“Face to Face with Jesus”

John 4:1-27
February 24, 2008

St. Paul UMC of Little Rock

Rev. John A. Fleming

I read our gospel lesson for this morning several times. I read it in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. I read in the New International Version of the Bible. I read it in Eugene Peterson’s The Message, his paraphrase of the Bible. I read it in the King James Version of the Bible I read it in the New Living translation of the Bible. I even read a past sermon or two that I’ve preached using this lesson. The question that kept popping into my head is the one we need to ask Jesus this morning. It is this one, “What are you doing here, Jesus?”

John gives us this line in our lesson, “He left Judea and headed back to Galilee. But he had to go through Samaria.” The problem with the line is that it is not altogether true. There was another route, a regular route, a better route that went from Judea to Galilee without entering Samaria. In fact, it was the route that all good Jews took. I want you to understand this, in Jesus’ day a good Jewish person wouldn’t be caught dead in Samaria. That is what makes Jesus’ story about the Good Samaritan so challenging. Besides that, going from Judea to Galilee by way of Samaria was like going from Little Rock to Memphis by way of Jackson, Mississippi. It was definitely out of the way. John is trying to tell us something here. Maybe he’s trying to answer the question that keeps popping up in mind, “What are you doing here, Jesus?”

The lesson gets better. It gets much better. Jesus and the disciples arrive just outside the city of Sychar at about high noon, in the heat of the day. John tells us that Jesus sent the disciples into the city to buy food. Jesus himself headed towards a water well. This may be the most famous of all the biblical water wells. It was Jacob’s well.

I am told that if you go to Israel today and make the journey to Samaria and to the city of Sychar, the well can still be found. I’m even told that it is the main water source for the city. The city itself has dried up. There are only three hundred people living there. And the well just outside of the city is the main source of water for these people who still consider themselves Samaritans. Everyone agrees that this is the same well that Jacob gave to the city and it is the same well where Jesus and a woman of Samaria had their conversation.

I want you to know this. Jesus going to a water well seems to be an innocent detail in the story. It is not. Jesus stopped at the well, on the outskirts of town, to take a short breather from the heat of the day. If you can imagine the scene, Jesus is sitting by the well and a woman from Sychar is walking towards him.

Put yourself in the scene. John is a master storyteller. Every detail he gives us is an important one. John sets the scene up brilliantly for us. You know something important is about to happen. A Jew in Samaria is the first thing John wants you to notice. A man at a well is the second thing to pay attention to. It is high noon. That is the third things Jesus wants you to note. Yes, something important is about to happen. There’s no doubt about that!

I don’t know about you. I want to run to Jesus and warn him of what is about to happen. I want to tell him that this might not be the best place for him to be. I want to say to him, “Jesus, there is a woman on her way here. She’s a Samaritan. Her reputation isn’t all that great. She’s been married a few times. Why don’t you catch up with the disciples and help them pay for the food and to carry it back here?” I want to run to Jesus and to say to him, “Lord, if you hang around here, you are going to have some explaining to do. And while we are on the subject, Jesus, what are you doing here? It’s not safe for you here.” Jesus, of course, never took the safe way.

While we are asking about why Jesus is here, we might also wonder why she is coming to a water well at high noon. It wasn’t the usual time to draw water. The usual time was the first thing in the morning. That’s when the women from Sychar came to draw water. They gathered together and went to the well together. The woman in our story had walked with them. To be honest with you, she just couldn’t take it any longer. No one wanted to walk with her and so she kept a few paces back. No one wanted to talk with her. What they really wanted was to talk about her. You see she has a reputation in Sychar. Everyone in town knew she had a live in boyfriend. They also knew she had been married five times. She was a scandal and when there’s a scandal around, everyone wants to talk about it. The Samaritan woman had gotten to the point that she couldn’t bear walking with these ladies. She went to the well at an alternate time.

