John
4:5-26, 39-42
March
23, 2014
© 2014
During Lent the Gospel will be presented in worship as dramatic readings before the sermon.
John 4:5-26, 39-42
Narrator: So [Jesus] came to a Samaritan city called
Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his
journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. 7A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to
her,
Jesus: “Give me a drink.”
Narrator: 8(His disciples
had gone to the city to buy food.)
Woman: “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of
me, a woman of Samaria?”
Narrator: (Jews do not share things in common with
Samaritans.)
Jesus: “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.”
Woman: “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep.
Where do you get that living water? 12Are you
greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and
his flocks drank from it?”
Jesus: “Everyone who drinks of this water will
be thirsty again, 14but 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.”
Woman: “Sir, give me this water, so that I may
never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Jesus: “Go, call your husband, and come back.”
Woman: “I have no husband.”
Jesus: “You are right in saying, ‘I have no
husband’; 18for you have
had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have
said is true!”
Woman: “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say
that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.”
Jesus: “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming
when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You worship what you do not know; we worship what we
know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23But 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. 24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in
spirit and truth.”
Woman: “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is
called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.”
Jesus: “I am he, the one who is speaking to
you.”
Narrator: 39Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of
the woman’s testimony,
Woman: “He told me everything I have ever done.”
Narrator: 40So when the
Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there
two days. 41And many more
believed because of his word. 42They 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.”
Bill was a WWII veteran in one of the
congregations I previously served. He endured a prolonged confinement in a
Japanese POW camp which left him with significant mental illness that made him
a misfit and often an outcast. He dressed in mismatched clothes covered with
buttons for every conceivable, contradictory cause you can imagine. He wrote
inscrutable, cluttered tracts that he duplicated and put on the windshields of cars
on the church’s parking lot. Especially during Lent, he would use magic markers
to put nail print stigmata on his hands and sometimes a crown of thorns on his
forehead. I never asked to see his side or feet. Real stigmata, marks of
crucifixion, have been known on certain Christian mystics, even in our time.
Francis of Assisi was thought to have received stigmata, and they are often
shown on portraits of him. Some believe that was what the Apostle Paul meant
when he wrote in Galatians 6:17 “I carry the marks of Jesus branded on my
body.” People always tended to politely avoid Bill, especially when he was
wearing his stigmata. I tried to see Bill as God’s messenger calling me to
identify so thoroughly with Jesus people might think I was crazy. Knowing how
to relate to people with mental illness or limitations can be awkward, so they
are socially avoided.
Amy Simpson wrote for Christianity Today (01-28-14), “Families affected by serious mental
illness have many things in common: secrecy, confusion, alienation, exhaustion,
fear, even terror, anger, frustration, longing to be ‘normal.’”
Downton
Abbey has become a defining
cultural phenomenon. Much of this season has revolved around Anna Bates’
desperately futile efforts to keep her rape secret, but she could not hide the
shame. It alienated her from her husband, her fellow servants and the Crawley
family whom she served. Halee Gray Scott also wrote for Christianity Today (01-30-14) “Defiled, polluted, castoff, exposed,
abhorred, and most dreadful of all: defenseless. This is what it feels like to
be raped.”
The Samaritan woman Jesus met at Jacob’s Well
was also a misfit outcast. With gentle compassion Jesus drew out her secret shame.
As we enter that conversation, Jesus coaxes us to open up our secrets. Within all
of us who feel like misfits and outcasts, Jesus unleashes a spring of living
water gushing up to eternal life.
We need to listen to this conversation very
carefully if we are to recognize ourselves in this woman and understand what
Jesus did and did not say to her.
Two other times in John’s Gospel Jesus told
someone, “Go and sin no more.” (5:14; 8:11) But Jesus did not say that to the
Samaritan woman he met at Jacob’s Well, nor did he ask her to repent or
pronounce pardon on her. In that society, women could not initiate divorce. Rather
than a serial adulteress, she is more likely to have been the victim of abusive
men. It is even possible she was given by her 5th husband to this 6th
man in payment of a debt, thus not able to marry him. Or her husbands might
have died, and the 6th man was fearful of marrying her.
