Encounter: Samaritan Woman
Jesus Seeks Sinners
John 4:5-42
Rev. Tim Callow
Preached Sun. March 12th, 2023
Jesus isn’t always in the places we expect, or with the people we expect. Last week a pharisee found Jesus in the middle of the night. The teacher of Israel sought his Lord, though he did not know it at the time. This morning Jesus crosses the borders of Judea, and enters Samaria.
The Samaritans were and are the descendants of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The short version of their history is that following the reign of King Solomon the Kingdom of Israel divided in two. The Northern Kingdom was made up of ten tribes, the southern Kingdom based in Jerusalem was made up of two. After the destruction of the Northern Kingdom at the hands of the Assyrians, and the conquest and exile of the Southern Kingdom of Judah at the hands of the Babylonians, the Samaritans were the people who remained. But when the Jews returned from their exile they found much to disagree with the Samaritans. They worshiped on Mount Gerazim, not on Mount Zion. Their Law was different, and the Jews regarded them as unclean.
Samaritans and Jews did not get along. In Luke’s Gospel we are told Jesus was refused when he tried to pass through Samaritan lands. It is this enmity between Jew and Samaritan that forms the backdrop of Jesus’ famous parable of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan looks beyond the enmity between his people and the beaten down Jew, but simply has compassion on the man and saves his life.
Jesus stops near Sychar, at the well Jacob dug and gave to his son Joseph. It is about high noon when a woman comes by to draw water. This is a strange scene for a number of reasons. First, Jesus the Jew is in the land of the Samaritans. Secondly, Jesus the Jewish man alone in the presence of a woman which broke the rules of propriety. And, finally, what is this woman doing drawing water in the heat of the day? It would be more reasonable, and was more common, to draw water in the morning when it was cool. But she left her home, perhaps a mile or more away, to bear the scorching heat and the weight of the full jar. Much of this scene does not add up.
When Jesus sees the woman arrive he says, “Give me a drink.” The woman is puzzled, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”
But Jesus is the very wisdom of God walking the earth. He is God incarnate, the light of the world, the Lord of Israel. He does not seek a drink, he seeks a soul. So he begins to reach 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.” The woman is further confused. Living water happens to be an aramaic idiom for running water (which is just an english idiom for water that moves). So she interprets Jesus saying there is water that he would give her. “"Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?”
Indeed, he is. Because the water Jesus has to offer is not the water that you drink and you are thirsty again. The water Jesus has to offer is the water of the Spirit. “Those who drink of the water that I will give them” Jesus says, “will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
Excited to receive this water, likely still thinking he means the sort you drink, she says, "Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Jesus tells her to go get her husband and come back, if she would receive the water. But she admits that she has no husband. And here we come to perhaps the most perplexing part of the episode. Jesus says, “You are right in saying, 'I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!"
Perhaps here we finally see why it is that the woman bore the heat of the day in drawing water around noon. She was a woman who, for whatever reason, had many husbands and presently lived in what the samaritans of the day (and the Jews as well) would have regarded as adultery.
So let’s take a step back and count everything that’s wrong about this scene. Jesus, a Jew, is in the country of the Samaritans. Samaritans don’t take too kindly to Jews around them parts. Jesus, a Jewish man, is alone with a Samaritan woman and even asks for water. Again, not the sort of thing that commonly happened. And, finally, that woman lived with a man who was not her husband. She would have been regarded as a sinner. And yet Jesus spoke to her, asked her for a drink, and shared the gospel with her. "I know that Messiah is coming,” the woman said. ”When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” But Jesus says to her, "I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”
Out of that conversation a whole village came to know the good news of the Messiah of God, the Lord of Israel. But that good news was not shared in the expected place, a synagogue, a jewish town square. But it was shared among the wrong people, to a sinner. And yet, and yet, it is a message that must always be shared to the wrong people. Jesus encounters the wrong people. Jesus is found among the wrong people.
Paul reminds us this morning, “while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” And, “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” And, “For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.” Jesus said once he came not for the well but for the sick. Not for the righteous but for the sinner.
The message of Jesus Christ, his life and death and resurrection is for all who know their sin and weakness, who do not know where to turn. Who have nowhere to go. Who are forced to bear the noonday heat and draw the water alone. Jesus came for us who know our sin, who seek a new life. And by his death we may know life. By his resurrection we may know salvation.