At the Well

John 4: 5-42, page 94
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 in 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 he 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.”
Sermon
There are circumstances where I love running into people I know. I love to run into people when I have on a freshly pressed shirt that Sara has helped me match to some clean slacks. I love to run into people out at restaurants downtown because there’s really something wonderful about our downtown. And I love to run into people when Lily, Sara, and I are walking home from church on Sunday afternoons because that is one of the happiest moments of my week – we are all happy to be walking together, the sermon I’ve been preparing for all week has been preached, and Lily is always doing the cutest things – stopping to touch flowers, giving Sara and me rocks, or trying to balance on the curb.
On the other hand, there are plenty of times when I would rather not run into anyone who I know. I don’t like to be seen when it’s 10 in the morning and I still haven’t changed out of my pajamas. I’d hate for someone to catch me in the drive-though at McDonalds. And there are plenty of times when Lily isn’t doing the world’s cutest things – when she is combing her hair with peanut butter, throwing her lunch on the floor, or crying hard and stretching out her legs so that she gives the impression she’s being kidnapped by me.
There are times when we are proud to be seen, when we are proud to be introduced to someone new, and for people to know who we are; and there are other times when we would rather not be seen, when we would rather hide.
That’s one reason I’m thankful Wal-Mart is open 24 hours a day – you don’t want to be checking out next to anyone you know when, “hoping to stop gas before it starts”, you’ve run out for a box of Beano melt-a-ways.
The unfortunate truth however, is that some live their whole lives that way. They would always rather not be seen, they would always rather not be known, and they would hate for you to ever see them with their family as their family is not something that they are proud of.
So they are thankful too that Wal-Mart is open 24 hours a day because they would rather not face the judgmental gaze of those of us who normally shop during daylight hours, they are thankful for the drive-through because it grants them anonymity when ordering more for lunch than most would find acceptable, and they keep to themselves mostly because they are afraid of what you might say if you met their mother, their father, their children, or their husband.
Wal-Mart is open 24 hours a day, which is nice for people who believe they have something to be ashamed of, who believe that they are different from most people, who believe that they will be judged.
We don’t know their whole story, but our scripture lesson for today tells one that isn’t so different. For fear of what they would say, for fear of how they would stare, for fear of their judgment, this woman goes to the well, not when the rest of her village goes, at the beginning of the day in the cool of morning, but when the rest of her village takes refuge from the heat, at midday.
She has good reason to go to the well at that time – for her, facing judgment from the other women wasn’t just a possibility, surely it was all but guaranteed. There may have been one or two kind if patronizing glances, but for a woman with five husbands there was the inevitable harshness of the majority’s gaze.
It’s sad to think about her. No one to talk with there at the well. No one to share her bucket and no one to share her load. She must have been so envious of the others – not only did they start their day with fresh water, but they started their day with laughter at whose husband snored the loudest, whose child grew the fastest, and whose mother-in-law meddled the most.
His voice must have shocked her. As his voice shocks us all.
Shocks us all with his request of us, as though we had something so worthy it deserved to touch his lips.
Shocks us all that he speaks to us as though we were equal, as though speaking to the King of Kings were something we did every day.
And shocks us all that, in a world where we have been afraid to be seen, too afraid to show up for fear of what they will say and how they will look, he has sought us out as though we were something worth searching for.
But this is just how he is.
Your gifts bring him such joy.
Your words always reach his ears as he is always listening, even when your prayers are but groans too deep for words.
And he does search for you, even when the whole world is telling you that you must earn your worth, you must gain their respect, you must fight to be seen – in a world of value and worth meted out on a unforgiving scale – he seeks you out because in his eyes you are like a coin lost in the dark of night – for you he lights his lamp, sweeps the house, and searches the floor until he finds it – in his eyes you are like a lost sheep, and for you he would leave 99 in open country to go after you until you are found – in his eyes, while the world around you looks down their nose, he sees you for who you truly are, worthy, beloved, child of God.
Once he found her, she left her water jar and went to tell the whole city.
What will you do?
Amen.