The text does not give us a way to sort out
the speculations of her secret, but she was clearly a misfit outcast in her own
Samaritan community, and she was acutely aware of the distain of the Jewish
community.
Jesus recognized a spiritual hunger that was
buried with her secret shame. When she brought up whether to worship in
Jerusalem or on Mount Gerizim, she was not just avoiding having her secret
exposed, she was also recognizing the deep division that separated her from all
Jews and thus from Jesus. When she identified Jesus as a prophet, she was
probing for something more satisfying than the debate over where to worship.
Jesus’ answer about worship in spirit and in truth spoke to this inner hunger,
which she knew enough to realize could only be satisfied by the Messiah, even if
her concept of Messiah was limited and defective. But when Jesus said, “I am
he,” she not only knew Jesus was the long anticipated Messiah, she was
immediately transformed from an misfit outcast into a messenger of good news.
Just as Nicodemus misunderstood what Jesus
said about being born from above, at first this woman misunderstood what Jesus
meant by living water. In common usage, “living water” meant water from a
flowing river, stream or spring. The water in Jacob’s Well seeped in from
ground water and rain. Only as the conversation continued through her problems
with men and social exclusion and worship did she recognize Jesus’ living water
was spiritual, the source of eternal life. Within all of us who feel like misfits and
outcasts, Jesus unleashes a spring of living water gushing up to eternal life.
The living water Jesus promised does not come
from dipping into a well that accumulated whatever seeped in but becomes a
spring of water gushing up from within. Living water is not an external
resource to go to when spiritual thirst calls. Living water is the continuous
source of life that comes from God who lives within.
In contrast with the groundwater slowly
seeping into Jacob’s Well, Jesus promised a spring of water gushing up to
eternal life. Exuberance and abundance, energy and joy. This unrestrained
fountain is the antidote for all the secret shame of every misfit outcast.
When the woman appealed to the anticipated
Messiah to assuage her spiritual thirst, Jesus’ answer in verse 26 was simply,
“I am.” John’s readers would surely have recognized that Jesus just spoke the
name of God spoken to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3:14. Even as
scripturally illiterate as this woman was, I suspect she recognized that too.
Whether she did or not, the power of Jesus word took effect and she was
instantly transformed. The spring of living water was unleashed in her, and she
rushed into town leaving a wet path and soaking everyone who had previously
pushed her away.
Within all of us who feel like misfits and
outcasts, Jesus unleashes a spring of living water gushing up to eternal life.
I would be the last one to minimize the
importance of confession of sin and repentance. But I do know that wallowing in
guilt, shame and regret is destructive to abundant living and effective
evangelism. Jesus emphasis with the woman at Jacob’s well was to call her to
life-giving faith. Jesus continues to call us, whose spiritual waters may have
grown stagnant, to life-giving faith.
When the Samaritans flocked to see Jesus,
they declared, “We know that this is truly the Savior of the world.” Though all
four Gospels use the verb to say Jesus saves, this is the only place in any of
them the title “Savior” is specifically ascribed to Jesus. Given the animosity
between Jews and Samaritans and the social isolation of the woman, calling
Jesus “Savior of the world” is significant. This is not the personal savior
typically referred to in revivalist circles but a savior who reconciles across
all social and relational boundaries. This is the Savior who transforms secrets
and shame, misfits and outcasts into gushing fountains of life and love.
I’m sure some of you were uncomfortable when
I started by talking about mental illness and sexual violence. For many of us,
these are daily family and personal realities. We don’t want our pain exposed.
For others, they are unpleasant and we want church to be a nice place where
nice people share nice experiences. As with the woman at Jacob’s Well, Jesus
ever so gently draws out our secrets and shame so he can unleash within us a
spring of living water gushing up to eternal life. When that happens, we can’t
help drenching everyone around us.
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