Last week we heard about a conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. He was a respectable religious leader, but he wanted to speak Jesus secretly and so he sought Jesus out privately after nightfall.
Today we hear of a conversation between Jesus and a woman who is a foreigner and apparently not very respectable, and this takes place in a public place, under the blazing sun, at the hottest time of day.
And in some ways it might seem unremarkable. Jesus turns up at a town called Sychar in the midday heat, flops down beside the well, asks a woman if she might give him a drink, and thus begins a conversation. What’s the big deal…?
But this is really a story full of surprises.
A Story of Surprises.
Jesus going to Samaria…
Samaria was a place on the outskirts of Israel. And the Samaritans were half-breed Jews – they were not a pure race. And they were despised. Though the Jews believed that the great Temple for worship was in Jerusalem, the Samaritans reckoned God should be worshipped in Samaria. So they were ostracised, ignored and hated by the Jews.
A Jew would never choose to enter the territory of the Samaritans. For they were regarded as the enemy. Of course the Samaritans felt the same about the Jewish people. So both races kept themselves to themselves. They didn’t mix.
(I say a Jew would never choose to do this, but here is one Jew, Jesus, who does choose to do so.) The Bible says that Jesus was going back to Galilee from Judea and he “had to go through Samaria”. (John 4:4) It suggests that he didn’t have much choice.
But that is not actually true. You can easily travel from Galilee to Judea without setting foot in Samaria. So Jesus didn’t pass through Samaria because he had to. He went there because he chose to be there. That was a surprise.
Jesus talking to (and asking a favour) from a Samaritan.
Most of us growing up would be told of a particular part of town to stay away from or a particular kind of person to avoid. In Jesus’ day that was Samaritans.
Jews wouldn’t talk to these people or even be seen with them - and the idea of sharing a drink with them (as Jesus was about to do) would be regarded as disgusting.
It would be like sitting down and sharing the cup of some homeless wino.
That was a surprise.
Jesus talking to a Woman...
It’s hard for us to imagine how big the gulf was between the sexes all those years ago. Men and women didn’t mix – they didn’t mix socially, they didn’t mix in conversation, they didn’t go to the shops together, or share the normal events of everyday.
A man wouldn’t even speak to his own wife in public.
Women were regarded as an inferior species. You didn’t waste time talking seriously to a woman. She wouldn’t have the intellectual savvy to understand – or so it was thought back then.
A woman’s evidence was inadmissible in court.
Jewish males had prayers that they said daily. One of them had this line “Thank you God that I am not a woman!”
Here is Jesus, early in his ministry, showing that he is tearing up the rules about this kind of thing.
Jesus had women among his followers - which was regarded as scandalous. But today it is to this woman that Jesus discloses his full identity for the first time. He shares with her just who he is. That was a surprise.
Jesus talking to a Sinner…
A sinner – or at least that is what we in the church have tended to presume about her. We imagine she was not a very savoury character. Or could the truth be that was she more sinned against?
We imagine she was a woman of very loose morals (with over 5 husbands and living with someone now who wasn’t even her husband). And maybe we are right to think that. Maybe she was.
Gosh - she’s right up there with Elizabeth Taylor who died last week!
Or maybe we are judging again – and even judging unfairly.
Maybe there were other reasons for those husbands…
Certainly in those days people could die from diseases that don’t much worry us now. Maybe some of them had died.
And divorce was easy – for men. Maybe some of them had divorced her.
As I said a moment ago, in the time of Jesus, men really ruled the world and divorce was something that only men could obtain. And they could obtain it for virtually any reason.
Any excuse - and a man could divorce his wife. And when the wife was divorced she was snookered.
How would she live? There were almost no opportunities for work. There was no social security. The only way to get an income would be to become a slave, a prostitute - or get married again quick.
Whether she was a sinner or perhaps more sinned against we will never know. Only Jesus, who met her, knew the truth.
And even if she was a sinner, and even if her morals were terrible,
and even if she had led a bad life, Jesus doesn’t give up on her.
He refuses to despise her, or write her off, or condemn her.
He simply shows her something else – something better - something new - and this woman grasps her chance gratefully.
That was a surprise.
And there are more surprises…
This woman, (perhaps a person of ill repute), a foreigner, an outcast,
an outsider - actually “gets it” more than the respectable Nicodemus from last week’s encounter.
This woman becomes the first evangelist, sharing the news that Jesus is the one sent by God with her neighbourhood.
So this incident today is a story full of surprises. But it is also a story of inclusion.
