March 23, 2014
John 4:1-42
“Give Me this Water”
Rev. Dr. David A. Davis
This water. Give me this water. Give me this water so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming back here to draw water. This water. Living water, was what Jesus called it. Living water. It could also be translated flowing water. As in the water that flows into a deep well. Water not stagnant but flowing. Sir, you have no bucket and the well is deep. Where do you get that flowing water? Flowing water. Living water. Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life. “Give me this water” she said. And those who thereafter overhear the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan Woman try to grasp the weight of the phrase “living water.” For Jesus clearly intends it to drip with meaning. Living water. Is it the teaching of Jesus recorded in the gospels? Yes. Living water. Is it the promised presence and the anointing of the Holy Spirit? Yes. Living water. Is it the grace and forgiveness that defines the gospel and rests at the center of God’s plan of salvation? Yes. Living water. Is it life in Christ in all of its fullness; abundant, eternal? Yes. Give me this water, she said.
You and I could tackle this conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman for a month of Sunday’s and still be left with plenty to ponder and lots to remember. In the chapter just before here in John, Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. The meeting at the well took place at noon and Jesus was the one who spoke first. Nicodemus pretty quickly fades away as the teaching of Jesus soars into John 3:16. Here in chapter 4 the woman at the well stays stage center pretty much the whole time. She goes back and tells others of the man who told her everything that she had done. “He cannot be the Messiah can he?” Because of her testimony, even her hesitant, question-formed testimony, because of her, many Samaritans believed in him. It is only as Jesus stayed with them for a few days, as people heard his word for themselves, only as they came to know him as Savior of the world, only then does the woman take a step back in the narrative’s drama.
She hardly fades away. Thee Samaritan Woman. This is no quick pop up remember on the bible’s screen. It is the longest recorded conversation that Jesus had with anybody; the Samaritan woman and Jesus there at Jacob’s well. Length is only part of what makes it remarkable. The gospel narrator’s comment about Jews and Samaritans not sharing things in common; that’s hard to miss. And the disciples shock that Jesus was speaking with a woman? It’s probably more than gender being questioned there. The disciples would have known those old stories of finding a spouse at the well: Abraham and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, Moses and Zipporah. Of course they were astonished that Jesus as talking to her there at the well. The well in town was like an Old Testament version of E-Harmony.com. So the reader doesn’t have to work very hard to understand how remarkable this conversation really was; this remarkable and longest conversation.
Do a little online reading about the Samaritan Woman and you will be amazed at how quickly interpreters, preachers, devotional writers, bloggers make her out to be a prostitute. Yes, it is a reaction to the part of the dialogue where Jesus asks her about her husband and then comments about the person she is with now. But it’s mostly an over-reaction that serves to make the gospel more juicy; not unlike how Mary Magdalene has been forever portrayed. Nowhere in the text does Jesus offer forgiveness or condemn behavior or talk about repentance or say to her “go and sin no more.” That’s a different conversation in John’s gospel (the woman caught in adultery). Here in this long drawn out encounter, Jesus had plenty of time to “go there” if he wanted to.
I figured I could blame men for portraying her as one with questionable character and a shady past but the attempt to turn this encounter into little more than a morality play doesn’t break along gender lines. It is an unfortunate, slippery slope: portray her as a sinner, assume her question about worship and mountains is intended to change the subject away from her past, belittle that confession that comes as a question (rather than understand it as a gradual and persistent awakening to who Jesus is) and then ignore the affirmation of her bringing others to Jesus. Push the Samaritan Woman to the steamy side and then forget that even before women were the first Easter morning preachers, here in John’s Gospel, the Samaritan woman was the first to offer a testimony to her encounter with the Messiah, the Savior of the World. It’s the safer read, isn’t it? Reducing the gospel to some archetypal account of a loose woman rescued, preached over and over again by evangelists preparing for their own fall from grace and thus kept far enough away from most of us whose lives lack such sinful flare. The church’s slippery slope that over and over again chooses to objectify women rather than listen to their testimony and empower them to preach.
