From the Pulpit:

 
  The Woman at the Well: A New Perspective
 

I am here to speak for the defense. Most of you all have heard this gospel lesson and preached on year after year. It is such a rich and complex and important story that I can’t imagine choosing any of the other scriptures to preach on today. This is a story so familiar that many of you allwould be able at the very least to give a very good paraphrase of it. If I asked you to break into groups of fourteen and gave you even ten minutes, I’ll bet you could come back and present a pretty darned good skit to the rest of us. Fourteen characters. Jesus. A Samaritan woman. Twelve disciples. Oh, but then there are the townspeople, aren’t there, but for most of the skit it is just a dialogue between two individuals. We’d have to think of some action to add, something to keep it from getting too stationary.

One detail that I feel certain nobody would overlook is the fact that the woman has had five husbands and that the man she is presently with is not her husband. Here is where I step in as her defense. Oh, I’ve heard the sermons in which she is called promiscuous, a scarlet woman, someone who lives in such shame that she cannot get her water in the early morning or late in the day when the other women gather at the well to gossip. That she would be the object of their scorn and derision. Well, it’s time to put on our scholarly spectacles and take a closer look at who she is, given the society she lives in.

She is not promiscuous. She is not the village tramp. There is nothing the least bit shady about her. She is a tragic victim of her times. The only way a woman could have had a succession of husbands was that either they died or they discarded her by means of divorce. In either case, she would have been left without means of support. The man she now was with was probably a relative of her husband who died, most likely a brother, who would have been responsible for keeping her alive but not technically her husband. This is a woman who has survived tragedy five times, who is now living a life not of her choosing, and who is at the well at noon because her heart is so
broken that she prefers to be alone.

 It is no accident that this story follows right on the heels of the story of Nicodemus, the Temple leader who visited Jesus in the middle of the night with deep questions stirring his heart, but who left bewildered and disheartened because Jesus’ message was too much to swallow. The two stories are mirror images of each other. Where everything is right in the first story, it is all wrong in the second.

We are told that for some reason Jesus had to travel through Samaria. And we know that Jews and Samaritans had had bad blood for a long, long time. They shared common roots for their religions, but each considered the place the others worshiped to be blasphemous and offensive to God. Don’t we all spurn offensive people? Jesus is in the wrong place in Samaria and also at the well. Men don’t go to the well. That’s woman’s work. And men do not talk to women who are not relatives. And nobody goes to the well at noon. It’s too hot. You stayed in the coolest place you could find and did as little as you could do.

But Nicodemus? He was a Pharisee with credentials to prove how upright he was. He was on home turf, where Jews belonged and Jesus belonged. He came at night, though, so nobody would see him, and when Jesus started talking about being born again he took everything on a literal level because he could not see what was right before his eyes.

 Both of these stories are all about seeing. In this gospel we always pay attention to the time of day because how light or dark it is, how well people can see is always an indication to us of how well they are receiving the gifts Jesus has to give. Nicodemus began in the dark and went back into the dark. Not only did he not hear Jesus. He did not see Jesus, and he did not follow Jesus.

 This woman, though, standing there with her jar on her hip, standing in the heat of high noon, which is the only time of day when sunlight could permeate even into the darkness of the depths of the well, this woman has ears to hear and eyes to see. Remember, I said there is nothing shady about her. She is there in the brightest sunlight, hiding nothing.  She asks the right questions, and, while she may not fully comprehend the implications  of what Jesus means when he offers her living water, she readily accepts the gift of that water. He offers her life and she is thirsty for it. As scarred and injured as she is, she is still seeking to be alive.

 I read a story this week, a sermon actually by a Presbyterian minister, in which she said she could identify with that woman. People in the congregation were surprised. Surely she was more like Nicodemus, educated, respected, successful. But she told them that when she was a college sophomore she had become pregnant. She had just begun to attend a Presbyterian church and was preparing to officially become a member, but she went to the pastor and said that, under the circumstances, she realized she could no longer join. The pastor asked her when in her life she could possibly need church more, and the congregation, to her surprise, embraced her and supported her, and her sorority took care of her all during her pregnancy, and the young men on campus did what they could to make her life as easy as possible until she had her son and gave him up for adoption.

 I’m sure there were some who looked at her askance, who whispered behind her back and called her names. But a loving community saw her as the beloved child of God, one who had made a mistake that had consequences and who would have to live with the pain of it. The woman at the well answered Jesus’ question about her husband with the excruciating truth because she saw in Jesus’ eyes, she heard in his voice that she was accepted, and because of that acceptance she could only answer with her own truth.

And what did this woman do? She ran into the town, right into the midst of those folks with whom she had such a long and complicated relationship. You have to come see, she said. You have to come meet him and hear him for yourselves. You have to come share in this living water. Do you think this might be the messiah?

 Jesus said to the woman, I am he, the one who is speaking to you. I am he. I am. Jesus is calling himself the
very name that God offered to Moses, and in Jesus God is offering himself to a Samaritan woman, someone who does not worship God correctly according to the Jewish tradition.

This is the Jesus who invites us into intimate relationship with him no matter what baggage we are carrying, no matter what we know about ourselves that would cause us shame and pain if others were to know it. This is the Jesus who offers us himself, the living water, not because we have earned it by our goodness, not because we have obeyed the law or read the Bible enough or even because we try our darnedest to be even minimally acceptable.

No, we are offered this water for no other reason than that we thirst for it. This is the Jesus who offers himself to us, today in the bread and the wine – offerings for our hunger and our thirst –  and in the sharing of the peace among this holy community. This is the Jesus who was born for us and who died for us and who was raised from the dead for us, all out of love. This is the Jesus who sees us and smiles upon us and asks only one thing of us, that we see him, and seeing, follow him.
Amen.