It's a LIE!

The Holy Gospel According to St. John, the 4^th Chapter

So Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 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.) 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.” The woman said to him, “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?” Jesus said to her, “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.” 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.” Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “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!” The woman said to him, “Sir, 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.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 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.” 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.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” 

Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him. Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.” 

When I was a kid in elementary school, the boys would take their leftover food at lunch and attempt to create a mixture so vile that even WE would find it disgusting.  It was a challenge!  Today’s Gospel story, is the story of a woman who assumed that in Jesus’s eyes, she would look like a vile, disgusting mix; worse than any leftover cafeteria food mixture created by any 4th grade boy.  The sad part is that she had pretty good reason to assume that would be Jesus’s reaction.  There were a bunch of things about her that any faithful Jewish man SHOULD have found more repulsive than my fourth grade cafeteria tray.  

First, she was a woman.  Women had no legal status.  Second, she was a Samaritan.  Back when the Babylonians took the people of Israel into exile they didn’t take everybody.  The leaders, intellectuals and the wealthy were taken away but many of the regular folks were left.  They ended up marrying non-Jewish people and having kids.  BUT, when the exiles returned, those who had intermarried were considered unclean and they were kicked out of the Jewish community.  Those who got kicked out became the Samaritans.  Third, since she wasn’t Jewish, her water jug was ritually unclean and finally, there was the issue with the men in her life. 

The tradition, of course, is that she was a woman of questionable moral character, but the text doesn’t really say that.  It’s more likely that her earlier husbands had either died or even more likely, abandoned her when they discovered she couldn’t have children, which would have been the “right” thing for the men to do in that culture and would also explain why she was out in public during the “men’s time” to be out in public, because the women would not want her around and possibly “catch” whatever she had that made her not be able to have kids.  

So, she’s a woman.  She’s a woman who’s a Samaritan.  She’s a woman, a Samaritan and unclean.  She’s a woman, a Samaritan, unclean and broken.  She’s a physically broken, unclean, unwanted, Samaritan woman who is doing whatever she can just to get by.  None of that was her fault.  It just was.  But regardless of who’s “fault” it was or wasn’t, she had been carefully taught over the years to expect that ANY person would have found ANY one of those things about her reason to throw her aside... All those things taken together SHOULD HAVE BEEN as disgusting to Jesus as the most toxic cafeteria mix an elementary school boy could ever imagine! ...  But it wasn’t.  

It wasn’t!  Should have been... five or six times over it should have been... but it wasn’t!   Now, she didn’t understand what Jesus was saying at first and really, who could blame her!  She had inherited a story, told over and over and over for generations before her and she had years and years of personal experience of people telling her directly this one particular story; that because of who she was, where she had been born and who her parents had been, that all the life she should ever expect was a leaky, heavy to haul, bucket of stagnant water kind of life.  But Jesus sat there at the well and insisted there was a different story for her life and he stuck with her until she finally heard it, didn’t he?  Back and forth and back and forth they went with Jesus always insisting she hear this new story.  

That new story Jesus insisted she hear, was that her life was worthy of abundance... of living water... of God’s overflowing artesian well of love for her.  Not “someday” when she changed or got converted or started living right, but RIGHT NOW, JUST AS SHE WAS right there at the well... a broken, wounded and abandoned Samaritan woman.  THAT woman was worthy of a life overflowing with the abundance of God’s love for her.  THAT was the new story Jesus had for her and the story he insisted replace that terrible and untrue story she had inherited and that she had been told all her life... it took a while, but when she finally got it, she REALLY got it!  So much so that she went and told the told the world!  

What terrible and untrue story have you inherited?  What awful, false and crippling story have you heard so many times that you fear deep down might just be true?  What story do you struggle to keep shoved back in the back of the closet?  What story do we push down deep into the dark places of ourselves, terrified that it might get out and someone else might see?  

You know the story I’m talking about.  I have a story like that… my story says I'm a bad provider for my family… I don't know what your story says but we all have one.  That heavy lifting, leaky bucket of stagnant water story?  That toxic mix worse than any cafeteria mess story?  You know that story?  THAT... STORY... IS... A... LIE.  Just like that woman at the well, YOUR life and my life is worthy of ABUNDANCE... of living water... of God’s overflowing artesian well of love!  AND just like that woman at the well, our CONGREGATION is worthy of a life of abundance... of living water... of God’s overflowing artesian well of love too!  Not just in the past and not just someday in the future when we do this or get that right, but JUST AS WE ARE right HERE, right NOW gathered together around THIS well of living water!  (the Baptismal font)

The new story Jesus has for us is that we are worthy of not just a stagnant water kind of life, but an abundant life... a life overflowing, gushing, showering us with God’s love, and that we are worthy of it simply and only because God in Christ says we are!   May you and I come every week to THIS WELL and not just listen to this new story but really HEAR this new story.  May you and I remind one another all through the week that THIS is our true story and may you and I tell each other this true story over and over and over and over again until that old, stagnant lie of a story is dead and buried in a tomb and the only story we can remember is the story of our Baptisms, the story of this well, the story of living water, the story of abundant life, the story of resurrection and God’s infinite, unconditional love for us and for all of creation through Jesus Christ.  Amen.