Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

A Woman With a Past Finds a Future

by Dave Wilkinson

John 4:1-42

March 12, 2000

The young girl was asked in Sunday school, "would you rather be good or beautiful?" I'd rather be beautiful," she declared, "and repent!" This morning we come to the story of this girl when she grew up and met Jesus.

The Samaritan woman's encounter with Jesus is a model for our encounter. Her problem may not be our problem, but our need is still the same as her need.

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail this morning about why Jews hated Samaritans and Samaritans hated Jews. Take my word for it. Or, if you don't want to take my word for it, I'll be glad to loan you some very thick books with tiny print so you can check it out for yourself.

We need to spend our time on the text.

It is high noon in the middle east. Jesus is hot, tired, thirsty and hungry. He comes to a village of the Samaritans called Sychar and sits at the well while the disciples go into town to buy food.

Perhaps the disciples leave Jesus at the well so he won't be contaminated by meeting any Samaritans. It doesn't work. They leave and a Samaritan woman comes to the well to draw water.

Now this, all in itself, shows us a problem in this woman's life. Women normally go to draw water and talk in the cool of the morning or the cool of the evening. No one comes in the middle of the day unless there is a personal or social problem.

Apparently this woman has been ostracized by the other women of the town. She has no way to win. If she comes with the others, she is insulted. If she comes at noon, she is publicly advertises the fact that the insults "get to her." Her presence at the well in the middle of the day is a public announcement that she is a failure in the eyes of her community.

So she comes to the well and Jesus does a very startling thing. He speaks to her.

Now first, she is a Samaritan. That's strike one. Second, she is a woman. The strict rabbis forbade a rabbi to greet a woman in public. There were even some pharisees who were called "Bruised and Bleeding Pharisees" because they shut their eyes if they saw a woman on the street and walked into walls or tripped over dogs sleeping on the sidewalk. She is also the kind of woman who has to come to the well in the middle of the day. That's strike three. She should have been out as far as Jesus is concerned.

But Jesus speaks to her. He not only speaks to her but asks for her help. He asks her for a drink of water.

Apparently the woman figures that the noon day sun has addled Jesus' brain. The very fact that he is asking her for help suggests that He could be deranged, maybe even dangerous. She reminds him that He's a Jew and shouldn't talk to her. She also reminds him that Jews have nothing "in common" with Samaritans. This means that He, as a Jew, cannot drink from her cup. Jesus doesn't have a cup so he's out of luck.

Jesus replies: "If you knew the gift that comes from God and who it is that is asking you for a drink, you would ask him for living water."

Soren Kirkegaard wrote, "God did not come into the world to say trivial things." We see this here. Jesus begins to move a superficial conversation to a much deeper level. But all the woman knows is that Jesus doesn't have a cup.

The text doesn't tell us but it is quite probable that this woman had just had a taste of Jewish hostility. She came down the hill at the same time as Jesus' disciples were going up. And we can be certain that, at this point in their lives, James and John and the others would never have moved off the path for a woman -- much less a Samaritan woman -- and one with loose morals at that. Perhaps she had been pushed aside or made to wait while the disciples marched by.

Now she has the chance to take a small measure of revenge. She decides to "needle" Jesus. "Sir, you have nothing to draw water with and the well is deep. Where do you get this living water? You are not greater than our father Jacob, are you, who gave us this well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle."

Notice her calculated insult. She knows that Jews hate the thought of common ancestry with Samaritans. They won't even admit it under torture. She also knows that the Jews believe that the well of Jacob was given to them and that Samaritans have no right to it. Maybe she figures that Jesus is tired or thirsty or crazy enough to swallow the insult.

Instead, he ignores it. Jesus is more interested in winning the woman than He is in winning an argument. He says: "Everyone who drinks this water shall thirst again; but whoever drinks the water that I shall give shall never thirst; but the water I shall give shall become a well of water springing up to eternal life."

