Third Sunday in Lent                                                St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church

The Rev. Shanda M. Mahurin                                         February 23^rd & 24^th , 2008

            THE WELL THAT NEVER RUNS DRY

Jesus and his disciples probably started their journey through Samaria early in the morning, before the temperature rose to the low hundreds.  By high noon, they were hot, hungry, tired and very thirsty. Jesus sat down by a well and his disciples went to buy food. 

 A Samaritan woman came with her bucket to draw water.  Customarily, all the town’s women went together to the well, early in the morning before the heat of day.  They would share news, talk about their families, and socialize.  Clearly, this woman who arrived as Jesus sat resting was not part of the circle of women.  She was a social outcast.  We know from John’s Gospel that she had had five husbands and the man she was with now was not her husband.  In a society where marriage meant both reputation and security, she was at great risk.  All a man had to do then to divorce his wife was say to her three times: “I divorce you.” This woman heard those dreaded words five times!  Having been repeatedly discarded, she may have felt herself to be of little value as a person.

 To some degree, we all experience being dehumanized.  Someone tells us big boys don’t cry or good girls don’t make a fuss.  We learn that getting good grades or being pretty or making lots of money is what life is supposedly all about. We discover people only care for us if we are compliant and take care of their needs.  Every time we deny our feelings or comply with uncomfortable or abusive demands, our self-esteem drops another notch.  Pretty soon we’ve lost our true self; we get used to being an object for others to use.  If this process goes too far, a person may never recover and may even begin to treat animals and other people as objects to be used and abused.  That’s how so much senseless violence begins: the school shootings, the merciless and never-ending lawsuits, the financial scamming of the vulnerable, domestic abuse and sexual abuse, even some of the suicide bombings and acts of terrorism.  At some point a person loses his or her self completely and can no longer care about or empathize with anyone.

 Perhaps Jesus could see that something like that was beginning to happen to this woman who is so alone by the well.  His heart is moved.  He doesn’t preach or offer her charity.  He meets her with his own humanity-- his need for a cold drink on a hot day.  He asks her for a drink; she tries to keep her distance.  She wants to talk about what divides people—Jews versus Samaritans and men versus women.  He tells her she can ask for living water; she focuses on logistics: how is he going to give her living water, when he doesn’t even have a bucket.  She even tries to get him embroiled in a theological debate, but Jesus just keeps relating to her personally, as one person of worth to another person of worth. He knows how desperately she needs healing, how much she needs a different kind of water, water that will quench a different kind of thirst.  He keeps cutting through her verbal smokescreen to issue her an invitation to rebirth and dignity.  This woman is obviously smart and feisty; that has probably been her self-defense through the shame of five divorces and the town’s rejection. She has hardened her heart and put up walls around her feelings. Jesus has to get her to let down her guard and let him in.  He knows that simple affirmation is not enough; she has to face the truth about herself without rejecting herself, which is the hardest part of transformation.  To allow oneself to be loved without shame is to be reborn!   Jesus sees her and loves her.  He helps her envision herself as the person she really is, a priceless child of the living God: God not only of the Jews, but of the Samaritans and the entire world as well.

 By the cultural norms of the day, Jesus should have treated this Samaritan woman like a leper.  To a Jewish man she was an abomination—ritually unclean—a foreigner and a woman.  He had no business speaking to her, much less accepting a drink from her, or touching anything she touched, but he did.  When his disciples return, they’re shocked.  Not only is he speaking to her, he is affirming the truth of her life.  He is lifting her up from her low place and restoring her to herself.  In today’s language, Jesus is helping her to claim her own personal power and her power as a child of God.  This sort of transformation happens all the time in recovery groups and during prayer for healing.  It needs to happen more often in regular church circles and wherever Christians gather day by day. 

 Thank God for those who love us as we are without playing our games.  Thank God for those who call us to leave behind our dependencies and addictions and take off our self-defensive armor.  Thank God for Jesus whose love softens our hearts and gives us new life.

 The conversation (about one third of which is omitted from this morning’s reading) between Jesus and the woman at the well is the longest conversation recorded in the Bible between Jesus and anyone!  Something very, very important is obviously happening here for John to have written with such length and detail. This story must be important for everyone who follows Jesus. It raises and answers all of life’s important questions: Who am I? What is the truth of my life? What am I here for? Who is my God? Who is my neighbor? What must I do?  How must I live? Jesus affirms the truth of the Samaritan woman’s life and thus calls her to conversion.  Although she has barely begun to discover and share her own gifts by the end of the story, she has already become a missionary, bringing the good news of Jesus to her townspeople.  We are told that many believed because of her testimony. She leaves her empty water jar, the symbol of her old life, and goes forth to issue her amazing invitation:   “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!”

 She issued an invitation to life to the very people who had invited her to drop dead. May we be like her—loved, reborn, and ready to testify. Unlike the Israelites in the desert in today’s reading from Exodus, who quarrel and complain because they are thirsty, and ask for miracle after miracle, may we recognize the living water of Jesus as all we ever truly need. May we thirst for the living water of Jesus with the same urgency and need as Jesus who thirsted at noon one hot, long, dry day, so many years ago, for the rebirth of one precious, lost child—a Samaritan woman who was no one and Everyone!  We are that woman. With joy, let’s tell the whole world.   Amen.