As I read the Gospels, I often find the disciples moving along briskly, going from this place to that place, when suddenly, one of them looks around and says, “Where is Jesus?” Then they must backtrack and they usually find Him off on a side street talking to an old woman, or stopping by the wayside to talk to a beggar, or to heal a man born blind, or to speak to an outcast woman at a well. Thus Jesus was constantly surprising His disciples, and nowhere more so than in the event recorded in our Scripture above.
To understand what is going on in our Scripture lesson, we must think for a few moments about the history and geography of the Holy Land. Let’s begin with geography. People who live and teach in the land of the Bible often speak of something called the “Fifth Gospel.” It is not a new or original term, but rather was suggested by Ernest Renan, the French philologist, philosopher, and historian, some years ago. What it refers to is the land of the Bible. Around 90% of the events in the Bible take place on a stage only 50 by 150 miles. Israel is not now, nor was it in Jesus’ day, a very big country. Yet within that small area in the days of Jesus there were three different and distinct divisions in the country. In the extreme north was the Galilee, where Jesus conducted around 85% of His ministry. In the extreme south was Judea. And in between lay Samaria. About 721 B.C. the Assyrians under the leadership of the king with the odd-sounding name Tiglath-Pileser III conquered the northern kingdom of Israel and did what many conquering nations did in those days: transported many of the people and most of their leaders into foreign lands (Cf. II Kings 17:6). Then they settled other people in the area, so that Jews were in the minority. After awhile these remaining people began to intermarry with the foreign newcomers, which to the pious Jew of the day was tantamount to the unpardonable sin. It diluted the racial purity of the people, and caused many of the Jews in Judea to stop considering the people of Samaria as true Jews at all. Later on, when the southern kingdom of Judah fell to the Babylonians (586 B.C.), they held onto their identity tenaciously, and when they no longer had the Temple they created the synagogue as a place where they could gather and remember their faith together by reading their holy scriptures. When they were eventually freed by Cyrus of Persia they returned home as Jews just as they had left home as Jews. Upon returning to their homeland, their immediate task was to rebuild the shattered Temple in Jerusalem. The Samaritans came down from the north and offered to help. But by then racial and religious prejudice had built up such a barrier between the Jews and the Samaritans that their offer was rejected. This happened around the fifth century before Christ, and so when Jesus came upon the scene, the Jewish-Samaritan quarrel had been going on for many centuries. And yet, as in the Middle East today and in Northern Ireland, it smoldered as bitterly as ever. But Jesus would have none of it. He even made a hated Samaritan the hero of one of His little stories, called “parables”! And when He wanted to travel to Galilee, he went through Samaria. Most Jews would not have done that, preferring instead to avoid the Samaritans by crossing over the Jordan River into Perea, then traveling north along the Jordan valley and crossing back after bypassing Samaria...sort of the way modern travelers must go if they wish to avoid possible terrorist attacks. In ancient times, as today, it was dangerous to travel in Samaria. Bad blood had flowed between Jews and Samaritans for so long that nobody could see an end in sight. And so, when Jesus started off for Galilee by the shortest route through Samaria, the disciples must have shook in their sandals. They must have said, or at least thought, “If we have to go this way, then let us go quickly; let’s not stop along the way.” However, by the sixth hour (noon by our reckoning), Jesus was tired from the long journey, and so he decided to pull into a rest stop by Jacob’s well. Here we have John again painting a very human Jesus, One who was sometimes weary and got tried as all of us do; not the Docetic Jesus sometimes pictured by later writers who forgot that He was truly human as well as truly divine. And so He stopped for a rest. And to their consternation, He sent His disciples into a nearby town to find a kosher deli where they could get some food to eat! When they returned (evidently they had found some kind of a supermarket open, for in verse 31 they say to Him, “Rabbi, eat something.”), they found Jesus seated at the well, and wonder of wonders, He was talking with a Samaritan woman!