This woman doesn't understand any of this -- yet. But she now knows that Jesus has something she wants -- something she desperately needs. "Sir, give me this water so I will not be thirsty, nor come all the way here to draw."

This is one of the most pathetic requests in the Bible. She is tired of the insults and rejection. She is tired of advertising her failure every time she walks to the well in the middle of the day. The well, for her, is not a place of happy gossip and the laughter with the other women. It is the place where she is gossiped about. "How wonderful to never have to come to the well again."

Sometime in the last century a whaler gave an opinion on a sermon he had heard. "He's a good speaker," he said, "but there are no harpoons in his sermons."

That could never be said about Jesus. Suddenly, without warning, he throws his harpoon right into the middle of this woman's life. "Go get your husband and bring him here also." The woman replies: "sir, I have no husband." Then Jesus sets the barb. "You have said truly that you have no husband --for you have had five husbands and the one you have now is not your husband. In this, you have spoken the truth."

There are two revelations in Christianity. There is the revelation of God and the revelation of ourselves. The Samaritan woman is made to come face to face with herself because of Jesus.

But why does Jesus bring up the husband issue at all? It’s not for cruelty. I believe He has to if the woman is going to be able to accept the gift He wants to give her. What if she had returned to the village without Jesus bringing up the husband problem? She would have then been wondering how real the offer of new life for her really was — "If he’d known who I really am, He wouldn’t have said what He said." But when Jesus says, "Go call your husband", He is also saying I know who you are and the gift am offering is to the real you."

This woman at the well is a person who would not seem at all out of place if we met her in the frozen food section at Vons. She might be living next door to us. She might even be us. Like most modern persons, she is not really concerned with her soul. She is concerned with meeting her physical and emotional needs and avoiding hurt and inconvenience. But Jesus moves her focus to a whole '’‘nother level. He tells her good news. But to her, the good news starts out sounding a whole lot like bad news -- bad news about herself -- bad news that she doesn't want to hear.

Bruce Larson in Dare to Live Now tells of an event from his life that illustrates our reluctance to admit error. "I was a new infantry recruit at Fort Benning," he writes "when I sat down to my first breakfast in the mess hall with ten other men at a family style table. I saw something in a large bowl that looked like cream of wheat. I scooped up a large amount into my bowl and poured on milk and sugar. A tall mountain boy sitting across from me was bug eyed: "is that the way y'all eat grits?"

"As a Chicago boy," Larson writes, "I had heard of grits but I had never seen them before. I filed this information away for future reference. But rather than admit my ignorance, I smiled self-assuredly and said: 'oh yes, this is how we eat grits in Chicago.' He was amazed as I finished the bowl, which tasted terrible. I kept my eye on him and discovered the proper way to eat grits is with butter and salt.

"Some days later," Larson continues, "I happened to be sitting at the same table with this same rangy mountaineer. Grits were served again that morning and under his watchful eye I took a bowl, scooped up some grits, and again poured on milk and sugar. Somehow I managed to eat the mess."

Larson writes: "we do not like to admit that we are wrong. We would rather go to hell maintaining our innocence that to say, 'I was wrong.'" That's where this Samaritan woman is.

Jesus' words to her could be read as deliberate cruelty -- a callous reminder of her problems when she has come to the well in the middle of the day for the express purpose of avoiding such reminders. And, in part, Jesus' words would be cruel if He did not also have a cure. As they are, they constitute necessary surgery so the process of her healing can begin. For Jesus did not come to rub our sin in. He came to rub it out.

The woman, however, is not ready for surgery. All she sees is the knife. She tries to turn the conversation:

"Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet." Now, in saying this she is paying Jesus quite a compliment because the Samaritans do not recognize the books of the Prophets -- just the books of the law. "Let me ask you a major theological questions that been bothering me a lot lately. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain and you Jews say that Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship. What do you say?"

The psychology of the conversation is perfect. Any time moral standards are unfavorably applied, the next question almost always has to do with comparative religion. Tell a man his behavior is wrong and he will almost always challenge the basis of your judgement.

