Like last week, the Gospel reading this morning is the story of a conversation. Two retellings of individuals in conversation with Jesus, and that is really about where the similarities end. Last week, we heard the story of the consummate insider, the Pharisee Nicodemus, seeking out Jesus by night to question him. This week, the conversation partner is the consummate outsider. A woman, a Samaritan woman at that. And unlike Nicodemus she did not seek Jesus out, did not initiate the conversation. But Jesus found her, not at night, but in the heat of the day, drew her into dialogue, and through that open-ended conversation, made of her a foreman in the harvest of the kingdom of God.
Nicodemus came to Jesus while he was in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. Following the celebration, Jesus went out into the Judean wilderness. It wasn’t long until the rumors began that Jesus was amassing a large following. To avoid the tension, Jesus decided to return to Galilee, and in order to get from Judea to Galilee, John chapter four, verse four reported, “But he had to go through Samaria.”
He had to go through Samaria. Now, geographically, this is true. Samaria stretched across the center of what we now know as Israel, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, separating Judea to the south of it from Galilee to the north. Jesus could have gone around, through the area of the Decapolis, but the most direct route was through Samaria. But there seems to be something more going on here. The word John used, edei, is most often used in reference to something necessary to fulfilling the plan of God. So, there is a theological dimension as well as a physical. Jesus had to go through Samaria, not only because that was the way the road went, but more importantly, because going through the land of outsiders was essential for revealing that salvation was from the Jews, but it was not exclusively for the Jews. Rather, it was to flow, like ripples in a pool when a stone is thrown, starting in Jerusalem, Judea, Israel, then outward through Samaria, and Galilee of the gentiles, and into the rest of the world, the universe, the cosmos. Salvation was for Israel, and also for all those who had been marginalized by Israel. Humanity’s borders had no bearing on the movement of the Kingdom of God.
So Jesus went through Samaria. And at noon, as his disciples went into the city to buy food, he met a woman who had come to the well to draw water. This alone was a strange thing. High noon, in the heat of the day, was not the time when one normally came to get water. Most women came at dawn or at dusk, in the cool of the beginning or the end of the day. Nicodemus used the cover of darkness to reach Jesus without anyone knowing where he was going. The woman went to the well at high noon to avoid everyone, and found Jesus there, waiting for her, waiting to offer her more than she could imagine.
When Nicodemus reached Jesus, he opened with an affirmation to prove his knowledge, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who came from God.” When the woman approached Jesus on the other hand, Jesus opened. And he opened with a request, “Give me a drink.” Jesus engaged the woman by showing his humanity and vulnerability. Woman and Samaritan though she was, Jesus put himself in the lower position of person without bucket in the presence of person with bucket and access to water.
But the woman was cautious. She’d gone to the well at noon to avoid others, and she wasn’t immediately going to open up to this strange Jewish man by himself at the well. So she inquired, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” Nicodemus used his identification of Jesus as a way to level the playing field; the woman used it as a way to distance herself. I see you, she told Jesus, I know who you are, and I know where I stand in relation to you. You are here, I am here, let’s keep that space. She gave Jesus the option to disengage, but Jesus didn’t take the bait. “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.”
She’d been trying to disengage, but Jesus’ persistence paid off. He gave her an opening she couldn’t resist. She stated the obvious, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep.” You may be a Jew and a man, and me a Samaritan and woman. But I am also the one with a bucket, and you the one without a bucket, you are the one who set the positions in place, what are you talking about when you claim you can give me living water?
Having drawn her into conversation, Jesus continued with his offer of living water, water with which she would never thirst again. Like with Nicodemus, we again see the miscommunication, the woman talking about physical water, while Jesus was talking about so much more. Having drawn her into conversation, Jesus used the opening to take the topic deeper. “Go, and call your husband.” To which she responded, truthfully, “I have no husband.”
Now, here we have to be careful. Because for centuries this part of the conversation has been used to cast a judgment upon the woman. She must have been a sinful woman, loose in morals, poor in character, to have gone through five husbands, to be “shacking up” with a man not her husband, how gracious, how noble of Jesus to forgive her. Her coming to the well at noon, avoiding the others of her village, could tell us that it was not only centuries of theologians who have cast such judgment against her, it was also those around her.
We have to be careful, because in contrast to centuries of assumptions, Jesus did not cast judgment. Instead he acknowledged the truth of her statement, fleshing it out to draw her to a deeper level, “You are right in saying, I have no husband. For you have had five husbands, and the one you are living with now is not your husband. What you have said is true.”
So amazed was the woman by Jesus careful assertion of her situation that she rushed back to the village to proclaim, “Come and see a man who has told me everything I’ve ever done!” Yet even in her wonder, there remained a tinge of hesitation, “he could not be the Messiah, could he?”
I mentioned the various differences between this conversation and the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. But I think her uncertainty is the most important difference. Her uncertainty, her doubt, her hesitations and questions were what allowed her to be changed by Jesus. Nicodemus came in totally set in his ways, in who he was, what he knew, and who he knew Jesus was. The woman, on the other hand, came in doubting, open to be shifted, open to be moved, open to be changed and grown and molded by Jesus, until she could rush back into her village to declare, “Come and see… He could not be the Messiah, could he?”
This Lent we are talking about the gift of baptism, and Jesus’ conversation with the woman is a beautiful model of how the dance of baptism unfolds. In these waters, Jesus meets us, like the woman at the well. This water here is living water, water that quenches our thirst once, for all time, and a well spring we can always come back to for the unending promise of refreshment. But most importantly, it is water deep enough to hold our questions, our doubts and our ponderings. Contained in this shallow bowl is the unending depths of the promise of God. May this water quench us, move us, and mold us, that our questions may move us to action. Amen.
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