The reading
John 4:1-42
1 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard,
"Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John" 2 —although
it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— 3 he left Judea and
started back to Galilee. 4 But he had to go through Samaria. 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."
On Wednesday night, I had the opportunity to lead the
worship service at Leif Erikson School in Brooklyn. This was where my brother and I went to
preschool 30 something years ago. Most
of the service was led by students in the school and included all of the
students from kindergarteners through 8th
grade. My only responsibilities were a
short sermon, holy communion and the blessing at the end.
The reading for the night was from the first letter of John:
“If, then we say that we have fellowship with God, yet at the same time
live in the darkness, we are lying both in our words and in our actions. But if
we live in the light – just as God is in the light – then we have fellowship
with one another, and the blood of Jesus, God’s Son, purifies us from every
sin.”
As I prepared for the message, I knew I would be speaking to
a congregation mostly of young students.
I wanted to share something they would pay attention to and could relate
with. I started off talking about all of
the groups we belong to. I asked a series of questions, who uses Instagram, who
voted, who was born in Brooklyn, who likes pizza, who likes football, who speak
2 languages?
I shared some of my identity and groups I belong to,
reviewing some groups I was born into,
having a twin, having 2 parents,
Some professional memberships, I am a pastor in the ELCA, I am a
graduate of Brooklyn college, since my church in Woodside has a preschool, I am
part of the Lutheran Schools Association. Other groups are social or personal,
I am married, we have a cat, I have a beard. Some of these groups are easy to come and go
from, others have high bars for membership,
That little reading from 1 John is also about belonging to a
group, in this case it is about belonging to the group that has fellowship with
God. This means being part of a group
where you see everyone, no matter what, as a child of God, where you welcome
and care for others because you see that they too are forgiven by God’s grace,
fellow sinners cleaned of every sin by the death and resurrection of Jesus.
The night went well but I was little disappointed. I was not
able to reuse my work on Sunday and would have to prepare another sermon. As I looked at today’s reading, I also
realized that it had a lot to do with the groups people belong to and the
message that, regardless of what other groups we belong to, the most important
one is that we are all children of God.
This Samaritan woman we meet this morning, she was part of a
group that others viewed as impure Jews because they did not worship in
Jerusalem and did things differently. The idea that she is at this well at
noon, the hottest part of the day, can indicate that she was not too popular
with her own people either. She is at
the well during non-peak hours. Most
everyone else went to get their water at the coolest part of the day, at 5 or 6
in the morning, before sunrise. We can
assume her 4 husbands plus a 5th she wasn’t married to didn’t make
her the most respected woman in the city either.
Her conversation with Jesus starts off very similar to the
story we heard last week, about Nicodemus the Pharisee sneaking out to meet
with Jesus at night and see if he was the Messiah or not.
Nicodemus is named, important, educated and an
accepted member of the community and deeply restrained by his status and
work. The woman is unnamed, unaccepted
but bold in her questions and her proclaimation, Like the conversation with Nicodemus about being
born again, Jesus and the Samaritain woman are talking different languages,
there is constant misunderstanding.
Jesus promises her living water and she asks “where is your
bucket”. Jesus tells 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." To this great promise she says, sounds good,
give me that water so I don’t have to bother coming to the well anymore.
Nicodemus leaves with questions, concerns, uncertainty, an
ambigious faith we never quite figure out, Nicodemus goes to see Jesus at
night, curious and trying to put Jesus into some acceptable box. The woman meets with Jesus in the daylight,
being open to what God is doing. The
woman asks better questions, well she asks personal, faith questions, she wants
to know “who’s right about where they worship”, who is part of God’s kingdom,
these things matter to her life. Nicodemus
asks more academic questions, testing or probing Jesus for the right answers. The woman at the well, she left her water jar
and went back to the city. (don’t skip over that detail, she left her water jar
there for Jesus, remember he did not have a pail and could not get a drink.
This is her first, generous response to the gift of living water) 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?".
Her testimony leads many to go and see, to meet and speak with Jesus and
believe, in fact many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the
woman's testimony, "He told me everything I have ever done.".
Interesting that she did not tell the city “I met a man who
said he is the Messiah”. That would be
too easy to dismiss. For her to say, he
told me everything I have ever done, well that’s something else, that gets
people’s attention.
We remain in the Epiphany season, time set aside to look at
how people figure out who was born on Christmas. It happened with the gifts of the 3 kings,
turning water into wine, healing the sick, restoring the skin of lepers and
ensuring their welcome back to society. It happens in showing that the kingdom
of God is for all people, that’s so radical, unpopular and upsetting, it must be spoken by the messiah. Like fellowship in 1 john, the groups affiliations disappear, being with
Jesus is more important than all those other groups the woman at the well or
Nicodemus belong to. She gets that,
Nicodemus has a more difficult time with that news.
Finally, I wanted to say a few words about “living
water”. This idea will come up several
more times in John’s Gospel and can be found in places like the prophet Isaiah,
always as a metaphor for God’s saving work in the world. Today, we hear frantic news about the drought
in South Africa and the countdown to the time when their reservoirs run dry
(about 80 something days). We are reminded how universal water is, our earliest
civilizations were literally built around it, our lives in faith begin with it
in baptism, wars are fought over it,
There is no one who lives without water (even survival type instructions
always start with finding clean drinking water, since you will only live a few
days tops without it). For the woman at the well, God’s word is violently
flowing water, she cannot contain it, she shares it,
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