George A. Mason Third Sunday in Lent Wilshire Baptist Church 23 March 2014 Third in series Crossing the Planes Dallas, Texas Going Deeper John 4:5-42 Little did she know what kind of bucket Jesus carried around with him. But before we go there, we might start where she did, sensing the most immediate problem that Jesus had and that we so often have ourselves. Your health is failing, and you don t have what it takes within you to make yourself well. You are over your head at work or home or school and don t have any idea how to face the problem. You are staring at your credit card bill, and you look at your bank balance, wondering if you will ever be out of debt. Jesus has just left Jerusalem, where he had talked at length with Jewish religious leader Nicodemus. He is heading back now to his home in Galilee, but he has to go through Samaria to get there. Now, when I say he has to go through Samaria, that isn t exactly true. That s the straightest route, but many Jews actually took the Samaritan bypass east of the Jordan River in order to avoid Samaritans. That would have sent them through Gentile territory, though, which would have been a problem itself. But you know, this is the way people think when they start out by making others other. Instead of seeing people as people and recognizing that they are merely different in their look or dress or culture, we see those differences as threats to our own purity. Sometimes you have to pick your poison: would you rather go through dreaded Gentile territory or hated Samaritan land? We know what this is like. Would you rather your white daughter date a person of color who is a Christian or a person who looks like your family but is hostile to the Christian faith? Would you rather hire a hardworking single mom who
might have to miss work sometimes because of her kids or a gay man who is always punctual and will work overtime anytime? Most of the time it s not about choosing between the two; it s about dealing with the one challenge right in front of you. Your daughter doesn t give you the choice. You may have only one applicant. What are you going to do with that situation? Jesus had to decide whether to take the path that led through Samaria. Would he take it or avoid it? As the poet Robert Frost put it, The best way out is always through. And Jesus always takes the throughway because he goes deeper than most of us are willing to go. He goes deeper than skin color or dress, history or stereotype. He sees Samaritans as people that God loves. And he even made one of them the hero of his most famous parable. Nicodemus come to Jesus at night. The Samaritan woman came to him at noon. We should probably make something of this contrast. The learned Jewish man who should have seen the light comes at night. The unnamed Samaritan woman who should be in the dark comes to Jesus at midday. He hides, she steps right into view. The social elite is fearful; the social outcast is fearless. Isn t that the way it is with so many of us spiritually? Those who have the most to lose by coming to Jesus have the hardest time engaging him. Those who have the least to lose are quicker to embrace him. Well, this unnamed woman didn t seek Jesus out; she was simply coming to the well to draw water, and Jesus was sitting there thirsty. No, he has no bucket, but for heaven s sake, he is Jesus. He s the one who has already turned water into wine and who will feed the five thousand from five loaves and two sardines. Think that s a real problem for Jesus? Deep well. No No problem. But remember that Jesus miracles were materially and spiritually motivated at the same time, while many who were the recipients were only marveling about them on a material level. Here again we see how Jesus is crossing the planes. He sees the 2
material through spiritual eyes, not the other way around. And so even his thirst becomes, by his willingness to delay gratification, an opportunity to go deeper. Jesus makes himself vulnerable to this woman of Samaria. If we ever want to lead people to faith, we need to learn this. God came among us as one of us, with no attitude! When we Christians take an arrogant posture toward others as if we re insiders and they re outsiders we re superior and they re inferior; we re somebodies and they re nobodies they can smell that a mile away. But when we take the Jesus approach, it sometimes shocks others right away and draws them deeper. Look at how this conversation progresses. To begin, it s a twoway conversation. Jesus is the protagonist. He initiates the whole thing. He goes to Samaria and sits down at Jacob s well. Which, by the way, I got to do a few weeks back sat down at Jacob s well. I guess it s Jacob s well. At least that s what the locals say. It s now located behind and beneath the altar of a Greek Orthodox church. I drank water from it after our guide cranked the wheel for what seemed like forever to reach the underground spring far below. The water was good to drink. Whether it was really Jacob s well or not, who s to say? Like so many things in the Holy Land, don t you know?! But here is Jesus at the well talking to this woman. The