The Samaritan Woman
Sermon Notes 12th March 2023
Bruce Fleming
Can you remember those children’s puzzles where you had to identify 10 things wrong in the picture; the puppy only has three legs, there is no rope on the swing, a flower is growing out of the slippery slide? That is similar to the picture we get in this story of Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well. Something seems out of place. Back then there were women’s spaces (kitchen, home) and men’s spaces, (fields, marketplace, town gate), and shared spaces, like the well. A factory in the 1950s was similar. Men are on the factory floor and women are in the typing pool or serving in the canteen. After work, men are in the pub and women in the kitchen at home. A shared space would be a restaurant for a family meal or a department store for shopping. Jesus is a Holy Leader - he has claimed the title Rabbi (a spiritual teacher to his people) - to bring them back to God and to bring God to them. But in this story, we find he is in a space with the wrong person at the wrong time.
1. He should not be alone with a woman. The risk of gossip, impurity, temptation, and scandal for a Rabbi is too great. Similarly, in a #MeToo culture like ours, the workplace is fraught with sexual tensions and dangers. Jesus’ disciples certainly queried his behaviour (4:27)
2. He is taking a drink from a Samaritan. Jews and Samaritans simply did not share food utensils, meals, or wells, let alone relationships. This racial and religious divide was centuries old and from the Jewish point of view, the Samaritans were in the wrong. As for Samaritan brigands, they saw Jewish travellers as fair game.
3. The woman is out at midday. A trip to the well is an early morning, or late afternoon task, conducted with social equals along gender lines. This woman is engaged in social avoidance and probably everyone prefers it that way. She is spared their contempt and they any guilt by association with a promiscuous woman. It would get the tongues wagging if the local Anglican minister had too many evening meals around at the recent divorcees house! Apparently, they love discussing theology - yeah, right!
Riddles (4:1-15)
After a genuine request for a drink, Jesus proceeds to talk to this woman in riddles, but his spiritual agenda is made clear early in the conversation. That he offers his truth, wisdom and concern to someone in her social, emotional and spiritual condition is revealed early. Something about her life seems to cry out for some level of healing or transformation - a better reputation, better social options, a better future. Jesus knows how she can move towards those precious things.
The literal refreshing water in the well is a powerful signpost to the real spiritual nourishment that Jesus is offering. Water really is a wonder product. We cannot physically survive a week without it, yet it also refreshes and cleans our bodies. Jesus offers her a new life in which she might find the inner resources and courage to attain some personal, social, emotional, and relational happiness and security. God’s loving spirit of embrace and acceptance is ready to nudge her in this direction, but she remains her own worst enemy at present. She clings to lifeless; it will take you nowhere, ends predictably, everyone else could see it coming, things! But a daily personal spring of clean water - clarity, purpose, hope, strength, confidence, self-worth, forgiveness, a new start - is available where she stands. She certainly leaps at the offer of easy water. I’m in if you’re promising fewer trips to the well!
Disclosure (4:16-26)
But if we want the freshwater Jesus is talking about, we need to let go of the stagnant stuff we’ve been drinking. Jesus now reveals that he knows a little of her painfully dysfunctional intimate life. Is she promiscuous to excess? Is she vulnerable and exploited by a succession of male abusers? Has she given up on herself as deserving of a loving trustworthy partner? Is she as much sinned against as sinning? What past traumas prevent her from building and maintaining good relationships? Does she always choose dangerous men? Does she always make herself sexually available early in a relationship? We do not know the answers to these psychological questions, only the sense of social chaos that seems to enmesh her.
Some social norms, like marriage, are used as weapons by a “moral majority” to shame and exclude outsiders, and the church has not been innocent of such behaviour. Some social norms, like marriage, represent a tried and tested model over thousands of years and thousands of cultures in which people, and their children, seem to flourish within secure and committed relationships. Marriage fits both those descriptions. All she knows is that her life is not doing so well outside those cultural norms, and that Jesus knows she is not doing so well. This, she realises, required some extra-sensory insight from Jesus - he must be a prophet or holy man!
The talk takes a sideways twist at this point, and she starts to evade with some classic, “pop-theology” and religious criticism. Or is she perhaps really quite literate in philosophy and ethics and here, at last, is a man who will talk at this level with a woman? I think the probable reason is that then, as well as now, “Religion” can offer anyone a very easy “out” when it comes to dodging moral scrutiny!
“Well, of course, there are so many different paths,” she counters. “I guess you have the traditions you were brought up with…as do we,” she goes on. “I mean, we have this sacred mountain, Gerizim, and you have yours, Mt. Zion, so who’s to say?” She gives a rueful shrug. “After all, doesn’t everyone think they are right?” The implication is this: Where you come from, maybe I am on the wrong path, ‘cos hey, according to you Jews, us Samaritans never get it right, do we? But can anyone really be so sure?
