John 4: 5-30
Third Sunday in Lent/ 23rd
March 2014
Every
day was relentlessly the same, a trip to the well with an empty water jar and
home again. She went alone. It was about noon, the hottest hour of the
day. It was probably the only time she
felt safe to go. There were fewer people
around. They all knew who she was even if
they didn’t know her name. The city of Sychar
wasn’t as big as some of the other cities in the region. Yes, they knew who she
was. And she knew the looks. She knew about the gossip. She knew that
people could be cruel. She felt the
shame of the community. That’s why it was safer to go at noon. She wouldn’t
have to meet anyone. She could just get
to the well, fill her water jar, and then be on her way home. Home—if that’s what you want to call it. It wasn’t much of a home life. It certainly wasn’t conventional. She was married once—then again, and again,
and again, and again. Maybe she wanted the
neighbors to think she was married because she’s going home to someone. But he’s not her husband. The shame she carried was great.
That journey to and from the well
summed up the monotony of her life: every day, going to the same old well with
empty jars. Going to the same old well, empty. Tired and empty.
One day, which seemed like every
other, she went to the well with her empty jar.
He was waiting for her. Just
sitting there. He was exhausted, tired
from his journey. He was sitting on the
edge of the well in the heat of the day.
Seeing a strange man at the well, a well that belonged to their ancestor
Jacob, and no doubt nervous, she approached with caution. She could tell he was a Jew. And that added to her concern. She knew that
Jews considered Samaritans as unclean, subhuman, and she could only imagine
what he thought of her as a Samaritan and as a woman, a woman like her, full of
shame, unclean.
He was alone. His friends went to buy food. He stayed there to rest. But he was thirsty.
Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink”
(John 4:7). Not even, “Please. ” Did you
notice that? No, “Would you mind giving
me a drink?” Not very polite. She was probably used to people talking that
way to her. We can’t blame Jesus too
much, though. He had to be direct, to
the point. Jews didn’t talk to
Samaritans and certainly not to Samaritan women in public. She was puzzled by this request. Was it a trick? “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of
me, a Samaritan?” (Jn 4:9), she said. A
Jew could not even touch something that had been handled by a Samaritan; they
could not share anything. Nothing.
Jesus replied, in a cryptic way, “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 [,that is, for a drink] and he would have
given you living water” (Jn 4:10). If
you knew what I had to give, you would be asking me for water.
Very confused at this point, she
says, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that
living water?” (Jn 4:11). She’s
right. Jacob’s Well was about 100 feet
deep, fed by a fresh spring. He had no way to retrieve water from that well on
his own, no bucket, nothing, nothing clean that is. And then she became defensive, “Are you
greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and
his flocks drank from it?” (Jn 4:12).
Then Jesus said, mysteriously,
“Every one who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 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” (Jn 4:13-14).
Never
thirsty again. The woman said to
him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will never be thirsty or have to keep
coming here to draw water” (Jn 4:13). Never again, she says to herself, will I
have to come to this blasted well, lugging a heavy jar of water. Never again will have I have to subject
myself to the shame and humiliation of coming to this well.
Then, from out of nowhere, Jesus
said, “Go, call your husband, and come back” (Jn 4:16). “I have no husband,” she said. “You’re right, you don’t. The one you do have is certainly not your
husband.” How did he know such things about her? A prophet?
Now the conversation deepens. They
move from talking about practical things to even really practical things, such as theology! She begins to like
him, but wonders why his people treat her with so much disrespect. “Where we worship on Mt. Gerizim is not good
enough for you, because it’s not Jerusalem?”
And then she really becomes confused when he says, “Woman, believe me,
the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountaintop
nor in Jerusalem….the hour is coming, and now is here, when the true worshipers
will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these
to worship him. God is spirit, and those
who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (Jn 4:20-24). She knows he’s talking about a future
time. The Samaritans, too, are waiting
for the coming of the Messiah. “When he comes,” she says, “he will proclaim all
things to us,” (Jn 4:25), he’ll settle our differences, he will tell us what is
true.
