Lent 3 A: Living Water, Living Faith
Dear Partner in Preaching,
How does someone come to faith? Not simply “faith” in the sense of intellectual or cognitive assent to doctrinal formulations like “Jesus is the Son of God.” But “faith” more in its biblical sense of trust, a living and active trust that makes it possible to take significant risks. I ask this question because I think today’s lengthy reading from John offers a vivid portrait of one such person coming to this kind of vibrant, trusting, risking-taking faith.
In order to highlight the possibility of not just lifting up but inviting such faith, I’ll make one brief observation about the use of this passage on Sunday and then offer a few reflections on the narrative. First, the suggestion: given the length and significance of this passage, I’d recommend, first, omitting some or all of the other readings to make space for this one and, second, preparing a shorter-than-usual sermon to bringing this conversation to life by having it read by various members of the staff and/or congregation taking up the parts of narrator, Jesus, the woman at the well, the disciples (as a group), and the Samaritans (as a group; you can use the same couple of voices that read the part of the disciples).
As to my reflections, I notice three things that I think are essential in cultivating such faith. The relative vulnerability and openness of the characters is the first. Jesus asks for a drink and so shows his need. (Quick side note: I know “give me a drink” doesn’t sound like a request, but the woman treats it as such, so I will also.) Asking someone for anything exposes a certain vulnerability, as we typically don’t like to show our need. In return, and perhaps in response to this demonstration of vulnerability, the woman neither simply grants his request nor ignores it, but shares what I take to be her surprise and discomfort. That, in turn, invites a deeper conversation about life and faith that may never have happened absent this initial note of vulnerability.
Second, Jesus doesn’t just talk to her, he sees her. Jesus’ words describing her marital history and present circumstances are not condemnation for past or present sins, but rather recognition that she has lived a tragic and difficult life. (Note that neither John as narrator nor Jesus as central character mentions sin or invites repentance.) Abandoned five times, now dependent on someone who will not marry her, she is in desperate straits. Yet rather than ignore, critique, or pity her, Jesus recognizes and names her challenges and so sees and values her. In doing so, he conveys to her that she exists for him. She is not invisible. She has worth and value. And all of this may have been rather new to her. In light of Jesus seeing and valuing her as a person – rather than simply as means to an end or embarrassment to be ignored – she is emboldened to risk asking the central question that has divided Jews and Samaritans for centuries: Where is the proper place to worship.
Third, in response to her question, Jesus issues a surprising invitation. An invitation to imagine that even our most cherished practices matter little if they do not facilitate a relationship with the living God. An invitation to recognize that it is the very Messiah and Son of God who is speaking to her and affirming her worth and value. An invitation to leave behind her burdens and share with others the joy she has encountered in their meeting. These invitations are surprising in that the come from a man to a woman, a Jew to a Samaritan, and a rabbi of relative power and authority to someone who had neither. They are also surprising because each invitation also involves challenge – the challenge of getting over one’s piety as an excuse for keeping a distance from God; the challenge of accepting the new identity Jesus offered; and the challenge of imagining that God could and would use her to share the good news. Invitations aren’t devoid of challenges, and challenges can themselves be empowering when offered out of regard, acceptance and affirmation.
In response to all this, the woman leaves her jar behind, goes out to her neighbors to tell what Jesus has shown her, and brings them to Jesus. Every element of that is risky. Yet she is, in almost every way, a completely different person and so able to take risks. Or, perhaps she is simply the person God created her to be but that she had difficulty embracing because of the tragedies she had experienced, and it is discovering who God created her to be that gives her the capacity for risking herself. The Gospel, I think, is often like that, creating something new that is really what God had hoped and intended for all along, and that gift of identity and regard is always empowering.
A willingness to be vulnerable. Truly seeing each other. Offering invitations that take seriously the gifts, worth, and potential of another. And all of this leading to greater faith, love, and action. This is the stuff of this story and, potentially, of the communities to whom we preach. Perhaps the whole sermon can be an act of vulnerability, sight, and invitation, or perhaps this letter will serve as such to you as you go into the pulpit this Sunday and into your role as leader of your community in the coming days. For I am so grateful for what you offer your people week in and week out. I know it isn’t easy. But I also know it matters. Thank you. Thank God for you. And blessings on your proclamation.
Yours in Christ,
David
David, great insight…Thomas is seen and sees at the conclusion of John’s Gospel.
Thought those who use this sight might be interested in a Readers’ Theatre rendition of the text and poem
Blessings,
Kenn Storck
St. John 4:5-42 – New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
Narrator: 5 So he 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,
Jesus: “Give me a drink.”
Narrator: 8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him,
Woman: “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”
Narrator: (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)[a] 10 Jesus answered her,
Jesus “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.”
Narrator: 11 The woman said to him,
Woman: “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?”
Narrator: 13 Jesus said to her,
Jesus: “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.”
Narrator: 15 The woman said to him,
Woman: “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Narrator:16 Jesus said to her,
Jesus: “Go, call your husband, and come back.”
Narrator: 17 The woman answered him,
Woman: “I have no husband.”
Narrator: Jesus said to her,
Jesus: “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!”
Narrator: 19 The woman said to him,
Woman: “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you[b] say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.”