This type of moral and religious relativism steers a conversation away from personal relevance and towards universal doubt and abstractions. It puts all the “godbotherers” in their place. You see, if no-one is right, then no-one is wrong either, and no-one is accountable, to anyone, for anything, so no-one should judge anything, or anyone either. It is a valid observation with a false conclusion, as Jesus demonstrates.
Of course, every single culture or government or religion or moral idea that has ever existed or been expressed in the history of human behaviour is different from…well…the ones that are different! There are many different ideas and opinions on faith and morals. There are many different answers given on a maths exam. There are various opinions and witnesses in a murder trial. But that doesn’t mean that one of the answers can’t be, or isn’t, the correct answer, or a better answer, or an answer that is closer to the truth. Of course, in the absence of verification or certainty, it is best to be gracious, humble and understanding. And if you are certain that you do know, it is still best to be gracious and humble and understanding. “Humble” and “Tolerant” and “Peaceful” and “Non-violent” are just some of the different moral opinions open to us. But if no-one can know which values are the true ones, well then, how do we know if “humble” and “tolerant” and “peaceful” and “non-violent” are better than revenge, or intolerance, or greed or genocide - also approved in some cultures. People using the relativism argument to shut down other people’s opinions invariably exempt their own opinion from it.
What does Jesus do with this lazy and sloppy argument? He acknowledges the partial truth nestled within it. “Yes,” Jesus agrees, “We could talk of who’s got the correct Holy Mountain, or the correct baptism rights, or the correct gospel, or the correct atonement theory, or the correct sacred book, but that won’t alter the main point - God offers new life, to all who desperately need that saving chance of moral transformation and hope. In the midst of personal shame, chaos and dysfunction, renewal is possible. There is a “better” in both senses of the word - we can “get better” as in “improve,” and we can “get better” as in “be healed”. God works effectively outside, or even despite, all our religious and moral systems, Jesus asserts.
God offers life and operates in terms of spirit and truth, and those who respond to God do so in the same terms. Squabbles over buildings, geography, intellectual knowledge and cultures obstructs this central truth about God. Not every belief system points equally in this same healthy direction. Gandhi and Isis State take you to different places. Some things will turn out to be wrong, harmful and destructive. Not every Mt.Gerizim that humans build a temple on produces living water. Some wells are contaminated. Some lakes are radioactive. Some belief systems, like relationships, are toxic. But within his Jewish spiritual tradition, (and Jesus is quite clear about this), there is a type of God, a type of saving, a type of healing, that is true. And it is that spirit that Jesus honours and serves, and it is that spirit that empowers Jesus and empowers change.
God’s spirit doesn’t require a particular mountain or cathedral, or language or prayer book to transform people. But that is not the same as saying that some vessels aren’t more faithful bearers or witnesses than others, or that nothing substantial is being offered, or that nothing is required by way of a response.
The woman tries one last hedging move. “Gee, maybe you’re right. Have you heard the rumours these days of some expected Messiah, a chosen one of God, who could probably answer just these kind of questions for us - and then we’d know for sure.”
“Yes”, says Jesus, “You’re talking to him.” And that is Jesus’ astonishing claim that he does know. That he is not confused. Or a construct of the early church. Or a construct of John the Evangelist. Jesus knows what is needed for us in order to flourish as humans in partnership with God and with each other. If only we would drink from his well.
The Response (4:27-42)
It’s great to read a story where we get to see Jesus dizzy with happiness, so encouraged is he by the Samaritan woman’s response. The travel, the setbacks, the arguments, the challenges, are all worth it today!
She excitedly re-engages with her community telling them everything that had happened at the well. Jesus had to stay on for another two days, such was the community interest in his message. His disciples were also encouraged by the newly made friends in such culturally hostile territory. The temples on the top of Mt. Zion and Mt. Gerizim, with all of their priests, had not been able to achieve, and perhaps never even wanted to achieve, what God’s spirit achieved that day in Samaria, reconciliation and harmony between broken people and different races.
Jesus is overjoyed and explains excitedly, “Usually, as the saying goes, one person sews and four months later you harvest. Even then, someone else might reap what you had sewn. But today, we proclaimed the message and we saw a positive response immediately! And that’s what nourishes me, to represent the healing work of God in the world. It’s been a great day!” And who would have thought that the first Samaritan evangelist would be a woman of ill repute!
Jesus’ message did indeed have its origins in the Jewish culture, but it is bigger than the Jews now! In chapter four of John, Jesus went from being, “you, a Jew”, to “sir", to “prophet”, to “Messiah", to “Saviour of the World.” Now that’s progress! Later in John, Jesus says, “Heaven rejoices over one sinner who repents”, or to put it another way, God is stoked when one messed up person has their life turned around! And on this day, Jesus couldn’t wipe the smile from his face.