“Encounter at the Well”
John 4: 7-15

March 23, 2014

Wells don’t mean much to us — we live off city water, thank you.  However, in Palestine wells were important — they were means of survival.  Wells were either named for or by those who had dug or discovered them.  Abraham, Isaac and Jacob — all were known for their wells. Wells were also the Starbucks or malls of their day — the places where people went to gather and to talk.  No, they were more the places where the “women” went to gather and to talk.  Several times a day (for most households) the women would come to the well and get water for their family’s needs.  Usually these women came in the cooler periods of the day — early in the morning or late in the afternoon.

However, on this fateful day the time was noon — and the most unlikely woman in Sychar was there.  Most unlikely?  Most unlikely to follow Jesus, that is.  Most unlikely to have a conversation with Jesus.  Most unlikely to engage him in theological debate.  After all she had three strikes against her: she was a Samaritan and he was a Jew; she was a woman and he was a man; she was poor — if she had been wealthy she would have had servants to bring the water for the house. Her marital status was uncertain at best.  Some have speculated that she had been married 5 times and was now living with a man.  In reality she may have had 5 husbands die and in the common marriage practice of the day she would have been passed from one brother to another as they died. She may have been living with the next brother and waiting for the proper time to pass to engage in marriage.

Whatever her marital status she was one who lived on the edge of proper society — which is probably why she came at noon.  No one would talk with her at other times — rather they would talk about her.  Wasn’t it much better to come alone than to hear the whispers and innuendoes of others?  Sometimes a lonely existence is much better by far than one where you are the center of the gossip.

This day, however, was not to be like other days.  For on this day an unknown male was sitting beside Jacob’s well — and from a distance he appeared to be Jewish.  “Oh well, at least this man will not talk to me — I can get my water and be on my way,” she must have thought.  She was never more wrong in her entire life.  Caught off guard is the only way to describe what she felt when Jesus ask her for a drink of water.  Not only did Jews not speak to Samaritans, nor did men address women in public, a Jew would never drink  out of the same utensil as a Samaritan.  For a Jew to do such was to become ritually “unclean” and nothing could have been worse.

Jesus was not like other men or other Jews — and he brazenly asks her for a drink.  However, his purpose that day went far beyond water; we really don’t know if he ever got that drink!  His purpose was to engage this woman in dialogue so that he could share with her the truth of who he was — and in so doing spread the good news that the Messiah had come to the Samaritans.  Here is the first instance where this good news is going not just to Jews, but to their hated “cousins” in the faith — the Samaritans.
You’ve heard the dialogue — I’ll not repeat it.  By the time Jesus and this woman have finished talking not only has she believed in Jesus, she has returned to the village and brought out an entire group who, upon hearing Jesus, profess faith in him.  I want to pick out some key verses/phrases this morning and let them set the stage for the truth we take away.

“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.”
There were two thirsty people at the well that noon: Jesus and our anonymous woman.  He was thirsty for water — yes, Jesus was human and he became thirsty like the rest of us.  She, however, was just as thirsty, but in a different sense: she was thirsty for the living water, the water of life, the spiritual nourishment which comes from God.  This is a reality that we too often ignore in others.  No matter how well off, no matter how well educated or how successful we may be — each of us thirsts for the water of life which comes from Jesus Christ.  

There is a place in each of us which can only be filled by the Spirit of Christ living in us.  We were designed for that Spirit — and without that Spirit we will be forever drinking but never filled, forever searching but never arriving.  When Jesus speaks of “living water,” i.e., water that was from a moving stream and therefore fresher and better tasting than the water from a well — he is using a prophetic Jewish metaphor, found in Jeremiah and Zechariah.  “Living water” refers to the spiritual nourishment which we all need if we are to be complete and whole human beings.  “Living water” is understood as that relationship we have with Christ Jesus in which the Spirit lives in us (in a spiritual sense) and nourishes our soul.  This living water provides for us that which we need in order to prosper as humans. 
The movie American Beauty won critical acclaim and numerous awards in 1999 as it portrayed the massive painful paradoxes of living the “American dream.” The setting was suburbia with an attractive couple, played by Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening.  The movie portrays them as well as their troubled and rebelling adolescent daughter facing the superficiality and contradictions of human existence. Spacey’s character experiences the being fired from his job in a belittling, and uncaring way. Bening’s character is obsessed with being a success at selling real estate. In her attempt to be “successful” and to “be somebody,” she experiences much humiliation and periods of great despair. The script is filled with attempts to escape their pain. There are the candlelight dinners with nice bottles of wine in their well furnished suburban home in which their empty conversations invariably turn into predictable arguments. Each participates in morally reprehensible behavior that seemingly tries to fill the voids inside them. Throughout the movie, Spacey comes to grips with the notion that he is expendable. His company fired him. His spouse had an affair. His daughter despises him. The inner voice says to him, “I am a loser,” and “I am dead.” The movie ends with his own complicity in his death.

