John 4:1-30
Jesus shouldn't have stopped to speak to this woman.
She was a woman, and in their culture it was a terrible offense for a man and a woman to just strike up a conversation. And beyond that, this woman was from a different racial and religious group. For a whole host of reasons, Jesus should not have stopped and talked to this woman.
And Jesus stops and talks to this woman.
I think it's really so easy to paint Jesus as being very prim and proper. Because we live in a world with icons of saints and glossy magazines of sinners - it's hard for us to see the real image of Jesus. Jesus just broke all of the rules.
John Paul II said, "This is an event without precedent: that a woman, and what is more a “sinful woman,” becomes a “disciple” of Christ." "
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I was at a birthday party with a large group of people, many of whom I did not know. I was sitting with good friends, but one of the girls at the table was a stranger. All of us talked and laughed and had good birthday party fun - and then the girl I didn't know leaned over and asked, "So what do you do in Ukraine?" When I explained that I worked with an interconfessional student ministry, she really wanted to finish the conversation. She and most of her friends are rather progressive and unconventional and don't care so much for religion.
And I'm reminded of this taboo conversation at the well between a mixed-race woman with a string of lovers and this wandering preacher who would eventually die to save the whole world. How awkward was this conversation?
For the woman is was wildly uncomfortable. You can feel this in her words. For Jesus it was a wonderful time. Because Jesus didn't stop to talk to a woman. Jesus didn't stop to talk to a despised racial minority. Jesus didn't stop to a sinner famous for her sin. Jesus stopped to talk to a person. Jesus stopped to talk to a beloved child of God.
Jesus asks her for a drink of water. He doesn't have anything to dip into the well to get the water - so he is asking her to dip her bucket into the water and share with him. This idea is revolutionary because the very act of drinking from an unclean woman's cup would make Jesus unclean for worship in the Jewish faith. There's so much chatter in this encounter about this very idea. Because our faith doesn't have this element of clean and unclean, we miss most of the hidden conversation. But, this woman's people were desipised by the Jews and she would have know that in their eyes she was unclean.
It's so amazing that our religion lacks this idea of clean and unclean that for two thousand years people have been trying to put it back in. They fought to keep people from eating meat offered to idols because it wasn't clean - and Paul fought right back that the Christian faith doesn't hold to these ideas.
Because I'll be painfully honest - if ours was a religion of rules and regulations, it might be easier to face the tragedies we have faced. If we could say "this happened because we sinned too much and we weren't good enough" then we could just behave better and make sure we don't have to face this again. We could offer up some burnt sacrifice to an idol and atone for our sins - but Jesus calls us to the Way of Life. Jesus calls us to a much better way, but a much harder way. Jesus calls us to trust in his goodness. To know that God has a plan and we do not. To know that we do not understand. To be good and loving not because we want an easier life but because we serve a God who is good and loving. Rules and regulations would be so much easier right now - but God instead gives us grace. We must accept that grace and all the challenges that come our way we must understand in the framework of that grace.
I love the way that Jesus pushes the theological arguments aside. Their religions were seperated by just a few things - but those things were pretty fundamental and they really blocked the people from one another. Jesus just pushes these theological concerns out of the way and refocuses on what this woman really needs to connect with God.
And Jesus offers this woman living water. He offers that she will never be thirsty again. We are rarely thirsty - for a woman in the desert, thirst is a constant. When you walk a long distance to get water, you will be thirsty often. But we feel our own thirst. We thirst for good things - for justice and mercy. We thirst for selfish things - for sex, money, and power. We thirst for basic things - like being able to pray fully again and live into the faith that we still claim.
Jesus shouldn't have stopped and talked to this woman. There were so many reasons. And in a religion of rules, regulations, and warnings - God certainly wouldn't have anything to do with us. God couldn't interact with our sin and our selfishness. But in a religion of Grace, Jesus will always stop to talk with us - with sinful little us. Because God's thirst is that we drink of the living water - that when we connect with God through Jesus Christ, all of our thirst is quenched. When we live in relationship with God our thirst for justice and mercy will be quenched by God's great call on our lives. Our thirst for bad things will be filled by the goodness of God, and our basic thirst will be satisfied by daily interaction with God.
John Paul II continues, "Indeed, once taught, she proclaims Christ to the inhabitants of Samaria, so that they too receive him with faith. This is an unprecedented event, if one remembers the usual way women were treated by those who were teachers in Israel; whereas in Jesus of Nazareth’s way of acting such an event becomes normal".
This woman goes and tells the others. She starts from her own place of brokeness. she explains that Jesus knew about her scandalous sins and she explains that Jesus loved anyway. It's a radical testimony of grace. She shares with the entire town. She invites them to drink of the living water. She invites them to join with Jesus and share in the grace she has discovered.
Amen.
And the people come to Jesus.
From our point of weakness and thirst, we may begin to share our own story of our encounter with the Messiah. We may share with others the living water that streams up from within us.
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