I am convinced by those who suggest a more nuanced reading of ancient marriage laws and writers who wonder if maybe she was infertile and therefore cast off again and again. All we know from the story is that she was either widowed or abandoned five times. As one colleague puts it, “one might imagine the woman’s story is tragic rather than scandalous.” For goodness sake , if the disciples hadn’t come and interrupted the well-side conversation, expressing their shock that Jesus would be talking to a woman, causing her to drop her bucket and rush off, if the disciples hadn’t come back, Jesus and the Samaritan Woman might still be talking there about worshiping God in spirit and truth. Jesus telling her that he is the one called Christ; invoking every part of God’s conversation with Moses back at the burning bush; I am..the one who is speaking to you. That dropped bucket on the ground; a symbol for all to see that she will never thirst again and that with her testimony she has now been moved, empowered, ordained to schlep living water. The scandal of the gospel was never about her; it’s what the world did to him. God’s love poured out. Give me this water…
Did you hear, did you notice how this long conversation started? John tells the reader that Jesus left Judea and started back to Galilee. Before John records that Jesus came to the a city, sat by a well because he was tired, before John tells us that it was about noon, John writes, But he had to go through Samaria. It is an odd comment. He had to go through Samaria. It’s odd because it’s not a geographic necessity. One could get from Judea to Jerusalem without going through Samaria. It’s like telling someone to drive to Boston but you have to use the George Washington Bridge and the Cross Bronx Expressway. There are other ways to get there. He had to go through Samaria. It’s a gospel way of underlining the importance of what is about to come. He had to go. It is a nod, a theological margin note that circles this whole boundary shattering, inclusive, grace-filled conversation. It had to happen. Almost like Jesus didn’t want to go that way; he had to! So that even there, in the most unexpected of places, even in the most difficult of places, by his grace and with her persistence, in that longest of encounters, living water starts to flow.
A couple of Christmases ago, our family went up to New York to see the musical Godspell. The night we traveled up there it was absolutely pouring rain; just teeming, coming down in buckets. As folks rushed into the theater out of the weather, the whole lobby area looked like a changing area at a pool. People toweling off and taking off wet coats and checking umbrellas. As we found our seats and had some time to look around the rather small, theater in the round, I noticed a drip coming from the ceiling. Given the amount of rain, a leak wasn’t a surprise. It was a slow, steady drip, falling right on the stage there in the middle of the theater. Instead of putting a bucket onstage, I noticed they had opened one of those trap doors that would lead into places unknown in the bowels of a theater under the stage. How convenient, I thought to myself. The leak was perfectly located. Drip. Drip. Drip. Of course, the joke was on me (and the rest of us in the audience). Very early on, that drip catching trap door was opened and became a baptismal fount as the characters splashed in grace baptized by John. The fount filled not by a rush, or a mighty pour, but by a drip, drip, drip.
The Samaritan woman and her experience of the Living Water: it wasn’t like a fire hose opening up. It came in the drips and drabs of the longest of encounters. It was her yearning, her persistence, her elongated inquiry and the bold grace of the Savior that took him to the most unexpected of places, courting the most unexpected of people. Some in this life of faith have been blessed by a transformation that comes like a teeming, drenching rain. (One thing I know, I was blind but now I see). Most of us, I imagine, trudge along for the long haul; experiencing the grace of Christ in the drips along the way. And here’s the promise that comes from Jesus and his encounter with the Samaritan woman; that you and I, we would find grace in the places we have to go, not just where we want to go. That grace will find us in the most unexpected places and through the most unexpected people.
Droplets of the teaching of Jesus recorded in the gospels; like welcoming children and loving your enemy and turning the other cheek and you can’t serve God and mammon; just a sprinkle of the Holy Spirit; the wordless presence that brings peace and comfort not at all like what the world has to give; even a trickle of the grace and forgiveness that everyday helps you to find your place in God’s plan of salvation; the sips of the life Christ offers in all of its fullness; abundant, eternal, sips that bring joy when the morning comes, sips that help broken hearts to sing again, sips that allow our lips to yet again praise God.
A fire hose of grace; maybe, every now and then….but most days, when the living water just drips….
Give me this water. Give us that water, O God….
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