not for water, not for love, not even for forgiveness, but for truth.
And Jesus, by revealing the truth about her,
has given her the hope that he might be able to reveal the truth
about other things as well.'
Could there possibly be
two more different people
as Jesus’ conversation
partners
than the ones from last
week’s and this week’s Gospel lessons?
Last week it was Jesus
and Nicodemus the Pharisee,
well-versed in God’s
law, well-respected among his peers,
talking of earthly and
heavenly things.
This week it is Jesus
and an unnamed woman,
not only a woman but a
Samaritan,
untaught in the Law, or
at least very unobservant;
for these three reasons
at the very opposite pole of Nicodemus.
But there is one more
difference between the two conversations.
Nicodemus comes to Jesus
in secret, by night,
and Jesus encounters the
woman at high noon.
These little details –
the season of the year,
the time of the day, the location of the meeting – are always included in the
Gospel of John.
Of course, it could very
well be
that John is simply adding
descriptive detail to his story,
telling us the facts of
what happened.
But it’s never that
simple with John.
You remember the five
‘W’s’ of journalism:
Who,
what, where, when, why.
Whenever John tells us who,
what, where, when
he’s never just telling
us who, what, where, when.
He’s telling us why.
Why Jacob’s well? Why
noon?
Why does the woman leave
her water jar behind
when she goes back into
the city?
But I’m getting ahead of
myself.
Let’s start with the
facts. The woman is a Samaritan.
Samaritans and Jews
shared a long and tortured history.
The Samaritans were
descendants of the ten Northern Israelite tribes
who had not been taken
away to Assyria at the time of their exile.
They believed their
interpretation of the faith of Israel
to be the correct one.
And so there was
conflict between the two groups.
But Jesus the Jew and
the woman of Samaria
encounter each other at
Jacob’s well.
If you remember your Old
Testament, Jacob was renamed Israel,
‘one who strives with
God.’
Jacob was the common
ancestor of the twelve tribes.
A very appropriate place
for representatives of the two groups to meet.
The fact that Jesus
speaks at all
crosses boundaries in at
least two ways:
a Jew talking with a
Samaritan,
and a man speaking with
a woman in public.
Jesus asks water of the
woman,
but promises something
else,
to give her living water
so that she will no longer thirst.
Just like Nicodemus last
week,
the woman takes Jesus’
words literally,
asking Jesus to give her
this spring of water
so that she will no
longer need to drag her water jar to the well each day.
Then Jesus tells the
woman that she has had five husbands.
But we ought to be
careful before we assume what is going on.
Although the woman does
have sins to be absolved,
this is not simply a
standard call to repentance and an offer of forgiveness.
There is something more
going on.
Jesus, by revealing the
woman’s history, reveals himself,
and the woman
understands the opportunity she has been given.
And so she goes right to
the heart of the matter –
who’s right, his people
or her people?
Where is the right place
to worship,
at her people’s
ancestral mountain, or his people’s?
not for water, not for
love, not even for forgiveness, but for truth.
And Jesus, by revealing
the truth about her,
has given her the hope
that he might be able to reveal the truth
about other things as
well.
The disciples show up,
and suddenly the woman up
and runs back to the city,
leaving behind the water
jar.
Why does she leave the
water jar?
Perhaps she was so
excited by what Jesus told her
and so eager to share
the news with her family and friends
that she simply forgot
about it.
She could have thought
that it would have been a hindrance,
slowed her down.
Maybe she decided that
she would leave it so the Messiah to get water
and would pick it up
when she got back.
These are all very
interesting theories,
none of which are in the
text.
She goes away, without
giving Jesus any water,
but Jesus must not have
been too thirsty.
Apparently he wasn’t
hungry either,
for when his disciples
showed up with food, he didn’t eat anything.
His food was to do the
will of God and to complete his work,
and what he was thirsty
for was faith,
and he found it in the
woman of Samaria.
The woman leaves behind
her searching questions,
because she’s found what
she’s thirsting for,
the truth about God
she’s been seeking.
We haven’t really been
talking about water, have we?
It’s never just who,
what, where, when with Jesus in the Gospel of John,
it’s about why.
Here at Jacob’s well, Jesus
shows Jews and Samaritans
that they may find
common faith and fulfillment in him.
It’s no longer a matter
of where we worship, but whom we worship,
for God’s Spirit is
among us
wherever we gather in
Jesus’ name and hear Jesus’ word
and receive Jesus’ body
and blood in faith.
Why does Jesus meet the
Samaritan woman at noon
but Nicodemus by night?
We can come up with a
prosaic answer,
that Nicodemus came to
Jesus in private
because he was not
Jesus’ disciple,
and the woman could only
come to the well at noon
because her notoriety
made it impossible for her
to come in the morning
with anyone else.
These may be true, but
John would not be satisfied with those reasons.
Rather, when Nicodemus
meets Jesus,
he is still in the
darkness of doubt,
and the woman is
illumined with the light of faith.
Though we hear no more
of the woman or her community,
Nicodemus’s story is not
over,
and there may well be
enlightenment for him too.
And finally, I may ask
this. Are you still carrying your water jar?
You may say, I don’t
carry around a bucket –
I’ve got a tap in my
home,
and bottled water when I
want it and can afford it.
But remember, we’re not
talking about water, are we?
This Lent, those who
around the world
are preparing for their
Easter baptism
hear this story and see
in themselves the searching one
who finds in Jesus the
living water which quenches her thirst for truth,
and who leaves behind
all that did not refresh and satisfy.
And we who are baptized
are recalled again to the promise
that in Jesus we have
received all that we need.
There is no further
revelation we need search for,
and we may leave behind
anything in our lives
that would keep us from
life in the Spirit.
Too often we have picked
up that water jar again,
seeking that which was
not life.
living in doubt though
we have been consecrated in faith,
Jesus invites us, again
or for the first time,
to the promise contained
in him,
to live in the Spirit
which springs up inside us,
to drink deeply of the
life and peace he gives us.
