Woman at the Well

March 19, 2017 The Woman at the Well John 4:5-42 Lent 3 During this season of protest, there have been many ways to get the message to our leaders that our people matter. Just a few weeks ago, there was the day without women, where women did not have to show up to work, in order to show how important we are to the world. Can you imagine what would have happened to the world if all of the women really did take a day off? The world would have truly been in a flux. We all know that it is women who run and rule the world. It is women who not only take care of themselves, but they take care of everybody else. They say that if you want to educate a family, then it is important to educate the mother, for she will always pass it on to those who she is in charge of. Jesus must have realized that centuries ago, because his primary ministry was to women. In many acts, he intentionally addressed the condition of the women in the situation. Our scripture for today is a prime example of that. This scripture has been speaking to me for some months now, and I don’t know that I have preached a lot of sermons on it. – the woman at the well. In the community organizing class, it is not surprising that since the professor is a women, that she would be drawn to this story in her teaching. And lately, in my car I have been listening to a cd of Mahalia Jackson’s gospel songs, and she too has been speaking to me about the woman at the well. This is a long scripture, which is why we only had one lesson for today. As lent goes on, the scriptures will get longer and longer. Because it is so long, and it is also a pretty deep text, there are a lot of lessons that we can get out of this one text. But I am only going to focus on a few of them for this morning. We all know this very popular story in the bible. Jesus is doing his ministry in the north – Galilee, but he decides that in order to be effective that he must go to Jerusalem. And on that journey he encounters all sorts of people, and teaches all sorts of lessons. On his three day journey, he has decided to take the short route through the Samaritan land, knowing full well that any respectful jew would have doubled the journey, just to avoid having to deal with the Samaritans. Any jew knows that the primary part of your religion is purity. Keeping yourself pure and following the rules. You don’t talk to strangers, you don’t mix with other cultures. You keep yourself a jew at all cost. The Samaritans are distant relatives who mixed with other people. They desecrated the jewish identity, and themselves, and you just don’t deal with them. Of course in this story, not only does Jesus deal with them, but he also talks to one who he knows he has no business talking to – a woman. A woman who is a Samaritan, but who apparently is not living a holy life. Why else would she be at the well getting water at noon day, by herself separate from all of the other women. Jesus has been travelling all day, and now he was all by himself. Maybe he was thirsty – that is why he asked her for a drink of water- it was ask or die. So he asked – a conversations ensues, Jesus tell her about herself, and she runs back an tells all of her friends and neighbors. That one encounter made a difference not only in her life, but in the lives of the entire community. As our professor teaches us about community organizing she teaches us about this story because the woman at the well had followers – people who were going to listen to her and anything that she said. In order to get to them, Jesus had to first get to her. If you give me a drink of water, I will give you living water, where you will never thirst again. I have enough not just for you, but for your family. Go and get your husband. I was rereading the text, to figure out how Jesus would have known about her life. Jesus tells her that not only does she have one husband, but she has five husbands, and the one she is with now is not her husband. That is alittle personal, how did he know all of that? Some commentators says that when Jesus tells her that she has five husbands, that he is not talking about her specifically – but about the Samaritan people. When the jews were invaded by foreigners, they were always told to love their oppressor, but to never take on their culture- always remain a jew. The Samaritans did the exact opposite – they married them, they adopted their gods and their culture, they didn’t give up being jews, they just compromised their identity. So some say that when Jesus tells her she has five husbands, that is symbolic for the five cultures that the Samaritans intermarried with. And the one who she has now that is not her own – are the Romans – whom they had not yet intermarried with, but they are still a little too comfortable with. So was Jesus talking about her people, or was Jesus really getting up into her personal business? We don’t know for sure. But what we do know is that any encounter we have with Christ is always an encounter with our deep innermost self. We cant hide ourselves and our actions from God. If we did it, if we think it , if we know it – God is going to bring it up and talk about it. When we come into the presence of God, we have no control over what God is going to notice in our lives. After her encounter, the woman runs and tells her friends, I met a man who told me everything that I had done. He knew all about me, without me telling him a thing. Anytime we have an encounter with Christ – we are going to be forced to take a deep look at ourselves. The conversation is going to start in shame for our sinfulness. When Peter met Jesus he told Jesus to get away from him, because he was a sinner. When the cock crowed three times, no one had to tell Paul that he had betrayed Jesus, he realized for himself. When Jesus started talking with the woman at the well – she too knew her sins far better than Jesus, and she started thinking about her life, what got her in