Lent: The Woman at the Well
Sermon by Anne East
Readings: Exodus 17: 1-7, Romans 5: 1-11, John 4:5-42
“Jesus and the woman at the well”. One of the many ‘unnamed women’ that we read about in Scripture: Jesus and the ‘bent-over’ woman, Jesus and the woman with a flow of blood, Jesus and the woman taken in adultery, the woman who anointed Jesus’ head, the woman who called out to Jesus from the crowd. Yes, you’ve guessed it, I’ve got a bit of a fixation with these unnamed woman — they occur in the Old Testament too, but we’ll keep that for another conversation.
Jesus and the woman at the well is the second part of the trilogy that Brutus described last week. Part One was the ‘insider’ Nicodemus, a man, a leader, a Jew. Here we have a woman, a Samaritan, an ‘outsider’, not quite respectable. But note that this is the longest one-to-one conversation between Jesus and another person recorded in the Gospels. We only find it in John’s gospel. Luke, who has so many stories about women, doesn’t have this one – neither do Matthew or Mark. It is an episode that has captured the imagination of writers, poets and artists over the centuries. There is something beautiful about the staging of this scene.
Jesus is facing hostility from the Pharisees in Judea, so he decides to leave for Galilee and to reach Galilee he has to go through Samaria. The disciples go off to buy food and Jesus rests by the well. It’s very hot, it’s midday – and this woman appears. What is she doing out in that heat, it’s not the normal time for drawing water. Why is she alone? Why didn’t she go the well with the other women? It is a strange situation right from the beginning. Now the answer to these questions may have something to do with what we are told later on – that this woman has had five husbands and is now living with another man. Maybe she is not socially acceptable? Got a bit of a reputation?
If Jesus was surprised to see her, she was even more surprised to see him and especially when he asked her for water. She was a Samaritan, he was a Jew. Jewish food laws were strict, what they could eat, what they could touch, what vessel they could drink from. “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria!”
And if that request surprises her of course Jesus offer of ‘living water’ puzzles her even more. “Sir, give me this water, so I won’t get thirsty.” People often misunderstand Jesus at first: Nicodemus, that we heard about last week, “How can a man be born again?” or even the disciples later in today’s reading, wondering about the ‘food’ that Jesus tells them he has.
So this conversation leads into a theologian dialogue – about ‘living water’, about the source of that water, and about where God is, where they should worship him – “our Mount Horeb? Or your Mount Sinai? Our ancestors worshipped in this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem” . The woman seems to be asking a similar question to the one the Israelites were asking Moses in that passage from Exodus: “Is the Lord among us or not?” ‘Is God with us? How can we know?”
She’s feisty, this unnamed woman. She recognises the societal barriers and boundaries that keep her in her place but at the same time she challenges Jesus’ authority over and against the ancestors of her faith, “Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and his sons and his flocks drank from it?” She reminds me of the Canaanite woman who in seeking healing for her daughter and being told “You can’t take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs!’ retorted “But the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the family table!.” Persistent.
Here, the woman says, “‘You seem to be a special person, you know a lot. I know that when the Messiah (the Christ) comes, he will explain everything to us” .
And Jesus gives this amazing reply, “I, the one who is speaking to you – I am . . he.”
‘I AM’ – that’s YHWEH, the name of the Lord in the Old Testament. This is God’s name as revealed to Moses, ‘I AM. Tell the Israelites that I AM has sent you.’
As we read on through John’s Gospel we find Jesus making other ‘I AM’ statements: ‘I AM the bread of life. I AM the light of the world, I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life. ‘
It starts here, at this well in Samaria: ‘I can give you living water . . You spoke about the Christ…I am he.’
So Jesus reveals his identity to this woman. Her question about the acceptable place of worship (Mount Gerazim or Jerusalem, over which the Jews and the Samaritans have disagreed for centuries) represents a fundamental issue for this Gospel: ‘Where can we find God’s presence?’ Let’s think back to the opening chapter “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”
What extraordinary things happen at this well in Samaria. Jesus tells the woman he is the Messiah, and she tells this good news to the others in her village. This unnamed woman is the first evangelist to the Samaritan people. Listen to their declaration: “Now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the saviour of the world.”
When we read / re-read a passage of Scripture – and particularly during our Lenten focus — in the tradition of ‘Lectio Divina’ (Diving Reading), we seek the gift to us in that passage.
John chapter 4, Jesus with the woman at the well: where, for you, does the treasure lie? What is the gift that you find when you dig deeper in this passage of scripture? Is it the fact that this woman is an outsider, a nobody, of low social standing? Jesus does not turn away from this woman – on the contrary, he engages her in serious conversation and spends several days at her village. Jesus welcomes outsiders, as well as insiders, into discipleship. And when we take small, tentative steps towards understanding (like this woman does) Jesus waits patiently until we see him for who he is.
The woman was amazed that Jesus knew so much about her. He knew where she was coming from, how life had been for her, where she was weak, mistakes she might have made. Jesus accepted her. Is that the gift for you? Reassurance that you are known, accepted and loved?
Or is it that “living water” which holds the treasure? Water, we know, is essential for life – we simply can’t live without it. Jesus offers a new life - a life that bubbles up in us like a spring – cleansing, renewing, refreshing. As Paul said in today’s NT reading, “God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit”.
And what should we do with it? The woman was offered the water of life and she used it to irrigate her whole village. The more that our lives are filled with God’s living water of life and love, the more we too may become sources of love and comfort and fairness and truthfulness for other people.
May it be so. Amen