March 12, 2023 Sermon

Sermon title:  "The Woman at the Well"

Scripture:  John 4:5-42

(Other lectionary suggestions include Exodus 17:1-7, Psalm 95, and Romans 5:1-11.)

John 4:5-42

5So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. 7A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." 8(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9The 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.) 10Jesus 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." 11The woman said to him, "Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?" 13Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14but 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." 15The 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." 16Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come back." 17The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband'; 18for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!" 19The woman said to him, "Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem." 21Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23But 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. 24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." 25The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming" (who is called Christ). "When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us." 26Jesus said to her, "I am he, the one who is speaking to you." 27Just 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?" 28Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 29"Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?" 30They left the city and were on their way to him. 31Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, "Rabbi, eat something." 32But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you do not know about." 33So the disciples said to one another, "Surely no one has brought him something to eat?" 34Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 35Do 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. 36The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.' 38I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor." 39Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I have ever done." 40So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. 41And many more believed because of his word. 42They 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."

          When I chose this long Scripture reading, I apologized to Tami - but she told me not to worry, because she uses "cut and paste" and she doesn't have to type every word. (Those of you who aren't so computer-savvy are just like me, so don't worry! To "cut and paste", one is able to grab a big portion of Scripture and transfer it elsewhere without having to type every word. So don't worry about Tami! Sometimes technology is wonderful and work-saving!) Back to the Scripture......it was a lectionary choice for today, and I think a good one. Please keep in mind that John's Gospel was written after the other three, perhaps as late as the end of the first century. And by the time John wrote this, there was already a Christian community that was separate from the Jewish community. Jesus has a lot of "I AM" statements in the Gospel of John, whereas in the other three he seems to want to keep his identity secret until the very end. Today we hear him telling the woman at the well that he is indeed the Messiah. In the earlier Gospels he would NEVER say such a thing!

          One of the aspects of this story is that the woman is coming to the well in the heat of the day, NOT the smartest thing to do! But she is doing so to avoid coming in contact with OTHER women, who most likely would come to the well earlier in the day when it was cooler. WHY did she want to avoid contact with other women? Because she was an outcast, even among her own people. For one thing, she had had more husbands than Carter has little liver pills! (Remember those little liver pills? Are they still being made? Maybe not....) And yet, here was Jesus talking to her ANYWAY! Get the point? Jesus loves even the most tawdry among us, even those who are of loose morals, even those women who have slept around. And Jesus was breaking all kinds of rules that his culture lived by. Jews never talked to Samaritans, and a lone Jewish man would never talk to ANY woman alone, let alone a lowly Samaritan. She could claim ANYTHING. But Jesus doesn't care! That's the point! Are you familiar with that Shingrix commercial? "Shingles doesn't care!" Well, neither does Jesus! Some things are more important than the culture's rules, and Jesus's behavior shows that he believes that.

          There are so many double entendres in John's Gospel. Jesus says one thing, and the person hearing it responds on one level, usually the lowest level. (Remember Drak's sermon from last week? Nicodemus actually asks if it is possible to be BORN AGAIN literally! Jesus has a totally different idea!) The same with today's story about the woman at the well: Jesus talks about LIVING water, which the people of his day meant as RUNNING water, meaning fresh water, water that is not stagnant. The woman thinks Jesus is talking about regular water, but he is talking about something else, an ever-bubbling fountain that wells up inside a person once he/she has bought into Jesus's message of God's love for them and all people, even those lowly, half-breed Samaritans!

          Jesus and the woman talk about something else:  where is the "right" place to worship God? The point is that God is too big for only ONE mountain. In fact, God is too big for only one TEMPLE, and people who insist that we must worship God in one certain place are engaging in a kind of idolatry. Jesus makes the point that God cannot be contained geographically or architecturally. Jesus says God is SPIRIT. In a way, what Jesus says to the woman is almost too much for her. She probably would have had a tough time understanding that true worship has nothing to do with territory and EVERYTHING to do with spirituality. So, she says, "Maybe the Messiah will sort it out for us." Jesus says, "You're looking at him."

          One of the things Jesus discovers here at the well is that there is a hunger, a spiritual hunger, for what he has to say. And it's not coming from his own people, the Chosen, but from these looked-down-upon Samaritans. And not only that but look who becomes the first Samaritan evangelist:  the woman at the well! Before she met Jesus, she was an outcast in her own country; now she goes and brings others to Jesus!

          Jesus seems excited about the prospect of those outside Jerusalem listening to his message. Perhaps that's why he makes those comments about the harvest. The Samaritans were ready to listen. Perhaps that was a happy signal to Jesus that the time was ripe for the spreading of the Gospel message. Perhaps "salvation is from the Jews", as we heard earlier - but the idea was never for the Jews to keep that message of salvation to themselves. Salvation, or being made whole, which is what salvation means, was designed to reach outside Judaism to embrace the world. Back in the book of Isaiah we have God saying that he would give Israel as "a light to the nations". Perhaps, in Jesus's mind, the time was NOW, and the events that happened that day at the well convinced him. The kingdom of Heaven was at hand. That term, "kingdom of Heaven", is from Matthew and not the Gospel of John. But what happened that day may have convinced him that it was time to move forward with his message. Amen.

Pastor Skip