Laboring In Samaria

                                          John 4: 5-42

          There are great moments in history, moments frozen in our memories, indelible because of the electricity they generated or the impact they had. Everyone has such moments. Many are common to us. Some are intensely personal. Let me share a few of my moments with you as you think of your own.

          One of my earliest memories is watching a TV program where FDR was announcing the attack of Pearl Harbor, then the footage of the USS Arizona on fire in the harbor. Another was “the catch,” when Willie Mays caught a ball over his shoulder in Game 1 of the 1954 World Series. The two world events etched in my memory are John Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 and the 9/11 terrorist actions in 2001.

There are more for me as there are more for you, but you get my point. There are moments in our lives when something happens, either to our community or nation or to ourselves personally, that change our lives, that re-point our destiny, that influence the way we will come to every thing else in our lives.

          Now…imagine that you are living in first century Samaria. You are a woman, no longer young but not yet old. You live in a man’s world where you are barely a step above the sheep and cattle that the men around you own. You have not been lucky in love or marriage. You have had multiple marriages—five in fact—in a society which frowns on divorce or remarriage. Now you are living with a man. He won’t even marry you. Your future is uncertain. Your present is just as precarious. You own nothing and have nothing but the clothes on your back. You live in a land where women have little value.

          Even your religion is of little consolation to you. You are one of the half-breeds of God’s people. You are a descendant of Abraham, but you are not a Jew. You are a Samaritan. God’s chosen will not even talk to you. To the Jews, there was nothing lower than a Samaritan except one thing…a Samaritan woman.

          There have been no moments for you. No home runs or wedding feasts or other celebrations. There has just been one piece of bad luck after another. Here you are in the middle of your life hanging on to a man who does not even respect you enough to marry you.

          So one day, you gather yourself to do the same old chores you do every day. You walk to the town well to gather water. You have been there before today, but now it is mid afternoon and you need water to prepare the evening meal. As you approach the well, you see a man. He is standing there by himself. He is obviously not a Samaritan. You assume him to be a Jew. You prepare for the shunning that is surely about to follow. But instead, he asks you to draw him a drink. This is shocking. For a Samaritan to serve a Jew is to render the Jew “unclean.” As you engage carefully in conversation without yet acting, he begins to talk to you about living water.

          Are you there? Are you standing at Jacob’s well, talking with this total stranger? In the heat and dust of the day, he is less concerned about his thirst and more concerned about yours. Who is this man?

          Jesus had been in Judea, in Jerusalem, for Passover and was ready to return to Galilee. There was really no reasonable way to get from the one to the other without passing through Samaria. While this is a geographical fact, it is also a God-moment for the gospel of John. In Chapter 3, we are introduced to Nicodemus, a Jew to whom Jesus witnesses. Late in Chapter 4 and again in Chapter 12, we will see Jesus dealing with Gentiles who approach. Here, in between those narratives, we find Jesus witnessing to a Samaritan woman. That pretty much covers the field. It’s hard not to catch John’s theme of mission, and mission to all who will hear, regardless of their race or station in life.

          You are a woman standing at the well and this stranger tells you that if you just knew who you were talking to, you could have living water…that you would never be thirsty again. You look at him more intently. Who is this man? You ask him for the water and he tells you to go call your husband. You answer that you have no husband. Then he tells you things about yourself that he cannot possibly know, and yet he does. Where does this supernatural knowledge come from?

           Here John’s narrative takes a new turn, for unlike Nicodemus, who could not seem to grasp what and who Jesus was, this woman with no pedigree says that she perceives Jesus to be a prophet. She is already way ahead of Nicodemus.  She questions Jesus about the proper place of worship. Is it a sacred mountain? Is it the temple?

          Jesus says neither. He says worship is not a physical setting, but rather a place in the heart. He says those who would worship God must do so in spirit and in truth, and that occurs from the inside out, not from an address.  

          The woman listens. Something inside her is quickening. This man is so different. He reminds her of hope she thought was lost, of faith misplaced, of a time when she could smile and look forward to the day. She is emboldened, and speaks of Messiah, of how he will know all things. Her heart is alive. This woman is about to have one of those moments we were talking about.

          “Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he.” She is frozen. Are you? What if you are there? Feel the moment. What have you just heard?

          Just then, the disciples return. They marvel at what they see, but say nothing. The woman goes into town. She doesn’t even take her water jar. She doesn’t go to her home or to find her man. She goes to the townspeople. Jesus has witnessed and the woman becomes his witness. She will not call her husband. Instead, she calls the whole village. She tells them that he had told her everything that she had ever done. Her amazement is obvious. She asks: “Can this be the Christ?” The people go to see.

You know the rest of the story. People came. Jesus stayed with them for two more days. What started out as belief because of the testimony of another became belief because of personal conviction. The woman’s plaintiff question “Could he be the Christ?” turns into a village’s testimony that “this is indeed the Savior of the World.”

It was a God-moment for the woman at the well.  Her testimony: He told me everything I’d ever done…was the watershed event in her life. She witnessed to it and became the herald for a whole village. Jesus works like that. Whether it’s a woman at a well or a kid with a few fish, Jesus calls us to witness, to plant the seeds. Jesus said to his disciples: “the fields are white with harvest.” We also have been sent. We are his witnesses. Like Jesus, our “food is to do the will of him who sent us and to accomplish his work.”

The labor continues until he returns. This is our mission. It can be done anywhere…in far away Samarias, in living rooms close by…in churches like this one. Like the woman at the well, we need to enter into God’s labor.