3rd Sunday in Lent
John 4:5-42
"An Encounter with the Messiah"
"So he came to a city of Samaria, called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and so Jesus, wearied as he was with his journey, sat down beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." For his disciples had gone away into 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?" For Jews have no dealings 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 nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle?" Jesus said to her, "Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw." Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come here." 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 he whom you now have is not your husband; this you said truly." The woman said to him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain; and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks 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 (he who is called Christ); when he comes, he will show us all things." Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am he." Just then his disciples came. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but none said, "What do you wish?" or, "Why are you talking with her?" So the woman left her water jar, and went away into the city, and said to the people, "Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?" They went out of the city and were coming to him. Meanwhile the disciples besought him, saying, "Rabbi, eat." But he said to them, "I have food to eat of which you do not know." So the disciples said to one another, "Has any one brought him food?" Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work. Do you not say, ’There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see how the fields are already white for harvest. He who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ’One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor; others have labored, and you have entered into their labor." Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, "He told me all that I ever did." 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 your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world."" John 4:5-42, RSV.
Grace and Peace to you from our Lord and Saviour, Jesus who is the living water. Amen
I would like to look at the 2 main characters of this text this morning, first the woman and then Jesus.
Many years ago, the women of the church studied this text as part of the monthly Bible study. We learned that the idea that the woman in this text was a "person of ill repute" might not be correct.
Mqargaret Wold who wrote the bible study we studied said, that this woman might had five husbands because, One: the man had complete control over his wife as it says in Deut.24:1-4 and could write her a bill of divorce and send her out of the house for such a simple act as burning the barley cakes. For it says clearly in Deut.24: "When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes, because he has found some indecency in her, he may write her a bill of divorce and put it in her hand and send her out of this house...." Another possibility, besides this woman being divorced five times for burning the barely cakes, could have been the idea of the "levirate" marriage, where if a man dies and they have no children, the brothers of the dead husband must take her to be his wife, as was the case with Ruth, who became the wife of Boaz in this manner. This could of happened to her 5 times, or she could have been divorced 5 times because she couldn’t bear children. And the man she is living with now is not her husband, but could have been a relative of one of her late or divorced husbands.
I am going to suggest that we dwell on the fact this morning that this woman was probably divorced 5 times because she could not bear children. She came to the well at mid day when it was the hottest because she did not want to face the other women of the town. Most of the women came to the well either early in the morning or later in the evening when it was cooler.
She comes with a troubled heart, knowing that her live has not turned out the way she expected it too, nor the way her 5 ex-husbands expected it to. She enjoys the solitude of the mid day water drawing journey.
So the woman comes to the well by herself and sees a man sitting on the stone wall surrounding the well. She is surprised to see a man sitting by himself at the well during this part of the day. For most people do not travel during the hottest part of the day.
She goes about her business of drawing water from the well. And then happens! Jesus speaks to her.
He says "Give me a drink."
Jesus begins the conversation with the woman in an innocent way. Give me a drink of water!
The woman is taken a back by this Jewish man asking a woman of Samaria for a drink of water so she says in a defensive kind of way: "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?"
Then Jesus knowing her situation reaches out to her by saying: "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."
She senses in Jesus, I think, a compassion, a kindness, she had not seen nor felt from anyone, let alone from a man, for a very long time. I think she kept the conversation going, because she felt something different inside as she visited with Jesus. She felt her despair, her loneliness, her guilt, her brokenness, all coming to the surface of her heart, mind and soul. Somehow, she felt free in His presence, to release, to let go of all that was making her feel less than God intends anyone of us to feel.
So she keeps the conversation going going by saying: "Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle?"
And then Jesus says the point of this lesson;"Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
This conversation has started off being quite simple but in a big hurry it gets complicated and very personal. The woman does not understand about living water at first but senses in Jesus a compassion, a love, that allows her to stay and keep on talking with this Jewish man.
When Jesus tells her to go call her husband, and then says he knows that she has had 5 husbands and the one whom she is living with now is not her husband, the conversation becomes very personal. Jesus understood her predicament. He reached out to her in this very simple way of asking her for water and low and behold it changed her life.
Look at what comes next.
They speak about worshipping on this mountain then the woman speaks about the messiah coming saying " I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ); when he comes, he will show us all things."
