Stranger's at the Well 3-12-23
Stranger’s at the Well
Ex 17:1-7; John 4:5-42
Ex 17:1-7
From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. The people quarreled with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” The Lord said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”
John 4:5-42
So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 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.) 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.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 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.” 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.” Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 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. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 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.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” 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?” Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him. Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 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. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. 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.”
Prayer – Who knew that a simple request for a drink of water between two strangers would result in living water being offered? And yet, that seems to be the way Jesus interacts with people, meeting them on the road, by a well, climbed up in a tree; blind, broken and residing on the margins of life and that is where Jesus tends to show up. Remind us this morning Lord Jesus, that we too encounter people every day in any number of ways and places – at a checkout line, handing out bags of food, at the coffee bar – and as you are there in that momentary moment, help us to see with inclusive, compassionate and grace-filled eyes, another beloved child of the Father and not some stranger that seemingly doesn’t deserve our time or energy. Give us your vision to see and respond – amen.
Two strangers – one an itinerant Jewish street preacher, the other a woman who shows up at the well at midday to avoid the judgmental eyes of the community that knows she has been around the block a few times and is currently living with a man who isn’t her husband – and something magical happens. When Jesus meets the ‘woman at the well’ in our gospel passage from John this morning, we find both of them not only crossing the boundaries of culture, but leaping over those boundaries. Knocking down walls that have been there for years.
Both Jesus and the woman at the well show courage. One brave and thirsty person asks for water from someone whose gender, race, religion, and background make her the ‘wrong’ person to give it. One brave, generous, open person gives water to someone whose gender, race, religion, and background would make him the ‘wrong’ person to receive it. Encounters, by chance or by design, have the power to change us and help us grow. And they are more times than not challenging. When another person makes a request that is uncomfortable, they force us to make a decision we might prefer to avoid.
When a refugee or immigrant asks for protection, shall we offer help even when such help challenges the barriers of our assumptions and culture? When someone seeks equality or points out the inequities of our social system, will we be prone to knock down walls – even is such a way that requires us to give up our own privilege in order to ensure that all have the same right and opportunities? When a group or individual requests affordable health care, will we be brave enough to help make sure it is available to them, overcoming barriers set in place to block such access? When a lonely person asks us to join them for lunch or coffee, are we willing to set aside the time regardless of our busy schedule? When life requires unusual action, are we willing to break down the boundaries of our own comfort zones to do the right thing? There is much at stake when we request, or hand over, the metaphorical cup of water.
Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well reminds us that the community Jesus inaugurated calls for a people of inclusion and not exclusion, of dignity and not denigration, empowerment rather than exploitation, and affirmation rather than marginalization. Jesus’ simple request for a drink of water provoked a dialogue with a woman on the edge that is a life-long lesson for us that God does not desire any human being to shrivel and die from a broken body or parched soul. Rather, Jesus longs to quench our deepest needs and desires with the ‘living water’ that restores and replenishes and makes all of us feel whole.
As Jesus traveled from Judea to Galilee he stopped in the town of Sychar around noon time, tired and thirsty from the journey. He sat down by the well and asked a Samaritan woman for a drink of water as she was there simply to fill her jar with water. That Jesus, a Jew, would talk to a Samaritan woman shocked the woman as well as Jesus’ listeners. That he would talk to a woman surprised his own disciples. In fact, through death or divorce, this woman has burned through five marriages and was then living with a man who was not her husband. She could have given Elizabeth Taylor a run for her money. I can imagine that the crowd around Jesus was shocked and his own disciples stunned – “HE’s lowering himself to talk to her?”
Allow me to explain, the Samaritans said that the only books of the OT that were worth reading were the Pentateuch, the first five books of Moses – Genesis through Deuteronomy. Samaritans also maintain that, unlike their relatives, the Jews, they, not the Jews, have the true religion of the ancient Israelites. The way the Samaritans tell it, when the Jews were carted off into Babylonian exile, they stayed in the Holy Land and maintained the true tradition of the elders whereas the Jews, in exile, were corrupted by other faiths and traditions and brought bag a mixed bag of religious beliefs when they returned from exile. Samaritans believe that Samaritanism is the true religion of the ancient Israelites, preserved by those who remained in the land of Israel during the Babylonian captivity.