Then, Jesus said, “I am he, the one who speaking to you”
(Jn 4:26).
“Just then” his disciples return
with the food, shocked to see him talking to her. No one dared to question him.
Then, leaving the water jar behind, she
slipped away from the men and ran off into the city, proclaiming, “Come and see
a man who told me everything I have ever done!
He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” (Jn 4:29).
That day the endless, monotonous daily
routine came to a surprising end. She
didn’t return home, instead, she ran into the city, without a desire to be
isolated, cut-off from the community; she didn’t care what people thought of
her—in fact, she had become an evangelist.
She didn’t return home with a jug of water, instead, she left the clay
jar back at the well —as the text says, one has to pay attention to every
detail in John’s Gospel—and she ran into the city to tell others what she
discovered about this man—and about herself.
Sadly, we’re never told her name. And, yet this nameless Samaritan woman is the
first person in John’s Gospel to spread the news that the Messiah has
come. Christian tradition later gave her
a name: St. Photine of Samaria. Photine means “enlightened one.” That
works.
While respectful of the tradition I
think we could imagine other names for her.
How about Desire? Not, Desiree, which means to be desired, but
Desire (which was a favorite name among the Puritans, by the way). Desire reflects her deep—deeper than
Jacob’s Well—yearning for a different life, something more. When she heard that
there was another water source that meant she wouldn’t have to go to the well,
she said right away, “Sir, give me this water….” That’s desire for something more. It says
something about the state of her life on that day. She goes to the well to satisfy her thirst. But all the water in the world won’t slake
the deeper thirst of her soul that cries out for something else, a life beyond
the shame and humiliation. Jesus
knows her, knows what she needs, and in order for her to receive what he has to
offer he has to take her out of one frame of reference into another. His cryptic responses do that. They throw her into confusion. A statement from Jesus yields a question from
Desire and then another response from Jesus.
Jesus is trying to see what she really desires. He’s trying to get her
to see what she’s really thirsty for. Jesus
is intentionally stirring the water, as it were.
So, I guess, Desire works, but perhaps a better name might be Zoe.
Why Zoe? In Greek there are two
words that can be translated as “life.”
There’s bios (from which we
get biology, biography), which means natural life, the period or course of
life, the extension or length of natural life.
It’s functional life; existing, but not really living.
The Greek work for really living is zōē (ζωὴ). Zōē refers to vitality, that which
animates life. Zōē is abundant life, full-life, a life overflowing with meaning,
purpose, love, and light. It’s “authentic existence.”[1]
It’s vigorous life. It’s life that
yields more life, not just sustains it. Zōē is one of John’s favorite words; he
uses it 32 times in the Gospel. We find
it right at the beginning of the Gospel in the Prologue. Speaking about Jesus,
John says, “What has come into being in him was life (zōē), and the zōē was the
light of all people” (John 1:4). When Jesus says that he’s “the way, the truth,
and the life (John 14:6),” the Greek reads zōē. Jesus said, “I have come that you have zōē and have it abundantly” (John
10:10). When Jesus says, “I am the
resurrection and the life,” he’s talking about zōē. “I am the resurrection
and the zōē.” When Jesus says that he can offer the
Samaritan woman “living water,” it’s zōē
that’s behind that word. It’s
overflowing life, Life with a capital “L” that cannot be contained in ordinary
life. “The water that I will give,”
Jesus said, “will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal
life.” In them—in us—within the heart or
soul or psyche, within our lives this new life will flow. And when Jesus talks about “eternal life” here
in John’s Gospel he’s not talking about life in heaven, but life, here and now.[2] Jesus is talking about true life, zōē, which is touched by eternity, life with
a touch of divinity, that is God’s life, God’s zōē, welling up within us, gushing up within us. Later in John’s Gospel we find Jesus saying,
“Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:37).