Two thing profoundly shocked them: first, that Jesus was talking with a woman. In Jesus’ day, no respectable Jewish man would be caught dead holding a conversation with a woman, much less in public. There was a rabbinical saying of the time, “A man should hold no conversation with a woman in the street, not even with his own wife, still less with another woman, lest men should gossip.”(Interpreter’s Bible, New York and Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1952. Vol. XIII, p.530 ) I have heard that there was even a group among the Pharisees called the “Bleeding Pharisees” because they carried this matter so far as to close their eyes whenever they came across a woman in the street, which caused them to keep bumping into trees and thus their foreheads were always bleeding. Even as I write this particular sermon in the winter of 1994, the official bus line of Israel called “Egged” has agreed to have two separate busses running in the “orthodox” sections of Jerusalem: one for the men, and one for the women, to avoid scandal or immodesty.
We must face the fact that the status of women in Jesus’ day was not very high. It was actually being debated in rabbinical schools of that time whether or not a woman had a soul at all. And in the pagan world of the time the numbers of female infants exposed at birth by the father’s whim give grave testimony to how little women were regarded. In one of the so-called “Gnostic” gospels, the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, a common view of womanhood of that time was set forth: “Simon Peter said to them (the risen Christ and the disciples) let Mary go out from us, because women are not worthy of life. Jesus said, See, I shall lead her, so that I will make her male, that she, too, may become a living spirit, resembling you males. For every woman who makes herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Logion 114) I guess we can be grateful that apocryphal “gospel” never made it into our New Testaments!
It has long been noted that, of all the religious leaders of ancient times, Jesus was the only one who accorded women equal standing with men. Ever since the Word of God became a human being and was laid at a woman’s breast, womanhood has never been quite the same. Jesus had women disciples, and accepted them on equal terms as men. They were last at the cross on Good Friday and first at the tomb on Easter Sunday; and let us also remember that St. Paul’s first European convert on European soil was a woman! (Acts 16) It was Christ who lifted women up to equality with men...even though it has taken some branches of His Church centuries to wake up to the fact! The disciples of Jesus were shocked to find Him talking to a woman at Jacob’s well.
But the shock ran even deeper: not only was He talking to a woman, but to a Samaritan woman at that! That compounded the shock. As I said, for centuries bad blood had flowed between Jews and Samaritans. They had even come to have separate places for worship: the Jews on Mt. Zion in Jerusalem, and the Samaritans at Mt. Gerizim. Now you can see why Jesus’ enemies were so shocked when he told that famous story about a man who traveled down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves who had beaten him and left him for dead along the side of the road. Jesus told the story, you recall, in reply to a question put to Him, “Master, you have taught us to love our neighbors. O.K., we are willing to do that. Only please enlighten us: just who are our neighbors?” Of course the question was a set-up, an attempt to trap Jesus in some way. And he replied by telling them a story, as He so often did. A certain man (He doesn’t say whether the man was a Jew or Gentile or Samaritan. To Jesus it did not matter), a certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho (that’s what you do: go down. Jerusalem is some 2500 feet above sea level, and Jericho nearly 1000 feet below...a distance of around 16 miles). This man was mugged and left for dead. Now there happened to pass by a priest. Jesus’ audience would have cheered, for the priests were the supposed “good guys.” But this particular priest passed by on the other side. Then came a Levite - a hereditary assistant priest. Again the audience would have cheered, for here was another “good guy.” But he, too, passed by on the other side. And guess who came down that road next: a Samaritan! We call him the “Good Samaritan,” but Jesus was talking to an audience for whom the only good Samaritan was a dead Samaritan! And Jesus made this man of a hated race and religion the hero of the story! You can see why he got in trouble for the stories He told. After Jesus described the acts of compassion which the Samaritan had performed for the anonymous victim by the roadside, he turned the question back to His inquirer: “Who do you suppose proved to be neighbor to the man who had fallen among thieves?” One can imagine the questioner, looking down at his toes, dancing back and forth, balancing on the ball of one foot and then the other, and finally having to respond, “Uh, why, I guess the one who showed mercy to him.” And Jesus replied, “You go and do likewise.” In other words, my neighbor is anyone to whom I can be a neighbor: regardless of race, color, or creed.
