John 4: 1-42
Pastor
Fred Phelps, founding pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas
died this week. If you don’t know
who he is, Pastor Phelps and his flock, mostly family members are known for virulent
anti-gay protests at events, funerals, and military funerals. He preached hatred unbridled under the
guise of Gospel, in my opinion.
He once told the Wichita Eagle in 2006, “If I had
nobody mad at me what right would I have to claim that I was preaching the
Gospel?" Under Phelps' leadership, Westboro members have preached that
every calamity, from natural disasters to the Sandy Hook Elementary School
shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, is God's punishment for the country's
acceptance of homosexuality.[i] That hits close to home. Really Pastor
Phelps? That is just not how I
understand the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Your ministry did not reflect, in my opinion, the inclusive invitation
of Jesus.
You don’t hear many prophetic, pushing the envelope
sermons from me, I’m usually a bit more pastoral in my approach but today you
will because it is what is on my mind and heart and it intersects with today’s
proscribed text from the lectionary.
So here we go.
He Qi
We
have for our consideration today a very long text. I probably could have
spent all of Lent on this beautiful text of restoration, witness and
hope. Referred to often just as ‘The Samaritan Women at the Well’, it
pours out redemption and love for us to consider. I’m going to start at verse 1 because it really sets
up why Jesus happened to wonder off the path and wind up in foreign territory
and why this story is so important to the witness of Jesus Christ. I’ll also be stopping with some
explanation along the way to break up the reading.
Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making
and baptizing more disciples than John” —although it was not Jesus himself but
his disciples who baptized— he left Judea and started back to Galilee. But he
had to go through Samaria. 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.
It’s notable that he stopped in Sychar because
Sychar (today Hebron) was a Samaritan city and a Jew wouldn’t have been caught
dead in Samaritan territory and especially in the middle of a hot day making a
stop. There was a long-standing
hatred between the Jews and the Samaritans because of their differences in
cultic and religious understanding and practice. It would have been dangerous for Jesus to expose himself
like that. But he does and in
doing so he cultivates a new witness that we will see.
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.”
Unlike Nicodemus from last week’s scripture who
comes at midnight, this woman comes to Jesus in broad daylight which also could
have gotten her in trouble. Unlike
Nicodemus who was religiously well bred, an insider and a male with a name,
this woman was an outsider on several levels, a female without a name that has
been recorded. But this woman has
chutzpah! She challenges Jesus to
a theological debate and ultimately his authority, she is not passive by any
means yet she recognizes her limitations.
And yet Jesus, God bless him, he lets go of created social barriers that
enforced human division in his day.
Unlike Nicodemus this woman recognizes what Jesus
can provide her with, she see’s his identity. What’s interesting is that Jesus comes to the well
unprepared, he has no bucket, no visual aid to help us understand the
difference between the water in the well and living water. And yet she gets it, and hopefully we
do too. The woman doesn’t need a bucket to fill with the living water that
Jesus offers, she needs an open heart and a willingness to accept that which
Jesus offers. They both were
thirsty that day and I believe both were quenched from their encounter.
This is one of the longest conversations that
Jesus has that is recorded. And we see that the story hasn’t ended yet.
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.”
It is here that his divine nature is really
revealed, she knows he is a prophet with the things he has told her about
herself, her former marriages, her current situation. And we also see their differences- that her ancestors
worshipped on Mt Gerizim in Samaria and Jesus ancestor’s worshipped on the
mount in Jerusalem but those Jesus says, who worship the true God will neither
worship on Mt. Gerizim or Jerusalem but in true spirit and energy because God
is spirit, and God is love. She
becomes a believer that blistering midday at the well. Living water and spirit. This divine aha moment however is
interrupted….
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….
…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.”
This woman, of insignificant beginnings, becomes
a witness for Jesus’ miraculous mercy and healing. She has been given a drink from the well of living water,
Jesus Christ. What was her unquenchable thirst and her questionable status came
to an end. Jesus met her in her most vulnerable state and took what she was
offering which was an open heart and she in turn received acceptance, forgiveness
and clean, refreshing, rehydrating, life giving and life informing water to
drink.
This is a good text if you’ve ever doubted your
identity, if you’ve ever doubted that you are worthy of God’s love because what
this text shows is that everyone, EVERYONE, is worthy of that incredible
love. It shows us that we are
acceptable in God’s sight just the way we are, warts and foibles invited! We don’t have to be the best or the
greatest or the smartest to earn God’s love. We don’t have to be a certain color or a certain gender or
sexual orientation to receive grace.
We just have to be who we are and, like Jesus meeting the woman at the
well, we will be met with wide open acceptance. All we have to do is show up and we too will be met at the
metaphorical well and be filled with the living water of Christ.
But the woman takes it one step further and we
need to as well. She goes out and
tells other people of this transformation of her life. That she is no longer a nobody tossed
of and swept away by society. She
is a somebody, included into the fabric of life rather than excluded. As
theologian Brian Blount says, “This thirsty man (Jesus) who was the source of
living water provided the model and the modus operandi for letting go of
division”.[ii]
Through his acceptance of this woman he shows us the way to inclusiveness
rather than exclusiveness. Isn’t
that the God we all want and desire?
Don’t we all want to be included in God’s merciful love? And doesn’t God want union rather than
separation?
Can’t we share this really great news with
others, can’t we let others know that they too can come and be accepted and
cared for just the way they are?
The church has that potential.
We have that potential as a community who loves one another. There is no room for prejudice in the
church. The church can be that
well, offering living water, offering hope and a place of acceptance to all
people from whatever path they have taken to get here. Let us not be even one iota like Pastor
Phelps congregation spewing hatred.
The Samaritan woman was not turned away from the well and no one should
be turned away and feel as if they can’t come to church because of who they are
by nature and grace. And no ones
funeral, the final most sacred act in life that we can give to another should
be tainted with hate.
The well of God’s love is deep and you will be
able to get water when you need it.
There is plenty for all.
The well never runs dry there is enough sustenance for everyone. Black and white, rich and poor, young
and old, gay and straight. God’s love is unbelievably wide, non judgmental,
sacred, and all encompassing. May
we emulate God’s love today so that all may drink from the well of salvation,
and affirm each person’s living as a beloved child of God.
For God so loved this world.
Amen!
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