trouble, and what she needed to do to get out of trouble. We are all sinners, and we all have our shame, this Lenten season, there is something about ourselves that we need to work on. Christ knows what that is, and Christ shines a light on it, so that we can do better. It is no accident that the woman has this encounter at the well. It is no accident that this is a conversation about the difference between regular water and living water. Jesus is in the hot sun, thirsty for regular water, but he offers her living water in return – water that will make her never thirst again. Perhaps it was her thirst for love and acceptance that would have drove her to be with man after man. Usually it is our own inner thirst that drives us to a life of sin. There is nothing wrong with being thirsty – that is how we are made, it is usually what we do to quench that thirst that gets us into trouble. What Quenches Spiritual Thirst In his book Sahara Unveiled, William Langewiesche tells the story of an Algerian named Lag Lag and a companion whose truck broke down while crossing the desert: They nearly died of thirst during the three weeks they waited before being rescued. As their bodies dehydrated, they became willing to drink anything in hopes of quenching their terrible thirst. The sun forced them into the shade under the truck, where they dug a shallow trench. Day after day they lay there. They had food, but did not eat, fearing it would magnify their thirst. Dehydration, not starvation, kills wanderers in the desert, and thirst is the most terrible of all human sufferings. Physiologists…use Greek-based words to describe stages of human thirst. For example, the Sahara is dipsogenic, meaning "thirst provoking." In Lag Lag's case, they might say he progressed from eudipsia, "ordinary thirst," through bouts of hyperdipsia, meaning "temporary intense thirst," to polydipsia, "sustained excessive thirst." Polydipsia means the kind of thirst that drives one to drink anything. There are specialized terms for such behavior, including uriposia, the drinking of urine, and hemoposia, the drinking of blood. For word enthusiasts, this is heady stuff. Nevertheless, the lexicon has not kept up with technology. I have tried, and cannot coin a suitable word for the drinking of rusty radiator water. Radiator water is what Lag Lag and his assistant started into when good drinking water was gone. In order to survive, they were willing to drink, in effect, poison. Many people do something similar in the spiritual realm. They depend on things like money, sex, and power to quench spiritual thirst. Unfortunately, such "thirst quenchers" are in reality spiritual poison, a dangerous substitute for the "living water" Jesus promised. William Langewiesche, Sahara Unveiled (Vintage, 1997); submitted by Jeff Ingram We all know the feeling of longing, but how can we tell the difference between being thirsty, being hungry and having an unhealthy craving for something? They feel the same, they are controlled by the same part of the brain. We get the same message. They say that a lot of time that you feel hungry, that you are really thirsty. Water quenches all thirst. So if you are getting that nudge in your spirit, first you should always drink a glass of water, if you are satisfied your were thirsty, but if your stomach is still growling that means that it needs some food. If you are truly hungry, anything that you eat will satisfy you, and you will be okay. But if it is a craving, then you will still hunger for a certain type of food. That is the point where we get in trouble. Because craving is not about our body, it is about our spirit. And no matter how hard we try to satisfy that craving, it keeps coming back and it starts to control our lives, our thoughts and our actions. The only thing that is going to satisfy us is the living water that Jesus promised. Water that if we take it, we will never thirst again. I don’t know about you, but this Lenten season, I could use some of that living water. As I speak to God, God is revealing all sorts of things about my soul. About those weaknesses and wounds that keep me stuck and about the strength that I need to move forward. About how to satisfy my hunger and thirst with the simple things in life first, and to look at those cravings, and to think what is it really that I am asking for. What is it really that I need to do. And how can I trust Jesus in this process. The disciples had left Jesus in the hot sun by this well by himself because they were worried about him. They didn’t think he could make it anyfurther in this journey. When they come back they bring him some food and he doesn’t want it, he tells him that he doesn’t need it – he has food that they don’t know about. That food is knowledge and understanding of his own soul. He recognizes the voice of his own soul, and its call out to God for fulfillment. He knew the difference between the body being thirsty and hungry, and the soul craving something more from God. His spiritual thirst in this story was to make a difference in this woman’s life. His hunger was to connect to her in a way that would not only change her, but those around her. That food that the disciples didn’t know about was the satisfaction of doing God’s will, even in a vulnerable situation. Jesus was sent into this world with a mission to show God’s love to the world. He knows all of the struggles of this world, of being a person, of learning to control our hunger and thirst instead of allowing them to control us. The Lenten story is about how Jesus felt the temptations that we feel everyday, but how to rise above them. Every encounter with Christ is an encounter with the things that get to us. Every encounter with Christ makes a stronger person, better able to deal with life. Every encounter with Christ is an opportunity to change the world- by first learning to change ourselves. I love this story because it is a story of a woman who made a difference