She knows that a Messiah is coming sometime and then Jesus lays the bombshell on her by saying: "I who speak to you am he." Jesus tells her he is the Messiah and the woman believes Him. Form a simple conversation about water to a complex conversation about the Messiah this story has it all.
The woman, I think, feels within her self a freedom she has not felt for a very long time. She feels accepted by this man, this Messiah. Her despair, her loneliness, is dealt with in a way that it has not been dealt with before. In fact she feels so good that she leaves her water jar and goes in the town and wants to tell everyone about whom she has met.
The woman goes from a lady that draws water in the middle of the day so she can be alone, to one who rushed into town to tell everyone that she has found the Messiah.
Can you believe one of the first missionaries for Christ was this woman at the well.
Jesus saw through the brokenness of that woman and gave her hope, comfort, a renewed sense of self-worth, and the courage to go back to town and not avoid people, but proclaim to them the great news that she, SHE, a woman, an outcast had seen and talked with the Messiah. What a day, what an experience for her.
An encounter with the Messiah changed her whole life. As we live with the Messiah in our lives, it changes us in the same way.
This lady was touched by the living water. And we need to be touched by that water also.
When Lawrence of Arabia was in Paris after WWI with some of his Arab friends, he showed them the sights of the city, but do you know what impressed them the most &endash; it was the faucet in the hotel bathtub… They spent much of their time turning the faucets off & on… They were amazed that they could get all the water they wanted with just the turn of a knob…
As they were preparing to leave the hotel & return to the East, Lawrence found them in the bathroom with wrenches trying to disconnect the faucets… They thought if they took the faucets home with them, they would have all the water they wanted…
Lawrence had to explain to them that it wasn’t the faucets that provided the water, it was the massive reservoirs to which they were attached…
That’s the way it is with our Christian lives… Like the faucets are useless without the reservoir… Our lives are useless without Christ… we must be connected to the living water that flows from the grace of God… 1
And that brings us to Jesus. Jesus took this trip to Samaria on purpose. Most Jews would have walked around, but Jesus did not. He went through. He came to proclaim that the Messiah was for all people.
Secondly, when the woman approached, Jesus sensed in her the frustration, the brokenness, the loneliness, the heartache in her life. And He reached out to her. He brought a measure of His grace into her life.
Sometimes we only see the harshness of God in our lives, or we think it is His harshness. Some people blame God for all the evil in this world.
But as Pastor Robert Hock says in the Augsburg Sermon Book Series A,
"I remember when my wife gave birth to twins years ago and the doctor took me aside and told me they wouldn’t live, and he added: "Please try to accept God’s will." Again, just 2 years ago when my wife contracted cancer herself, a surgeon tried to comfort me with: "We have to accept God’s will" BALONEY!!! The will of God is LOVE and GRACE and MERCY. If the cross teaches us nothing more, surely, it teaches us that at the heart of the universe there is a heart, beating and throbbing, full of love --unconditional love, " a love that will not let us go," as the old hymn puts it
Hock continues, "I believe that Jesus’ coming into the world, the cross that we focus on during this season of Lent, His great love and mercy; all show us that in God’s eyes we are truly worth saving. Or to put it yet another way, if we don’t have any worth, as some of the doom peddlers today would have us believe, then God in Christ sure did go to a lot of trouble for nothing!! Peter put it: "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people...Once you were no people but now you are God’s people".(I Peter 2:9,10) The difference between night and day; between no life at all, and new life in Him!!
Jesus saw the worth of that lady at the well when everyone else did not. He sees our worth and reaches out to redeem us through his body and blood.
Jesus is reaching out to us with His living water to redeem our lives, to ease the burdens we carry, to heal the hurts, to mend the bruises, to bring a measure of His grace into our lives. He comes to those who mourn and gives them comfort. He comes with the living water to those who are ill and gives them a measure of his peace and courage.
The living water is flowing through the faucets of the word and sacraments into our lives from the reservoir of Christ.
Will you drink?
Amen
Written by Pastor Tim Zingale February 21. 2005
1 from a sermon by
Rev. Mike DuBose
Newhebron United Methodist Church
Newhebron, MS
