John 4.5-42
We live on a watery planet.
Over 70 percent of it is covered in water. Water makes up between half and
three quarters of our bodies. We can’t live without it for more than a few
days. But our dependence on it makes us vulnerable.
Today’s Gospel reading underlines
that.
Ancient communities formed
where they did because they needed access to a reliable water source, and the
story we hear today is set around one of those essential local watering places,
a well just outside the Samaritan city of Sychar. This isn’t just any well,
though. This well has a story attached to it. According to local legend, it was
the well where the patriarch Jacob, met and fell in love with Rachel, his bride
to be. You can read about it in Genesis 29. As it happens, Jacob’s father and
mother had also met at a well, but that’s probably not as much of a coincidence
as it might seem.
Middle Eastern Biblical women
were meant to stay at home, hidden from view, as far as possible, as they still
are in some places. Collecting water – an essential task - was one of the only times
when they’d be out and about, and therefore one of the only times they might
come across men outside their families. But going to the well could be
dangerous because of that. So, it was safer to go in company if you could – and
it was a rare opportunity to socialise.
But the woman we meet in the
Gospel story seems to have no friends. She comes to the well on her own, and in
the middle of the day too, the hottest time, hardly the moment for hauling heavy
water jars around. There’s obviously a back-story here, though we don’t know
what it is yet.
When she gets to the well,
she finds a lone man already there, and a Jewish man at that – Jews and
Samaritans regarded each other with mutual suspicion.
What’s going through her mind?
She has no idea who this stranger is, or what his intentions might be. Maybe
she remembers those stories of romance blossoming at the village well, but I
think it’s more likely she’s wondering whether this man might do her harm,
might even have been lurking there on purpose.
Women throughout history have
been trained to be on their guard in situations like this. We’re taught to be
careful, and fearful, about walking on our own or in the dark, about chance
encounters with unknown men. The conditioning works. It’s hard to shake the
suspicion that something bad might happen, even though women are actually much more
likely to be assaulted in the supposed safety of their homes.
Jesus’ request for water is
entirely innocent, but this woman doesn’t know that, and her response sounds
defensive and prickly. “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a
woman of Samaria?” But gradually she realises that Jesus not only means her
no harm, but is turning her life around. How? Simply by treating her with
respect, listening to her, taking her seriously. Many men at the time wouldn’t
have talked to her at all, but Jesus does, and more than that, he talks theology
with her, at length. This is the longest conversation recorded in the Gospels. He
even declares to her that he is the Messiah, the first time he does so in this
Gospel. He answers her questions, shares his thoughts, even chewing over the
big issue between Jews and Samaritans about where God should be worshipped - in
the Temple in Jerusalem or on Mount Gerizim. He treats her as an equal. How
many times has that happened in her life before? Probably never, especially as
it seems that this woman has been dealt a particularly rough hand in life.
As I said earlier, there’s
clearly a back-story to why she is alone at this well in the heat of the day,
instead of in the company of female friends. We get a glimpse of that story
when Jesus tells her that he knows she’s had five husbands and the man she is
with now isn’t married to her.
Let’s be clear what that
means. It means that five men have divorced
her – women in her culture weren’t allowed to initiate divorce, only men could
do that. It’s possible she’d been widowed repeatedly, but she’d probably have
been described as a widow if that was the case. Even then, she’d have been
regarded with suspicion – what had she done to deserve such bad luck – they’d
have assumed she’d done something? But divorce is more likely, and despite it
being solely the man’s decision, the shame and blame of it fell on the woman,
not the man – five times over in this woman’s case. She’s probably alone at the
well because she’s been shunned.
But whatever her community
think of her, Jesus doesn’t seem to think she’s done anything wrong. How do we
know this? Because he never forgives her, and if he felt she was to blame for
what has happened to her, he surely would have done.
It's not forgiveness she
needs. It’s the affirmation of being listened to, properly, thoroughly, maybe
for the first time in her life. “Come and see a man who told me all I ever
did!” she says in amazement to her neighbours. “Come and see a man who
has seen and heard my story, rather than the story others tell about me, who knows
me better than I even know myself.” This
is what transforms her. This is the “living water” for which she truly thirsts,
and when she finds it in Jesus, she runs off to tell her neighbours, leaving the
water jar she’s lugged all the way to the well behind her.
What Jesus does transforms
her, but it also transforms her community. When they see what he’s done for
her, and come and meet him for themselves, they call him the “Saviour of the
world”. It’s the only time in John’s Gospel that Jesus is called “Saviour”, and
of course it is long before he dies on the cross. It’s not just Jesus’ death on
the cross and his resurrection which saves us, says John – they are just the
end point, the inevitable result of a whole life spent saving people, bringing
them joy, a joy that he evidently shares in this story. The salvation this
woman and her neighbours see in this story is the recognition of her dignity
and worth, and that changes them all.
This is the good news, the living
water, she and they have thirsted for, and we need it just as much as they did,
because we’re just as ready to silence, scapegoat and blame others for things
that are not their fault. This week we’ve have seen serious proposals from the
government not only to turn away refugees who arrive here in small boats –
that’s bad enough - but also to refuse
them any chance to tell their story or plead their cause, no matter what
horrors they are fleeing, no matter what gifts and skills they have to offer,
and to refuse them that chance not only now, but forever. Whatever the answer
to the refugee crisis is, I don’t believe it can be achieved by refusing to
hear the voices of vulnerable people.
Amen
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