The woman at the well, John 4:5-42 March 19 2017

recording of the sermon is here

“There is a hunger deep in every heart, a deep craving for forgiveness and hope, a sense that our best days are not all behind us, that God has not given up on us even if we have in some ways given up on ourselves. I believe we all crave some token of God’s presence in what often seems a godforsaken world.”[1]

The Story of the Samaritan women at the well calls to our yearning our need to be touched by God or at least to see God present in this world.  As obvious as water from a well may be, we do not know we have it till it is brought up into the light.

The interesting thing about the Samaritan woman and this well is that readers at the time would know exactly what this story was referencing.  Ministry magazine has a nice summary.

“Abraham decided it was time for his son Isaac to get married. In Bible times, fathers decided these things. So Abraham sent his servant to go to the place of Abraham’s birth, to a foreign land, and, among his relatives, to find a wife for Isaac. The servant packed ten camels with tons of goods and gifts and headed out (Genesis 24).

After entering the foreign land, the servant stopped by a well and he prayed: “There are young women coming to this well to draw water. I am going to ask for a drink. May the one who gives me a drink and offers to water my camels, may she be the wife you have chosen for Isaac.” Even before he finished his prayer, Rebekah arrived at the well and did everything he had asked. When she finished watering the camels, she ran home. The servant of Abraham was then invited to supper, but before he would allow himself to eat, he asked that arrangements be made for the marriage of Rebekah and Isaac.

Isaac and Rebekah’s son Jacob also met his bride at a well (Genesis 29). After traveling to a foreign land, Jacob stopped near a well and began asking whether anyone hanging around knew his relatives. Just then a young woman came up to the well. Scripture says that Jacob kissed her and wept. Like Rebekah, her soon-to-be mother-in-law, Rachel immediately ran home. Eventually her father and Jacob made marriage arrangements.

Fast-forward to Moses. After he got into serious trouble with Egypt’s  pharaoh, Moses fled from Egypt and went into a foreign land called Midian. Scripture says that he “sat down by a well” (Exodus 2). What have we come to expect at this moment? Sure enough—the priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came with their father’s flocks for water to the well where Moses rested. But a group of shepherds started giving the women trouble. Moses stepped in, defended the women, and made sure that their flocks had all the water they needed, and then the women went home. After Moses was invited to supper, one of the seven sisters, Zipporah, was given to Moses in marriage.

Wells and weddings seem to go together.[2]

I had not ever heard this parallel drawn before and I must say it truly intrigued me.  In the past I have always heard how this story is a mirror image of the Nicodemus story.  And the images are easy to see the parallels and the differences almost as if they were meant to be read side by side.

Look at the characters of the two stories: “Nicodemus” and “the woman.” She is not named, which is significant. If the designation makes her anonymous in one way, it also makes her representative. We cannot excuse ourselves from this story by imagining that what Jesus said or did applies only to her.

In addition, obviously, unlike Nicodemus she is a woman. That Jesus talked to women at all, even taught women, scandalized the Pharisees, who were known to thank God they had been born men. She is a Samaritan, moreover, while Nicodemus was a Jew. Jews had no dealings with Samaritans (think apartheid or Jim Crow). Jews considered Samaritans half-breeds, pagans, heretics, and apostates. Samaritans, like all persecuted peoples, considered themselves the true witnesses to God, the builders of God’s true temple on Mount Gerizim. Jews and Samaritans hated each other both racially and religiously.

Nicodemus is a three-time winner and insider: he is a Pharisee, a leader of the Jews (meaning an elected official), and he is a teacher of Israel. The woman is as outside as Nicodemus is in: not only because she is a woman, and a Samaritan woman besides, but she is a sinful Samaritan woman at that—married and divorced so many times she doesn’t even bother with the ceremony anymore—ostracized by the other women, by the other Samaritan women; that’s when you know it is bad.”[3]

This is an interesting and , I must say not a very modern view of this woman’s plight.  Modern society and even ancient labelled her a sinner. Yet what is one person’s Judgement may not be reality at all.  Mary Haloviak has a different perspective; “Modern western readers typically think of her as a loose woman with a sinful past—because of her five marriages and because, at the time she met Jesus, she was living with a man who was not her husband. However, in the world of Jesus’ day, men decided issues of marriage and divorce, not women. Unlike today, only husbands could get a divorce, abandon their families, and kick out their spouse. Also, in the world of Jesus’ day, women could not survive unless they were attached to a man. After this woman’s first abandonment (through death or divorce), if she did not have a father or brother or adult son who would take her in, she had to attach herself to another man in order to live. Going through this experience five times is tragic beyond words.

Given the world of Jesus’ day, her story is probably more of a discarded woman with a painful past than of a loose woman with a sinful past. Why was she discarded so many times? Since her current living conditions were based on her own survival, she was living with someone who refused to acknowledge his responsibility to her. We should probably see her more as a slave who had to do whatever he wanted than as a secret lover having an affair. She was trying to survive. He should have married her.”[4]

The days and the circumstances were very different then than they are today and in this context one may also understand why Jesus bequeaths his mother to the beloved disciple it was assuring her survival.

So some final differences are Nicodemus Goes to Jesus in the night in secret. Jesus goes to the woman in daylight plain as can be and he addresses her.  Nicodemus as I pointed out last week just didn’t understand Jesus or his ministry where we the Woman says I see you are a prophet!

