Scripture Reading John 4:5-30; 39-42
So [Jesus] came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to 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?” (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.”
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!” The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these 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” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I AM, the one who is speaking to you.”
Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” 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?” They left the city and were on their way to him.
Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” 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 what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”
Sermon
So this is love…Mmm, mmm,
So this is love
So this is what makes life divine
I’m all aglow, Mmm, mmm,
and now I know
the key to all heaven is mine.
For those of you unfamiliar with that little song, it’s from the 1950 Walt Disney animated film, “Cinderella,” and it plays a particular role in my relationship with this gospel passage. I was a graduate student at Boston College the first time I preached on this text (in fact, the first time I preached). I was also the mother of an adorable 2-1/2-year-old boy who demonstrated an early, precocious love of animated musicals. This means, we watched the VHS tape of Cinderella approximately 800 times over the course of a year. This is only a slight exaggeration. And as I set myself to do the research to write that sermon, one of the first things I learned was the significance of Jacob’s well. Jacob was something of a trickster, and one notable trick—stealing his brother’s blessing from their father—had him running for his life. So he ran. And when he arrived at his destination, there was Rachel, bringing in her father’s flocks to be watered at this well. Rachel was beautiful, she was graceful. It was love at first sight. First, Jacob watered Rachel’s father’s flocks, and then he kissed her, and the engagement was all but set.
And that’s not the only Biblical engagement at a well. Jacob’s parents, Isaac and Rebekah, were engaged at a well. Moses and Zipporah were engaged at a well. I mentioned last week that John’s gospel is filled with symbolism. This story takes place at a well. That’s how we know: it’s a love story.
It was at this point in my research that this little song, so well-known to me, took root in my heart and became the unofficial soundtrack to John 4.
Jesus is heading back to Galilee, and “it is necessary” that he go through Samaria. That’s like me saying to you, right now, I have to go to Johnson City, and it is necessary that I go through Scranton. In other words, it’s not a geographical necessity. In fact, it’s a strange choice.
Most Jews, in this situation, would do everything they could to avoid going through Samaria. Jews and Samaritans were bitter enemies. They were also all descendants of Jacob. So, this was a terrible, ongoing family fight, that began, probably, when the northern kingdom split from the southern kingdom. This enmity was exacerbated by things like the northern kingdom’s building of a sanctuary at Mount Gerazim, so that their people would not need to travel south to Judea to offer sacrifices in the Temple at Jerusalem. It was, likely irretrievably finalized in 128 BCE, when the high priest from Jerusalem ordered the destruction of the capital city of Shechem and razed the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerazim to the ground.[i] Shechem is the Hebrew name for Sychar, the city where Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well.
Jesus needed to go through Samaria. My friend miller reminded me of a line from the poetry of Rumi, the 13th century Islamic scholar: “Not only [do] the thirsty seek the water; the water, as well, seeks the thirsty.”
It was not a geographical necessity. It was a spiritual one.
Jesus is sitting alone by the well, and he’s thirsty. An unnamed Samaritan woman comes to the well in the heat of the day—and again, remember John’s symbolism regarding day and night. This woman is coming to the well, and, unintentionally, to Jesus, when the sun is at its highest point in the sky, when it is the brightest outside. When there is light and warmth and nothing is hidden. Nothing at all.
“Give me a drink,” Jesus says. The woman is startled. What an extraordinary thing for Jesus to do. She calls him out on it. It is extraordinary for a man to strike up a conversation with a woman to whom he is not related. It’s even more extraordinary for a Jew to strike up a conversation with a Samaritan. But the astonishment goes even deeper. As one scholar has written,
We have a man speaking to a woman, a rabbi speaking to a woman, a Jew speaking to a Samaritan, a Jewish rabbi speaking to a Samaritan, and…they are alone.[ii]
It’s just not done. But Jesus replies, “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.” It has to be said out loud, because I know at least a few of you are thinking it: Is Jesus… flirting with this woman? The gospel of John is fully committed to Jesus Christ as fully human and fully divine. If Jesus is fully human, it is entirely possible that he may experience not only sexual, but also romantic feelings for other fully human beings. After all… this is a love story.
The woman’s reply this time is indignant… or is it playful?
“Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?” She has a point. This is the same dynamic we saw in last week’s passage, in Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus. Jesus is talking in metaphors, in symbols. The Samaritan woman is talking in concrete terms. Jesus does not have a bucket, so his claim to be able to provide any kind of water, living or inert, is suspect. Before Jesus gets a chance to answer, she goes on.
“Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?”
Though this, too, may be a playful retort, it asks a serious question. Is Jesus claiming some kind of special stature? What, exactly, is he saying about himself?
Jesus elaborates on the living water.
