for the 3rd Sunday in Lent, 27 March 2011
John 4
This Lenten Season, we continue to read from the gospel of John, wherein we meet four people who each have a “Jesus Experience.” These stories invite us to contemplate how we experience Jesus in our lives.
We meet the woman at the well today. The Samaritan woman. Both words are significant. As the text reminds us, Jews have nothing to do with Samaritans. The writer assumes we already know what everyone living on the rim of the Mediterranean would know, in the first centuries of Christianity: Men do not speak to women. Correction: virtuous men do not speak to women who are not their mothers, sisters, or wives. And a virtuous woman would not respond to a man who is not her father, brother or husband. That is why, later in the story, the disciples are scandalized to see him talking with a woman. They are so preoccupied with Jesus’ boundary violation, wondering furthermore if he took food from this woman, that they don’t notice what is happening around them. While the disciples are preoccupied with Jesus’ rule-breaking, boundary-busting behavior, the Samaritan woman is doing their job! She is telling people what she knows about this Jesus. Intrigued, the villagers come out to meet Jesus for themselves. The disciples listen, dumbfounded, as Jesus tells them they will reap where another has sown, and here comes the sower herself, bringing in the harvest!
But let’s go back, to the Jesus experience at hand. What do we know about thirst? Do we know thirst like the Samaritan woman’s thirst? Jesus knows her, she is the woman who has had five men, and the man she has now is not her man, he is, presumably, someone else’s man. She is the woman who is searching for that one person who will make her life complete, who will quench her thirst for meaning. Can we relate to that? She is looking for that one perfect opportunity which will allow her to use her full potential. She is searching for the perfect place that will finally feel like home. She is thirsty for love, hungry for ultimate meaning. That is the woman at the well.
In Jesus, she finds someone who knows everything that she has ever done, but does not condemn her. In Jesus, she finds everything she has been thirsting for-- so much so, that she forgets why she came to the well in the first place. Leaving her water jar behind, she begins a new life, as a witness, an apostle, a messenger of the gospel. She tells everyone in town what she has experienced, and they run to Jesus to see for themselves. They, in turn, have their own encounter, and invite Jesus to stay with them. And Jesus accepts their offer, and stays with them for days.
The woman who first came to the well alone, utterly alone, returned to the well with a family, a whole community. The one who was an outsider, and accursed, was honored by that community as the one who brought them the living water. She became the vessel, she became the water jar, of living water.
Now I invite you to enter into a guided meditation. Consider for a moment, what are you thirsting after? What is it you are constantly returning to, to quench that thirst? What’s your well or watering hole? Go there now, in your imagination.
If Jesus were to meet you there, and tell you “everything you ever did,” what would he say?
And if you were to leave something behind, like a water jar, what would it be? What is encumbering you? What’s getting in the way of your freedom to tell others what you have experienced as Jesus in your life?
And finally, when you leave that water jar of yours behind, what will you say to the others. How can you share your Jesus experience with others?
I invite you to contemplate these questions, as we listen to the interlude and prepare to sing the hymn.
