Don Friesen
The New Testament Gospels are about Jesus, and each Gospel writer had a special purpose in mind when writing his gospel. Matthew wanted his readers to know that the events of Jesus' life dovetailed nicely with Old Testament promises and story-lines. Mark wanted to present Jesus as a man of action and authority, which he does in a straightforward and succinct manner. Luke wanted to persuade a Greek acquaintance that the story of Jesus is bigger than Nazareth, bigger than Jerusalem, big enough to appeal to everyone, and so he wrote a Gospel that has universal appeal and also exudes warmth and compassion. And then there's John, who starts off philosophically, but whose Gospel also contains a number of stories. John wrote his Gospel, he said, "so that (we) may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing (we) may have life in his name." (John 18:31) John, in a heady mixture of highly figurative and philosophical prose and stories, pursues that purpose.
The Lamb of God Who Takes away the Sin of the World!
If you follow the events recorded in John's Gospel from the point of view of someone who was reading this Gospel soon after it was launched, it can be quite a ride! After a lofty introduction, John introduces Jesus as the "Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." (John 1:29) Jesus recruits several disciples, and then the first public event is a wedding – the wedding at Cana. (2:1-12) No sin to take away there! The wedding account presents Jesus as a man who can enter into festivities, and even supply some of the festive refreshments!
The next public event is a stop at the Temple where Jesus caused a ruckus by chasing out the hucksters who were exploiting people of faith on site! (John 2:13-22) That took care of some sin, and Jesus' actions were probably welcomed by people of faith. Many may have wished someone had done that a long time ago.
Then we have Jesus' nighttime encounter with Nicodemus. (John 3:1-21) We don't expect to find any sin in Nicodemus! He was an upright Pharisee, a man of learning and influence. However, this encounter may have been puzzling to the first-time reader, for Jesus didn't give Nicodemus the respect he deserved. And Nicodemus turned out to be a disappointment. He wasn't tracking well.
Riddled with Sin
This brings us to today's encounter, the meeting with a woman in Samaria. The reader might think: Finally – the jackpot of sin! A Samaritan was, by definition, riddled with sin. We've got sin on the radar even before the two of them start to talk. You see, while Jews and Samaritans had much common history, they did not get along. Centuries before, when the Assyrians invaded the northern kingdom and brought in new colonists the inevitable result was inter-marriage – to the utter dismay of those in the southern kingdom who stubbornly refused to assimilate. Later, when the Samaritans offered to help rebuild the Temple their offer was disdainfully declined. Things never got better, and incendiary incidents from time to time only increased the antagonism between the two groups. With Samaritans you're talking generations of sin! It's a long story – which I don't have time to develop this morning – but this encounter had 400 years of resentment and bitterness colouring it.
There was even more sin to take away, for it wasn't long into the conversation when it came out that the woman had been married five times! Married and divorced five times! And she was shacked up with a sixth man! There was enough sin here to keep the Lamb of God busy for some time to come.
Is this a Set-up?
It would be at about this point in the Gospel that a first-time reader might begin to suspect a set-up, for as you continue reading, things don't make much sense with that set of assumptions. The fact that this conversation took place at all is the first hint that our assumptions may be faulty. The disciples reveal as much when they come back from town. "They were astonished," John writes, "that (Jesus) was speaking with a woman...." (John 4:27) Now none of them said to her, "What do you want?" or to Jesus, "Why are you speaking with her?" But they thought it. (4:27) It was against Jewish custom to keep public company with women; rabbis especially were not even to greet women publicly. A rabbi, in fact, could not even greet his own wife in a public place. Jesus met a respected leader and scholar under cover of darkness, while conversing with a woman in broad daylight! A strange turn of events.
The conversation itself would have surprised John's first-time readers. It's a good thing the disciples went into town to get pizza, because if they'd stayed they would have been shocked right out of their apostolic booties! The conversation went something like this, with Jesus initiating the conversation:
Did God not Send us to Condemn the World?!?
The history of the interpretation of this story is disheartening. The woman is assumed to be sinful, and the sin has a lot to do with her marital situation. Many are the preachers, evangelists, and commentators who have presented highly imaginative but biblically unwarranted portraits of her, always assuming that the fact that she was married five times was her fault and reflects negatively on her character. We can hardly read this story, even for the first time, without catching some whiff of disapproval. These things were written, we seem to think, so that we may judge and disapprove. Didn't God send us into the world to condemn the world? Or did I get that wrong?
There are several things missing from this story that an early reader of John's Gospel might expect to find. For one thing, Jesus does not urge the woman to repent or change her behaviour. No condemnation here. Secondly, there is none of the condescension that marked male-female encounters, when they took place at all. Thirdly, what's missing is Jesus' usual discretion about his messiahship, a discretion he often invoked lest people who thought him the Messiah misunderstand the nature of his messiahship. In fact, Jesus reveals his messianic identity to this woman.
These things were written, John may have said, so that Jesus might mess with our minds! And if we are tempted to exude our own whiff of disapproval over the woman's multiple marriages, we should be bothered by the fact that Jesus did not condemn her. To have been married five times was a negative reflection on the husbands, not on her. Divorce in those days was altogether in the power of the husband. The Mosaic law, which Jews and Samaritans shared, only allowed for husbands to divorce their wives, and not vice versa, and so a man could essentially discard his wife at will. The continuance of a marriage depended solely upon the husband's preferences and caprice! So Jesus' reference to her five husbands was essentially a recognition that she had been rejected by five men.
God so Loves the Whole World
The Samaritan woman turns out to be a most unlikely witness to the gospel, for the reasons I've already mentioned, and also because she's not even a thorough witness. As one commentator (Fred Craddock) points out, her confession to her townsfolk that "a man ...told me everything I have ever done!" (John 4:29) is not exactly a recitation of the Apostles Creed. Her exchange with Jesus was much loftier, agreeing, as they do, that true worship of God is not geographically defined but is determined by God's nature, which is spirit and truth. God transcends gender, race, tradition, history, place and liturgy. In her mind, a God whose nature is to embrace all people in all places is the Messiah. And John immortalizes her by giving to her witness a name which is the very term with which he begins his Gospel. The Samaritan woman, the Greek text reads, spoke "the Word". And a convincing and fruitful word it was, for many of her townsfolk felt compelled to meet Jesus themselves.
The Samaritan woman and Jesus met at a well, Jacob's well, to which she had come to draw water. Archeologists have identified the site of this ancient well, and the authenticity of the well is undisputed, remarkable in itself; Muslims, Christians, and Jews all agree that this is the place where the story took place. Someone has also noted that the well was a percolated well; that is, water seeped into it through its limestone walls, as well as taking in surface water. Its source was not an underground stream, so its water was not the best. Jesus offered the woman living water, which he described as "...a spring of water gushing up...." (John 4:14) Jesus offers to replace that within her – and us – which is spiritually stagnant with that which is infinitely more appealing, more refreshing, more thirst-quenching, and life-giving.
May the Water of Life, Christ's living presence, flow into our hearts and minds, so that we may grow into his very likeness, of like spirit, and extending compassion to everyone.
He asks for a drink.
It's the kind of verbal sparring you might expect between Nicodemus and his colleagues, but it took place with someone Jesus should have avoided. She's a whole lot quicker than Nicodemus, and Jesus does not avoid her; in fact, he seems to find the exchange delightful.
She calls him a Jew.
He responds with some vague allusion to living water.
She teases him about coming to the well without a bucket.
He continues waxing poetic about this living water.
She calls his bluff.
He gets personal.
She gets evasive.
Then they both get theological, and on it goes.
Quotations of Scripture are from the New Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise noted.