Narrator: 21 Jesus said to her,
Jesus: “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.”
Narrator: 25 The woman said to him,
Woman: “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.”
Narrator: 26 Jesus said to her,
Jesus: “I am he,[c] the one who is speaking to you.”
Narrator: 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,
Woman: 29 “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah,[d] can he?”
Narrator: 30 They left the city and were on their way to him.31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” 32 But he said to them,
Jesus: “I have food to eat that you do not know about.”
Narrator: 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them,
Jesus: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 35 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. 36 The reaper is already receiving[e] wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
Narrator : 39 Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony,
Woman: “He told me everything I have ever done.”
Narrator: 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.”
A Poem a Sunday
Lent II – A
March 19, 2017
Well! Well! Well!
Water is life
status is wealth,
and Jacob’s well
is a place of death.
Death to a barren one
who lives in despair
yet encounters the Teacher
with living water to share.
Living water that cascades
from a cloud ridden sky,
a gift of liquid grace
for a woman’s deep cry.
Underground waterfalls
and the Prophet’s voice
declare: “I am the One!
And you have a choice
to step into grace,
be drowned by the waters
or remain in disgrace
in Jacob’s dark quarters.
A well springs within you,
a promise ever new.
escape the well of Jacob
live a life that is true.”
Samaritan, half-breed,
barren woman once cursed
now bright and brave
having had a new birth.
Declares to her neighbors:
“This is the one,
the Prophet of God,
Messiah, the Chosen One.
Come, see for yourself.
Come, to the living waters.
Jacob’s old well
now has no borders.
Grace is for all,
no longer in a Temple.
God, dwells with God’s people,
it is truly that simple.
Come to the living waters;
be washed, made new.
God loves all peoples,
and is here for you.”
Copyright @ A Poem a Sunday
May be used with permission
kennstorck@gmail.com
I was taken by something that was said on “Sermon Brainwave” that the most likely reason for her “marital troubles” would be because she was barren; so she was abandoned over and over again. In that culture, I would envision that barrenness would have been seen as a punishment from God for some sin of some kind – why else would she be punished? So whether or not she had done any “known sin” she was seen as sinful just the same – why else would tragedy touch her life so?
In early Greek sermons, the Samaritan woman is called apostle and evangelist, and it’s noted that her faith surpassed that of the disciples. Later, the Byzantine Christians considered her a saint, St. Photini. Vivid stories of her missionary career and her family’s martyrdom under Nero detail her preaching and healing abilities.
I’ve spent a lot of time with this passage. This time around, I’m struck by David’s first point: Christ comes to her in vulnerability, tired and thirsty. He asks her for something she is able to provide and offers what he has to give. The impact on her life and the lives of those in her city of that one act of self-humbling and self-offering was life-changing.
How often do I cross racial, cultural, class, gender barriers in order to ask for what will meet my most basic needs? (Pretty much never) What might the impact of such a counter-cultural move be?
That’s my personal point of wrestling with this text; I don’t know that it will show up in Sunday’s sermon.
And how often do I intentionally receive Christ in the form of someone crossing those human-imposed barriers to ask for something from me? How often do I stay with the conversation long enough to discover the grace that they bring?
Yes it should! I continue to wrestle with this text too! I find David’s reflection helpful. I wonder whether there could be another perspective. Christ the bridegroom of the Church and the Church the bride. Could this woman have been deeply trouble by something they meant have was marginalised by others. Therefore tried to find meaning from all sorts of spiritualities. Having lost a parent through suicide and therefore having experienced the marginalisation from my culture even from close family and friends, this texts resonates with me a deep level. In Jesus I found leaving water after trying all source of other means in vain. Maybe this woman is in the same position as some of my women friends in my culture who are still seen as property and therefore passed from one man to the other as part of the culture in search of a boy child to carry the family name forward, and yet she is marginalised by society as she is seen as being the problem. Jesus, who goes before us all, meets her at the point of her need, while the disciples are fighting over who is the greatest!
Another point of interest, adding to our sense of this woman’s vulnerability, is the fact that she went to the well at noon, in the heat of the day, and seemingly alone.
Collecting water was a communal activity. The women of the village would go to the well together, perhaps for safety’s sake. The fact that this woman was alone, at a time of day when no one else would have been collecting water, emphasises her isolation. She was something of an outcast, needing to collect water by herself because she couldn’t bring herself (or wasn’t permitted) to join the other women.
I am so grateful for this resource. Thank you David. For a feminist interpretation of this text, particularly the bit about shaming the Samaritan woman at the well for sexual sins (how many husbands!) I recommend Sandra Schneiders, “Written that You May Believe: Encountering Jesus in the Fourth Gospel.” Published by Herder and Herder.
There’s a challenge in the woman’s response to Jesus – You – a prophet – have never accepted us! (our fathers worshipped in this mountain and you say Jerusalem is the place). Or, ‘you’ve never recognized us as a legitimate people so what are you doing here with me?’ Israeli’s and Palestinians, conservatives and liberals, white men and women of color… The wounds are deep and lasting. For this to be the ‘healer of the order of things’ – soter of the kosmos – is a breakthrough…