Now, I would like to go on record here. Us preachers have been harsh when it comes to this woman. We have been victimizing her. When lesson comes up, we pause when the number of her marriages comes up. We want to see what the reaction of the congregation is. We enjoy this unless we are a little like her. If we have been married more than a couple of times, it is not so humorous. Preachers have boldly said that she had been married and divorced five times. The Bible doesn’t tell us that. The Bible doesn’t tell us how her marriages ended. Her husbands could have died. She could have traveled the path to the cemetery five different times with men she loved.

My own grandmother, my dad’s mother, was married three times. She buried all three of her husbands. After the third died, my mother gently said to her, “Mother, quit marrying these men. We are having to take care of them!” When my grandmother died, we wondered what we should put on her gravestone. I think they charge for that by the letter.

No one has wondered about the Samaritan woman’s grief. If she was divorced five times, he husbands would have had to initiate that. In Jesus’ day divorce would have been beyond her control

And now she comes to a well, a biblical meeting place, about noon. Sitting there is a man, a Jewish man. In Jesus’ day good Jewish men did not speak to women in public places. They also never talked with Samaritans. But Jesus spoke to her. He said to her, “Give me a drink.” There were rules against these sorts of things. Jews weren’t supposed to talk with Samaritans. Women weren’t supposed to talk to men in public places. She understands the customs, the rules, and the boundaries. She reminded Jesus of them when she asked, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” As always is the case, Jesus does not care about the customs. He says, “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.” Living water, Jesus?

Like Nicodemus in last week’s sermon, this woman tries to understand what living water is. She says, “The well is deep. Where’s your bucket?” Jesus says that everyone who drinks of the water of this well will be thirsty again, but the water he gives will become in them, inside of them, a spring of water gushing up to life eternal.”

Let’s think about living water for just a moment. I think the Bible begs for this question to be asked, “What are you thirsty for? What are you really thirsty for?” I’m told that your body will send out warning messages if you’re low on water. The messages are things like dry mouths, thick tongues, achy heads, and weak knees. When your soul is thirsty, similar signals are sent. Do me a favor, friends. Take a few minutes this afternoon, walk around your house or your neighborhood, and walk around inside your soul. Place a glass of water in front of you and read the lesson again and name your thirsts.

The woman in our story is thirsty and Jesus draws that out of her by asking her to go and get her husband. Can you see her backing out of the conversation? She tells the truth when she says, “I have no husband.” Jesus says he knows that. He also knows the man she is now living with is not her husband.

I want you to see this. Her first real thirst is for a meaningful and a successful relationship. She backs out of the subject of her marital status as quickly as she can. She does it by calling Jesus a prophet. The best way to get a preacher away from your life is to talk about religious life. Generally preachers and pastors love to do that. The woman talks about the way her people worship as opposed to how and where the Jews worshiped. It’s easy to miss it, but she is also thirsty for worship. My guess is that private worship is the only kind she finds now. Jesus speaks of a time when the requirement for true worship will be less about a time and a place and more about a spirit.

Those are two of her thirsts. There is a third. She is also thirsty for a savior. She says, “I know the Messiah is coming and when he does, he will set things straight.” For the first time in this gospel, Jesus gives his identity. He says, “I am he, the One who is speaking to you.”

John tells us that it was about then that the disciples returned from town. The woman left in such a hurry that she left her water pail. As it turns out, she forgot all about her past when she ran into Sychar. To anyone and everyone who would listen she said, “Come and see a man who has told me everything I have ever done.” Her statement ends with a question and it is one I want you to ponder this week. She asks the crowd, “He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” Can he really be the one who quenches our thirst and the One who can give us living water? Let us pray.

(I hope this sermon will cause you to stop and to think about the things you are really thirsty for. I hope that you will realize that you can find a quenching of your thirst in the same place the woman of Samaria did, in Jesus. By the way, my grandmother’s name was Nora Lee Morgan Fleming James Roane. When she died, her gravestone read Nora Roane).