in the world. She wanted everybody to know the good news of transformation. We don’t have to stand here any longer we can be better than we ever dreamed we could be – just by having an encounter with Christ! We are so afraid of evangelism, we are so afraid to share our faith with others- but this story is a perfect example of just how easy it is to bring others to Jesus. It has been said that evangelism is just the story of one beggar, telling another beggar where to go and get bread. Or in this case it is one sinner, telling another sinner where to get a tall refreshing glass of water – in a living encounter with Christ! Let us pray…. A Day without Women Invite someone to do the right thing What is evangelism? Stand up for what you believe in Leads to extraordinary transformation radical newness and radical inclusiveness Not just a one on one, but a ministry to an entire people A New Creation Once there was a man on a train going across the desert in Arizona. He was the only person in the car who had not pulled down the window shades to keep out the glare of the hot sun on the parched earth. In contrast to the other passengers, he kept looking out his window, and seemed actually to enjoy the dismal scene. After a while the curious man seated across the aisle, asked, "Sir, what do you see in that wasteland that makes you smile?" "Oh," he replied," I'm in the irrigation business, and I was thinking if we could only get water to this land that the desert would become a garden." That's what Jesus is teaching His disciples. He wants us to see the world's people as He sees them. Every one of them is precious in His sight. By divine grace, they can become a new creation, made beautiful in holiness. Robert E. Coleman, Evangelism: Behold the Harvest! An Unexpected Evangelist This wonderful man was not well educated and his manner was somewhat rough and crude. He became a Christian and took the Lord's requirement seriously. He kept pestering his pastor to put him to work. Finally, the minister handed him a list of ten names with this explanation: "These are all members of the church, but they seldom attend. Some of them are prominent people in the community. Contact them about being more faithful. Here is some church stationary to write letters. Get them back in church." The man accepted the challenge with rugged determination and enthusiasm. About three weeks later a letter from a prominent physician whose name had been on the list arrived at the church office. Inside was a large check and a brief note: "Dear Pastor, Enclosed is my check for $1,000 to help make up for my missing church so much, but be assured that I will be present this Lord's Day and each Lord's Day following. I will not by choice miss services again. Sincerely... P.S. Would you please tell your secretary that there is only one `T' in dirty and no `C' in Skunk." Ah, those unexpected evangelists. To this day, that nameless Samaritan woman, the first unexpected evangelist, is revered in many cultures. In southern Mexico, La Samaritana is remembered on the fourth Friday in Lent, when specially-flavored water is given to commemorate her gift of water to Jesus. The Orthodox know her as St. Photini, or Svetlana in Russian. Her name means "equal to the apostles," and she is honored as apostle and martyr on the Feast of the Samaritan Woman. Can you do what she did? Invite friends and neighbors? Of course, you can. David E. Leininger, Collected Sermons, ChristianGlobe Networks, Inc. Some Things Must Be Shared A Mercedes-Benz TV commercial shows one of their cars colliding with a concrete wall during a safety test. Someone then asks a Mercedes engineer why their company does not enforce their patent on their car's energy-absorbing car body. The Mercedes' design has been copied by almost every other car maker in the world in spite of the fact that they have an exclusive patent. The engineer replies in a clipped German accent, "Because in life, some things are just too important not to share." Wow! What a great statement. Some things are just too important not to share. As Christians we believe that the good news of Jesus Christ is one of those things that is too important not to share. No, that is an understatement. We believe that Jesus Christ MUST be shared with our friends, our neighbors, the world. The work of sharing the news of Jesus Christ we call evangelism. The Christian faith has been advanced through the ages by people who were willing to take upon themselves the responsibility of being evangelists - those who spread the good news of Christ. King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com A Drink of Water to a Thirsty Soul For those conducting Communion this Sunday this illustration offers some strong tie-ins for a conclusion: Have you heard the legend of the Fisher King? When the Fisher King was a boy, he was sent out to spend the night alone in the forest, as a test of his courage to be king. During the night, he had a vision of the Holy Grail—the cup used by our Lord at the last supper. He saw it surrounded by great flames of fire, and he immediately became excited by the prospect of the wealth and glory that would be his by possessing such a great prize. Greedily, he reached into the flames to grab it, but the flames were too hot, and he was severely wounded. As the years went by, the Fisher King became more despondent and alone, and his wound grew deeper. One day, feeling sad and depressed and in pain, he went for a walk in the forest and came upon a court jester. "Are you all right?" the jester asked. "Is there anything I can do for you? Anything at all?" "Well, I am very thirsty," the Fisher King replied. The jester took an old dilapidated cup from his bag, filled it with water from a nearby stream, and gave it to the Fisher King. As he drank, he suddenly felt his wound healing for the first time. And incredibly, the old cup he was drinking from had turned into the Holy Grail. "What