In our Scripture we have our Lord practicing what he preached. We read that a woman of Samaria came to draw water at the well. Now, water was usually drawn at night-time, and she was coming at noon. Why? Probably because she had a rather unsavory reputation, as the story turns out. If she had come when the other women of the community came, she might have been ostracized. She would have expected ostracism from Jesus, but what does she get instead? Jesus asks her for a drink of water! She is flabbergasted. Who would have expected a Jew to contaminate his lips on a Samaritan’s water jug? And thus ensues one of the most fascinating conversations in the Bible. Let’s listen in: “The Samaritan woman said to him, How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common 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 no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’ Jesus said to her, Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’” The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water’” (John 4:9-15)
Now, whenever you come across a reference to water in the Bible, there is most probably a double meaning. It may mean simple water to assuage the thirst, but it is also a metaphor for humanity’s greatest need and God’s greatest gift: grace. In Jeremiah 2:13 God is Himself described as “the fountain of living waters.” Psalm 42:1-2 says,
As a deer longs for flowing streams,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and behold
the face of God?
But the woman at the well seems at first to miss the point. John seems to delight in this kind of verbal by-play. Jesus utters a statement. Someone misunderstands, thereby giving Him the opportunity to clarify and expand upon it. With killing literalism, the woman asks, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?” Then it is that Jesus tells her that He is talking about something more than mere H20, and something deeper than Jacob’s well. One can only wonder what this Samaritan woman thought of this strange Jew who was asking her pointed questions. Was His mind addled from the heat? Was He merely playing games with her? Yet, she knew that the life she had been leading was off-center. Perhaps there really was something deeper going on here. So she stands there in confusion. Jesus tries to get the conversation going again by saying, “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!” The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet.” (John 4:16-19) That’s the biggest understatement of all time!
Quickly, the woman tries to change the subject: “Tell me, Preacher, which Church is the right one in which to worship: the Presbyterian or the Methodist?” Well, that’s not what she said, but you get the general idea. The Jews insisted that the right place to worship God was Jerusalem, where the Temple was; the Samaritans, who were not allowed to share in the rebuilding of the Temple, had decided that Mt. Gerizim was the right place. When the conversation gets too close to home for comfort, you can always switch to a theological discussion. Talking theology beats the dickens out of talking ethics. There is an old story of a college chaplain who had a student say to him, “I am having trouble with the Apostles’ Creed.” To which the wise chaplain replied, “And are you also having trouble with the Ten Commandments as well?” It is an age-old dodge. Theologian Karl Barth was not the first to note that people sometimes use religion as a shield to keep God away at arm’s length. This woman at the well tried to get Jesus trapped into a discussion about which church was the right one to attend.
But Jesus would not be put off. He said that there would come a time when people would look to neither mountain as the sacred place of God’s residence. According to Jesus, no place is sacred: only persons. This woman’s sin was not that she had mistook the proper Temple in which to worship, but that she had undervalued her own self as the Temple of the living God. “You have had five husbands,” said the Lord, “and the one with whom you are now living is not your husband!” How very modern and up-to-date she seems! One can only think of movie stars and other celebrities of recent vintage who have had five, six, or seven husbands or wives...or more! And then, of course, many folks today think nothing of living together without, as the quaint phrase puts it, “benefit of clergy.” In fact, the United States Census Bureau has even given this status a name. Actually, an acronym, “POSSLQ.” A few years back Charles Osgood of CBS tied this into an old familiar poem and came up with the following:
Come live with me and be my love,
And share the pain and pleasure of
The blessed continuity,
Official posslquity;
And I will whisper in your ear
The word you love so much to hear.
And love will stay forever new,
If you will be my POSSLQ!
