The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming…; when he comes he will show us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.” St. John 4:5-42
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
She was a known quantity among her fellow Samaritans. She had what we might call a history. She had had five husbands and was now with yet another man. Whether she had been widowed and remarried, divorced and remarried, or simply separated and now with someone else, after a while it was hard to keep track, even if you were one of those neighbors who thrive on the details of others’ lives. How does a person with a “history” that everyone seems to know get free?
There he was, sitting there. She met him at the well at noon near her city (a small town by our standards). Jesus, weary and thirsty from his journey, did not give her his name and didn't ask hers, yet he crossed several boundaries by speaking four words to her, “Give me a drink.” Jesus’ disciples had gone into the city to buy food. They were alone; she was a Samaritan, a woman. Jews had no dealings with Samaritans; it was first century Palestine. What happened? Somehow, she now felt free.
They had talked about water. She had marveled at the very fact of their talking. Jesus, picking up on that, spoke of a new kind of water, living water, which he could give her so that an interior spring would well up in her so that she would never thirst again; so that she would truly, eternally, live. How was it, when they talked – Jesus and the Samaritan woman, these two who were separated by an infinity of boundaries – how was it, that the fact that they were talking at all led so suddenly to Jesus speaking of living water and eternal life?
She asked him for the living water, not quite understanding what it was, but simply asking. She didn’t want to schlep a heavy water jar back and forth in the dust and heat, but there were other kinds of thirsts, her thirst for life, underneath her request for the living water. At this, just as suddenly as he introduced the subject of living water, he said, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” Go; bring your history here to me. “I have no husband,” she said. Somehow he already knew, this Jewish traveler, this stranger. He knew; knew she had had five husbands, and the current man was not her husband; yes, he said, you spoke truly in saying you have no husband.
Further talk ensued. I perceive you are a prophet, she said, and then asked whether the Jews or the Samaritans were right about where was the true place to worship – the Samaritans’ mountain or the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Salvation comes from the Jews, said Jesus, from the Word of God, the Scriptures which God gave to the Jews. But more to the point: the time is at hand where the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeks such (Samaritans, Jews, anyone else) to worship him. Messiah will show us these things, she answered. “I who am speaking to you, I am he,” said Jesus.
His disciples arrived with lunch. They marveled that Jesus was talking with a woman but they didn’t raise any questions. She left her water jar and went into town (the water she had drawn could wait). Why was she so bold and refreshed as she spoke to all those people who knew her: “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” Well. Shortly the entire village would be coming out to see Jesus, who stayed on in their town two days.
The woman had experienced real prayer, in spirit and in truth. She drank the living water, rather deeply in a short time. She had prayed and had hardly known; it took her by surprise. Her whole life, cramped by frailty, sorrow, disappointment; that life circumscribed and written off in the judgments of her fellow townspeople; that life had been presented, open and vulnerable, before eyes that saw with complete perception. She had been heard by ears with hearing so clear it reached all the way back to the start of her story, to her first cry as a baby. She was known, but even more, she was understood. This wasn’t like her neighbors’ eyes and ears. This wasn't peering, squinting curiosity and judgment. This was the Truth, with a difference, with the patience of Mercy and the insight of Love, such as she had never experienced. This Love was awesome; it was – almighty. The woman had been in prayer. She had carried her water jar right into a conversation with God, who was waiting there at the well outside her city.
There are many boundaries between us and the holiness of God. God is deep and pure; we are shallow and complicated. We have these “histories.” They begin as early as childhood. Teenagers are particularly tied and bound by them, especially by their judgmental peers. This goes on and on. School and college and professional school; careers, promotions, failures, changes; affairs of the heart, marriages, divorces, remarriages, families, rejection, illness, loneliness – we have all had as it were “five husbands” in one way or another, our “histories” by which others think they know us, like the Samaritan townspeople. How do we get free? Where is life? Jesus meets us where we are, thirsty, tired, at the village well. Fall into a real conversation with him, and all the boundaries between you and God’s holiness disappear. Don’t be embarrassed; he knows it already, yet he usually starts the conversation with something like, “Give me a drink.” And he usually ends it with words to the effect, “I who am speaking with you, I am he.” Nothing external appears to have changed, yet everything has changed. You are refreshed and free. You have been at prayer, and you may not even have realized it for most of the engagement.
One of the main reasons this church is here is so that multitudes of Samaritan women and men can have a moment with Jesus. It doesn’t have to be here; it can be anywhere at all, for the Father seeks us everywhere. But it is good to have a historic, familiar well to go to, to get that living water. Come, meet a man who knows everything you ever did; he is the Christ.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
