“The woman said to Jesus: ‘I know that the Messiah, that is the Christ, is coming; and when he comes, he will tell us everything.’ ‘I who am speaking to you,’ said Jesus ‘I am he.’” John 4: 5-42
When we get to the end of today’s long gospel-reading from John, we still don’t know whether he received the drink of water from the woman whom he had risked engaging in conversation. All the prejudices the Jews had about women and Samaritans prescribed that he should have avoided her in the first place. Strange women, especially Samaritan women, were taboo. Whether or not he got the drink he requested is irrelevant. What eventuated has given us a gripping story about God’s thirst for humanity and humanity’s thirst for God. Hundreds of years later, using a different metaphor, St Augustine said something the same: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” (Augustine, Confessions, 1.1.1.)
There are no wasted words in John’s Gospel and Letters. All three are brimful of purpose and meaning. For instance, the setting for Jesus’ encounter with the woman, who is central to today’s gospel, was Joseph’s well in the small Samaritan town of Sychar. John noted Jesus’ decision to rest beside the well. However, he had nothing to collect the water he wanted for a drink. When a woman came along, he broke all the rules of social engagement and asked her for a drink of water. That was the trigger for the conversation that ensued. Wells were essential for survival in desert climates. They were also places of socialisation among all the women who came to collect water for their domestic needs. Moreover, they were also places at which shepherds and cattle herders first encountered women who might eventually become their wives. For example, when Moses was fleeing from the Egyptian Pharaoh who was pursuing him for murder, he headed for the land of Midian and sat down beside a well where he went to the assistance of the seven daughters of the local priest. The women had come to collect water for their father’s sheep but were being chased away by shepherds who wanted first use of the well. Moses stepped in and watered the sheep for the defenceless girls. When they arrived back home earlier than their father had expected, they told him how an “Egyptian stranger” had helped them. Their father’s response was: “Why did you leave him there? Ask him to come and eat with us.” (Exodus 2: 20). The narrative continues: “So Moses settled with this man, who gave him his daughter Zipporah in marriage.” (Exodus 2: 21). There’s a similar story of how Jacob came to the help of Rachel by rolling aside the large stone at the mouth of a well when Rachel had come to water the sheep belonging to Laban, her father. Laban was Jacob’s uncle and, for his kindness, was rewarded with two wives, Leah and Rachel. (Genesis 29: 1-14) In John’s theology, the fact that Jesus had settled himself near a well, the source of life, was a sign of what would eventuate between Jesus and the woman he would soon encounter. It was not by chance that John noted the time of the encounter: “It was about the sixth hour” (John 4: 6), the very time at which Jesus would give up his life on Calvary out of love for humankind.
When the woman arrived, carrying a jug, Jesus nonchalantly asked her for a drink. Her response was predictable. It was both sarcastic and revealing; she disclosed that she was fully aware of what Jews thought of Samaritans: “What? You’re a Jew and you ask me, a Samaritan for a drink?” (John 4: 9) It was that which was the catalyst for the discussion between the two of them about “living water“. In the exchange that followed, the woman revealed her own familiarity with the Samaritan religious tradition and its hope for the coming of a Messiah. She was eventually moved to ask Jesus for some of his promised “living water”. And, while he did not precisely describe himself as “the water of life”, he identified himself to the woman as the Messiah and affirmed her integrity when she admitted that, despite her many relationships, the man with whom she was living was not her husband. As a result, she set her bucket down beside the well and hurried off to urge the townspeople of Sychar to “come and see a man who has told me everything I ever did; I wonder if he is the Christ?” (John 4: 30) That unlikely woman was the very first of Jesus’ Samaritan disciples, a missionary to the people of Sychar, who soon discovered for themselves that “he really is the saviour of the world”. And they begged him to stay with them. Their prejudices evaporated and, in the process, his own disciples learned something about the consequences of harbouring prejudice.
When the woman heard Jesus disclose to her details of her past life, she was quick to conclude that she was in the presence of someone worthy of attention. Accordingly, she raised a question about whether Mt Gerizim (on which was a Samaritan temple destroyed by the Jews) or the Temple in Jerusalem was the more appropriate place for people to worship. Instead of selecting a location, Jesus’ answer was that the time had come when God’s Spirit was to be seen alive and active in people rather than in designated places of worship: “The hour will come – in fact it is already here – when true worshippers will worship God in spirit and truth; that is the kind of worshipper the Father wants.” (John 4: 23)
In the course of their exchange, Jesus’ words served as something of a mirror into which the Samaritan woman looked and found herself and the God for whom she was unconsciously searching. Moreover, Jesus did not say a single word about sin or any need for repentance or conversion. He accepted the woman exactly as she was, trusting that she was now on the path to living with truth and integrity. She had already discovered that none of the circumstances and desires of her past life could ever offer her the deep satisfaction for which she was searching. This gospel account of the meeting of Jesus with the Samaritan woman is a timely reminder to us that our faith is built on our relationship with Jesus, the Christ of God. It is a clear statement that God loves us deeply, exactly as we are. That personal relationship with God and with Jesus is such that it will well up in and out of us and empower us to share it with others just through the way in which we engage with them in our everyday interactions. Relational faith of that kind does not go unnoticed.
Today’s first reading from Exodus shows us a people searching for water in the desert and complaining against Moses for leading them io a place where they were anticipating they would die of thirst. That journey was more than a trek across a barren landscape. It was a pilgrimage into faith in God and into a realisation that those being led by Moses were God’s chosen people. Their thirsting for water was a symbol of their thirst for an identity in which God was central. In faith, Moses trusted God to slake their thirst. They still had a long way to go to come to faith in God.
Our second reading today from Romans raises the topic of “justification by faith”, an expression that is an essential part of Lutheran theology, in which the adjective “righteous” is also prominent. Righteous simply means having a healthy relationship with God, full of faith and trust and free from fear. That’s the gift the Samaritan woman experienced, symbolised by “living water” and expressed in her discipleship