by the Rev. Carole Horton-Howe
Please note that the following sermon text was provided prior to the audio recording. The two versions may differ substantially.
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 he, 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.
Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 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. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering 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 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.”
—John 4:5-42 (NRSV)
There’s a small town of about 2,000 outside of Houston called Kemah. It’s one of those places where everyone knows everyone else. So when a man that no one knows appears on a street corner that gets people’s attention. Everyone wants to know who he is. He’s there every day, every night, rain or shine. He’s always there. He’s pacing around as though he’s looking for someone or something. And this goes on for nearly three years. People want to know but no one asks.
Finally one day, a café owner named Ginger decides that she will ask. She figured that she had passed him at least four times a day in her comings and goings over the last three years. And it was time to know what was going on with him. So she pulled up to him. And before she could say anything, he extended his hand and said “Hello, I’m Victor.”
At that moment he became a man with a name, a man with a story to tell. Victor struggled with mental health problems. He had never completely well. He lived with his mother in Houston. When she reached the point where she felt she could no longer care for him she drove him out of town, to that corner, dropped him off and left. And because he didn’t want to miss her when she came back, Victor stayed on that corner waiting and waiting and waiting for his mother to return.
When Ginger hears this story, she gets ideas about how Kemah can wrap their arms around this stranger. She gets the word out on social media that he needs everything especially access to doctors and therapists and medication. Victor gets what he needs. Victor was transformed – healthy and whole he was able to communicate. He gets on his feet, gets a home and then needs a job. Ginger thinks “well, I have a restaurant” and puts him to work. And Victor turns out to be one fantastic cook. He’s good at it and people love to come and eat his food.
This all happened because one woman stopped in the midst of her life to find out what was going on with a stranger on the corner. The story of Victor and Ginger and the town on Kemah is a wilderness story and not all that different from the story from John’s gospel that we hear today.
Last week we heard about Nicodemus and his wilderness of being so concerned that the way to be in closest relationship with God was to follow the rules. Along comes Jesus to show him the way out of his wilderness. Today we are at the opposite end of the spectrum – not a high ranking, respected Jewish Pharisee but a nameless Samaritan woman in a wilderness no less troubling to her than Nicodemus’s was to him. We don’t know her story but it’s not a stretch of the imagination to believe that she’s no stranger to tragedy, rejection, desperation since it was difficult to survive as a woman alone. Her personal wilderness is likely very bleak.
The people in Sychar, Samaria had not expected to see a Jewish Rabbi sitting at their well. To say that Jews and Samaritans didn’t get along is possibly the greatest understatement of the ancient world. Samaria is between Galilee and Jerusalem but Jewish people went the long way around to get to the temple rather than travel a shorter distance through Samaria. That’s how deep and intense the animosity was between these two groups of people. But not Jesus. Jesus and his followers were in the midst of them.
There he encounters a Samaritan woman. He knows her story but he doesn’t shame her. He doesn’t say what she should or shouldn’t have done. He doesn’t blame her for the situation in which she finds herself. Instead he tells her about “living water.”
Water was scarce and precious. Only a few months of the year did rain fall and the rest of the time the people survived on stagnant water that was stored in cisterns in the ground. So when rain did come, it seemed miraculous.
Without rain the hills would barren and brown, but after a season of rain there were green meadows and lush vegetation surrounding them. Out of this experience, came the idea of living water, which refers to rain or flowing springs coming directly from God. It’s not water stored in cisterns or sea water that looked and felt refreshing but was poisonous to drink.
Living water was the very presence of God. This is what Jesus offers her in himself – this constant wellspring of life-giving presence of God that cares not one whit about what has happened in her past but desires only for her the blessings for forgiveness, mercy, compassion, love - if she will only accept it in humility and gratitude recognizing it for the gift that it is. No one has ever offered this to her before. This is her way out of her wilderness.
Her problems are not going away. She’s still a Samaritan woman with a need to survive. She will still have seasons of dryness in her life like those months without rainfall. But now, with living water flowing over her and through her, she has a power in her life to lift her and support her and guide her. The powerful love of God for us changes everything. This is her story, this is our story. And it’s the story we need to tell.
We have an unexpected wilderness going on right now for ourselves: the virus. We’ve had to take drastic measures around our activities together. But at St. Matthias we always focus on doing the loving thing. And at this time, being mindful of the health of our community feels like the most loving thing.
It’s hard to know what to do when you don’t know exactly what you’re dealing with. Avalanches of information from people with impressive scientific credentials and years of research and treatment experience give conflicting ideas.
Nebulous processes… risk of harm to those we love and ourselves… unknown outcome… worry about job status… can fixate us. But there’s also grief over interruption of our routine… long anticipated plans for trips cancelled... visits with family and friends on indefinite hold. Pastor Nadia Bolz Weber correctly calls it a “pandemic of human disappointment.” In this Lenten season, this is a wilderness in which we find ourselves. And that brings us back to water.
One thing all experts seem to agree on is the importance of frequently washing our hands for at least 20 seconds with soap and warm water. They are addressing physical well-being. But as followers of Jesus Christ we understand the critical role of water as a way out of the wilderness.
Today’s gospel isn’t the only time we hear about living water: Water is a part of Jewish purification rituals. We baptize from flowing water as a sign of the work of the Holy Spirit that incorporates us into the community of believers. Jesus washed the feet of his closest friends the night before his death to demonstrate the importance of self-less service to each other. We simply can’t live either physically or spiritually without water.
There’s something else about water. It’s calming. Have you ever soaked in a tub or taken a long hot shower at the end of a crazy day? It practically speaks to us, settling our nerves as it flows over us. I think Jesus knew that water is the perfect visual and tactile accompaniment to the exhortation we hear so often in scripture “do not be afraid.”
My prayer for all of us as we experience this wilderness is that we can acknowledge our fears and disappointments and then let them wash away leaving calm spirits, compassionate hearts and focused minds with the assurance that God is with us and loving us through every moment, in every water drop until we emerge on the other side. Amen.