Scripture Intro – John 4:5-42
Today’s gospel reading is the story of Jesus and the woman
at the well.
The key thing to know about this story is that it takes
place in Samaria.
Samaria is the territory that lies between Judea and
Galilee. Jesus and his disciples would need to pass through Samaria or go
around it every time they traveled from Galilee to Jerusalem. The reason they
might consider taking the long way around is because Jews and Samaritans were
not on friendly terms.
The Samaritans were a mix of decedents from the original
Northern Kingdom tribes and foreign colonists from Babylonia. When the Jews returned
from exile and rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem in Judea, the Samaritan
objected, because they believed God now resided in their territory on the top
of Mount Gerizim. Because there could be only one true place to worship God,
and the Jews and the Samaritans disagreed on where that was, the two groups reviled
each other and built up numerous cultural walls to keep from interacting with
one another.
Into this setting walks Jesus and the woman from Samaria.
It’s worth noting that she stands in stark contrast to the
story of Nicodemus that we heard last week.
Nicodemus is a Jew. She is a Samaritan.
He is a man. She is a woman.
He is righteous moral leader. She has a questionable past
and is an outcast.
Nicodemus visited Jesus at
midnight
Jesus encounters the
Samaritan woman at noon.
Possibly because when the sun
is high overhead it is much harder to hide in the shadows…and this encounter
was one that Jesus wanted everyone to see.
Rev. Maureen Frescott
Congregational Church of
Amherst, UCC
March 23, 2014
Exodus 17:1-7; John 4:5-42
“Thirst”
At
daybreak on April 26, 2003, 27-year-old adventurist Aron Ralston set off on a solo
hike into the remote canyonlands of Utah. It was meant to be a fast day hike,
one that he had done many times before, so he carried only a limited amount of
food and water, and he didn’t feel it was necessary to tell anyone where he was
going.
You
can probably guess where this story is heading.
Just
after noon, Ralston met two young women who walked with him for a while. When
he told them how far he intended to hike and where, they were skeptical that he
would finish before dark. When they reached a fork in the trail they urged him
to hike out with them, but he insisted on going it alone and completing the
hike he had set out to do.
At
2:40 in the afternoon, Ralston lowered himself into a narrow slot canyon, which
is essentially a crevice in the ground, where the walls are so close together
you can touch both sides without straightening your arms, and the canyon floor
is so far down the sky is reduced to a narrow band of blue and white above.
As
he shimmied down into the narrow opening, navigating around the fallen rocks
that had wedged themselves between the canyon walls, Ralston inadvertently dislodged
an 800-pound boulder. He fell, landing on his feet on the canyon floor below…but
the boulder came tumbling down after him, trapping and pinning his right hand
and wrist against the canyon wall.
Aron
Ralston spent six long tortuous days at the bottom of that canyon, desperately
trying to wrench his arm free of the rock that held him in place.
I
will spare you the gory details of how he eventually broke free.
You
can read about it in the book that Ralston wrote about his experience, which he
titled “Between a Rock and a Hard Place,” or you can watch the movie version of
his story, starring actor James Franco, which was renamed, 127 hours.
One
hundred and twenty seven hours is how long Aaron Ralston managed to survive in
that narrow desert canyon without food, and more importantly, without water.
We
often hear that the human body can function for weeks without food, but without
water, we will die in 3 to 5 days.
The
survival time is reduced even further if we’re exposed to heat, cold, and the
elements, like Aron Ralston was in the Utah desert.
Over
the course of six days, Ralston felt his skin shrivel, his blood pressure drop,
and his organs deteriorate as he lost 4 to 5 pounds per day.
But
what he remembers most about the experience is his unrelenting thirst. In his
book, he writes:
For all the physical signs of my body’s dire need
for hydration, nothing, nothing compares to the anguish of my thirst:
unshakable…unquenchable….insuppressible…inextinguishable. I find myself wishing
to get this all over with simply to bring relief to the thirst.
Ralston
survived for six long days by rationing the two sips of water he had left in
his bottle and recycling the water that trickled out of his body.
Again,
I will spare you the unpleasant details about how he did that.
While
he was trapped, with his mind and his body straining to function, Ralston did
what many of us would have done. He came to terms with the fact that he was
going to die. He thought of what
he might say to his family and friends if he had one last chance to tell them
how much he appreciated and loved them, he looked back over his life and felt
regret for all the selfish and stupid things he had done, and he promised
himself that if by some miraculous chance he made it through this experience
alive, he would be a better person, and no longer believe that he had to go it
alone in the world.
The
combined predicament of feeling trapped and decimated by thirst, is one that
would bring most of us to our knees.
When
we can’t move or escape from a situation that is slowly killing us, when our
lips and throat are cracking from lack of life giving moisture, when our head
is pounding as our blood desperately tries to force itself through our
veins…..there’s not much that we can do except resign ourselves to our fate and
wait to die, or wait for someone to save us, because we no longer have the
strength to save ourselves.
The
woman Jesus encountered at the well was in a similar predicament.
She
was thirsty, and she was trapped, and she was desperate for someone to save
her.
As
a Samaritan woman with five marriages under her belt she was trapped by her
social and religious standing, her gender, and her reputation.
We don’t
know if she has been divorced 5 times, widowed 5 times, or if the relationship
she was currently in was actually what the Jews would call a “Levirate
Marriage” – one where the brother of her deceased husband is obliged to take
her in out of duty and pity.
What
we do know is that she came to the well at noon, in the heat of the day and hours
after all of the other women would have come and gone,
most
likely because drawing water in the morning with the rest of her community brought
on judgmental stares and hurtful comments, and it was just not worth the
effort.
She
would endure her thirst.
It was
easier than enduring disdain.
