John 4:5-42
The story of the Samaritan woman at
the well is one of the longer stories in the gospels. And yet, it
only appears in the Gospel of John. You would think that something
like this would be remembered by the apostles. And they probably
remembered something like this. But John never writes with a
historical eye; he always has layers and layers in his gospel, and a
story like this is practically a textbook of theology.
In the Old Testament, there are
several stories of men meeting women at wells. Isaac meets Rebecca
at a well, and Jacob meets Rachel. Moses meets his wife Zipporah.
And King Saul meets three women at a well, and very much contrary to
the tradition, does not become acquainted with his future wife. It
is sort of a prediction that Saul will fail at answering God's call.
So John expects his readers, who will mostly be Jews, to remember the
significance of a man and a woman meeting at a well. And
everything starts out typically. Jesus asks for a drink. Jewish men
didn't talk to strange women if they could help it, and certainly not
Samaritan women. And then we begin to notice other things.
The Samaritan woman reminds me of a
patient I once took care of. Roberta, not her real name of course,
had been married twice and her current man was not her husband. She
had abandoned her family which included two young children. This had
to do with alcohol, abuse, poverty – all those things, apparently.
She was always poorly groomed and smelled of tobacco smoke. And yet
she was an intelligent and pleasant woman. She had just given up.
Her life seemed to be devoted to the pleasure of alcohol and the
avoidance of responsibility. And like the Samaritan woman she needed
saving.
The woman in the story is coming to
the well at noon, You didn't do that unless you were trying to avoid
other people. That's the time everyone was inside, trying to avoid
the heat. The woman is a Samaritan – to Jewish people, she would
be an outcast. Pagans you could understand, but a Samaritan, who
didn't worship at the Jerusalem temple? Who denied the divine
authority of the books of the prophets and the wisdom books? Who
worshiped on a sacred mountain which was almost a sacrilege to the
Jews, because that's were a lot of Pagans worshiped. Samaritans were
even worse than pagans, practicing some perverse mockery of the true
religion.
Jesus draws out that the woman has
been cast out by five husbands; women could not initiate divorce. Or
maybe she was the widow of five men; that's not much better, because
it gets you thinking about how that happened. And the cherry on the
Sundae is that she is an adulteress. The Samaritan woman is about as
far from an ideal marriage partner as you could get.
But it is to this hopeless sinner that
Jesus reveals himself. She begins by calling him “sir”, then a
prophet; then Jesus reveals that he is the one to come. And finally
the villagers become convinced, first on her testimony, then on their
own witness, that this is the savior of the world.
So it is a love story, of sorts. It's
a story of mercy, how Jesus reaches out to us as we go about our
daily activities, how he enters into our ordinary lives and asks for
water and then offers us living water, water that will once and for
all quench the thirst in us.
We are thirsty. If you've ever been
really thirsty, it's hard to think of anything else. And once your
thirst is quenched, you know it won't be long before you want more.
Thirst is a good name for our human condition. Do you have
everything you want? I don't. I think all of us could think of
something we would like to have. Maybe good health, maybe youth,
maybe more money, maybe more success. Maybe we are content but we
want something for our spouse or our children. But unless you have
reached a very high spiritual level, you can't say “I want
nothing”. But whenever we get what we want, our satisfaction is
very brief, and then we turn to the next thing on our list to want.
We live in a constant state of thirst. Most of our thirsts can be
grouped under one of four headings: pleasure – we want to feel
good, we want to get rid of aches and pains, we want to be warm and
comfortable and have full stomachs. But when we experience pleasure,
it's brief and never lasts. Wealth is another thirst. It goes
without saying that an enormous amount of pain is caused by the
seeking after wealth, and often most of the pain goes to the one
seeking, who loses relationships, health and time in the process. A
third is being noticed. We could call that fame. There are people
who are driven by this, but most of us like a little attention. How
far we are willing to go to get it, of course, is where we get in
trouble. Some of the people who go into a crowd and begin shooting
are looking for fame. And finally there is power. In our country,
especially during a presidential election, it's never hard to see how
seeking power can distort and destroy a person. I'm always amazed
that people with very little real life experience think they are
qualified to run our country. And like the other thirsts, people who
get power are always thirsting for more. Indeed, these thirsts make
us hurt, and when we devote our lives to one of them, we are the most
wretched of creatures.
And that's what Jesus offers this
wretched woman – a woman who immediately grasps how wonderful it
would be to get away from the constant cycle of going down to the
well every day, bringing water home, using it up, and then going back
the next day. If she had living water, she would be free of this
burden; if you and I had living water, we would be free of the
endless thirst that is in us. And we hear Jesus tell us “Come to
me all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest”.
That's what Jesus offers her – the
quenching of her thirst. And that's what he offers us.