That’s the kind of life, with a
capital “L”, that Jesus came to offer, came to give, the kind of life Jesus still
offers, still gives. It’s so easy for us
to get caught in our routine lives and fail to see that Jesus is trying to give
us something more. The woman at the well
is so stuck in a day-to-day routine, so literal-minded, I sense despair, that
it’s difficult for her to imagine a different way, an alternate life, something
more. The poet T. S. Eliot (1888-1964)
once asked the question: “Where is the Life we have lost in our living?”[3]
It’s a question that often haunts me.
For I believe that this is exactly what Jesus came to offer her—Life—and
he will not relent until the scales on her eyes are washed away and she’s
allowed to see him and see herself. He
offers her more, offers greater life, true life, meaningful life, God’s
life. That’s what Jesus is always
extending out to you and me. Always more
Life. Always.
However, there’s something within us
that causes us to forget this or is fearful around this. Christian Wiman reminds us that we’re always
trying to bring God down to our level. Wiman is one of the leading intellectuals
of our age; he was the former editor of the esteemed Poetry journal. He was
raised in the faith, grew up in the church, moved away from it, then came back
to it just around the time he fell in love and got married and then diagnosed
with a very rare form of cancer. He has
written extensively about his experience and the depth of his faith. In his memoir, My Bright Abyss, Wiman, says, “Our minds are constantly trying to
bring God down to our level rather than letting him lift us into levels of
which we were not previously capable.
This is as true in life as it is in art.” When I read this recently, I thought of Desire or Zoe, our Samaritan woman at the well. She’s stuck at one level and can’t quite
connect with what Jesus is saying to her.
She responds to Jesus from within her immediate frame of reference. Wiman continues, “Thus we love within the
lines that experience has drawn for us, we create out of impulses that are
familiar and, if we were honest with ourselves, exhausted.”[4] We stay within the confines of the familiar,
we allow our past to limit what the future can be, we stay close to home, keep
up the routine and we end up exhausted because we’re trying to keep things as
they are, trying to bring God down into our world, into our lives, trying to fit
God into our experience, our expectations.
But Wiman then wonders, “What might it mean to be drawn into meanings
that, in some profound and necessary sense, shatter us? This is
what it means to love,” he says.[5] That’s what love does. Love shatters old ways—ways that do not, can
no longer give us life—in order to open us up to a “still more excellent way (1
Corinthians 12:31),” which is exactly what Jesus offered the woman at the well. It’s all given in deep, profound love. “Unceasing love, surpassing all we know.”[6]
And so she discovered something new
flowing within her soul, a new life stirring, bubbling up within her. She is now fully known, she is recognized,
she is understood by him. He knows her through and through, he knows her
past—all of it—but without a word of judgment lifts her up and calls her
forward into to a new way of life. And so
she leaves the water jar behind. That clay
jar and all that it represents for her no longer has to “contain” her life. It
had become a symbol of her life, but she didn’t need it any more. In leaving the jar behind she’s leaving the
rest of her life behind too. Love calls
her forward. Her body, her heart, her
soul, together, now become the container for new life, the zōē-life of God gushing forth within her.
I like to think that when she left
that jar behind, she tossed it away and when it landed on the ground it cracked.
Or, better…she tossed it away and
when it landed on the ground it—shattered.
Thanks
be to God.
[1] John Macquarrie, An Existentialist Theology: A Comparison of
Heidegger and Bultmann (London: SCM Press Ltd, 1955), 135ff.
[2] Macquarrie, 138: “Such
life, understood not as a natural
phenomenon but as man’s authentic God-given existence, is eternal or
everlasting life, because, being the opposite of death, the concomitant of sin,
it is therefore immune from death. Thus
the believer has even now eternal life.” See also John 3:16, 5:24; 6:47; 17:3.
[3] T. S. Eliot, Choruses from “The Rock” (1934).
[4] Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a ModernBeliever (New York: Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 2013), 49-50.
[5] Wiman, 50.
[6] Michael Dennis Browne,
from the text of Stephen Paulus’ anthem Pilgrim’s Hymn.
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