“The water that I will give will become in [those who drink it] a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
Again, eternal life is not only a promise of life after death. It is a promise of fuller life, abundant life, here and now. It is the promise of the inbreaking of the Realm of God. Last week Jesus spoke of rebirth, being born from above. Here, he speaks of drinking the living water. In both instances is inviting this woman—he is inviting us—to an encounter with God in spirit and in truth.
The unnamed woman’s answer is, essentially, Yes, please. I want this. There is something so plaintive in her reply. We feel her pain. We feel her need. But then, Jesus, in a non sequitur, asks her to bring her husband. She replies, “I have no husband.” And Jesus comes back quickly with “That’s right. You’ve had five husbands, and you’re not married to the one you’re with now.”
What is happening here?
I think it’s important for us to know that a woman of that era would have had little to no control over her marital status. Her nearest male relative—father, brother, uncle—would have determined when she would be married off, and to whom. She would never have been able to initiate divorce, under any circumstances. Her husband would have complete control over that and could divorce her for any reason or for no reason. It’s possible she is a widow. It’s possible she is a widow many times over. But here, I think, is the source of that pain I was talking about—that pain that I’m sure Jesus could see—the sense that she is deeply, desperately thirsty for something she doesn’t even know she needs. It’s not about marriage. It’s about abundant life as a precious child of God.
After a moment, she says “I can see that you are a prophet.” And then there seems to be some urgency in her voice. She goes directly to the heart of one of the biggest conflicts between Jews and Samaritans—where they worship. “You say Jerusalem, we say Mount Gerazim…” and Jesus brushes that away with a pronouncement—about her, this woman, who is standing in front of him.
“Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem… the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth…”
Jesus has called this unnamed Samaritan woman a true worshiper, a true believer. And it is true, now she understands. “We believe that the Messiah will come…” she says, and Jesus replies, I AM. The one standing before you.”
I AM. The name of God, as God revealed it to Moses by the burning bush. I AM, or I AM WHO AM. Not a noun, but a verb. The name of God. Jesus claims it for himself—not just here, but many times throughout this gospel. But this is the first.
At the heart of each of the four gospels there is one question: Where is God? This is because every gospel, though it has its seeds in the eyewitnesses who followed and encountered and were healed by Jesus, was written later—much later. Every gospel was written down after the sacking of Jerusalem, and the destruction of the Temple in the year 70 of the common era. The Temple was the holiest place on earth for Jews, the place that housed the Holy of Holies, God’s true home on earth. Once the Temple was gone, this was a burning question for all God’s covenant people. If God is no longer in residence in the Temple, then where is God? Each of the gospels answers this question in the person of Jesus. But only in John’s gospel does Jesus boldly state the name of God as revealed in the Hebrew scriptures. I know the translations in our Bibles say “I am he,” right here. But that is not what Jesus says. He says, “I AM.” He says it again and again in the gospel according to John. The gospel is filled with I AM statements, Jesus stepping into the name of the one who existed before creation—Jesus, the Word, who, in the beginning, was with God at creation.
And Jesus has revealed this to the last person on earth anyone might have imagined. An unnamed Samaritan woman who, by her very existence, and her faithful questioning here, underscores what Jesus revealed in last week’s gospel: God so loves the world. The WORLD. The world that includes righteous and proper religious leaders like Nicodemus and women broken by life like this woman of Samaria. The world that includes those we call kin and those we call traitors. The world that is made up of those we agree with, and those with whom we can find precious little common ground.
This is a love story, alright. It is a story of God’s love, which is wider, and deeper, and more expansive than we can imagine. A story of God’s love that causes us to ask, “Really? Those people?” And that causes some to look at us, and say, “Really? Them?” And the answer, always, is Yes.
After these words of Jesus, the Samaritan woman leaves her water jar and runs to the city, telling anyone who will listen, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done.” I remember a friend who told me that she knew that a particular man she had started seeing was “the one.” “Right from the beginning, I felt like he knew me better than I knew myself.”
This is a love story. A man and a woman of entirely different backgrounds (and who are socialized to despise each other) meet and a conversation breaks out that is life changing. A conversation that is the longest Jesus has with anyone in the gospels—anyone. The woman ends up an evangelist—the first in John’s gospel, rounding up the people of her hometown to “come and see” this extraordinary man. No, there’s no engagement ring. No, there’s no wedding. But there is connection, and there is honesty, and there is invitation, and there is rebirth. And this story—it’s an old story, one of the oldest. Two people meet. Everything changes. But it’s as fresh as this morning’s headlines. It’s not just their story. It’s our story. A story of encounter with the holy. A story of new life. A story of second chances… and third, and fourth, and fifth, and more.
So this is love. So this is what makes life divine. And now we know, the key to all heaven… is right there for the asking.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] Jennifer Garcia Bashaw, “Third Sunday in Lent: Commentary on John 4:5-42,” March 12, 2023, Working Preacher, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-in-lent/commentary-on-john-45-42-6.
[ii] Karoline M. Lewis, Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries: John (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014), 56.