Fwd: PBPC - Sunday Sermon Available
Dear Friends,
Here is the link to today's sermon on YouTube, and the manuscript is attached. Hope you can join us on Zoom next Sunday!
Blessings,
Pastor Chris
Sermon – "The Woman at the Well" – John 4:1-26
January 31, 2021Chris Coon, PBPC
Introduction
When I was six years old, we got new neighbors. They were moving from a short distance away and had a boy my age who I recognized from school, although we hadn't been in the same class. I remember walking over to the house as the movers were bringing in the furniture. The boy was standing in the front yard with a small group of kids from our block, who evidently already knew him. Feeling like an outsider, my natural shyness caused me to hang back and observe from a distance. Eventually, the boy invited the other kids to come inside and see his new house, and as I turned to go home, he suddenly looked at me and pointed and said, "you come, too." Such simple words, and yet so powerful. I responded to his invitation, and that was the beginning of a friendship that lasted throughout our school years. And it all started because he reached out to me, past any barriers that may (or may not) have existed.
There are many barriers that divide us from one another and divide us from having an authentic relationship with God. Some of these barriers are put up by others, some of them are put up by ourselves, and some of them may exist only in our mind. Whatever the case, we see in our story today that God crosses over the barriers that divide us – with an amazing invitation.
John 4:1-26
1Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, "Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John" 2 —although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— 3 he left Judea and started back to Galilee. 4 But he had to go through Samaria. 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.
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."
Jesus Reaches Across the Divide
Life in first-century Palestine was filled with social boundaries and divisions. Jews and Samaritans did not associate with one another, for a number of reasons. The Samaritans were descendants of the northern Israelites who had been conquered by Assyria and had then intermarried with deported populations from other lands who were brought in and settled in Israel. When the Jews from the southern kingdom returned from their exile in Babylon, they discovered these "half-breeds" who had polluted their pure Hebrew blood, and they wanted nothing to do with them. The Samaritans also developed their own version of Jewish religion, most notably believing that the place God was to be worshiped was on Mt. Gerizim in Samaria instead of in the temple in Jerusalem. Finally, the Samaritans had sided with the Greek oppressors during the previous war, and this only served to harden the animosity between the two groups. So racial, religious, and political divisions ran extremely deep.
Samaria lay between Jerusalem and Galilee, the place Jesus and his disciples were traveling to. Normally, Jews would travel around Samaria so that they could avoid contact with Samaritans. Jesus, however, chooses to travel through Samaria, which sets up the interaction in this story. After walking all morning along the dusty Samaritan road in the hot sun, Jesus stops at a well to rest while his disciples head into the nearby town to buy food for lunch. As Jesus is sitting, a Samaritan woman approaches to draw water, and Jesus enters into conversation with her.
The boundaries between men and women were very clear and very much observed in Mediterranean culture. This is true in many areas even today. Men and women do not talk to each other outside the home, and women certainly do not talk to strangers. Kenneth Bailey, a Christian scholar, says that in 40 years of living in the Middle East, he never crossed this boundary. It would have been considered inappropriate to even look at each other, let alone to speak to one another. To protect and support these norms, women would almost always have gone to the well (fetching water was traditionally women's work) in the company of other women, usually in the cooler times of the day, in the morning or evening. The fact that this woman was coming to the well alone at noon is an indication that her company has been shunned even by her own people and she must come at a time when she won't have to interact with them. From what is revealed about her shortly, we learn that she would be considered to be living in sin.
All of this makes the ensuing conversation all the more unlikely: Jesus is a Jew and the woman is a Samaritan; he is a man and she's a woman; he is a rabbi and she is an obvious outcast. Imagine her shock when she approaches the well and this Jewish stranger asks her for a drink. Everyone who came to the well had to bring their own bucket or leather pouch to draw water; Jesus didn't have one, and he was thirsty, so he asks the woman to let him drink from her bucket. But this seemingly simple request is actually quite shocking: you see, as the text states, Jews and Samaritans did not share things in common. This was because Jews considered Samaritans to be unclean, and the feeling was somewhat mutual. To the Jews, the Samaritans had unclean blood and unclean worship, and for a Jew to come in close contact would be to risk becoming contaminated and unclean themselves. A Samaritan woman was even more unclean, and an adulterous Samaritan woman would have three strikes against her. To drink out of the container belonging to such a person would inevitably result in being contaminated by her uncleanness, to be defiled.
Living Water
In response to the woman's shocked reaction to his request, Jesus presents the intriguing offer of living water. Samaritans set great stock in their heritage and in tracing their ancestry back to Jacob, as being the true Israelites. "Are you greater than our ancestor, Jacob?" Refusing to get pulled into the ethnic debate, Jesus focuses on his offer: "Whoever drinks of the water I offer will never thirst; indeed, this water will become a spring within them that gushes up with eternal life."
This living water literally means running water, and it is contrasted to water that has been stored in cisterns. It is continually clean and fresh, always being renewed. Jesus is speaking symbolically of the life with God, the spiritual life that is now available through him. Unlike the water of Jacob's well, which represents the pride we may cling to in our ethnic or national heritage, the life that Jesus offers is alive and real and constantly being renewed. It is life without end.
Spirit and Truth
When Jesus tells the woman to go and bring her husband, she replies that she has no husband. Jesus then reveals that he knows more about her than she could possibly suspect: "indeed, you have had five husbands, and the man with whom you now live is not your husband." Jesus, without condemnation, is demonstrating his knowledge of her life situation. Perhaps one or more of her husbands have died, but whether caught up by circumstances or by her own bad choices, there is some implicit understanding that she is a woman of compromised morals. At the very least, the fact that she was living with a man who was not her husband would have been considered scandalous and sinful and been enough to put her in bad repute with her community.
Understandably, the woman tries to change the subject, in this case to theological issues. The issue that divides Jews from Samaritans is the location where God should be worshiped – whether there, on Mt. Gerizim, or in Jerusalem. Again, Jesus will not get caught up in ethnic or religious controversies. He says, "the time is coming when people will not worship God in either place; but the time is now come when the true worshipers will worship God in spirit and in truth." Forms, places, structures, institutions – all of these things have had their place, but now that Jesus has come, they have served their purpose and are obsolete. God is calling people to worship (that is, offer themselves) in spirit (with their whole hearts, not merely in form or ritual) and truth (honestly and authentically).
In one last attempt to deflect the implications of what Jesus is saying to her, the woman says, "I know that the Messiah is coming; when he comes, he will explain all of this to us." And Jesus' response to her is, "I am he."
Conclusion
There are all kinds of barriers that get put up between us and God. They might ethnic or racial assumptions, they might have to do with our gender, or they might be baggage from our religious tradition. Or they might have to do with our own actions, the decisions we have made, the sins we have committed; we're not convinced that God could ever truly forgive us. Many of us feel that God will only accept us if we are good enough, or work hard enough, or know enough, or give enough. Many of us struggle with the idea that God loves us just as we are.
In Christ, we see the tangible demonstration of the words, "For God so loved the world…" In Jesus, we see that God wants to reach across barriers to love us. In Jesus, we experience the truth that nothing – not even our sins – can separate us from God's love. In Jesus, we learn the amazing truth that God wants to give each of us the gift of living water, his presence within us that is like a spring gushing up with eternal life. And in Jesus, we hear the invitation to come to God just as we are, without pretense, and to worship God in spirit and in truth.