[The Lessons this week are Exodus 17: 1-17, Romans 5: 1-11, and John 4: 5-42.]
Today’s story about Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well is so rich with meaning that to truly do it justice would take the work of many hours! You will be pleased to hear that, in keeping with the Lenten theme of resisting temptation, I will resist the temptation to do just that! Even in the relatively brief time we have today, there is a lot we can get from this story.
First, Jesus has gone to Samaria. On several occasions, we learn that there is enmity between the Jews and the Samaritans, but we don’t normally hear why that is. So, some background.
It wasn’t always that way. In 586 B.C.E., King Nebuchadnezzer of Babylon humiliated the Israelites by defeating them in battle, destroying Solomon’s temple, and dragging the leadership of Judea off to Babylon as captives. There they would live as exiles for many years.
Even after the return from Babylon and the rebuilding of the temple, the sting of this defeat hurt. A reason for it had to be found. People tried to explain why God had allowed this to happen. Scapegoats had to be found.
Some like Ezra and Nehemiah blamed those men of Israel who had married foreign women and demanded that the men immediately divorce their wives, transferring Israel’s shame to them. Many, especially in Samaria, refused and were attacked. Thus began the enmity between Judeans and Samaritans, which was centuries old by the time a young Jewish rabbi sat by Jacob’s well. As an aside, another distinction is that the Jews believed that God had to be worshipped in the temple in Jerusalem while the Samaritans worshipped on Mount Gerizim.
A Samaritan woman (we never learn her name!) comes to the well at noon, in the heat of the day. Normally, the women of a village would do this hard task early in the morning or in the cool of the evening and they would do it together so their fellowship would break the drudgery of the task.
A woman who does this alone, in the heat of the day, has a reason. She is an outcast, the subject of scorn by the other women of the village, and the midday sun is better than the stares of the other women. So, she goes at noon, when she can be alone.
But this day, she isn’t. Jesus is sitting there and he is tired and thirsty. Jesus is thirsty because he is fully human, just as we are. One point to take from the story is that, when we are thirsty, or hungry, or tired, or in pain—even to the point of death, Jesus knows and understands how we feel, because he has been there and felt the same way. His humanity connects him to us.
Jesus speaks to the woman. In that culture, Jews didn’t converse with Samaritans and men did not speak to women unless they were related or they had some other type of business in mind. You can imagine the thoughts in the woman’s mind when this Jewish man speaks to her and understand her discomfort. But Jesus doesn’t treat her as she has been, an outcast among outcasts. He treats her as an equal and doesn’t treat her past as a cause for shame. This is another point to take from this story—Jesus reaches out to the outcasts of society.
You might also notice that Jesus didn’t bring up that the woman lived with a man who was not her husband in order to condemn her. He didn’t say that her status as an outcast was her fault as a sinner. He didn’t, as some ministers of today would do, make sure that he pointed out just how shameful her behavior was and insist that she be kept from the center of Christian community. Instead, he treated her with respect, love, and grace, and she was transformed.
This woman, who had accepted the verdict of her villagers that she was a source of shame, felt strong enough to demand (“Sir, give me this water”) living water from Jesus. She sees that she needs this living water—a water of the spirit—to satisfy her spiritual thirst in her broken life. She runs into the village, leaving her water jug—a precious possession—behind, for she no longer needs it. This outcast woman goes into the center of the village to tell them to “come and see” Jesus and they listen! And they believe! All because of her willingness to talk to the stranger at the well. In many ways, she is the first evangelist!
What transformed this Samaritan woman can transform us and our world today, if we but let it. Jesus sets aside the score-keeping of this world and, by treating us all as if all were forgiven, makes forgiveness possible—even for us.
How do we get this living water? We know how we ought to live and we know that we fall short. We know enough to recognize the gap between who we ought to be and who we really are. These weeks of Lent give us the chance to narrow this gap and let the living water transform us as it did that woman at Jacob’s well almost 2,000 years ago.
A few years ago, people posed the question, “What would Jesus do?” Let me turn that around. Jesus is sitting before us, tired and thirsty. He asks us to give him a drink. Are we ready to talk to him? Are we ready to reveal our causes for shame to him? The question is, “What would we do?”
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