A Story of Inclusion.
Despite everything about her that made her unworthy of attention and ineligible for acceptance, what Jesus does is break down the barriers and invite her in.
For respectable religious people this woman is way off limits for all kinds of reasons but Jesus breaks all the rules to invite her and include her as a follower.
This is what Jesus does. This is what Jesus does with us all.
He knows who we are. He knows the labels and tags that people put on us whether rightly or wrongly.
He knows the baggage we carry. And he knows our faults, our weaknesses and our failings.
But none of this stops him from coming near to us, engaging with us and inviting us to receive the water of life – inviting us to receive the good news and to share that in turn with the people around us.
This week I came across something written by a woman called Katie Sherrod, who is a writer and TV producer from Fort Worth in Texas. And in a short article written for Lent, she explains how, (as a young person), coming across the story of Jesus and the Woman at the Well restored her faith in God.
Growing up she lived in a very small town called Iraan in Texas. Her family were the only Catholics there, and the other kids, who were mostly Baptists, would sometimes tease her.
I’d like to close today by reading her words…
We, our Baptist playmates would announce with great authority, were not really Christians because we worshipped statues and did not read the "right" Bible.
They had numbers on their side, but we had Father Fred. He was a circuit-riding Franciscan missionary who served a vast area in and around Pecos County. Once a week, he appeared in our town, population 300, to teach only the Sherrod kids about a proper Catholic God. He assured us we were indeed loved by God, all of us, even Baptists, (although they really should convert to Rome).
There was no Catholic Church in Iraan, so every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation, our parents loaded us in the car and drove 30 miles to the equally small town of Rankin to Mass. The church in Rankin was literally a converted chicken coop. The whole place had room for only six four-foot pews.
Father Fred said Mass in Latin and then gave a sermon in Spanish and English. My brothers dressed up in white cassocks covered with white lacy things to be altar boys. They got to light candles, ring bells, and swing the censor with the incense.
I lusted after all this closeness to God.
So at age eight or nine I told Father Fred I wanted to be an altar boy too. I already knew all the Latin responses, and knew I could light candles and swing censors with the best of them. After all, if MY brothers could do it, how hard could it be?
Father Fred, that gentle soul, shook his head and broke the hard news to me.
Only boys could be altar boys.
How could that be?
If I were one of God's beloved children, wouldn't God want me serving at his altar?
Well, no, Father Fred said. Only boys could serve at God's altar. Girls could do other things, he said, none of which he could think of at the moment.
I was too deeply shocked to be hurt or angry. I was still in that time in childhood when there is deep-seated belief in and need for fairness. All this time I had known my Baptist friends were wrong, because if God was anything, God was fair!
Now I was being told the Catholic Church apparently believed girls weren't Catholic enough, just like the Baptists believed Catholics weren't Christian enough.
I mentally took a step back from the church, and from God.
Then, about seven years later at a Catholic girls boarding school, the Sisters there introduced me to the woman at the well.
There she was, a Samaritan woman who was part of a people who had intermarried, and so were considered by the Jews to be half-breeds and mongrels. She was a heretic. Worst of all, she was a woman.
None of this mattered to Jesus.
Jesus did not tell her that she was wrong and that the Jews were right. Instead, scripture says that Jesus told her God is a spirit that cannot be limited by Jews or Samaritans (or even Baptists). Jesus said that God is to be worshipped not in Samaria or Jerusalem, but "in spirit and truth."
Jesus dealt with her thirst, not her sin. He reached out to this "unclean" woman, not to shame her, but to empower her to transform her life. Indeed, she is commissioned as his missionary to Sychar. She not only "gets" what Jesus is telling her, she also brings her entire village to Christ.
And she brought me back to Jesus. Her story allowed me to see past my confusion and pain, to see that God and Jesus weren't the problem -- the problem is with all the man-made barriers put in place by church "leaders" who want to control who is "in" and who is "out."
The truth is, we are all Samaritans, thirsting for a church in which energies are directed not at people's sexual orientation or gender or race, but toward seeing that all are fed by the "holy food and drink of unending life."
This Lent, may we all drink deep of the Living Water of God's love.
(Katie Sherrod: We are All Samaritans, Witness Magazine Feb 2005)
Katie Sherrod is spot on – we are all Samaritans.
Like the Samaritan woman we all thirst for the water of God’s love, and a connection to God.
Like the Samaritan woman we all come with our own baggage, but Christ is here to tell us that whoever we are, we are loved, accepted and invited to be part of what God is doing in the world.