Third Sunday in Lent

Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 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.) 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.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drink from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 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.” 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.”

Jesus Said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus aid to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 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. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 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.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

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?” Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him.

Meanwhile, the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, ”I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 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. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that the sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.

Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. 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.”

The Gospel of the Lord.

It is a remarkable story, and it’s one of my favorites. It’s a story with humor; it’s a story with intrigue; it’s a story with risk; but a story, also, in which a rather precious friendship seems to develop. But it’s an unlikely story; it’s an improbable encounter. Really, when you think about it, it never should have happened. It never should have occurred. These two people—this Judean man and this woman of Samaria—should never have had this encounter. And there are very powerful reasons for that.

First of all, Jesus was a Judean and she was a Samaritan. I think it’s hard for us to understand what that meant to the people of that day. It might be helpful to know that the location of this well, this well of Jacob, is in the West Bank city of Nablus. Does that city ring a bell? It’s been in the news a lot lately. It is the place of one of the largest Palestinian refugee camps in the region. It’s a center of Hamas militant activity. It’s a place where, in the last few years, there has been tremendous violence and bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians; lots of innocent lives have been lost.

The situation was not so different in Jesus’ day between Judeans and Samaritans. There was great tension between Judeans and Samaritans. In Jesus’ day, there was some measure of peace because of the Roman occupation of the whole region, but previously there were centuries of violence, warfare, enmity, and bloodshed. Yes, they were a people of similarity. Their religions were similar. They both ascribed to the first five books of the Bible, our Bible. Both saw the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as their ancestors. They had laws and rituals that were quite similar to one another.

The key difference was that, while the Judeans felt that the Bible mandated worship in Jerusalem at that temple, the Samaritans believed the Bible commanded worship be on Mount Gerizim, which is right next to where this story takes place. And they had a temple, too. They had rival temples. In fact, about 100 years earlier the Judeans had launched an attack against the Samaritans, marched up to this very area, and burned down the Samaritan temple.

This contact between Jesus and the Samaritan woman never should have taken place. Jesus and his disciples are on pilgrimage, they’re on their way from Galilee in the north, down to Jerusalem in the south. And between those two places is Samaria. Now, most Judeans, when they take that route, travel outside of Samaria, they avoided it altogether for two reasons. One is because it was dangerous; people could get attacked, hurt, robbed. But, secondly, the rabbis, of which Jesus was one, generally taught that any contact with a Samaritan rendered a Jew ritually unclean and unable to go up to the temple.

This contact never should have happened. This was a boundary that most Jews would never cross. But Jesus deliberately went into Samaria. Not only did he go there, but he reached out in fellowship to the woman and to her village.

The second reason this should have never taken place is because Jesus was a man and this was a woman. Again, the rabbis generally taught that a Jewish man should never speak publicly with a woman. Certainly, a rabbi never would. Again, a boundary that Jesus didn’t respect, that he crossed over. And when Jesus’ disciples come back and discover that Jesus has been talking in a public place with a woman, they are shocked, they are scandalized. No matter, Jesus does it, anyway.

The third reason that this ought never to have happened is because of what Jesus knew about this person. And how shall we say it? She was a person who lived rather forthrightly, apparently, outside the social and moral order of her society. She had had five husbands. We don’t know what that’s about, we’re not told. Did they all die? We don’t know. But we do know that, according to Jewish law, a person was to have no more than three spouses in their lifetime. This woman had, for whatever reason, five. And even more scandalous than that, the person she was living with at the time she wasn’t married to. What that was about we don’t know. Was she a victim of her circumstances? We don’t know.

I rather like to think of her as one of those uppity women of history, one of those women who lives out loud and defies convention, social conventions; somebody, rather, like a Georgia O’Keeffe, or Mae West. That’s my fantasy. But at any rate, she was certainly somebody that a typical rabbi would never speak with, knowing what Jesus knew about her. In speaking with this woman, Jesus was transgressing.

So we have a couple of very unconventional people meeting together and speaking. They have a conversation about water while they are standing at a well. Jesus begins to speak of this mysterious living water, living water. Or it could be translated flowing water, or rushing water, or gushing water, or bubbling water. And she, of course, takes it literally. In the Gospel of John this happens regularly. Jesus says something figuratively and people take it literally. “You must be born again.” Well,” Nicodemus says, “how can I get back into my mother’s womb?” “No, no, no, no. I’m speaking of things of the spirit. I’m speaking in metaphor and figure, symbolically.”

So what is he talking about when he says living water? Some commentators are quick to say he’s talking about the life of the Spirit. But, when you think about it, that’s just as mysterious. “Spirit” is a metaphor as well; it means, literally “breath.” No, I think if we want to know what that living water is, we need to look to the story, and the story shows us what it is.

In the beginning of the story, the woman comes to the well with a jar to get water. At the end of the story, she drops her jar and goes back to tell the people of the town about this experience that she’s had. That living water, that gushing-up water that never ends, was occurring in her. It occurred in the encounter. Despite every reason that Jesus might have shown her disregard, he treated her instead with humanity, with respect, with dignity, and with acceptance. He treated her as an equal. He showed her love; he showed her grace. And she got it.

Do you know what it’s like to be in the presence of somebody who really sees you; who sees you as you really are, the good the bad and the ugly? And who sees you, nonetheless, with love? In that presence, don’t you experience the freedom to be who you are, to really breathe, to let your hair down, to not hide? In their presence, don’t you feel safe? Doesn’t that kind of presence bring out the best in you and make you feel whole? This, I believe, is what the woman experienced so surprisingly, in Jesus’ presence. Jesus demonstrated that kind of love.

God’s love flows to all, without condition and without boundary. It’s compassion, without boundaries and without limits. It’s for you and it’s for me, but it’s also for our enemies, whoever and wherever they might be. Therefore, the living water that Jesus was talking about is not just for our own spiritual blessing, it’s not just for our own salvation, but it’s meant to be something that flows up, not just to us but through us, to all the world. Water, flowing water, is just the right metaphor to describe it

That living water makes us peacemakers, or else we haven’t got it. And that, at least in part, in large part, is what this story about a Jewish man and a Samaritan woman is about.