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To Know and Be Known
A sermon preached February 24, 2008 at University United Methodist Church,
East Lansing, by Alice Fleming Townley
John 4: 5-42
One of our favorite children’s books at home is called the “Mix and Match
Storybook.” It first belonged to my husband Michael, and now we enjoy it with
our children. (Hold it up.) It is a spiral bound collection of well known
stories condensed into one page each. The book has separate “sub-pages” for
each character and activity. For example, the three pigs, the three houses,
and the wolf are each on a separate “sub-page.” Hansel and Gretel, the
breadcrumb trail, and the house in the woods on separate “sub-pages.” The
fun part of the book is that you can flip the separate sub-pages, and in so
doing, mix and match the characters of each story. In a flip or two, Hansel and
Gretel are walking down the yellow brick road, on their way to the home of the 7
dwarfs . . . and the so story gets all mixed up.
First century ears listening to the fourth chapter of John would think
someone has flipped the sub-pages, and mixed it all up, like we do with our
children’s book. A Samaritan woman, a Jewish rabbi, at Jacob’s well, at
noon—none of these belong in the same story.
The story begins with Jesus coming near Jacob’s well. My Old Testament
professor, Dr. Greggs, used to say, whenever you see the word “well” in the
scriptures anticipate wedding bells. By all means, Isaac came to this well and
met Rebeckah, Jacob came to this well and met Rachel, and Moses came here and
met Ziporah. Can you hear the bell? (The bell rings)
But, now who would meet? Jesus, a Jewish rabbi and an unnamed Samaritan
woman at Jacob’s well.
A “good” Jewish man never initiated conversation with an unknown woman.
Certainly a Jewish teacher would not engage in public conversation with women at
all, not even their wives. Women, of course, were not even allowed to worship
with men, men whose morning devotions often included the prayer, “Thank God I am
not a woman.” One group of religious men would close their eyes whenever they
saw a woman coming down the street. Hence, they would walk into things and
became known as “the bruised and bleeding Pharisees.” (William Davidson,
p. 34, Lectionary Homiletics) I think God’s heart was bleeding.
Jesus should not even have been in Samaria. Yes it is the shortest route
from Judea to Galilee, but a good Jew of the time would have taken the longer
route “around” Samaria. The animosity felt between the Jews and the Samaritans
was centuries old. They shared the same family tree, both groups were Jewish.
The break started around 722 BCE when Assyria destroyed and occupied the
northern kingdom. The Samaritans eventually intermarried with the “unclean”
making themselves “unclean” in the eyes of the other Jews. The Samaritans only
counted the first 5 books of the Hebrew scriptures, the Pentateuch, as
scripture. The Samaritans believed God should be worshiped on Mt Gerizim, and
that God lived on Mt.Gerizim, as the Pentuatech said. The other Jews believed
God should only be worshipped in Jerusalem, and God lived in Jerusalem, as their
scriptures said. Both the Samaritans and the Jews hoped in a promised Messiah.
I imagine God’s heart was bleeding to see the break in his family. And so,
John wrote, “Jesus had to go to Samaria.”
Now, in John’s story it was noon. Women came to the well at dawn to
gather water for their families and to visit with each other. Everyone
came at dawn, except for travelers passing through, and the one woman wanting to
avoid seeing anyone or being seen.
Jesus, the Jewish rabbi, was thirsty, he came to Jacob’s
well, saw this Samaritan woman drawing water at noon, and
said, “May I have a drink?”
“What?” The Samaritan woman herself thought Jesus was all mixed up. “Why
are you, asking me?
Jesus said, “Woman, if you knew, the gift of God, and who it is that
is asking for a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you
living water.”
The woman now knew this man was crazy, and said to him, “You have no bucket,
no rope, and the well is deep. Where do you get that water?”
Jesus said, “Everyone 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 life.” The woman now
realized Jesus had something to offer and said, “Sir, give me this water, so
that I may never be thirsty or have to come here again to draw water.”
Jesus tried another way to make himself known. “Go, call your husband, and
come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said, “You are
right. You have had 5 husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.”
Jesus knew her. Now, if our eyebrows don’t raise at the other details of the
story, they often do here. Our moralistic bent often inclines us to judge this
woman for her lifestyle. We do not know how many choices, if any, this woman
had in her life. According to Deuteronomy 25;5-10, a man was obligated to marry
the widow of a deceased brother if the brothers lived on the same estate.
Could this woman have been passed from one brother to another through a series
of untimely deaths? In addition, husbands in that day could divorce wives for
trivial reasons. Women had no power to divorce. Had five men divorced this
woman? The text gives no clues. It offers only Jesus’ response. He is content
to affirm the truthfulness in her words, while revealing that he knows her
unspoken history. In so doing, he puts his finger on a painful place in her
life, perhaps the very pain that lead her to haul water in the noonday heat to
avoid the stares and wagging fingers.” (p. 49, Companions in Christ: Grace)
Notice Jesus does not condemn. She is fully known, fully accepted, and fully
engaged. Jesus’ dialogue with her is the longest recorded in the gospels,
longer then any discussion he had with his disciples, or even his family.
