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A Sermon Delivered at First Christian
Church Stockton Exodus
17:1-7, Romans 5:1-11, John 4:5-42
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 truth, for the
Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who
worship him must worship in spirit and 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 him 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." It
is difficult to preach from familiar texts like this one because we have
heard it before and we come with our preconceived notions. Who has not heard this as a morality tale about a hussy with
dark shades of mascara and a mini skirt who is sexually promiscuous?
After all, she has been married five times and the man she is
currently shacked up with is not even her husband.
I don't know why we like to paint her that way.
Maybe she had a string of bad luck and all of her husbands had died
and she didn't want to curse her new boyfriend so she didn't married him.
And why do we assume that she had divorced her husbands?
By law the woman was not able to divorce her husband, only the man
could file for divorce. And
if she had been promiscuous she would likely have been stoned to death.
Notice also in our text that Jesus does not ask the woman to change
or repent or anything of that nature.
He could care less that she was shacking up with a man.
Most likely Jesus was being sympathetic to a woman who had been
passed around from man to man, used like a piece of property.
The
first thing we know is that Jesus is going from Judea to Galilee.
John says that he had to go through Samaria.
Really? No good Jew in
his or her right mind would go through Samaria.
Samaria was off limits to Jews, and they were considered to be like
your cousin four times removed who practiced a sort of voodoo religion and
inbreeding. They would be the relatives nobody ever talked about and you
hoped they wouldn't come visit you from the hills of Tennessee.
They are the relatives we keep in the closet.
What
we also know is that Jesus knew of her five marriages and current living
arrangement, and he seems to be telling her so that she will know she is
encountering not just another man but a special man from God.
He isn't interested in sitting in moral judgment of the woman.
No finger wagging or anything of that sort.
The fact that she is not living with her current partner does not
alarm Jesus, and it should not alarm us. We
also know that this is the longest recorded conversation that Jesus has
with anyone. On many counts
it seems extraordinary that it took place at all: a man and a woman in
public; a Jew and a Samaritan; a transient and a citizen; one offering
living water and another caught in the ceaseless rounds of drawing water
at the well. Samaritans and
Jews had been sworn enemies for over 700 years, even though they shared a
common heritage. A Jew would
never drink from the same cup as a Samaritan, but here is Jesus, without a
bucket to draw water, asking a woman for a drink from her cup.
This is a remarkable moment. We
may assume that she has few if any friends because she has come to draw
water alone, something an outcast might do.
She may not have been welcomed to join the other women in the
morning who went together to get their water.
The other women may have considered this woman taboo. Why is it that in most religious circles we draw lines about
who is in and who is out? Do
we judge single moms or single dads?
Families with two moms or two dads?
Why are we so interested in someone's sexual orientation?
Is it any of our business, and does it really matter?
Jesus doesn't treat her as an outcast from the distance.
He treats her as a person, a fellow human being, and he engages her
up close and personal. Some
men don't like to talk business or sports with a woman because they think
she won't understand. Not
Jesus. He engages the woman
in a theological discussion, and she pretty much holds her own.
The bantering over "living water" goes over her head, but
he also spoke over his Disciples heads most of the time. Jesus treats the woman as an equal. Incidentally,
notice how the woman is not named in John.
Last week Nicodemus was named as a seeker, but this woman, who
engages Jesus in along conversation, is not even named. How ironic. Why
does Nicodemus get named, but not this woman? She
knows he must be some sort of prophet, so she asks him an important
theological question. "Rabbi,
our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where
people must worship is in Jerusalem.
Which is it, this mountain or your temple in Jerusalem?" Jesus answers "Soon it will make no difference
where one worships, only that you worship in spirit and in truth."
It is one of the best questions anyone asked of Jesus, and is
answer is right on the money. He
says, in other words, God transcends sex, race, tradition, place and
liturgy. A radical answer! So
she goes deeper. "Rabbi,
I know that the Messiah is coming, the savior of the world. And when he comes he will make it all clear to us."
Jesus' reply is startling if one hears it as this woman might have.
Jesus said, "I am he", which sounds a lot like the name
of God given to Moses. At
about that time Jesus' disciples wander onto the unlikely scene, and the
woman runs back to town and gives the call to faith, "Come, see a man
who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?"
If
any wish to be fascinated by this woman, let them be so now. She is a
witness, but not a likely witness and not even a thorough witness. "A
man who told me all that I ever did" is not exactly a recitation of
the Apostles Creed. She is not even a convinced witness: "Can this be
the Christ?" is literally "This cannot he the Christ, can
it?" Even so, her witness is enough: it is invitational ("come
and see"), not judgmental; it is within the range permitted by her
experience; it is honest with its own uncertainty; it is for everyone who
will hear. How refreshing! Her witness avoids triumphalism, hawking
someone else's conclusions, packaged answers to unasked questions, thinly
veiled ultimatums and threats of hell, and assumptions of certainty on
theological matters. She does convey, however, her willingness to let her
hearers arrive at their own affirmations about Jesus, and they do: When
the villagers come and see Jesus for themselves, they reply "This is
indeed the Savior of the world." The
story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman turns out to be not a romance
story, but truly a love story, for only one who loved you knows you as you
are and not as you pretend to be. Only one who loves you knows your
deepest desires. Only one who loves you can look at your past without
blinking. This Jesus knows everything we ever did, and still does not sit
in moral judgment of us, but loves us unconditionally.
What an incredible message of love, to hear from the lips of the
savior of the world "I love you and accept you as you are." But
I wonder sometimes, and maybe you do as well, why we do not act like the
Samaritan woman and go and tell everyone we know that we have had an
encounter with the savior of the world?
Why should we keep it to ourselves?
Don't you think other people would like to hear some good news for
a change? In
a couple of years we will be building a new sanctuary right outside these
doors. My experience is that
people aren't just going to show up and become a part of our faith
community. We may need to
become witnesses like the Samaritan woman and go and tell a few people.
Then we could fill up our new sanctuary. Wouldn't that be great?
Michael Malone
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