Bible Text: John 4:5-42 | Preacher: Rev. Jenn Geddes
ipad, iphone, file for download
These days it is easy to find out about someone’s past. What I mean is, that people can search out someone with a few simple moves of the mouse. Many employers will do a “google” search on a potential employee to find out if they have any skeletons in the closet. Have you ever googled yourself? If you have little web presence than there’s likely nothing of great import, although it is always interesting to find out who else shares your name and what they have been up to. It is frightfully easy to do. We are often warned that anything we post on the internet will remain there in cyberspace despite our efforts to erase it from the records. Jesus didn’t have the luxury of a google search in his day but then again he didn’t need one. He manages to surprise the Samaritan woman at the well in a lot of ways, but primarily by telling her, her past without much effort.
Before we can understand this woman’s story we must understand the setting. It is a story rooted in history and juxtaposed with social commentary. The gospel is in the details of this story but it is a story that began during the return of the Israelites to Palestine following decades of exile. Samaritans were descendants of the Israelites of the Northern Kingdom who unlike their Southern counterparts, during the exile, intermarried with the Babylonians. As a result, when all the Israelites returned to their land following years of exile the Samaritans were regarded us impure, as people who had given up their identity, laws and culture. This friction between the two groups had been going on since the fifth century B.C.E. That’s at least four hundred years of resentment, anger and hatred. The Samaritans also denied the centrality of the Jerusalem Temple due in part because they had their own temple on Mount Gerizim, which only but a century before this conversation at the well, had been razed by the Hebrews in the Southern Kingdom of Jerusalem. The animosity was mutual and had resulted in many a conflict.
Once we know this setting we have a better understanding of how peculiar it would have been for a travelling Jewish man to approach a Samaritan woman at the well. Just as it is difficult to erase posts in cyberspace it is difficult to erase centuries of hostility and yet Jesus takes the plunge and dives right in without hesitation.
Initially this story is structured much like the one we heard last week with Nicodemus. The narrative leads to conversation, which is filled with misunderstanding, which leads to teaching. What sets it apart is that this conversation is Jesus’ longest-recorded conversation with anyone in the Bible. I spent some time last week talking about the darkness which Nicodemus approaches in and that it is a symbol for the darkness of unknowing- of ignorance and unbelief. But this woman comes at mid-day- when the blazing sun prevents most people from leaving the house. It is, however, the only time this woman is able to get water from the well uninterrupted by the local gossips or critics. If this woman was expecting another hot, quiet, afternoon at the well, she is mistaken. Instead the heat is warded off by the refreshing and cool waters provided by this chatty, travelling stranger.
Jesus surprises this woman by stepping across the line of ethnic hostility and approaches her as any other human being. In fact, he assumes an inferior position when he asks her for a favour, for a drink of water, which by the way he never gets because the conversation quickly changes from his request for water to her request for his living water.
As the conversation unwinds, the woman struggles to understand as he speaks in theological metaphors and like Nicodemus her initial reaction is literalistic. The woman first understands Jesus to be referring to water from Jacob’s well and asks how he will give her this water without a bucket. But Jesus’ reference to living water is a play on words. In Greek, the phrase ‘living water’ refers to that of a flowing body of water as oppose to still water. Jesus is offering fresh, rather than stagnant water. Jesus is linking this living water to the gift of eternal life which gushes up, even wells up, in hope. Unlike Nicodemus the woman then understands that Jesus is referring to something much greater than this water from a well.
As soon as the woman asks for the living water Jesus takes the initiative in revealing who he truly is by simply challenging her to call upon her husband. Through his internal search Jesus reveals that he knows all about her, except her name- an important detail because most of us need the name of someone in order to google them. Many commentaries call Jesus tactic provocative theology because it appears that even when Jesus tells this woman everything she has ever done he does not seem to take an interest in her sordid past. Unlike with some of the other woman Jesus knows he does not say to her “Go and sin no more” nor does he accuse her of sinning at all. Jesus tells her what he knows not to criticize her but rather to demonstrate his prophetic capacities. I like the realization that Jesus knows our inner most thoughts, our sordid pasts, our doubts, and failings and still offers us that living water. The woman perceives his abilities and realizes she is among a great prophet- and so she continues this stimulating conversation. She immediately asks him a question that has theologically divided her people from his for centuries.
To her surprise Jesus does not debate her but rather declares that true worship of God is not geographically defined but rather defined by God’s own nature, which is Spirit and truth. That is to say, that God transcends gender, race, tradition, place and liturgy so that all who are capable can dwell in God’s presence, can maintain a relationship. The Spirit is introduced here deliberately because it is through the Spirit that one grows deeper or wells up in a relationship with God through Christ. The Samaritan woman has entered a relationship with Jesus and she realizes that he might be more than just a prophet.
My feminist side wishes we knew her name. But another part of me says that the fact that she remains nameless allows this woman to be me or you, or anyone we meet at the well. This text also demonstrates that it is not what we know but who we know. It is about having an encounter, an experience with Jesus, whose light and love shines on our past and our future. The woman’s final act in our story is that she drops everything- she leaves the well, even leaves her bucket and goes out witnessing, telling people to come and see Jesus. It takes courage and wherewithal to drop everything and go and share what we know but it is the only response we can give when abundant grace is gushing out of us like a fast flowing river. Amen