February 13 2022
John 4:1-30
My wife and I have three grown children ranging in ages from twenty-five to thirty. Our middle child, Sarah has a significant other but the other two, Elizabeth and Matt are still single. Now, my wife and I are concerned about our children being in a relationship because, you know, we would really love to have grandchildren some day. Yet we understand, dating is so different than it was when we met. I mean, now the way that you meet prospects is through a dating app. I cannot even fathom what it must be like to meet somebody like this, having to set up a profile and then having to look at somebody else’s profile and hoping that when you finally meet each other in person that the other person was as least as honest as you were.
While I’m not real certain about the online dating that my kids use, I also realize that every age his its way of helping people get connected. My wife and I met through a mutual friend who set us up and hey, it worked out because thirty-six years later we are still happy and in love. In ancient times though, their dating app was your local neighborhood watering hole, the well where women would go and fill their jars. There, away from the judgmental glances of the young girls fathers, a young boy could strike up a conversation which might lead to something. This is the way that Abraham’s servant found a wife for Abraham’s son Isaac and also how Isaac’s son, Jacob found his wife and how Moses ended up meeting his wife. So, while it may not be evident to us, those in the original audience of John’s gospel would most likely have understood that Jesus meeting a woman at a well had undertones of a dating scene. What we know about dating is that when a person goes in search of a significant other they do so because of the possibility of a future with them. So, its reasonable to assume that this woman was there at the well in the middle of the day hoping that this handsome stranger sitting there resting from his journey might be the one who would change her future. She was searching for a future because her past had become a burden she carried with her in the present. From her own admission, she was a person who had no luck in finding someone who would love and care for her. Six times she had sought someone out to hang with her for the long haul but to no avail. The tragedy of her situation which might be hard for us to grasp is that for a woman in her world, being without a man to provide for her, to give her security, meant that she would have been constantly uncertain of how she was going to survive. She lived in a man’s world where a woman did not enjoy the rights and privileges that they have today; they were always at the mercy of men to provide. So, imagine the trauma she endured as each man she entered into a commitment with either had died or moved on, each time leaving her alone and scared, unsure of where she would go to find just the basic sustenance. Currently, we are told in our story, this woman found herself merely in the company of a man not her husband which is told not so that we might wag our finger at her but so that we might be struck with the desperation of her situation.
It was at this depth of her despair that this woman saw Jesus sitting at the well and grabbing her jar she ran to see just who this was that was resting there. This stranger very politely asked her for a drink of water. As he spoke she could tell by his accent that he was from Judaea and she asked him why would he, a Jew, ask her, a Samaritan, for a drink. Here we begin to understand that John desires that we not only know that this story is about a woman but how this woman represents the people of Samaria. Samaria was the area that was once part of the Promised Land, the part that the people of ten of the tribes of Israel had claimed for themselves leaving the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin to have the land around Jerusalem. This northernmost land where God’s people lived became known as a land full of idolatry which had gotten so bad that God allowed wave after wave of foreigners to invade it until the people became vastly different in their beliefs than those who lived in Judaea. Just as the woman had sought someone who could ease her anxiety and worry over her existence so too had the people of Samaria sought out ways to manipulate the powers of nature so that their worries and concerns over their safety might be appeased. Again and again they chased after the different ways, different powers, offering up themselves and all that they had all to find something to give then relief from the gnawing unease of their life. Yet, just as in the case of the woman, none of these gods they chased after ever delivered on what they promised. In the end, all the people of Samaria had was an emptiness that longed to be filled.
So, yes, this woman and her people were a people with a past but Jesus was a man who offered them a future. This future was a future where their past longings would at last be satisfied. Jesus explains to her that he is the gift of God, a present from the Present One, the one who was given to give a life which satisfied. Jesus the gift was given to save the world, to bring us into the safest place, the very life of God. Jesus offers this woman the living water, a life in the Spirit who would wash over her and lead her out into the ocean depths of the love of God.
The woman does not understand Jesus because her life of earthly sorrows had no room for heavenly joys. How can this be, she wonders, that the love of God might come in and flood my life; I am a woman with a past. Yet, here is Jesus offering her a future. A future saturated and overflowing with the life and love of God, the life of eternity. This life and love would wash over her in wave after wave until her life would be awash with love, flowing and overflowing her life in a torrent of love. Such love, of course could not be hidden but would be a reality that could not be dismissed, just as a flood cannot be ignored. This new reality which would be so evident would be known to be true because it is a reality that would be experienced and known to be the truth.
What Jesus offered this woman was the true way of life, the life of the eternal God. So she could come to know that life is more than a daily struggle, of lugging water and searching for a meal. Life could be known as a life maintained and sustained by the God who loved her, a God whose love washed continually over and through her life. This is the future Jesus offers to this woman with a past, a past plagued by an endless struggle to figure out what to eat, or what to drink or what to wear or where to live. Jesus was holding out a future of love so that she could leave her anxiety and worry in the past. No earthly relationship could give her such a future that she thirsted for because what we all are thirsting for can only be given to us from heaven.
So, yes, she was a woman with a past. Jesus knew her, he knew her past. Jesus asked her to go and call her husband to come and meet Jesus at the well. The woman replied that she had no husband to which Jesus countered with the revelation that he already knew that the one she was living with was not her husband and that she had had five husbands before this one. You see, Jesus was there with her in her pain, in her hurt, in her anxiety and worry, Jesus was there and he knew her longings. And Jesus knows not only her longings but our longings as well. This is why he was given, to take all of that pain and hurt and make it his own upon the cross. Jesus came to take all the worst that this world has to offer so that he could offer us something so much better, a future secure in the love of God. A future given so that we could leave our past in the past.
The woman can only respond with what she knows of, the past. Thus for her such a man who knows what he knows can only be a man of God, a prophet. So caught up in what is past and passing away she believes it is her duty to dredge up the old controversies, the old hurts surrounding the worship of God in Jerusalem.These were controversies that were rooted in the insecurity of not knowing God, of somehow believing that if only they could worship at the right place, do all the right things, say all the right words and sing all the right songs then, just maybe God would show up and show his people his favor. What the problem was was that people had always been afraid to step into the ocean depths of God’s love but as we well know, the ocean cannot be known from the shoreline. Jesus came to move us from a worship of sacrifices to a worship of the offering of ourselves to be channels of God’s overflowing love. Now is the time to be drawn into the river of life, the Spirit, this is what Jesus tells the woman. Jesus says in so many words, allow the Spirit to wash over you and through you and out of you until your life becomes part of the great flood of love, a reality which cannot be hidden, a truth waiting to be experienced. When you allow yourself to be drawn into this life and love of God, to give your life to be a channel of the love of God, there you will discover God the Father who has been searching for you all along. So, when we step into the ocean what we find is that the ocean comes washing over us in wave after wave of love.
The woman Jesus encountered and the people she represented, they had searched high and low for a god that would give them a life without anxiety or worry. This was their past. But here is Jesus holding out a future, a future where we find that God is searching for us. The God who searches for us is the God who gave us Jesus, a gift sent out to seek and to save the lost, those lost in a past of empty longings and demanding thirst. To those entrapped by fear on the shoreline, Jesus searches us out and offers us a taste of that water, a taste that satisfies yet leaves us always longing for more. This longing makes us leap into the waves to be carried out, to find ourselves found by the one who gave us the gift, a gift of our future which allows us to make our past the past. What about you? Are you thirsty for more? Are you ready to leave your past in the past and take a deep dive into the wet and wonderful future Jesus is offering you? May you find your thirst quenched by God today! Amen!
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