John
4:5-42
March
8, 2026
5 So he came to a Samaritan city
called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son
Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired
out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
7 A Samaritan woman came to draw
water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (His
disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9 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.) 10 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.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you
have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are
you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well and with his sons and
his flocks drank from it?” 13 Jesus said to her,
“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 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.” 15 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.”
16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your
husband, and come back.” 17 The woman answered him,
“I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no
husband,’ 18 for you have had five husbands, and
the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” 19 The
woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our
ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where
people must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21 Jesus said
to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the
Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You worship
what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the
Jews. 23 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. 24 God
is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 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.” 26 Jesus
said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”
27 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?” 28 Then
the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the
people, 29 “Come and see a man who told me
everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” 30 They
left the city and were on their way to him.
31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging
him, “Rabbi, eat something.” 32 But he said to
them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So
the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to
eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the
will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 35 Do
you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look
around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. 36 The
reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life,
so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For
here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I
sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you
have entered into their labor.”
39 Many Samaritans from that city
believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have
ever done.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him,
they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. 41 And
many more believed because of his word. 42 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.”
*************
I know that today’s gospel lesson
was long. All I can say for that is that
next week’s is even longer. John writes
very differently from the other gospel writers.
He enjoys telling stories about the intricate relationships and
interactions between Jesus and all kinds of people. Last week it was Nicodemus, a leader and
teacher of the Jews, a highly respected and influential man. Today it is a Samaritan woman with a past
(and a present) who turns out to be more influential in her own circles than
Nicodemus was in his. Jesus understood
them both, befriended them both, spoke the deepest truth to both, and brought
each of them the healing and blessing of God when they felt it out of their
reach.
The woman Jesus met at the well had
two strikes against her to begin with, as far as the religious culture of that
time and place was concerned. John
reminds us first that
“Jews
do not share things in common with Samaritans.” [John 4:9]
There was
a strict Jim-Crow type of segregation.
So here is Jesus asking her help with the Samaritans-only drinking
fountain. The other problem was that she
was a woman. In the Talmud, collected
sayings and commentary of leading rabbis of that era, we read words advising:
“… talk
not much with womankind. They said this
of a man’s own wife: how much more of his fellow’s wife! Hence the Sages have said: He that talks much
with womankind brings evil upon himself and neglects the study of the Law and
at last will inherit Gehenna.”[1]
No wonder
that when Jesus’ disciples found him talking with her,
“They
were astonished that he was speaking with a woman,” [John 4:27]
They both
go way out on a limb simply to acknowledge the other’s existence.
Then
it’s game on! Or maybe I should say, “Game
off”. She, who is supposedly a distraction from religious studies, asks him theological
questions. Jesus, who is supposed to be insulated from people’s illicit entanglements,
lets her know that he’s aware not only of her past five husbands [4:18] but
that she’s currently keeping company with a sixth man. She can clearly see that he’s not just
well-informed but some kind of prophet – and maybe even the Messiah.
“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]
The two of
them – the shady-lady Samaritan and the Jewish Messiah – drop their pretenses
and are just themselves. The Savior
doesn’t hold her at arm’s length, and she doesn’t have to impress him with her
swagger. They drop any prefabricated
images and preconceived scripts. Then
they can really communicate openly. Then
she can speak her hopes and he can speak God’s promises.
Nadia Bolz-Weber is a Lutheran
pastor centered in Denver. One of her
books, Accidental Saints, says on the back that
“Tattooed,
angry, and profane, this former standup comic turned pastor stubbornly,
sometimes hilariously, resists the God she feels called to serve. But God keeps showing up in the least likely
of people – a church-loving agnostic, a drag queen, a felonious bishop, and a
gun-toting member of the NRA.”
That’s
kind of an image that she has nurtured, and it is genuinely who she is – to a
degree. In the book itself she questions
about the way anybody, not just her, gets in God’s way when someone holds on to
a curated image too tightly or too long.
She writes,
“We
carefully create a persona, but it’s always one that’s only partially
true. And maintaining this partial
truth, this created personality, this assembled ‘self,’ can be pretty
exhausting.”
She points
out that social media
“allow us
to present an image of ourselves from just the parts of our lives and
personalities we wish to project. This
is why we almost never see updates on Facebook that say: Spent the evening
alone again last night. Or: Wonder if I’ll ever be loved. Or: Just manipulated my spouse to get my
own way.”[2]
Jesus knows that about us. The woman told her neighbors,
“He
told me everything I have ever done,”
[John 4:39]
none of
which prevented him from treating her as someone with dignity, someone worth
risking the disapproval of his friends, someone worth taking time for. In fact, Jesus interrupted his travel plans to
stay with that whole Samaritan town for two days, just to be among them and let
them get to know him, to the point where
“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.’” [John
4:41-42]
People are
not generational profiles. People are
not defined solely by gender or sexuality or political party or ethnicity or
profession or hair color. Don’t do that
to others, don’t let others do that to you, and don’t do that to yourself. People are not types. If we come before the Lord trying to be
anybody but ourselves, we’re not fooling anyone.
“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.” [John
4:23-24]
Thanks be to Jesus, the Savior of
the world, we can do that.
Amen.
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