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The Third Sunday In Lent
Almighty God, who seest that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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The Third Sunday In Lent
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Scripture citation(s): John 4:4-42
A Sermon by
Fr. Mead
on
John 4:4-42
✛
An Outcast is Received
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In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Jesus is the leading actor in today’s drama so masterfully told by Saint John, but the main supporting actor, the Samaritan woman at the well, is of great interest; and she gives the story its accessibility and reach.
What comes across so powerfully about Jesus in the story – and for that matter in all the stories about Jesus – is the unity of his depth and simplicity. Jesus is so substantial, so real; powerfully attractive, this quality is a result of his personal union with God, because his humanity has not been marred by sin or alienated in any way from his Father. As he told his disciples in this story, he has food to eat which they do not know, and that food is to do the will of the One (the Father) who sent him and to accomplish his work.
As for the woman at the well, she like us is a sinner. In this sinful world, some sinners are more respectable than other sinners. There are reasonable moral distinctions to be made among sinners, from hardened criminals to conscientious citizens. There is a more important distinction from the perspective of eternity: the difference between impenitent and penitent sinners. This difference holds, wherever they are on the social scale: from the heights of respectability to the depths of desperation. For the penitent have turned their faces toward God; and the impenitent have turned away from God. This is a difference between life and death; in the end, between heaven and hell. Although she is not socially respectable, the woman in our story turns her face towards God.
The woman at the well was a social outsider in at least three ways. To the Jews in Judea, she was an unclean Samaritan, a Jewish-pagan half-breed left over from the Assyrian conquest centuries before in the northern apostate kingdom of Israel. For a time there was a capital under King Ahab in Samaria. To the Samaritans themselves she was an outsider; for as the story unfolds she has a complicated not to say immoral life involving five husbands and a current cohabitant not her husband. Jesus saw and knew all this even before she said, “I have no husband,” when he told her to call her husband. This was probably why the woman came to draw water in the heat of the day rather than morning or evening when the village women would normally have come to draw. She likely found their company and conversation difficult. Finally of course she was a woman, and in first century Palestine it was not usual for men of any group to converse with any woman – alone – certainly not to the depths that Jesus was talking to her. When Jesus’ disciples returned from the village with food, they were shocked by this. But we know from many stories that Jesus treated and included women in his company and conversation with breathtaking authority and freedom.
It all starts at Jacob’s well with Jesus asking for a drink of water. [By the way, if the ancient well near Sychar is indeed Jacob’s well and it may well be, it was over 100 feet deep; you couldn’t have a drink without drawing.] As you heard, the conversation was remarkable. Jesus drove straight while the woman for several reasons swerved around and changed the subject. But each subject got closer: Jesus offers an inexhaustible supply of living water. Jesus sees deep into the life of his questioner. Jesus says God is spirit and true worshipers worship in spirit and truth – it is not the place of worship that counts so much – even though salvation comes from the Jews. And yes, Jesus is a prophet; more than that he is the Messiah that even the Samaritans have heard about: “I who speak to you am he.”
Off into the village runs the woman, “Come meet a man who told me everything I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” So, as the story ends, here come the villagers. Jesus’s disciples now have a lot of work to do, and the Lord and they stay there for two days. But the disciples didn’t start the work. The woman at the well did. She was Jesus’ first witness.
What is it about the woman? What constitutes the accessibility and the reach of her story with Jesus? This is what could be called an “I and Thou” encounter, a dialogue amounting to prayer, whether or not the woman realized it. She was drawn into it. Jesus’s presence together with his complete reception of her drew her. As he talked about water and worship and finally himself, the woman without knowing (yet no doubt powerfully sensing) had the Spirit of the Lord nudging her from behind, supporting her beneath, and drawing her toward the Lord. And the Lord never passed judgment on her; he simply described the truth about her. She experienced grace in being known. He understood her. He took her in, and she responded with excitement, telling the Good News about Jesus. Her exit, naturally enough, was when those twelve men, the shocked disciples, returned with food from her village.
We don’t know what happened to the woman after her encounter with the Lord. But if her first reaction is a clue, I doubt her life was the same. I imagine she discovered new things, new interests about life. We know from other New Testament texts that there was a goodly harvest among Samaritans after Jesus’s death and resurrection and the descent of the Holy Spirit on his disciples. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the woman, whose name we do not know, was to be found among Jesus’ many women disciples. Perhaps Mary Magdalene befriended her.
The Jewish ruler Nicodemus, having left Jesus after a nighttime encounter, showed up with courage at the cross.[1] I wonder if the Samaritan woman was there too – there was a large company of women who bewailed and lamented Jesus at his Passion. The raising of Lazarus drew huge crowds to Jerusalem.[2] I wonder if the woman was among them and heard Jesus, just before he died, say “I thirst.”[3]
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
_______________
[1] Jn 3:1ff; 7:50; 19:39
[2] Jn 12:9ff
[3] Jn 19:28-30
