“The Woman at the Well”

John 4: 7-15

June 7, 2009

Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ

400 Glenwood Drive

Chattanooga, Tennessee 37404

Rev. David Brown

This is a strange story, this encounter at the well between Jesus and the Samaritan Woman. To begin with, what is Jesus doing there at all? Yes, the text says Jesus had to go through Samaria as he and his disciples traveled from Judea to Galilee, but that wasn’t true at all. They could have avoided Samaria by crossing the Jordan River and going up the east bank until they had passed by Samaria. Then they could have crossed the river again. That detour would have taken them about twice as long as going through Samaria but it was the way most Jews preferred to go.

Why? Because Jews and Samaritans despised each other. Even though they shared common ethnic and religious roots they wanted nothing to do with each other. Actually, both groups hoped the other group would disappear or be destroyed. That sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Think of Israelis and Palestinians today. Think of the recent hatred between Protestant and Roman Catholic Irish. Think of the murderous rage going on at this moment between Sunni and Shiite Moslems in Iraq. Isn’t that the sad lesson of history: those we should be closest to are often the people we despise most? We even want to destroy them if we can.

No, Jesus didn’t have to go through Samaria. He wanted to. He wanted to be with and among those whom his tradition and training and religious culture told him he should have nothing to do with. But he was always doing that, wasn’t he? He was always mixing with the wrong kind of people. His critics accused him of being friendly with the dregs of society – tax collectors, prostitutes and other morally corrupt people – and they were right. He did eat with such people and they enjoyed his company. He also ate with people who disagreed profoundly with his religious views such as the Pharisees. Today that would be like a group of fundamentalist Christians inviting a liberal minister to be their guest. That sort of thing just doesn’t happen, shouldn’t happen, but Jesus did it. He also mingled with and touched people he shouldn’t have, people who had awful, loathsome diseases. He also had the wrong kind of friends. His disciples were a rag-tag bunch of misfits, outcasts, religious fanatics, and political revolutionaries, terrorists if you will. Perhaps, worst of all to a patriarchal culture, He actually had friends who were women. He talked to them, listened to them, and treated them as equals. How could any self-respecting Jewish man do a thing like that?

The list of the religious, social, national moral, gender barriers and boundaries that Jesus broke goes on and on. No wonder the establishment hated him and wanted to destroy him. He was upsetting all the cherished prejudices we have about people who are different and should be kept apart.

In our story today he does it again. He comes to Jacob’s well in Samaria at mid-day. He’s exhausted. Nice touch there for those who can’t quite bring themselves to believe that Jesus was a real human being! He sits by the well at noontime and when a Samaritan woman appears, he asks her for a drink. There are several things we ought to notice about this meeting. First, Jesus is talking with a woman and a Samaritan woman at that. Good, pious, observant Jewish men simply didn’t do that. Particularly, Rabbis, Jewish leaders. You know how that is, even today. Clergy aren’t supposed to do things that lay people can do. After all, I’m paid to be good; you’re good for nothing(!) Forgive me for that unkind little joke but you know what I mean. Worst of all, Jesus is talking with a bad woman. And he knew it. Now I know that later in the story it seems that Jesus has some sort of magical power to know who she is and what she has done, but the very fact that she was there at the well at noon told him all he needed to know. Good women drew water in the morning and in the evening, not at high noon. Who would want to draw water in the intense heat of a middle-eastern noontime sun? But this woman had to do that. She was a moral outcast and everyone knew it. She was sexually different. Apparently she had married and divorced five different men and now she was “living in sin,” as we used to say, with another man. She didn’t want to be the object of gossip, ridicule and scorn by the other women of the village and so she came at noon to draw her water.

But Jesus talks with her and asks her for a drink. Then they have a long conversation, a real dialogue, a true meeting of person with person. It’s one of the longest such meetings recorded of Jesus and another person in the gospels. It’s also a very puzzling conversation. As usually happens in the Gospel of John, the talk moves from things of this world to things beyond this world’s understanding. The woman offers Jesus ordinary water and he offers her eternal water. And she hasn’t got a clue what he’s talking about.

But we should. In offering the Samaritan woman living water, Jesus was offering her himself. Just as he broke down all the other barriers in his world, he was now breaking down another barrier, that unseen barrier between this world and the next, between human reality and divine reality. And by doing it this became a sacramental moment.

That’s what a sacrament is, you know. In a sacrament, in an ordinary moment, ordinary things become the way in which we can experience the extraordinary power of the divine breaking in upon us. A sacrament breaks down all the barriers we set up in human life because in divine reality those barriers simply cannot exist. We come to the table as one loving, affirming, respecting, caring human family or we should not come at all. If we come, as the apostle Paul tells us in First Corinthians, come in an unworthy manner, harboring anger or hatred for another person, we will eat and drink destruction to ourselves. This is the meal that unites, not divides the human family. This is the meal that brings life and love, not death and hatred. This is the meal that brings together everyone who has ever lived no matter how much they have been divided in their human lives.

Yesterday, a number of us had the privilege of hearing Jim Philpott. He is an incredible teacher and I can promise you he will be with us again. In the course of the morning, Jim reminded us of that marvelous movie, “Places in the Heart.” It tells the story of a small-town southern sheriff back in the 30’s who is married to Sally Field. The movie begins with the sheriff being accidentally shot and killed by a young drunken black man. In those days and in that place there was only one response to such a thing. The Klan and their supporters kill the young black man and drag his body through the streets. The rest of the movie describes graphically how difficult it was for a young black widow in the south of those days to survive economically. But she does, with the help of two unlikely men who live with her: a black man and a blind man. But the last scene of the movie is a transcendent moment.

Sally and her children are in her church for worship and it is a communion Sunday. The plates of bread and wine are passed through the pews. Suddenly, amazingly, as the plates go through the church we see Sally’s dead husband taking communion and then passing the plate to the young black man who killed him and who was lynched for it. And the young black man passes the plate to the man sitting next to him who was part of the Klan. What on earth is going on here? Nothing on earth.

This is the meal that overcomes all human divisions, all human hatreds. This is the meal that overcomes time and brings us to eternity. When we are blessed with the eyes of faith to see, this ordinary bread and wine that Ila Raye and Kate prepared for us becomes the very body and blood of Jesus Christ. Don’t ask me to explain how it happens. I don’t know. It’s a complete mystery. But I do know this: when we come in faith and receive this meal it will unite us with the whole human family, past, present, and future. At this table, we are one people and it is our blessed privilege to go from this place to proclaim and live that unity for the rest of our lives until we experience the fulfillment of that unity at God’s heavenly banquet. Thanks Be to God. Amen