“What Are You Doing Here, Jesus?”

John 4 (selected verses)
February 27, 2005

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John Andrew Fleming

I read our gospel lesson for this morning several times, half a dozen times before the question entered my mind. Here it is: “What are you doing here, Jesus?” John, the gospel writer, gives us these words, “…he left Judea and headed back to Galilee. But he had to go through Samaria.” That is not altogether true. There was another route, a regular route, a good route that went from Judea to Galilee without going through 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 would not be caught dead in Samaria. And going from Judea to Galilee by way of Samaria, was like going to Dallas by way of Oklahoma City. It was definitely out of the way. John is trying to tell us something here. He is trying to answer my question, “What are you doing here, Jesus?”

It gets better. The story gets more interesting. Jesus and the twelve arrive in Sychar at noon, during the heat of the day. Jesus sends his disciples into the city for food, while he heads toward one of the most famous well of biblical times, Jacob’s well. Jesus going to a well seems like an innocent detail. It’s not. It seems harmless for him to do such a thing, especially since it is the middle of the day in a hot land. It is not harmless, especially for a single man like Jesus. The Old Testament tells us of story after story of men who met their mates at a well. Jacob himself met Rebekah at a well. And by the time of Jesus, wells were meeting places, especially for men and women who were not married.

Back in high school in my hometown of Jackson, Tennessee. On Friday nights, we would go to our school’s football games. But when the season was over, different things happened on Friday and Saturday nights. The thing to do on those nights, back then (and it may still be this way) is to get a couple of friends together, pick them up in your car and go cruising. I will go on record here and say that I despised cruising. There is something about it that I did not like. Give me a steady girlfriend, her parents’ house, and a movie over cruising and I would take it every time. In Jackson, we would cruise from the McDonald’s parking lot, up Highland Avenue, turn left on a street whose name now escapes me, and into the shopping center that housed both Wal-Mart and a place called Fun Land, a video arcade kind of place. And when we had circled that parking lot, we turned back towards Highland Avenue and the McDonald’s a few miles up the road from it. The business owners in both places hired police men to run all of us off, and so most of the night, we traveled up and down Highland Avenue, trying to spot someone who was easy on the eyes, if you know what I mean; someone that we hoped to spend a little time with. I didn’t like cruising. My parents didn’t like it, either. I wonder how many times I was asked on Saturday morning after an evening of cruising, by my dad, “How in the world, son, did you put a hundred miles on my car last night?” All this was done in the name of meeting Miss Wright, or at least Miss Right Now. And I despised it.

I would have rather had a well, like the one that is described in our lesson for this morning. Jesus goes to such a place, in our story for this morning. Can you put yourself in this scene. John is a great story teller. He sets up the scene. You can sense that something is about to happen. A Jew in Samaria. That is the first thing that John wants you to notice. A man at a well, that is the second thing. High noon, that is the third thing that you are supposed to observe. Yes, something is about to happen. There is no doubt about that. And because you know Jesus like you do, it makes you want to go up to him, before anyone else arrives, and gently tell him that this is not the best place for him to be. It makes you want to say to him, “Lord, there is a woman on her way here. She’s a Samaritan. Her reputation is not all that great. Perhaps you ought to keep on walking and go to a better place. Maybe, Lord, there is place where you could pray.” It makes you want to say, “If you hang around much longer, Lord, you are going to have to explain what you are doing here. And why we are on the subject, Jesus, what are you doing here?”

Any warning that we would offer is late in coming. John tells us in his seventh verse, “A Samaritan woman came to draw water.” We might want to ask her, too, what she is doing there, at the well. Noon, you see, is not the usual time for someone to draw water. Women from her village, most likely, came as the sun was beginning to rise, before it got sweltering hot. As the sun came up, they began their trek to the well, to draw from its waters. While they walked, they talked. It was this woman, who came at noon, who could not stand what they talked about. You see, she was the topic of their favorite conversation. Most of the time she walked by herself. No one wanted to be associated with her. And it hurt her to the well when they did, because she heard their whispers and she saw their grins. And so instead of having to deal with that, she went later in the day, in the heat of the day. That is what she is doing on this day, around noon, at Jacob’s well. Do you want to know what they are saying about her? They are saying that she has been married a few times, five times to be exact, and now she is living with a man that she is not married to. It’s scandalous, but it’s also good to talk about.

Can I go on record here? Us preachers have been victimizing this woman for years now, raising our eyebrows when we mention the number of nuptials that she has said. A smile often appears on our faces when we pause and look out at the congregation. Smiles appear on church members’ faces, too, unless you have been married more than a couple of times. Then it is not so funny. We have painted this woman to be the portrait of the Elizabeth Taylor of her day. We have sketched her life as one in which she trades in husbands like someone would sports cars. Not many preachers have wondered what happened to the five. Not many have said, “Grief must surround her, having to bury five of her husbands like that.” My own grandmother, my dad’s mother, married three times. When she buried husband number three, my mother gently said, “Mother, quit marrying these men. We are all having to take care of them.” No one has wondered about her grief. And not many point out that in her day, it was the husband who issued the divorce decree, not the wife. So if her situation was divorce, if it had indeed happened to her five different times, none of those times were her choice. I feel called to apologize for my brothers and sisters in the ministry who paint this woman in a bad light. She did not choose the life that she was living, she was just living it.

