John 4:1-15

01/18/09
John 4:1-15
Hudson UMC

So far, in our exploration of the Gospel of John, we have heard long expositions about how Christ is the Word of God made flesh and living among us. We have heard John the Baptist make declarations about Jesus and how everyone should listen to Him. We have seen Jesus call His first disciples and invite them to have a personal encounter with the good news of God. We have seen water turned into wine and the cleansing of the Temple. We have heard an extended bit of teaching and explanation from Christ to Nicodemus the Pharisee. Finally, we have heard John the Baptist, in his last public message, explaining that Jesus is not an ordinary man, but teaches with the very authority of God. Now, we move on and we begin to read about Jesus’ ministry proper, when He goes out into the world to perform miracles, to teach, and to transform lives. This is where the story really begins, where we get to see our Savior in action.

It is fitting that, right after Jesus begins His ministry in Jerusalem, He immediately goes North to minister to those who live in Galilee, those who have been marginalized by the rest of the Jewish community. Those who were so settled into their ways in Jerusalem, who thought highly of themselves because they were near the location of the Temple and the cultural center of all of Judaism, were not able to listen to Jesus; indeed, they crucified Him. We will read about Jesus making many travels between Jerusalem and Galilee. Many of these passages tell about things that happen while Jesus is “on the way” somewhere. If you pay attention, you will notice that, over and over again, Jesus will be on His way somewhere, only to be stopped on His way to speak some words of wisdom, or to work a miracle, or to make an unexpected visit. In some places, we end up hearing more about what Jesus did on His way to do something else than we do about the things He was on His way to do! What better way to remind us that Christianity and, indeed, all of life, is not so much a matter of getting things done to reach a destination but rather a large journey on which we have critical junctures?

In this case, Jesus, after becoming aware that He was attracting all kinds of negative attention from the Pharisees in Jerusalem, leaves to go to Galilee, the region where He grew up. In between Jerusalem and Galilee, however, is Samaria. Samaria and the people who live there have something of a bad reputation. We read elsewhere in Gospels that, when Jesus wanted to emphasize what the love of God looked like, He did not use the Pagans, but the Samaritans. As much as the Jews in Jerusalem hated the Gentiles, they hated the Samaritans more. It is in this region that we meet the woman at the well. She is a Samaritan, which means that she is part of a group of people who has been traditionally marginalized and treated poorly. On top of this, she is a woman in a patriarchal culture, so she is even lower on the social totem pole. This is precisely the sort of person that the Jews would never want to be seen with, let alone talk to.

All of this background is so that the first words between Jesus and this woman make sense. Jesus asks the woman for a drink, and she responds, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” She is so surprised, she does not even know what to do. In fact, she is so aware that she is considered to be the lowest of the low, that she does not dare to do what Jesus has said at first for fear of how it might be perceived. For a Samaritan woman to presume to have any interaction with a Jewish man was a violation of the social code of the highest degree. The way the culture was set up did not allow for kindness to be shown to the Samaritans. They were considered to be something less than human. She doesn’t want this conversation to come back and bite her later, so she is hesitant to get Jesus what He wants and gives Him an opportunity to live according to the unwritten social code and bring things back to the way they have always been, when everyone knew their place.

However, Jesus wants nothing to do with perpetuating this social barrier. This woman is so much a stranger to being treated with respect that even a kind word from a Jew is remarkably uncomfortable. He does not back down from His line of questioning, but pushes it further. “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 first question was awkward because this Jew, who had no business speaking to a Samaritan woman, had opened a conversation. The second statement is even more so because he is offering to give her a gift. He is not only bridging the social gap, but is offering good will to one who would not have considered herself worthy of anything from the hands of a Jew.

Of course, Jesus’ offer does sound a little silly. He had just asked for a drink of water, implying that He does not have any. Now, He is offering to give this woman some living water. We know that the woman notices this problem because she says, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?” The problem is increased when we remember that, though we in twenty-first century America only really talk about living water in the context of this passage, ancient peoples called any water that was running, living. This offer would have sounded to the woman like Jesus was offering her some running water. We have seen Jesus being misunderstood already in this Gospel. We have heard Him talk about being “born again” or “born from above” in a spiritual sense and He was mistakenly thought to mean that we are to be literally born again. The same kind of misunderstanding is happening here. Jesus is not talking about obtaining running water, but truly living water that brings eternal life.

The woman, of course, does not understand this. She is still unable to believe that this Jew is really looking out for her best interest. She continues, “Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” As Christians, we understand that Jesus is indeed greater than Jacob the patriarch. Jacob was the grandson of Abraham, one of the most important and celebrated people in Israel’s history. Indeed, it is Jacob whose name is changed to Israel and gave the nation its name. And yet, Jesus completely ignores this comparison to Jacob. After all, it would not have gone over well for Jesus to simply say, “Why, yes, I am greater than your ancestor Jacob.” The fastest way for Him to lose His credibility and simply be laughed at is to boldly and directly make such an audacious claim. Who in their right mind would ever say something like that? So, seeking more to transform lives than to correct everybody’s views, Jesus lets the Jacob comment lie and returns instead to the water.

