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Mar 26, 2011
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Sermon, March 26, 2011
Third Sunday of Lent
By Susan Soric
The Woman at the Well
Here we are on the Third Sunday of Lent, moving forward on our journey of introspection, repentance, prayer and, for some, fasting. We are preparing for Easter’s coming as we take stock of our lives, get in touch with our humanity, our humility, our dust. It’s an earthy time, in a way: a time to remember that we are from the earth and will return to the earth. But this Sunday’s scriptures speak not of earth, but of water, and not so much of sacrifice, but of grace, and spirit, and eternal life. After all, though we are carbon life forms, more than 61 percent of us is made of water. We can’t live without it for more than a few days. It’s the elixir of life, and we’re always hydrating.
In our reading from Exodus, we see the entire nation of Israel, the people of God, stranded in a dry wilderness, desperate for water. They’re angry and grumbling against God, because they’ve followed God into the desert in faith, only to be left without sustenance. But God hears their cry and through Moses performs a miracle: water springing forth to meet their needs and to help them along their journey.
Jesus, too, is on a journey from Judea through dry and dusty lands to Galilee to settle rumors about who is baptizing the most people (John the Baptist, or Jesus and his people). The scripture tells us that on his way he “had” to go through Samaria: not a pleasant side-trip for a Jew who would not be well received there at all. Perhaps not a trip he would normally choose to take. But Jesus was on a mission: God’s mission.
He enters the town of Sychar in Samaria at high noon, tired and thirsty from his journey. He comes up to a well; not just any well, but Jacob’s well, a legendary well that was also deep, generations old, and solid, and reliable. But Jesus has nothing with which to draw water and depends on the kindness of Samaritan strangers. Then someone does approach: a woman with a water jar. Jesus asks her for a drink.
Though the setting and circumstances may seem rather unremarkable, something extraordinary is happening in this encounter. Here is a male Jew (a rabbi, no less) encountering a woman of dubious repute who is a Samaritan, a class of people reviled by the Jews. Society at the time also frowned upon men and women having public conversations, especially if they were strangers: it was not seemly or appropriate. But Jesus is not interested in human constructions and boundaries. He smashes right through them. He even asks her for a drink from her water jar: a vessel his people would consider to be unclean or contaminated because it belongs to a Samaritan. Jesus is definitely thirsty, but now that he has encountered this woman, he appears no longer concerned about his own needs. He is seeing right into the Samaritan woman’s weary, parched, love-starved soul.
The Samaritan woman is clearly intelligent. She asks him pointed questions. She notes the absurdity of a Jew asking a Samaritan for a drink. She’s curious about this man who dares to approach her and it seems she finds him audacious at first. “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?” she asks him, thinking only of the physical well in front of her.
Jesus takes up her challenge and leads her on, telling her “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
Not quite understanding what he means by living water, her reply seems almost politely mocking: “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” If I were in her shoes at that moment, I’d be struggling to get the point, too. But Jesus isn’t finished with the conversation. He takes matters even deeper, showing her that she is, indeed, dealing with someone greater than Jacob. He probes into her life and reveals her deepest, darkest secrets. This impresses her, but she does not dwell on her sin. She is focused on Jesus. She sees he is a prophet, and she challenges him on what is likely one of the current socio-religious topics in Samaria: “Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
Jesus minces no words by telling her that salvation is through the Jews, and that Samaritans worship what they don’t know while Jews worship what they know. I would think that an ordinary Samaritan might be offended by his statement, but this woman remains curious, open, and interested in this Jewish man.
What we notice about this encounter is that though the Samaritan woman does have a dicey past and is presumably living “in sin,” with a man not her husband, neither she nor Jesus dwells on her sin. That is not the point. The conversation turns to God.
“God is spirit,” Jesus tells her, and this message appears to sink deep into the well of her own soul. It prompts her to think about the messiah to come: the one she and her people are waiting for. Little does she know that she is standing before him.
And at this riveting moment, when Jesus reveals to her that HE is the messiah, the dramatic turn of events is foiled by the disciples, returning with the food they bought. Perhaps they scare the Samaritan woman away. Maybe she is so excited about her encounter with Jesus that she just drops her water jug and runs back to her people anxious to tell them about this extraordinary man. One might expect her, at this point, to make a bold proclamation about having met God or the Messiah, but she’s still not 100 percent sure: “Could this be the Messiah?” she asks her people.
The Samaritan woman’s spirit is filled with the Holy Spirit and the Good news of the Messiah’s arrival; the spirit welling up within her overpowers even her own doubts. God uses her enthusiasm, her wonder, her testimony, her spirit, to win over a large portion of the city of Sychar to faith in Jesus Christ as the Messiah.
When we are filled to overflowing with the Spirit and with the knowledge of Christ, we cannot keep it to ourselves. We are compelled to tell others, spread the good news, help others find that well of living water so they, too, can live and move in that spirit. That’s what’s on Jesus’s mind as he sits down to eat with his disciples, but somehow Jesus isn’t in the mood to eat. Apparently he never got a drink of water either. He is not concerned with bodily needs at this moment. His mind is on God’s priorities: a harvest of people out there in the world who need him and the living waters he brings them; people who need spiritual food; who need someone to point them to the source of eternal life.
As our Lenten practices draw us into the wells of our own souls, are we managing to dig out the silt and dust, the gravel and grub of our lives that keeps the spirit from filling us up? Do we find living water there? Is the spirit gushing forth, moving us outward into the world, into a life of grace that embodies worship of God, despite any doubts we may have? Are we able to put aside our bodily needs and desires from time to time, to work for God’s Kingdom? To allow God to work in us and through us in spite of ourselves?
Lent is also good time to remember our baptism as we look forward to Easter. In a way, our spiritual lives began at that font, that well, that place where we accepted the one permanent, enduring, life-giving gift of God that will carry us through whatever we endure here on earth; and will sustain us through all eternity.
As Paul said to the Romans and to us: we are standing in grace, and we boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”
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