It all sounds so new, so modern, (and in the age of AIDS, so dangerous)! But here we have Jesus, nearly 2000 years ago, sitting by a well, confronting a woman involved in just such a living arrangement. And the curious thing is, I do not find Him treating her harshly. She seems to have been treated harshly enough by life, already. She had had five husbands. Now, I cannot imagine that each husband had, in turn, died, so she must have been divorced five times. But the interesting thing to note is that in that day and age divorce was strictly a man’s perogative! A man could divorce his wife simply by saying “I divorce you” three times and walking out. So this tragic woman had had five men walk out on her, and her present partner did not even think enough of her to make a permanent arrangement with her. I do not see her as a bad person, but rather a person who may have been, as the saying goes, “more sinned against than sinning.” She certainly had an inquiring mind. Perhaps that is what attracted so many men to her in the first place. She always seemed to be searching for something. But perhaps it was also this constant searching which had destroyed her marriages. I can imagine a man saying to her after a month or a year, “I don’t know what you want. I’ve done everything I can, but you never seem to be satisfied.” Of course not; she didn’t know what she wanted herself. All she knew is that she was searching for something deeper in life than mere human love, as good and as important as that is. Is it too much to say that she was searching for the love of God? Perhaps this is what sparked her keen interest in theological questions. Whatever the reason, the men in her life had walked out on her, one after another, until one day, by a well, she met this strange Man from Galilee who actually treated her as a person instead of as a thing.
And Jesus says to her, in effect: “Aren’t you tired of all this? Tired of the pretense and the shame? Tired of playing marital musical chairs? Tired of coming to the well again and again, trying to find satisfaction? You are looking for the right thing, but you are looking in the wrong places. You are thirsty, all right, but thirsty for real fulfillment in life; thirsty for a meaningful life, thirsty for God. And this thirst I can fulfill for you.” In the words of an old hymn:
I heard the voice of Jesus say, “Behold, I freely give
The living water, thirsty one, Stoop down and drink and live.
I came to Jesus, and I drank of that life-giving stream,
My thirst was quenched, my soul revived, And now I live in Him!
To her, a woman with a checkered past to say the least, Jesus gave the clearest witness to who He was, and is. The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” (John 4:25,26)
In Francis Thompson’s immortal poem, “The Hound of Heaven,” God says to the one who had been running away from the One who loves him more than he can possibly imagine, and who wishes him only good:
Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am he whom thou seekest!
And the record says that this woman at the well quickly ran to tell all of the people in her hometown what the Lord had done for her. And if you read further in this chapter, you will find that “Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.” (John 4:39) in other words, the people in her village saw that Christ had caused such a change in her that they, too, were attracted to Him. And that’s what “evangelism” is. It is what D.T. Niles once called “One beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.” Or, in light of this chapter of the Fourth gospel, we might paraphrase it, “Evangelism is one thirsty person telling another thirsty person where to find water.” It is not necessarily browbeating people over the head with the Gospel, or buttonholing them on street corners passing out tracts. Such actions may actually do more harm than good. It is one person showing by his or her life what the Lord can do in terms of a changed life. Thus, this five times divorced woman from Samaria became the first Christian evangelist. She had a rather checkered past, but Jesus did not seem to be as much concerned about her past as her future.
Somewhere in my reading I came across a phrase, taken from the world of business and stock markets, “dealing in futures.” Now, my ignorance of the stock market is vast. For me, it ranks somewhere between witchcraft and voodoo. The one or two brief ventures I have made into the stock market have been disasters. A good rule to follow in investing would be: just watch what I buy, and then invest in almost anything else! But that phrase “dealing in futures” intrigues me. That’s what Jesus Christ is all about. Whatever the past may be, He deals in futures.
Each new day is a gift from a loving God. With Christ, each of us is called to live toward the future, not hampered by the past. “Live toward the future”...the phrase comes from Boris Pasternak’s novel, Doctor Zhivago. Before you are ten pages into the novel, one of the characters named Nikolai Nikolaivich says, “History as we know it began with Christ and...Christ’s Gospel is its foundation... It was not until the coming of Christ that time and man could breathe freely. It was not until after Him that men began to live toward the future....” AND WOMEN, TOO. Certainly this woman by the well. And you and me, as well. Thanks be to God.