contrasts couldn t be greater, as the conversation reveals. Just follow along. We ve already established that Jesus is a Jew and the woman is a Samaritan. It s obvious also that she s a woman and he is a man. Not sure the scandal then was much greater than now. We still have a hard time believing that men and women can be friends at anything but a superficial level if they aren t married. It s like Jesus is at lunch alone with this woman. What will people say? Well, that s the problem, isn t it? Most of what people will say is based on making sure that men and women don t engage at a deep level because to do so will always end badly. Jesus doesn t let that deter him, and to her everlasting credit, neither does she. So Jesus says to her, Give me a drink. His request doesn t sound respectful or polite on the 3
surface. We think he might have asked rather than commanded. He might have said please. But maybe being direct is most respectful of her, since he goes below the surface this way. He gets straight to the point, and she appreciates it. The conversation proceeds quickly past the initial stage her wondering why he could want to be there with her at all to Jesus saying: If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying, Give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water. See what he s doing? He s going deeper. Things start superficially, and then he goes beyond ethnicity and gender as if he doesn t pay any mind to these things that divide people. He crosses the material plane and goes beyond literal water to living or flowing or spiritual water. The woman is stuck at first on the material plane and wants literal water that will allow her not to have to keep going to the well. Jesus next addresses the woman s relationship status. I have no idea how he knew that she had had five husbands and the man she was living with then was not her husband. Here s one of those times I just have to say, That s Jesus for you. He knows us better than anyone else. But there s also no judgment implied in his knowing. Women in that day had a limited agency in relationships. The fact is, if she had been married five times, it was likely that she had had little choice five times and that her husbands had either died or divorced her. She would have needed a man for protection and provision, because there was no such thing as an independent single woman in that Samaritan or Jewish culture. She would have lived with her father or some other man. Again, though, Jesus doesn t exclude her because of her relationship history. Next they talk about the differences in religion and place of worship. She sees that he wants to talk about deeper things, and she shows that she knows some things herself, though no man had probably taken her seriously enough before now to engage her. But Jesus won t even let religion divide them. He doesn t try to make her a Jew in order to be saved; he goes deeper. He goes to God being spirit and not being 4
tied to geography or religion. And then things get really personal. She admits that there are limits to what any of us can know, and that we will have to wait for the messiah to come to straighten things out. Jesus finally has her where he wants her. I am he, he says, the one who is speaking to you. And I think the last part of that is the most interesting: the one who is speaking TO YOU. In other words, he is the one who breaks down every barrier, the one who breaks below the surface to the deepest places of the human heart, the one who knows you better than you know yourself I am he. I am the one who has the bucket to draw the deep water of eternal life. The disciples arrive on the scene with food, and they are aghast that Jesus is talking to a woman. They don t say anything to him directly. I think John wants us to see that we re in church at this moment. This is the way church people act toward one another. Those who are closest to Jesus and should have had the easiest time seeing that Jesus defies social conventions instead also have a hard time giving up superficial barriers that never adequately define us. She then runs off to town to give her personal testimony of her encounter with Jesus. Some believe in him because of her words. Some are curious enough to go deeper and hear him out for themselves. And so Jesus has taken the matter deeper than we could ever have imagined. Listen, people people will not come to Jesus by our reinforcing all the social, ethnic, gender, sexual, religious, and national borders that we try to enforce to keep people apart. Unless and until we present Jesus the way Jesus presented himself, we will only be ghettoizing the church among our own kind. The deep wellspring of eternal life can be reached only by a bucket that Jesus always has. The well is deep indeed, and Jesus has a Do you want this water of eternal life that Jesus wants to give you, or would you rather live on a superficial level forever? There s one thing I am still wondering about regarding this story. Did Jesus ever get that drink of water from the woman, or did her faith quench his thirst in the end, the way our faith does for us? Just wondering. 5