for them to feel love. Thirsty for this woman to know that she is so much more than the sum of her husbands.
Jesus thirsts for us. Just as we are. And that’s what makes all the difference.
She leaves Jesus as a whole person. “He knew everything I had ever done - and he loved me anyway!” “He knew all the ways I screwed up and hurt others and was hurt by others. He knew all about my bruises and scars and mental illness and addictions and self doubt and he still looked me in the eye.” “He asked me for a drink.”
Jesus says, “The Father seeks such as these to worship him” - Such as these - the adulterers and the isolated and the meth-heads and the perfectionists and the asshole bankers and the pastors of bigoted abusive “churches,” -- and the victims of those bigoted abusive churches.
“The Father seeks such as these.”
The Father seeks the transvestites and the abandoned and the orphaned and the doubters and the plagiarizers and the CEOs of billion dollar car companies.
The Father seeks the hungry and the thirsty and the abandoned. The motley crew of homeless and businesspeople and college students and exhausted parents who sit in creaky chairs in a former bar on the South Side of a once dying mill town.
“He can’t be the Messiah, can he?”
Can he?
Come see a man who told me everything I had ever done. And still looked me in the eye. Still asked me for water.
He can’t be the Messiah, can he?
Can he?
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