wonderful magic do you possess?" the Fisher King asked the jester. The jester just shrugged and said, "I know no magic. I only gave a drink of water to a thirsty soul." James W. Moore, Some Things Are Too Good Not to Be True, Dimensions, p.105-106 ______________________ We All Have Skepticism We all have skepticism in us. Think about these phrases: “Open wide now, this isn’t going to hurt a bit.” “It is easy to assemble. Just follow the directions.” “Please, daddy, I’ll walk him. I’ll feed him. I’ll do everything.” “Hi. I’m from the IRS and I’m here to help you.” “Mother is only staying for two weeks. You’ll hardly know she is in the house.” People may come to Jesus with some of that same skepticism. That’s OK, as long as we are willing to listen. Because gradually people realize that when Jesus opens His mouth, the only thing that comes out is the truth. George Clark, A Step of Faith Why Always the Bible? The author Hans-Ruedi Weber relates a story which is often told in East Africa. A simple woman always walked around with her bulky Bible. She never was parted from it. So the villagers began to tease her: "Why always the Bible?" they asked. "There are so many other books you could read." Yet the woman kept on living with her Bible, neither disturbed nor angered by all the teasing. But finally one day, she knelt down in the midst of those who laughed at her. She held up the Bible, high above her head, and said with a great smile: "Yes, of course there are many books which I could read. Yet there is only one book which reads me." I thought of this story as I read of the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman. How improbable a meeting it must have seemed to Jesus’ disciples. Jews were contemptuous of Samaritans. Rabbis avoided speaking to women in public. But with his customary disdain for the national and sexual chauvinism of his day, Jesus spoke to this woman, and he graced her. Robert Bachelder, Between Dying And Birth, CSS Publishing. Pointing to Christ The highly esteemed theologian Karl Barth had a painting of the crucifixion on the wall of his study that was painted by the artist Matthias Grunewald. In the painting there is an image of John the Baptist. The artist portrayed John the Baptist pointing his finger to the cross of Jesus in the center of the painting. It’s said that when Barth would talk with a visitor about his work, he would direct them to John the Baptist in the painting, and he would say, “I want to be that finger.” Barth wanted to point people to Christ. King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com Authentic Evangelism "Authentic evangelism," writes George G. Hunter, "flows from a mindset that acknowledges the ultimate value of people - forgotten people, lost people, wandering people, up-and-outers, down-and outers - all people. The highest value is to love them, serve them, and reach them." "Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city." The woman would be back. The woman who shied away from people because she wanted to avoid their scorn was energized to tell others, the very people who had hurt her, that she had found the Messiah. George G. Hunter, quoted by King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com SERMON ILLUSTRATION CHILDREN’S SERMON…… "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.' " Theme: Prayer; spirit. Visual Aid: A small potted cactus. (An unusual pot will elicit more interest from the children.) As the children gather on the steps they see I am holding a small cactus planted in a pot shaped like a cat. "What did I bring with me this morning?" I ask them. "A plant in a cat!" some of them respond. "Yes, a cactus in a cat," I tell them. "What does this cactus need to live in this pot?" "Sunshine!" says one little boy. "Yes, it needs sunshine. What else does it need?" "Water," replies a little girl. "Yes, it needs water. And there is something else it needs." I start to tilt the pot to the side as I speak. "What are its roots in? What is holding it in the pot?" "Dirt!" most of them say triumphantly. "That's right, dirt. The cactus gets food from the dirt. "Well, what I have to say to you this morning may be one of the most important things I ever tell you. But, it's a little hard to understand. That's why I brought this plant along, to help me explain it to you. Like the cactus, all of you need sunshine, water, and food to live, though you don't eat dirt -- at least not usually!" "You need all of these things for your physical health and to give you the energy to use your mind. But your spirit needs something too. Perhaps this will be easier to understand if you think of your spirit as a plant inside you -- probably not a prickly one like this cactus; you wouldn't want to be all prickly inside!" Several children shake their heads in agreement, grinning. "Now this spirit, this plant inside you needs a special kind of 'water' to live -- it's something Jesus called 'living water.' It isn't like the water from the rain, or the water several blocks from here that flows in the Missouri River. It isn't like the water you get out of a faucet. You can't see it, or touch it, or taste it, but you can feel it, at times of great joy or sadness, and at very quiet times. It is the feeling that brings tears, which you could think of as 'rain,' and laughter, which you could think of as the rainbow that follows the rain. It is spirit 'stuff' and it comes to us from God, through God's son, Jesus. And the only way to get it is to ask. That means it is important to take time to pray, quiet time, to talk with God and listen to God so that we can receive this 'water' for our spirits. "Tonight when you go to bed, before you go to sleep, you might whisper a prayer, asking God for this invisible 'living water' of the spirit. You might think of your spirit as a little plant inside you that is thirsty, and ask God to give it a drink." CSS Publishing Company, Inc, Cows In Church, by B. Kathleen Fannin