A key Samaritan belief is that Mt Gerizim, located near the city of Nablus in the vicinity of the biblical Shechem in the modern day West Bank, is the original holiest place for the Israelites since the beginning of time. I hope that you’re keeping track of all of this because it is notable that Jesus goes to Samaria and there, way out among the odd-worshipping Samaritans, Jesus meets a stranger at the well, Jacob’s well of all places. And just in case you missed something, John reiterates, ‘Samaritans don’t have anything to do with the Jews.’ Why? Mainly because of the different notions of just when where and how you meet God.
So as Jesus is interestingly journeying through Samaria, stops at a well to rest and get a drink of water, meeting a stranger, a woman, a Samaritan, a woman who has had five husbands, and begins a conversation about not just water, but living water. In this brief conversation, the Samaritan woman doesn’t know a great deal about the one who engages her at the well. And though she is uncertain that Jesus is the Christ, she leaves their encounter no longer a stranger but an intimate witness sharing with others the need to meet this itinerant street preacher named Jesus. At that brief meeting at the well, she moves from conversation and questions about Jesus to open encouragement of others to encounter him. I wonder, I wonder, if people run away from encounters with me, or perhaps with you, wanting to know more about this Jesus.
The woman at the well is engaged by Jesus in dialogue that doesn’t provide her with a set of straightforward, easy answers and propositions. She doesn’t receive a list of knockdown arguments from him or straightforward answers. She receives something better, Jesus himself, talking with her, engaging her in an encounter that is truly a face-to-face conversation with Emmanuel, God with us.
Noting that she has come to draw water at the well, Jesus speaks to her of his ‘living water.’ She has no idea what ‘living water’ may be and she still asks Jesus, ‘Give me some of that living water so I don’t have to come back here and pull up a bucket of heavy water every day.’ And I can imagine the smile on Jesus’ face because we know that whenever Jesus mentions something ordinary in John’s gospel, there is nothing ordinary about it. Here, he is talking of a deeper, wonderful, spiritual water that is ‘living.’
When you connect the dots of her story, you realize that this woman epitomized the many ways that society marginalizes people. Jesus shattered all the taboos – social, religious, cultural – that held sway then, and perhaps even now – gender discrimination, ritual purity, socio-economic poverty, religious differences, and the moral stigma of multiple marriages. But more important, and perhaps one lesson to take from our encounter at the well is that the Samaritan woman displayed a spiritual thirst, candor about her main problems and genuine insight about her real needs. She longed for something beyond the ordinary water sitting in her jar, but for ‘living water’ that Jesus offered her, so much so that in her excitement she forgot her water jar when she rushed to town to share the good news she not only felt and saw, but met at the well. So many folks were touched by what the woman had to say about Jesus that he stayed for a few extra days and many more people could say, ‘we no longer believe because of what you said, now we have heard and seen ourselves and we really know that this is the Savior of the world.’
In our passage this morning, we have an interesting human encounter, at a well between two strangers, in fact, two people who under normal circumstances wouldn’t give each other the time of day. But for some reason they did. A couple of things to consider, Jesus has a way of showing up in the ordinary moments and activities of the day, and we have to be aware, or awake, enough to recognize that this is someone special who can perhaps change our lives. A second thing to consider is that Jesus himself didn’t mind, in fact, loved to break down barriers established by society, the church, the culture, the everyday people who he met on the road. Jesus loves to invite us to consider, to rethink the normal way we have been doing things, to re-envision life in different ways. He is committed to breaking down human erected barriers that might prevent any and all from seeing, hearing, believing that he is indeed the Savior of the world.
And I wonder, if that is Jesus’ task, why are we in the church so predisposed to erecting more and more barriers to keep others from seeing, hearing and believing in Jesus? Why is the church as an institution all too often more about exclusion and doing things a certain way than about meeting a stranger, someone who is different and inviting them into relationship?
Our passage this morning is a story of an encounter at a well, between two strangers who have no reason whatsoever to look at each other, much less talk to one another. And with courage, both chose to dismantle what they knew, or thought, or maybe even believed and something vital, something alive came from that encounter. You and I are called to bear witness and we are called to do so with everyone we encounter, to share a sip of living water with each other, to deepen the human connection, to learn with and from one another so that perhaps the world can be a better place. To see, to hear of, to believe that two strangers, as different as night and day can meet and connect, means that something magical can happen with everyone we encounter in our daily walk – may it be so – thanks be to God – amen.