The woman replied, “Sir, I see you are a prophet.” One who knows. So then
she put him to the test and asked the burning question that divided her people
and his people. “Where is God to be worshipped? Here on the mountain? Or in
Jerusalem? “
Jesus replied, “The hour is coming, is here, when true worshipers will
worship in spirit and truth. God is spirit, and those who worship, must worship
in spirit and truth.”
The woman said, “I know that the Messiah is coming.” Jesus replied, in
Greek, “I am.” And there in those words echoed the answer Moses received on
the mountain when he asked God who God was. “I am who I am.” The woman caught
the wind.
In coming to know Jesus, she came to know God as one who crossed the barriers
she had known. Through Jesus’ interaction with her she came to know God as one
who knew her fully, loved her fully. She came to know herself more fully by
encountering how God knew her.
She left her jar, and ran back to her city. She said to her people, “Come
and see.” Many believed, and asked Jesus to come and stay with them. Come and
participate in their life. Do you hear the echo from the first chapter of John,
when Jesus called the first disciples Andrew and Simon Peter to leave their nets
and, “Come and See” and they “stayed with Jesus for two days.” John draws this
parallel, so that we see the Samaritan woman as one of the earliest and
most fruitful preachers, disciples, and evangelists.
Meanwhile, Jesus’ disciples returned offering Jesus food, and he said, “Can’t
you see this feast. My food is to do this work. Look around you at the
harvest.” And they joined him in the harvest.
Back to Dr. Greggs, who said that when we see the word “well” we should
hear wedding bells. It didn’t fit for me at first with John’s story. It was
yet another mismatch, until I remembered John likes to speak metaphorically.
Indeed, this is a story of God reaching out to God’s own people. Saying, “I
know who you really are. You are not left out. You are precious. You are mine
and I am yours. Live in me, and I in you, forever.” Hear the bells ring? (Bell
rings.)
By mixing up the characters and the place of the story from what first
century listeners would expect, John is telling of the story that God is calling
us to live. And if we who listen now can hear that the Samaritan woman
was fully known, fully loved, fully engaged by God, then we can know that there
are no limits. Even our lives can be put into this story.
I have come to see this church as a well. It is a gathering place for
thirsty people, like you and me. It is a place to drink deeply. This week at
one of our Lenten studies, I sat with 9 women. We each have different stories,
we are different races, ages, and stages in life. We would not normally be in
the same room—or in the same story, so to speak. I listened to the women share
about what touched each them in the book and how it connected with her life—the
reflections on friendship, the story of Mary and Martha, or this sense of God’s
love. As each women shared, I came to know more about her, and more about
God. And as their reflections connected with my heart, I came to know more
about myself and God within me. The whole church is a well. I also tasted the
water this week in committee meetings, informal chats, state wide gatherings,
and a choir tour.
Anne Lamont, in her book Traveling Mercies, writes about how she
experienced the church as a well. She came alone, young and white, into a close
knit and predominately older and black congregation. They were characters you
usually don’t find in the same story. She writes, “When I was at the end of my
rope, the people at St. Andrew tied a knot in it for me and helped me hold on.
When I announced during worship that I was pregnant, people cheered. All these
old people, raised in Bible-thumping homes in the Deep South, clapped. And then
almost immediately they set about providing for us. They brought clothes, they
brought me casseroles to keep in the freezer, they brought me assurance that
this baby was going to be a part of the family. . . I first brought Sam to
church when he was five days old. The women there very politely pretended to
care how I was, but mostly what they were doing was killing time until it was
their turn to hold Sam again. They called him “our baby” or “my baby.” (pp.
100-102, Anne Lamont, Traveling Mercies.) The church was her source of
living water, her source of life. As she got to know the church members, she
came to know God more fully. As she came to know God more fully, she came to
know herself more fully. Anne Lamont is one of my favorite spiritual writers.
She has become a modern day Samaritan woman—sharing her faith with millions of
people.
Each time we gather as “male, female, Samaritan, Jew” we have opportunities
to know and be known more fully. We have opportunities to drink deeply of God’s
presence, and offer others this living water. John’s story of Jesus at Jacob’s
well with the Samaritan women is a mix and match story. The picture of
everyone here and every weary traveler can be transposed in this story. (Hold
up the pictorial directory and the “Mix and Match Storybook.”) You and I can
“come and see” and “stay.” Do you hear the bells ringing? May those who have
ears, let us hear. (Bell rings.)
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