And now she comes to a meeting place, at noon, and there is a man there. Maybe she looks up at Jesus and quietly hopes that he will not say a word to her. But you know that that is not the case. Instead, Jesus uses his best pickup line, “Give me a drink.” Give me a drink? Is that the best that you can do, Jesus. If you are going to use a line at a meeting place, why not try one of these, “So, where have you been all of my life?” Or this one, “Excuse me, do you know CPR, because looking at you takes my breath away.” As it turns out, Jesus is not interested in picking her up. As it turns out, Jesus is interested in lifting her up.

Fred Craddock tells of the time when he went to the Winn Dixie, one of the grocery stores in the town where he was the pastor. He tells that he was a novice grocery store shopper. He was not sure where many of the items could be found. After searching high and low for peanut butter, he approached a woman who was also shopping in that store. He said, “Excuse me. Could you tell me where the peanut butter is?” She stopped what she was doing, looked up at Fred and said, “You are hitting on me, aren’t you?” My guess is that Fred was taken aback by her words. For a minute, he could not say anything. When he could, he said, “No, I am looking for peanut butter. Do you know where it is?” She looked puzzled and walked away. A few minutes later, the two ran into each other again. The encounter happened on the fifth aisle. Fred was in the middle of the aisle with a jar of peanut butter in his hand. She saw that and said, “You really were looking for peanut butter, weren’t you?” He replied, “I told you that I was.” She said, “I’m sorry, these days, you can’t be too careful.” Fred said, “Yes you can.”

My guess is that the woman at the well had had her share of conversations at the well. She had heard men say many things through her marriages. And now here was another man with another line, another question. And what made it worse was that the man who asked her for a drink wasn’t a man from her village, or even from her country. He was a Jew. And the rules set up between the Samaritans and the Jewish people, between men and women, did not allow such conversations. She is bold. She does the right thing when she keeps the boundaries high and lifted up. She wants Jesus to understand the rules. And so she says, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” And is always the case, Jesus does not care about rules and customs. He will have none of her boundary building, and so he says to 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.” I like this woman. She is brave. She has lived long enough to know that she does not have to take anything from anyone. She listens to what Jesus says, about living water, looks around and notices that he does not have a bucket and says, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get this living water?” Listen, friends, to what Jesus says. It is great and powerful, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 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.”

For the first time perhaps in a long time, I think that the woman lets her defenses down. She shows her vulnerability. You see, she wanted this living water. She no longer wanted to come back and forth to draw water. At this point, I don’t think that she really understands what living water is. Now, I am not sure what happens next. I am not sure if Jesus looked around and saw all the boundaries that he was crossing. What I do know is that his next move is curious. Instead of continuing the conversation in the way that it was going, he said, “Go and get your husband.” Big mistake, Jesus. She nearly tripped over the hem of her dress trying to get out of that conversation. She was beginning to build the walls back when she said, “I have no husband.” Jesus said, “You are right in saying that you have no husband. You have had five and the one that you are with now is not your husband.” Now what does a husband have to do with living water? Could it be that Jesus looked into her eyes, down into the depth of her soul, and saw what she was really thirsty for, a meaningful relationship in her life?

I want you to see what happens next, because we have all done it. She was uncomfortable. She had no desire to talk with this stranger about the roller coaster that was her love life. She did not want to go there with him, and so she changed the subject. Have you ever done that? When things got uncomfortable, did you change the topic. When you were near tears, did you say, “So, what about this weather? Isn’t it great?” That is what she is doing here. But instead of the weather, she looks at Jesus and says, “I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” She was hoping that getting Jesus to talk about religious things would get him away from her heart. But it doesn’t work. And for the second time in the story, Jesus’ words cause her defenses to fall. Listen to his words, “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. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” I think that there is a look in her eye at this point, a longing for a better time, a promised time. She says, “I know that Messiah is coming.” And Jesus says, “I am he. The one who is talking to you.”

Well, it is getting late and the sermon is getting long. But before you go home, I think that there is something that we need to ask of ourselves. We may not be like this woman. Our lives may be nothing like her. We may not have been married five times. The sneers of the villagers may not have crossed our ears. But there is something, down deep inside of all of us, that we hope Jesus will help us with. Perhaps it is something that no one else knows about, something that we have trouble admitting even to ourselves. And the thought of it keeps us coming to the well. And the thought of it makes us thirsty. What is it friends, that you are thirsty for? What is it that you hope will be living water? What is it that you hope you won’t have to keep dealing with. And who is this Jesus who can change your life. Let me paint another scene in this story. The woman leaves Jesus, forgets about her past, looks at her future, tells the entire community that she has met a man who knows everything about her. And then she asks the question that I want you to answer this week. Here it is: He cannot be the Messiah, can he? Let us pray.

(The story found in this sermon about Fred Craddock and his encounter in the Winn Dixie can be found in his book Cherry Log Sermons.).