You see, this woman wants to protect herself from Jesus by shutting him in a box that she can label: "typical Jewish religious bigot and male chauvinist." Instead, Jesus moves beyond her question. He says: "Woman, believe me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem shall you worship the Father. Something is happening here that is much more important than where people worship."

She now knows that she is out of her depth. She has just one more card to play, and she plays it. "I know that when the Messiah comes, he will explain all these things." This is a way to end the conversation. The phrase "when the Messiah comes" was used to refer to a far off day when all the knotty issues would be resolved -- kind of like Utopia or Never-Never Land. She is saying "I don't really know about these things and I don't really expect to know." It’s kind of a first century "Whatever!"

Then Jesus drops the bombshell. "I who speak to you am He. It is the Christ, the Messiah, who is talking to you right now." Literally Jesus doesn’t say, "I am the Messiah." He says, "I am the I AM." These are the same words the Living God speaks to Moses at the burning bush.

Jesus frankness tells us something about this woman. When people are indecisive, Jesus is deliberately obscure. When people reject the truth He speaks bluntly. But when people are committed to truth, Jesus speaks frankly and openly about His identity. Apparently, and despite all her problems, this woman had already decided that if the promised Messiah ever appeared she would follow him.

The impact of Jesus' words is shown by a small detail. The Disciples return shocked to find Jesus talking with a woman after all they have done to protect Him. The woman leaves her water pot and goes back to town to tell the men what has happened. The women won't talk to her.

In that culture among people of limited means, a proper "sweating" water pot that kept the water cool was very expensive. Had she been anything but overwhelmed, she would not have left her's at the well. She goes and says to the men: "Come and meet a man who told me all the things I have ever done. This not the Christ, is it?" I bet that worried some of the men. The things she’s done are the things they’d done. But the result is the first city wide revival in history. The living water moved from God to a woman and then flooded a town.

We also have the joy of passing on the living water to our towns — and jumping whatever walls we need to jump to do that. The action step for this week in out 50 Day Adventure encourages us to light up our street — to take a prayerful walk around the blocks where we live — asking God to shatter any assumptions or stereotypes that might keep us from reaching out to our neighbors. We are going to explore this week if we are willing to turn everyday contacts — including those outside our comfort zone — into opportunities for God to flow some living water. A definition of an optimist is a person who puts on his shoes when the preacher says "finally." But finally, let me make two quick observations.

The first observation is about Jesus. He breaks down barriers to make contact with this woman. Although he sits on the wall of the well the whole time, Jesus has jumped over all kinds of walls to reach her. He has jumped over the Jew-Samaritan wall. He has jumped over the male-female wall. He has jumped over the "I’m okay, you’re not okay" wall. He has done it to offer the incredible gift of "Living Water." Jesus calls her to see the same eternal destiny is there for anyone — anyone — who will accept God’s gifts — no distinction. He breaks down barriers of race and prejudice. He breaks down barriers of religion. He breaks down barriers of history. He breaks down barriers of sex. He breaks down barriers within the woman herself. In this genuine, human contact Jesus' spirits are refreshed so He says to His disciples: "I have food to eat that you do not know about."

The second observation is about the unfolding experience of the woman. Many years ago a man named Ephram the Syrian summarized the text this way: "At the beginning of the conversation, He did not make Himself known to her. But first she caught sight of a thirsty man, then a Jew, then a rabbi, afterwards a prophet, last of all the Messiah. She tired to get the best of the thirsty man, she showed her dislike of the Jew, she heckled the rabbi, she was swept off her feet by the prophet, and she adored the Christ."

The Bible tells us how God acts. His encounter with this hurting woman is his encounter with us. When He meets us by the wells of our lives, we experience the same patience, the same confrontation, the same respect, the same liberation. We too hear the good news. And, like this woman, we have the joy of knowing that we have met the Christ.