March 15, John

JOHN 4:5-42

 This morning’s Scripture is another of my favorites from the Gospel of John.  Again, we see how John uses rich imagery to help us connect with the story.  We can see the humanness of Jesus, hot, sweating in the noon day sun, sitting down to rest and to hopefully get a drink of cool water.  We can imagine Him seeing the woman walk toward Him and the well in the shimmering of the heat, carrying her water jug to the well.

To set the stage, Jesus had been in the area of Judea, preaching, teaching and baptizing people.  Word had come to him that the Pharisees were greatly concerned about the excitement He was stirring up.  So, Jesus and the disciples left the area to go back up to the area surrounding Galilee.  Although most Jews did not travel into Samaria because of a century old feud between them and the Samaritans, Jesus chose to take that route.  In the Adult Bible Study class and in our Lent Bible Study, we have been talking about “stepping out of the boat,” or your comfort zone.  For most Jews, taking this route would have been just such a step, but not for Jesus.  Jesus shows us that sometimes we need to be willing to do those things that might be personally uncomfortable to minister to those who need to hear God’s Word.  Thus, we find Jesus sitting at the well dusty, hot and thirsty on this particular day.

Many are quick to condemn the woman at the well and label her as promiscuous.  After all, she has a history, some of it good and some of it, not so good.  She has guilts, regrets, and fear. We might say, she is a woman with a past, but don’t we all have a past, and feelings of guilt and regret?  In a sense, we are all Samaritan women.

In our world today, it is easy to forget that women of her day had little choice or control over their own lives.  If she was divorced, it was the husband that divorced her as she had no say in the matter.  If she was not divorced, then she had suffered the death of five husbands.  Regardless, each time, she would have been left alone, left unprotected in a society where she was not valued.  Whether she was divorced or widowed does not matter, for either way, she had experienced much tragedy in her life.

Her encounter that day, however, was life changing, just as our encounters with God can change our lives.  It is a time of awakening, a time to really see ourselves as we are, to the see the blackness in our hearts, the blackness that only Jesus can wash away.  In the encounter we see Jesus listening to and understanding her story, and as always, breaking down the cultural barriers of the time.  Not only was He breaking the custom of men not talking to women in public, but He was breaking down the barrier between two nationalities that did not speak to each other.  In fact, Jesus was demonstrating the universality of the Gospel.  The Gospel is for all people, not matter who they are or where they reside.  God’s love and grace is for everyone, and Jesus demonstrates it in action when He encounters the Sarmatian woman.

Notice that Jesus gently questioned her and gave her the opportunity to own up to her shortcomings.  The opportunity to suddenly catch site of herself, to face herself and the total inadequacy of her life.  The woman suddenly realized that life as she knew it would not do.  Not only does Jesus reveal to her her own sinful state, but He goes on to tell her what will change her life.

Like Nicodemus in last weeks Gospel lesson, at first, she takes Jesus’ words quite literally when she was meant to understand them spiritually.  She sees herself as never having to make the trip to the well and carry back the heavy jugs of water, but then she catches site of Jesus meaning as she sees herself as God sees her.  Her insight emboldens her to “step out of the boat,” and go tell her friends and neighbors about Jesus.  We see the dramatic transformation of her life, but more importantly, we see that Jesus welcomes even the most unlikely people into the fold.

Notice that Jesus too is thirsty in this story.  He is thirsting for us to see our lives as God sees them, and like the Samaritan woman, recognize our sins and do something about them.  In a sense, Jesus is thirsty, and we are the ones with the buckets.  It is only by dipping them into the well of living water, that we can never thirst again. At the heart of all of this is the fundamental truth that in the human heart there is a thirst for something that only our relationship with Jesus can supply.

As we leave here this morning, let us ponder whether we truly see ourselves in the presence of Christ.  Do we see our own sins or do we gloss over them as being minor, as not as bad as other’s sin?  Do we forget that sin is sin?  There is not ranking in one sin being worse that another.  In this time of Lent, do we clearly see and understand what Christ did for us on the cross so that we might have eternal life?  Are we truly quenching our thirst with the living water?

Amen