Lent 3

John 4:5‑26

{5} So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. {6} Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

{7} A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” {8} (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) {9} The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) {10} Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." {11} The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? {12} Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” {13} Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, {14} but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” {15} The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

{16} Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” {17} The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; {18} for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” {19} The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. {20} Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” {21} Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. {22} You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. {23} But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. {24} God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” {25} The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” {26} Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

John 4:27-42

{27} Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” {28} Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, {29} “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” {30} They left the city and were on their way to him. {31} Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” {32} But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” {33} So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” {34} Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. {35} Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting.

{36} The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. {37} For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ {38} I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”

{39} Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” {40} So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. {41} And many more believed because of his word.

{42} They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

The Sermon

These are the forty days when we are most engaged with the story; when we remember most acutely what Jesus means to us; when we take a self-critical inventory of ourselves; and when we focus most intently on the question that underlies all the gospels:

Who is this man?

To ask that question is to ask the most fundamental questions about who we are. Because the answer to that question means everything. It tells us about what we’re doing here; about how we mean to live our lives; about the burdens that we carry with us every day.

When she found Jesus there at the well, the burden of her whole life could be summed up by that heavy, burdensome water bucket.

Every day she had to haul it to the well, fill it up, and carry it—have you ever tried to carry that much water?—all the way back home.

That bucket represented the unavoidable labor of each day: the toil, the difficulty, the monotony, the sweat. And you have to have water, so the bucket was for her an inescapable taskmaster, always demanding service, always requiring toil, never giving a day off or even so much as a pat on the back.

But in addition to that, she had a special burden, which made her water bucket represent even more.

What on earth was she doing drawing water at noon? It was already a chore, and in the heat of the desert sun, the burden was multiplied by a factor that only depended on how scorching the sun happened to be that day.

But there must have been some reason.

Apparently hauling the water bucket to the well in the middle of the day was better than going when everybody else was there.

She has a little bit of a history; she’s been married a few times. Like five. And right now she’s with boyfriend #6. John doesn’t say how old she is, but she’s still young enough to be expected to haul this bucket every day—and, presumably, young enough that people still talk when she’s seen in the company of a man. Six is a lot, especially for her age, especially in the eyes of those around her.

Why not go to the well at the same time everybody else goes—early morning or evening, when it’s cooler? Well, because you get tired.

You get tired of the looks.

You get tired of the condescension from people who either don’t know you, but think they do; or who don’t understand you—but think they do.

You get tired of hearing yourself use that phony voice, either acting like you’re happy to see people, or trying to laugh along as they insult you, under the disguise of just teasing.

“Getting water to poison your latest husband? Just kidding.”

“I didn’t know women like you had to come and get water, too!—Just kidding.”

“I forget, which husband are you on now, #6 or #7? Ha, ha, just kidding.”

You get tired of feeling yourself smile that stupid, humiliating smile in front of all those people making their stupid remarks.

A man in Palestine used to be able to be married more than once at a time, and have public esteem. A woman marries more than once in her life and, at best, she’s the subject of ridicule.

So she doesn’t go when everybody else is there.

She waits until the hour when she can be sure that no one in their right mind is going to be around—nobody to chide her for her failures; nobody to keep her trapped in her embarrassing past, or wallowing in the unbearable shame of her present.

And then one day, somebody was waiting there when she arrived in the heat of the midday sun . “Woman,” he said, “Give me a drink.”

She said, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”

Maybe it was the way he ignored that question completely that made it seem like he wasn’t interested in whether or not she was a Samaritan, whether or not she was a woman, whether or not she had a reputation.

He addressed her as a person. That was all that mattered; that’s all he needed to know to treat her as a person.

It was like he already knew her; like he already knew about the past indiscretions and the past challenges; like he knew how hard it was to be her, and how well and how poorly she had acquitted herself up to this point in her life.

It was almost as if he could accept her for being who she was, and at the very same time, invite her to become something more.

That was her first taste of Living Water.

He finds you in the same place you find yourself: in the demanding heat of the sun, the place where you’re willing to trade some inconvenience for the opportunity to hide from the rest of the world the untellable secrets, the habits you wish you didn’t have, the dreams you’re too self-conscious to share, the burden you can hardly bear, but you definitely can’t bear to lay it on someone else.

This is you, where you are, unhidden, and this is where he is pleased to sit down a while, and let you serve him a little water from your own well so that he can drench you in the water of life.

The living water is a miracle that has no end and never runs out. It’s the miracle of not only being alive, but being understood, being respected, being forgiven. The living water gives life and refreshment to your dry spirit; when everything else in life is desert and scorching sun and hopelessness and monotonous toil, when my attempts to escape my shame and embarrassment leave me alone in the middle of a desert, there is someone to meet me there with an endless fountain of peace, and comfort, and hope, and acceptance, and love.

She was so excited by this revelation, she ran into the city to tell everyone—and she left the bucket behind.

Lent is an occasion to look at who we have been, and who we are, and who we hope to be. It’s about leaving our thirsty water buckets behind, and going to the spring of living water for a long, cool drink.

Keith Grogg

February 24, 2008

Carolina Beach Presbyterian Church

Carolina Beach, NC