Rebel with a Cause: Clean and Unclean

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March 8, 2015 - 3rd Sunday in Lent 
John 4:5-29, 39-42

5 Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9 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.) 10 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.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 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.” 15 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.”

16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 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. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 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.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

27 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?” 28 Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 29 “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”

39 Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 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.”

Sermon: “Rebel with a Cause: Clean and Unclean”

I wish I knew the name of that Samaritan woman at the well.  I wish I could apologize to her for the ways we preachers have mistold her story for centuries.   Perhaps in heaven, after being reunited with my beloved grandparents and cousins and my sweet old dog, I’ll find her.  And though I doubt regret is something we cling to in heaven, I’ll say I’m sorry.  Because I, too, have preached her story as if I knew it.  And I, too, have labeled her a promiscuous woman.  All because of that conversation she had with Jesus, and the mention of 5 husbands.

Jesus came to Jacob’s well in Sychar, and asked her for a drink of water.  She was shocked that he, a Jew, asked her, a Samaritan, for a drink.  We’re told Jews and Samaritans “did not hold things in common.”  That’s a polite way of saying they didn’t shop at the same grocery stores or live in the same parts of town.  The honest way to say it is to call it segregation, or apartheid, or racism.  Drinking from the same water fountain, sharing a cup of water was unheard of, because it required the breaking of too many social and cultural rules. 

And that’s exactly what Jesus did: broke those rules.  He asked her for a drink.  But the Samaritan woman didn’t really want to break the rules: the stakes were higher for her.  She was a woman.  Breaking the rules could mean being cast out of the system that supported her, even as it oppressed her.  But then Jesus explained something essential: he didn’t care about the rules.  He cared about the law: the law of God that says the waters of eternal life are open to all who worship in spirit and truth, Jews and Samaritans alike. 

So stirred by the grace beyond the rules that separated people as clean and unclean, this woman said yes, that she wanted these living waters.  Jesus then asked her to bring her husband to him.  She replied truthfully: she wasn’t technically married.  He responded with what has always been read with a sarcastic tone by us interpreters:  “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!”

Why is it, I wonder, that we picture Jesus as the sort of manipulative Messiah who sets people up to confess their sins and then shames them for them? 

Why is it that we fail to hear this woman’s response and all that happens because of it?

She responded not with defensiveness or anger, but with faith.  This unnamed woman named Jesus a prophet because he saw who she really was.  Perhaps she had made poor choices and moved from one man to the next.  Or perhaps she had, in a time of shockingly short life expectancies, lost many husbands.  Perhaps she was fulfilling Levite law requiring her to be the property of her brother-in-law after her husband’s death, to provide him with children, to live with him and serve him, but not to be technically married. 

Perhaps I won’t know until I get to ask her in heaven someday.  But I do know this: as a woman in that time, she was utterly dependent on men to survive.  And Jesus named that reality.  He saw her situation for what it was and didn’t leave because of it.  He brought her salvation in the midst of it.  He didn’t much care what it did to his reputation to associate with this Samaritan woman.

That sort of courageous compassion, of graceful rule-bending was catching.  The disciples came and, though they were conditioned to keep separate from that Samaritan woman, like any good Jew would do, they didn’t question Jesus.  Not one asked “what do you want?” or “why are you speaking with her?”  Not one.  And yet, for centuries of interpretation of this text, we Christians have asked again and again of Jesus, “why are you speaking with her?” 

Her fellow Samaritans didn’t question her, either.  They listened to her testimony of being truly known.  Perhaps that is the greatest salvation we will ever experience: feeling truly known by God and one another, in all of our complicated and tragic lives. 

She ran to her village and proclaimed this salvation to anyone who would listen:  “Jesus loves me, this I know…”   She didn’t much care what it would do to her reputation to admit her past tragedies or mistakes, or confess to her present scandalous water-sharing with a Jew.  And, once again, that sort of courageous compassion, of graceful rule-bending was catching.

Because the next thing we know, many who heard this woman’s testimony placed faith in Jesus as the Messiah.  And then they let that faith re-orient their rule-driven cultural and religious practices.  Some Samaritans from that woman’s city invited Jesus – a Jew – to stay with them. 

He said yes, once again breaking the rules to fulfill the law.  And they saw for themselves, and said those powerful words of faith that was made their own:  “We no longer believe because of what someone else has told us.  We’ve heard for ourselves, and believe that Jesus is truly the Savior of the world.”

Jesus was named a prophet and then a Savior, even as this Samaritan woman remains unnamed.  That Savior didn’t just come to save souls, though he did do that.  He came to save struggling women from grief and oppression.  He came to save human beings from the systems and practices that separate and divide.  He came to break every barrier down.  He came to show every human being, no matter how complicated their past, that they are known.  He came to save the world, all of it, from the us-and-them that threatens to parch our spirits and communities of the living waters of unity we long for. 

Yes, I would like to apologize to that unnamed Samaritan woman, for making her supposed sin the center of her story in so many sermons I’ve preached.  That’s not the center of her story, just as our worst life experiences are not the center of our stories. 

The center of her story is that she met a Savior who refused to abandon her to her shame or sorrow, and that he changed it all, watering her soul with the sort of acceptance she never could have hoped for. 

After saying I’m sorry for simplifying her story, I would like to then ask this Samaritan woman to tell me that tale in her own words.  I want to know the salvation story she shared with her entire city until they, too, were changed by an encounter with this rule-breaking Jesus. 

Maybe she would say that she was as promiscuous as history has made her out to be.  Or maybe she’ll tell me about how losing spouse after spouse, provider after provider, made her feel life was hollow and fleeting.  I do know there’s one thing she’ll tell me: that she met salvation that day at the well.  Salvation found not in a snarky Savior who tricked her into admitting what she tried so hard to hide, but salvation in being fully known and accepted by Jesus just as she was. 

Salvation that isn’t just for getting souls to heaven, but also for unmasking the secrets and lies of injustice and guilt.  Salvation that isn’t for saving individuals if they get everything perfect, but is for saving entire systems from apartheid, racism and segregation.  Salvation that has very little to do with the dividing rules of humanity and very much to do with the uniting law of Christ that makes all people clean.

And then, when all of that salvation storytelling has made her thirsty, I’d bring that unnamed Samaritan woman a cup of water.  It’s her turn to drink.  Amen.