Sunday, March 19, 2017 – Third Sunday in Lent
Exodus 17:1-7
Psalm 95
Romans 5:1-11
John 4:5-42
(Walking with our “Lenten Guest Preachers: Martin L. Smith and Jan Richardson)
Here at Jacob’s well, we have this rather extraordinary exchange between Jesus and this Samaritan woman. It’s an ancient well, a place of gift and promise, at least in the context of Judaism; and Jesus, tired by his journey, stops there for a drink.
We are three weeks into Lent and we, too are weary from the journey – we could use a moment to sit down, and perhaps a sip of water ourselves. Maybe it’s all that time in the desert which makes everyone thirsty, for Martin Smith also mentions a spring in his Lenten book, A Season for the Spirit. Smith tells of an ancient English spring which was famous in the Middle Ages as a place where pilgrims with eye diseases would go seeking healing. Martin first learned of this spring while he was in school. The location of the holy spring had been lost over the centuries, and it intrigued Martin. So Martin, being Martin, set out to find it. And after searching for hours in the fields where tradition said it should be, he realized that the cows standing in a stinking mud patch might be guarding the secret. After twenty unpleasant minutes of digging in muck, he uncovered a carved platform from which protruded a wooden pipe. Pure water poured out in a steady flow – he had found the well, the place of pilgrimage and healing.
This story in the Gospel text is a little like that – to get to this well of living water, to drink the pure waters here, we have to be willing to wade through the muck. In this case, through layers of prejudice and presumption of who is in and who is out. Who are chosen, and who are assumed to be the rejected people of first century Judaism. And with eyes newly opened, we are able to see how Jesus expands the circle of his community, and through this encounter how his ministry begins to expand as well.
Jesus has come to the well at a disadvantage: he is a stranger, he has no way to draw the water from the well, and he would like something to drink. The Samaritan woman is already there, and she has the advantage of being local; she has come prepared with a bucket (for she comes to this well several times a day to draw water). It’s not glamorous, it’s women’s work – all the stuff that holds the fabric of life together: mostly invisible, but life sustaining work. And here they have this interesting exchange.
Commentator and Professor of New Testament, Dr. Osvalo Vena writes:
The scene is paradoxical. Here is the giver of living water, thirsty himself. A thirsty Messiah and a resourceful woman will find out that they need each other, a wonderful metaphor for how God and humanity are intimately interconnected.1
In engaging this woman at the well in deep conversation as he does, Jesus crosses lines of race and gender in an intentional way. (It’s interesting to note that things haven’t changed all that much in several thousand years, as we still struggle to have the vision/heart to see past race and gender.) This woman is an outsider in so many ways, that it’s astounding to his disciples that Jesus would be seen with her. Yet Jesus speaks to her with respect, and she responds, asking questions, being engaged, having more to say than Nicodemus seemed to offer in last week’s Gospel conversation. She is from outside the Jewish faith, beyond the chosen people, it should be astounding to us that she is the first person in the Gospel of John to declare Jesus to be the Messiah. And she will be a disciple, for those to whom she goes and tells her story of meeting Jesus will understand him to be “the Savior of the World.” She is most certainly changed by her encounter with Jesus.
And we can assume that Jesus is also changed by his encounter with her. For he, too, was in need of something when they met, and for a moment they were mutually connected in holy conversation. And whenever that is true – whenever we are in holy conversation with another, we are both affected. I have to believe that’s true, even if one of us happens to be the Messiah. While we hear him say “salvation comes from the Jews,” perhaps it’s through this encounter that Jesus begins to understand the universal scope of his ministry. Maybe seeing himself through the eyes of this woman from outside his community, brings him new clarity, and extends his vision.
Salvation will not be limited to the Jews but will spill into the whole world. The testimony to who he is, and through him, who God is, will not be contained, but will spread to the ends of the earth. To all people and nations. God’s salvation is generous and expansive. Like this moment at the well, when Jesus will not be bound by social convention, or ethnic prejudice, or gender bias, when he extends his friendship and respect to include this woman into the circle of his discipleship.
From this encounter we can be changed as well – our eyes opened, instructing our hearts to follow. For we can see that community is created only when we are no longer afraid to extend ourselves toward others, when we banish old prejudices, and break the social conventions that dehumanize us. When we allow the living water to wash us clean of old hatreds and hostilities, and expose us as the diverse people of God on earth that we truly are. A beloved community, all beloved but not all the same.
A week ago Friday, several of us gathered with many of the members of the Yarmouth Compassionate Housing Initiative: New Mainers and their families, and those who had hosted them from the three church communities. It was a chance to share a meal together and reconnect with one another. Those of us who dreamed it up were hoping it would go well. There were language barriers and transportation issues, and logistics to deal with. How many people we could fit in the space? The families don’t all know each other, just because we know them.., and they don’t speak the same languages, and most of us don’t speak those languages either. We weren’t sure what to expect. We needn’t have worried. It was a joyful, raucous, ‘couldn’t hear yourself think over the multitude of conversations in different languages,’ event.
Community happened – holy conversations happened all around us – as mutual needs were met: the need to connect, the need to be part of one another’s lives, to share food, and stories, and smiles, and play with children, and hold babies, and to build connections. Community flowed like … living water flowing from a well in the middle of a desert.
Jesus said to her, “… 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 Blessing of the Well,
by Jan Richardson2 from Circle of Grace
If you stand
at the edge
of this blessing
and call down
into it,
you will hear
your words return to you.
If you lean in and listen close, you will hear this blessing give the story of your life back to you.
Quiet your voice. Quiet your judgment. Quiet the way
you always tell
your story
to yourself.
Quiet all these
and you will hear
the whole of it
and the hollows of it: the spaces
in the telling,
the gaps
where you hesitate to go.
Sit at the rim
of this blessing.
Press your ear
to its lip,
its sides,
its curves
that were carved out long ago
by those whose thirst drove them deep, those who dug
into the layers
with only their hands and hope.
Rest yourself beside this blessing and you will
begin to hear
the sound of water entering the gaps.
Still yourself
and you will feel it rising up within you, filling every emptiness, springing forth
anew.
1 Osvaldo Vena, Working Preacher.com, Commentary on John 4:5-42; March 19, 2017. 2 Jan Richardson, Circle of Grace, Wanton Gospeller Press, Orlando, Florida; 109 – 111.