Attempts to process this movie in an adult forum went something like this: “What do you think?” “Great movie!” “Do you think you’ll watch it again?” “No.” “Why not?” “It hits too close to home.”

What did that “living water” provide our woman?  From my reading of this text Jesus provided her with an acceptance so filled with grace that she was restored to full esteem and self-acceptance.  Jesus saw her not as fallen, disgraced, or “half-breed” but as a child of God who needed the grace, the forgiveness that comes only from Christ.    How we see ourselves is so important to who we are and what we do.  If we see ourselves as less than full, complete, and worthy human beings then we will live at that level.  Often when I am listening to someone pour out the story of their life, I think: “If I could just get you to see yourself differently…to see yourself as Christ sees you…then maybe, just maybe we would have a chance of you changing your behavior and getting off this path of self-destruction.”

So many of us are going down the wrong paths simply because we are looking for someone outside ourselves to complete us, i.e., to love us, to tell us that we are worthy, that we are vital, and that we are accepted.  Each and every one of us needs this — and we will search until we find it or die trying.  Christ offers us “living water” — the presence of God living within us.

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!”
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?”

Jesus gave our woman total and complete honesty — which opened up for her an avenue of hope.  So often in life what we say and what we mean are two different things.  Sometimes in our attempts to be “honest” we are really too blunt and wind up hurting another.  Our “truth” is nothing more than our prejudices bound up and designed to hurt another.  For Jesus, being honest was about giving her a reason to hope.  If he, Jesus, knew all about her and still saw her as worthy and loved by God, then how ought she to see herself?  Was there not still hope for her?  Was there not still a chance that she could know the love and grace of God?  If the Messiah was willing to stop and speak with her, a poor Samaritan woman, then how ought she to see and understand herself and her life before God?

There is nothing more wonderful or transforming than to realize that, even when another knows all the “bad stuff” about us, they still love and believe in us.  This works on an inter-personal level; it also works on a spiritual level.  The essence of spiritual transformation is that through the acceptance and grace of God we are able to come face to face with the “bad stuff” and get it out — for we finally realize that it neither defines us nor controls us.  

There is nothing greater than to see someone be freed of the addiction(s) of their life and in so doing start out to be the person God created them to be.  Most of us — even though we claim the name of Christian — carry around with us the scars, burdens, and blockages of life.  All of us, at one level or another, have “stuff” that we just cannot seem to let go of in order to be free.  Disappointment, rejection, hatred, bias — these affect us all and they wedge themselves into the dark and hidden crevices of our souls.  Spiritual transformation, the new life in Christ of which we speak, is about coming to terms with that which is hidden deep within us and letting Christ take it and remove it from us.  This process we call salvation is about naming the evil which lurks in our shadows and in naming it bringing it to the light.  

Our woman runs back to the village so fast that she leaves her water jar behind!  So excited from her encounter with Jesus Christ she must get back and tell these, her fellow Samaritans, that she has found the Messiah.  She is so excited that she seems to have forgotten that they were the ones who look down upon her and rejected her in the first place.  In fact, at the end of this passage it reads: “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.”   Despite her being the one who shared Christ with them and allowed them to experience the good news first hand, they still do not wish to give her any credit.

I cannot imagine that this bothered her one bit.  I cannot imagine that she really cared why they believed — only that they believed.  Did Christ matter to her?  I wonder what ever became of her?  Later in the 1st century during the development of the early church a strong group of believers in Jesus is found at Sychar, here in Samaria.  

We live in a world of spiritual seekers — of that there can be no doubt.  We have so many religious options in our corner of the world that one can become quickly befuddled.  However, that is really nothing new.  If you just ride around and look at all the older church buildings in a community you will find one on just about every other corner.  Or, if you like, you can go observe all the sports arenas — the new religions; or take in the shopping centers and malls — the never ending religions.  Or, just get on the internet — you can worship as you like to your hearts content.  Or discontent.

There is only one source of spiritual nourishment for us as humans — and that is the gospel of Jesus Christ.  No matter who we are, where we are from or where we are doing — it is only in Jesus Christ that the nourishment we seek will be found.  It is only in that act of surrendering ourselves to Christ that we discover spiritual nourishment and life worthy of the adjective “eternal.”  In this gospel of John we have an interesting comparison taking place:  In chapter 3 Nicodemus, a Pharisee and Jewish leader, a member of the chosen people, not to mention a religious professional, comes to Jesus but can fathom neither who Jesus is nor what Jesus is doing.  Of all people we meet in the gospel of John he should “get it,” but he does not.  In chapter 4 we have the most unlikely of all, a Samaritan woman, who “gets it.”  She hears and understands what Jesus is saying and she, not the religious professional, accepts and believes that Jesus is the Messiah.  It is through her, not the “leader” that an entire community comes to faith.

Where will you encounter Jesus this week?  Are you looking?  Do we get it?