So Jesus asked this Samaritan woman for water from the well.  We know she is nothing like the other Biblical women who ended up married because they were at a well. And Yet John has set us up for what? A Wedding?

Well according to ministry magazine yes sort of…. “Yet Jesus keeps talking with her. He keeps offering her living water. He proclaims to her that His “hour” is coming
and when it comes, worship of God will not be about ethnicity or whether one worships on this mountain or that mountain. With Jesus, the hour has come where true worshipers will worship God in spirit and truth. Jesus tells her that God seeks such worshipers. In this encounter at a Samaritan well, the family of God is expanding!

For the first time in John Jesus shares his true identity.4 When she begins talking about the Messiah who is coming, Jesus says, “I am”! I am the Living Water, the Messiah, the One coming, the One here, God! Suddenly her hope for the future is also for the present! The Messiah is no longer something to anticipate, the Messiah is here . . .”[5]

Can you imagine being this woman who has so been beaten down and yet , from the conversation we know she is theologically savvy.  She knows the prophecies she knows and believes what has been handed down through the ages to her people.  And now here is the messiah.  Her heart must have leapt.

He has told her everything about herself.  He has broken the social rules to speak to her.  He has broken the ritualistic Jewish and Samaritan rules to even share a cup from the well with her.  There is something new and exciting happening here.

“Typically, in scenes when women and men meet at wells, the woman leaves the well and goes to her family, and the family then comes to meet the man, the future bridegroom, at the well. Then, after they share a meal, the two families make wedding plans. In John 4, the Samaritan woman does not go to her family. This is another clue in the story that she probably does not have one. But she does go to her community.”[6]

I would venture to say she did run back to tell her family.  This town had one way or another become her family either through her own cunning to survive or, as I would like to believe, they were intentional in making sure she was cared for and not left to die destitute and hungry.  So now she has gone to town and is preaching up a storm.  She is bringing the whole village to Christ.

Jesus kind of reproaches his own disciples by saying “I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into that labor’ ” (4:38, NRSV) The harvest which the disciples did not labor are all those who will come to Christ.  Literally in this moment it is the Samaritan village that is running across the fields to meet Jesus.  They came to believe because of what the woman told them.  Her personal witness of how Christ had moved her and perhaps even changed her.

“The family of God has expanded. The harvest has begun. Jesus receiving hospitality from Samaritans for two days must have meant lots of sharing of eating utensils and drinking vessels. When women from other Samaritan homes went to the well for water to cook and serve Jesus and His disciples, did the disciples go with them to help? What boundaries were broken down during those two days? How were the disciples’ eyes opened? After all, in the future they will follow the Samaritan woman’s example, bringing all kinds of people to Jesus, in all different cities and villages.”[7]

This is what we are called to do as Christians as a community.  Now evangelization is not everyone’s thing.  Today if one goes about preaching that one knows the messiah you get written off as a cook ro a fanatic. But breaking boundaries?  Going where we are not expected to go? Offering water that is life giving?  That we can do.

For example, through the One great Hour of Sharing “In cooperation with Global Ministries, Church World Service, Action by Churches Together, Interchurch Medical Assistance, Foods Resource Bank, Oikocredit, Freedom from Hunger and hundreds of local partners around the world, One Great Hour of Sharing is part of a remarkable network of service and caring that is efficient, effective and faithful. Administrative costs are typically less than eight percent annually.

The United Church of Christ unites with Christians in eight other Protestant denominations and Church World Service in One Great Hour of Sharing, thus multiplying the effectiveness and extent of our witness many times over.

The partnership we share with nearly 6,000 United Church of Christ congregations across the United States and Puerto Rico is where this remarkable miracle connecting UCC members to the world truly begins. The UCC annually channels more than $3 million dollars through One Great Hour of Sharing to humanitarian needs in the world.”[8]

You are a 5 by 5 church that means through special collections you are reaching out across borders that are social, economic, and cultural.  We are telling the world we may be small as a community church but we are part of something huge that is making a difference in the world.  In the same way we can do that right here.

The bird house project is a great opportunity to reach out to our neighbors.  Tell them who we are, what we are doing, and invite them to come visit and maybe even stay for coffee and some conversation.  Do you know the number one reason people come to church and stay??  Because they are invited.  Because someone went past their fears and insecurities and say …Hey I would love you to join me this Sunday and become a part of a wonderful community.

When was the last time you went and told someone we are doing such and such in our church?  The Samaritan woman ran and told her whole village about one conversation.  We are making a difference in this world as a denomination and we are making a difference in this community as a congregation now all we have to do is tell people about it!

Spread the Good news.  There is plenty of water in the well!

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[1] Thomas R. Steagald, The Samaritan Woman and Nicodemus, February 23, 2013, accessed March 13, 2017, http://www.ministrymatters.com/all/entry/741/the-samaritan-woman-and-nicodemus.

[2] Kendra Haloviak, The wedding at the well, Januarary 2014, accessed March 13, 2017, https://www.ministrymagazine.org/archive/2014/01/the-wedding-at-the-well.

[3] Steagald, The Samaritan Woman and Nicodemus.

[4] Haloviak, The Wedding at the Well.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] UCC.org, One Great Hour of Sharing _About, 2017, accessed March 13, 2017, http://www.ucc.org/oghs_about.