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.
John 4:5-42 (NRSVue)
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.”
My sermon from the Third Sunday in Lent (March 12, 2023) on John 4:5-42
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So we’re halfway through my sermon series on the word “gospel.” At its simplest, gospel is an ancient Greek word meaning “good news” and was typically used when an emperor, king, or queen wanted to make some kind of proclamation. During Jesus’ own ministry, or at least very quickly after it, that word became associated with Jesus himself. Near the end of the first century, four books about Jesus’ life and death were labeled by the early church as “the gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.” This good news speaks into every aspect of our wonderful, messy, and very human story in ways we don’t always notice or see. Yet it might seem a bit silly for us to try and summarize what that good news is since entire books in our Bible barely scratch the surface of what it all means. At this point, it might be helpful to share a couple examples of what these summaries might look like. And in fact, last week, we heard John’s own take of what the gospel is when Jesus said: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Those 52 words are awesome but, based on the verbs alone, there’s a lot to unpack. Our version might use similar language like what Bishop Craig Satterlee of the North/West Lower Michigan Synod did when he crafted his first draft of the gospel in 50 words or less. He wrote: God became human in Jesus and gave himself to the world, to be with us in everything, even the most horrible death; to draw the world to life God intends; and, by God’s Spirit, to free and empower us to live God’s abundant life now, because God loves us. That sounds fairly but it also feels a little stilted – missing that emotion about why this is good news for us. The good news of Jesus Christ is for everyone but that doesn’t mean the gospel is generic. The good news is good news – and today’s story from the gospel according to John might help us notice where in our own stories, the words for this good news might be found.
Now Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well is actually the longest one-on-one conversation Jesus had with anyone in the gospels. We know, from his sermon on the mount and his farewell message to his friends at the Last Supper, that Jesus could be a bit of a talker. Yet his one-on-one interactions were typically short. Jesus, after visiting Jerusalem during the first year of his public ministry, headed back to Galilee and cut through the land of the Samaritans. Geographically, this makes sense because Samaria was between those two locations. Yet for centuries, Jews and Samaritans had done everything they could to avoid running into each other. Even though they shared similar beliefs about God, they didn’t get along very well so the usual journey from Jewish Galilee to Jewish Jerusalem went around the Samaritans. Jesus, though, led his disciples into a land they wanted to avoid. And once there, they stopped at a water well that was first established by Jacob, one of Abraham’s grandsons. The disciples went off to find some food, leaving Jesus all by himself when an unnamed Samaritan woman stopped by.
If the setup for this scene sounds a bit cheeky, that’s because it is. In Jesus’ time, wells were the stereotypical places where romantic relationships were formed, such as when Jacob met his first wife Rachel. Wells were also places where the Bible introduces to us important women like Rebekah and Zipporah. Jesus’ presence at a well with an unknown woman is meant to make our eyes get a little kooky since romance could be in the air. But this time, in the words of Professor Jennifer Garcia Bashaw, instead of meeting a “blushing soon-to-be bride,” we meet “a wedding-weary woman.” Christian preachers have, for centuries, treated this unnamed woman as some kind of hyper-sexualized harlot – a titillating sinner who excites us. We define her as someone who is morally suspect because of her rather lengthy martial history. And the fact we don’t know her name invites us to turn her into a fantasy that shames her – which says more about us than it does about her. Yet it’s interesting how Jesus doesn’t do what we do. He doesn’t shame her or belittle her or really say anything about her marital relations. All he does is notice her and how she, unlike him, is prepared to actually be there. I imagine when she first spotted him that she did all she could to avoid him. But Jesus refused to let their cultural, religious, ethnic, and gender identities keep them apart. Unprompted, he initiated contact by demanding a drink of water without even saying please. She could have ignored him or, since he was a strange man, engaged in some small talk as a way to keep Jesus away. She, though, chose to engage with him – even making a joke comparing him to Jacob who created and fell in love at a well. Her words could have focused on their differences but she, in her own way, named what united them together. Jacob was, after all, “our ancestor” – which other Jews and Samaritans might not have agreed with. Jesus could have pushed back about what she said, affirming his own distinctive religious and cultural identity. Yet he, instead, used her words as a kind of foundational moment to reveal who this good news is for.
By the time we get to Jesus’ statement about her husband, we’ve already started to notice how her marital status wasn’t what defined her. Her past is, most likely, not her fault. Because, as a woman, she was not in a position to “initiate divorce” and it’s possible she had been widowed or pushed aside by the many different men in her life. She might have even felt expendable but, in Jesus, she was indispensable. When she finally felt comfortable enough to reveal to this stranger her own thoughts about faith, God, and who the Messiah might be; Jesus said “I am (he.)” Our translation of this passage while, understandable, obscures what Jesus actually said. Rather than a rather mundane “I am he,” the actual Greek words match what God said when Moses asked for God’s name. Throughout the gospel of John, the “I am” statements usually come in two forms: either when it makes up the bulk of Jesus’ side of the conversation or when he connects it to things like “I am the bread of life.” But it’s here, while chatting with a Samaritan woman, that Jesus makes this specific “I am” claim as the Messiah which he doesn’t do with anyone else. He entrusted to this very unlikely person the truth about how he was and, in the process, revealed to her the truth of who she could become.
It’s very easy, I think, to let the gospel be generic since we’re not sure if we really are the best ones to share what this Jesus thing is all about. We’re grateful to be part of Jesus’ family yet when it comes to the gospel, we assume that someone else – who is a bit more faithful, a bit more charismatic, or maybe with a more interesting story – should be the one to share this good news with others. A generic sounding gospel feels a bit more safe since it can’t be contaminated by those, like us, whose faith isn’t always that strong. But Jesus, as we see in today’s story, didn’t choose just anyone to receive the good news: He chose you. You, right now, are necessary for what God is doing in this world. And during those moments when you, like the woman at the well, feel valued, loved, included, and seen rather than shamed – that’s when Jesus made himself real to you. Those are the moments in our lives that help us find the words and phrases that show how this good news is good for you. And we don’t need to be afraid to let the gospel include parts of our real story because Jesus has already included you in His.
Amen.