When
the woman approached the well and saw Jesus sitting there, I imagine that she
hesitated just for a moment.
She
knew he was not a Samaritan, perhaps because she had heard that a group of
Jewish men had arrived in town, but she didn’t know him so there was a good chance that he had no knowledge of her….and
thus she would just be some anonymous woman who just happened to be late drawing
her family’s water for the day.
So
she swallowed her fear and brought her empty jar to the well.
When
Jesus spoke to her, he must have startled her.
Men
rarely spoke to women at the well.
Not
because it was taboo for men and women to speak to each other, but to do so at
the well was seen as a sign of marital interest and intended courtship.
Talking
to a woman at a well in first century Palestine was the modern day equivalent
of approaching a woman in a bar and asking if you could buy her a drink.
Only
in this instance, it is Jesus who asks for a drink.
The
woman responded with confusion, as expected.
“How is it that you,
a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”
In her mind this was
wrong on so many levels.
He was a man, he was
not a Samaritan, and he was asking her
to provide something to him that she
had access to but he did not.
She could see that he
had no bucket to quench his own thirst.
Which made it all the
more strange when he started talking about giving living water to her.
She asked him, “What
is this living water, that you speak of?” And how do you get it when you have
no bucket?”
But
Jesus was not talking about giving her a literal drink of water that would
quench her physical thirst.
We
know that.
He
was talking about the eternal, life giving love and grace of God.
The
love and grace that sustains us and redeems us and is offered freely and
unconditionally to us all, regardless of the circumstances of our lives.
This
is the living water that the Samaritan woman was thirsting for.
She
was desperate to drink from this cup of acceptance and love.
And
this is the cup that Jesus offered to her.
He
looked her in the eye and said, ‘I know who you are – I know you’ve had 5
husbands. I know you are living with a man who is not your husband. And I know
that as a Samaritan you believe that God is to be worshiped on this mountain
and not in Jerusalem as the Jews believe…but in the end, none of that will
matter. The living water that will flow through God’s Kingdom is offered to you,
right here, right now.’
What
Jesus doesn’t say to the woman is that to receive this water she must first ask
for forgiveness….for being a Samaritan, for having a questionable past.
And
Jesus doesn’t offer her forgiveness.
He
never says, “Go, and sin no more.”
Because
the living, eternally sustaining love and grace that he’s offering to her is
not contingent upon her ability to be perfect and sinless.
How
many of us have been thirsting to hear this message in our lives?
Many
of us grew up in religious traditions where we were taught that we’re unworthy.
Unworthy
of forgiveness, unworthy of receiving the graciousness of God’s gifts, unworthy
of being in God’s presence unless we’ve first knelt down with our heads hung in
shame, and confessed that we are inherently defective, and will always be
deserving of God’s judgment and wrath.
This
story of the woman at the well is for anyone who has ever been told, “You’re
not good enough to be welcomed into the Kingdom of God.”
“You’re
not good enough to be in the presence of Christ.”
What
Jesus shows us here is that this nameless woman at the well has just as much
right to be in his presence as the respected and righteous Nicodemus.
Compared
to Nicodemus, she’s a nobody.
An
outsider among outsiders. History didn’t even see fit to record her name.
But
Jesus speaks to her and trusts her to carry his message back to her city, and
he spends two days in her city talking to other Samaritans because they too are
nobodies and nobodies matter.
That
is the good news that Jesus has to offer the woman on that day, and it’s the good
news he has to offer to us as well.
In
the bright light of the noonday sun, Jesus and the Samaritan woman looked at
each other and fully saw who and what the other was.
She
looked at Jesus and saw a prophet – the Messiah – a man who knew her past and
loved her anyway.
And
Jesus looked at her and saw a human being, a woman trapped by her thirst and
her pain yet she was still willing to leave her precious water jar behind and
return to her people to tell them the “good news” –
because
this time she carried with her news of living water…water that would quench
their thirst for eternity.
I
particularly like the ending of this story because it says, “Many Samaritans
believed in him because of the woman’s
testimony.”
This
woman who came to the well alone at noon because she was shamed by her past was
now welcomed into her community, and she was believed.
We
don’t know if it was because people began to see her in a different light or if
it was because she had let go of her own feelings of shame and unworthiness
that led her to believe that she had no choice but to go it alone.
Aron
Ralston walked into the Utah canyonlands believing that he was meant to go it
alone. All he did was disappoint people, and let them down, and do one stupid
thing after another to the point where it was just easier to keep people at a
distance, rather than deal with trying to repair what gets broken over and over
again.
In
the final scene of the movie 127 hours, Ralston drags himself out of the canyon,
having freed himself from the boulder that trapped him.
He’s
bleeding, severely dehydrated, and on the brink of death.
Off
in the distance he sees three people, a couple with their young boy, who just
happened to be taking a walk in this remote canyon on that day.
Ralstan
falls to his knees and cries out weakly, “I need help. Someone, please help
me.”
And
without hesitation, all three turn in unison and run towards this fellow human
being in need.
Aaron
Ralston is the first one to say that he survived his ordeal not because he
found an inner reserve of strength to save himself. He says he survived because
of love. In his darkest hour, he saw the faces of his family and friends all
gathered together around him, and he longed to see them again. He writes, “God
is love, and love is what kept me alive and that love is what got me out of
there.”
God
has a habit of drawing us out when we’re trapped by our pain.
Sauntering
up to us in the light of day and saying, “I know who you are.”
You
are a beloved child of God.
You
are loved even when others say you are unlovable.
You
have value even when you say you are worthless.
And
you are an indispensible member of this community, even when they say they
don’t need you, and you say don’t need them.
Love
and grace is the living water that sustains us.
And
as we allow that water to flow in us, and through us,
May
we see to it that no one ever goes
thirsty again.
Amen.
