Give me this water (John 4:1-42)
John 4:1-42 (NRSV)
4 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John” 2 —although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— 3 he left Judea and started back to Galilee. 4 But he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
7 A 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.) 9 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.) 10 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.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 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.” 15 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.”
16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 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. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 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.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”
27 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?” 28 Then 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?” 30 They left the city and were on their way to him.
31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 35 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. 36 The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
39 Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 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.”
February 4, 2018 Sermon Notes
The story of the Samaritan woman at the well comes just one week after the story of Nicodemus coming to meet Jesus at night. The contrast between the two individuals is stark. Nicodemus was an ultimate insider in Jesus’ culture. He was a Pharisee and biblical scholar. He was on the Jerusalem council. He is important enough to be addressed by name.
None of these attributes apply to the woman in today’s story. She was about as much an outsider as it was possible to be. Even though they worshiped the same God and shared a history with the Jewish people, the Samaritans were thought of half-breeds and collaborators. They were theologically suspect because they did not worship at the temple in Jerusalem. Being a woman was hard enough in that patriarchal culture. Having been widowed or divorced five times left her even more vulnerable. We do not even get her name. She is simply an outcast Samaritan who should not have been worthy of the time and attention of a traveling rabbi.
On the other hand, she demonstrates something that Nicodemus never does, an awareness of who Jesus is. At the end of the longest single conversation recorded in the New Testament the Samaritan woman proclaims that he is the Messiah they had long been waiting for. She rushes into town and becomes the first non-Jewish evangelist in the gospel of John.
Following a boundary crossing Messiah
There are many things that this text tells about Jesus. It is a reminder that Christ was willing to cross boundaries in order to share his living water with the world. He was not a respecter of the bigotry and biases that infected the culture in which he lived. He transcended the boundaries that even his own disciples were willing to put around the love and forgiveness of God. Like Nicodemus, they simply did not yet understand what the kingdom of God was all about.
Jesus’ willingness to bring this outsider into the kingdom of God is as important to us as it was to her. No longer was she an outcast. No longer was she forgotten by God. She was so important that God’s Messiah gave her a new life and a new identity. The same thing happened to the people of her community. The same thing happens to us. No matter who we are, or how cast off we feel, Jesus offers us the water of life. Baptism brings through that water and into new relationship with God’s people.
Even while it reassures us, this story also keeps us humble. Jesus demonstrated to his Judean disciples that God loved the Samaritans just as much. Scripture says that the church is the body of Christ. We have to be just as willing to transcend boundaries as Jesus was. All too often Christians turn inward and forget the outcasts of our world today.
We prefer people who look like us, think like us, and act like us. Sunday morning becomes a time where we get dressed up and pretend that we have our lives together. This is not what the church is supposed to be. We forget what the great theologian Abigail Van Buren says, “the church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.” It is a place where outcasts like the Samaritan woman at the well are invited to drink of the living water of Christ. It is a place where the brokenhearted, forgotten and forlorn can come to be known by the savior of the world.
Being a boundary crossing church
At our best, this is exactly what happens in church. The outcasts become known. Lives are changed. Grace is shared. Jesus is made known. Ten years ago, recovering alcoholic and Lutheran minister, Nadia Boltz-Webber, founded a congregation specifically designed to reach out to the Samaritan women of our world. The House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, Colorado, has become a vital refuge for everyone including addicts, homeless individuals, NRA members, transgender believers, and those recovering from spiritual, emotional and physical abuse. She describes her motivation in her book, Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People:
Blessed are the poor in spirit; the out-of-step, the unhappy in marriage, the mistake makers, the frightened, the sick, the uncertain, the lonely, the yearning, the oppressed. Because only the poor in spirit know the incalculable value, the infinite preciousness, of a fellow human hand.
This sentiment is drawn from the words of Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount. He embodied these words when he offered his love to the Samaritan woman at the well. Through his actions, an outcast became known and cherished. Christ’s love and forgiveness transcends all human boundaries. This is why the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) seeks to be a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world. There is no one who is not eligible for the kingdom of God. Filled with the Holy Spirit let us seek to welcome all to the Lord’s Table as God has welcomed us.