In doing this, He makes it a little more clear that He is not simply talking about water that you could get out of a well, or we can get out of a faucet. He claims that “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 give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” Now this is some fancy water. This woman, whose day-to-day life is burdened by the need to continually fetch clean water, is very much interested in this kind of water. “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” She wants the water, but she does not yet understand what Jesus is getting at. He is not promising a magical fountain that will give her water to drink, but He is promising that He will be the water for her soul, that He will give her and anyone else who believes in Him satisfaction for the yearning in their hearts, He will give them strength to endure in the midst of difficult times, He will refresh them when they are weary.

What does this passage tell us about Jesus? It tells us that, even when He is on His way somewhere, He always has time to notice the unnoticeable. He was on His way from Jerusalem, where everybody who is anybody spends their time. He was on His way to Galilee, in many ways, the place where more people listened to Him than anywhere else, and He takes time to notice, not only a Samaritan but a Samaritan woman. Even the least members of our world are not below the notice of our gracious Lord. Not a single one of us is so insignificant that God has not taken notice of us. We might feel that we are little and unnoticeable, but Jesus sees us as we pass by and asks us to serve Him. This service is not a burden, but is met with God’s extravagant gifts of grace and mercy. Even a willingness to get water for the Lord is met with Jesus’ promise to give living water.

I’m not one for stories in my sermons, but Alli and I have a cat. We feed her every morning, but, until we do, she makes absolutely sure that we know she is there. She jumps on our alarm clock, turning it on, she sits on our heads, she paws at the closet door right by my head, and all of this while we are still very much trying to sleep. She does everything she can to be noticed and, while we eventually give her what she wants, we basically do whatever we can to avoid getting up too early and we complain about her shenanigans. This is absolutely not the case with God. We sometimes think that it is, but it isn’t. Sometimes, we feel like we need to put on some kind of show to get God to notice us, we think that we have to have this kind of worship service, or that kind of programming, in order for God to notice us and bless us. This is not the case. In fact, we see Jesus seeking the Samaritan woman out in order to bless her when she would never have started that conversation. We see Jesus refusing to let her go without a blessing, even when she tries to weasel out of it. God is not waiting for us to jump on His head and annoy Him until He cannot stand it anymore before He will give us this living water, but is yearning for us to simply receive it. One might even paint the picture that, so far from us being the cat, doing our best to be noticed by God to be blessed by Him, it is God who is jumping on our heads, pawing at our doors, and doing what He can to get our attention so that He can give us living water.

This story is not yet over. We will learn more about the Samaritan woman and who she is and how she reacts to this visit from Jesus in the weeks to come. We stop at this point in the narrative, not just because it gives us a convenient break in the preaching, which it does wonderfully, but also because it gives us an opportunity to reflect on a particular stage of our relationship with Jesus. Not everyone who attends church has already given their entire life over to Christ. Many of us still hang on to our sins, believing that God is not big enough to take them from us and deal with them. Beyond this, there are people who attend church who just haven’t made up their minds about this whole Jesus thing and are trying to learn more before they dive in completely. Even further, there are some people who go to church to hide from God, of all things. Indeed, people who are smarter than me have claimed that the last great hiding place from God is the church. We are a diverse body here in Hudson.

I bring this up because this passage, especially if we stop right here, gives us an opportunity to think about where we have been and where we are going. We see Christ, God in flesh, continually misunderstood by the woman. As much as I believe that the basic Gospel message and the general tenor of Scripture is easy to understand, God is not. God is so hard to understand that God could not even tell us what God is like, but had to show us through God’s Incarnation in Jesus Christ. Jesus offers true kindness and is scoffed at, as if He were insincere. He offers living water that gives eternal life, and He is thought to mean that it could be carried in a bucket. How often have we misunderstood God? The more I learn about the Bible, the more theological reflection I do, the more I realize that I almost continually misunderstand God. And yet, though we so often misunderstand God, God does not abandon us, He does not give up on us, just like He did not give up on the woman at the well. He stuck around, even when she was confused, to help her, to take the time to show her that, though she might feel like the lowest of the low, she is loved and cherished by God. For those in this room who have experienced this, you know exactly what I am talking about. For those in this room who have not experienced this, take heart, because God is far more patient than you can imagine and will explain Himself over and over again until you finally can grasp it. He is a good teacher.

Finally, as we continue in this New Year, as we continue to work our way through this story and identify with it, let us imitate the desire that the woman at the well had for the living water. She did not yet fully understand what Jesus meant by “living water,” but she knew that she wanted it. Jesus wants to give us, indeed, He wants to be for us living water that will be a spring of water gushing up to eternal life. This is not eternal life for someday but eternal life for now. Let us join with the woman and say, “Sir, give us this water, so that we might never be thirsty”. Let us pray.

AMEN