Sermon: The Woman of Samaria

Date Preached: Sunday February 24th 2008

Bible Reference: John 4

When I was an undergraduate in Sheffield in the dark distant past there was a singer-songwriter who made a mark for a while called Andrew Gold. One of his albums called ‘What’s wrong with this picture’. At first glance everything on the album cover (remember those?) seemed in order – just a room scene with him and his guitars – but as you looked a little closer it just didn’t make sense – like the pictures of Max Escher the artist who plays with our minds.

Well there are some highly unusual things going on in our (rather long) gospel reading. I wonder if you noticed anything odd? Actually it may not seem terribly odd to us, but to anyone looking on at the time it just wouldn’t have made sense.

Let’s have a look.

Well for a start Jesus had already made a reputation as a holy man – someone leading a movement to bring Israel back to God with all his talk about the kingdom of God. So what on earth is he doing on his own with a woman? Many devout Jewish men wouldn’t have allowed themselves to be in such a situation. And if they couldn’t avoid it for some reason, they certainly wouldn’t have taken the initiative to strike up a conversation. It just wasn’t done. The risks would have been considered too high: the risk of impurity, of gossip or of being drawn into immorality. And yet here is Jesus alone and conversing with a strange woman. You’ll note that when the disciples came back later from shopping John tells us they were “astonished”

And then of course the woman is a dreaded Samaritan. It’s ironic that the organization famous for helping people in extreme distress is named after the people whom first century Jews regarded as the worst kind of outcasts. Why the antipathy? Well Tom Wright explains in his John for Everyone commentary[1] that ever since some of the Jewish exiles had returned from Babylon to find that the central section of their ancient land was occupied by a group who claimed to be the true children of Abraham, there’d been no love lost between them. There were times when it had broken out into actual bloodshed and murder – but mostly it was simply a matter of not mixing – avoiding each other at all costs. Jews wouldn’t have anything to do with Samaritans: they wouldn’t share eating or drinking vessels with them – very much like the Apartheid regime in South Africa, or the black-white divide in the southern states of the USA before the release of Mandela and the civil rights movement. And yet Jesus asks this Samaritan woman for a drink (Are you getting this?)

And on top of all that, this woman is clearly of quite questionable character. How would Jesus have known that? Well the normal time for women to visit Jacob’s Well (and apparently it’s still there) – situated a little distance from the town – would be at a cooler time of the day – maybe first thing in the morning or late in the afternoon. This woman comes during the heat of the day (“mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun”). Why? – because she’s knows she’s not likely to meet anyone – especially those who would have been aware of her shady past and current lifestyle (and Jesus presently shows her he’s well aware of all that stuff too). And yet here he is, engaging her in conversation  - a conversation with a playful, double-meaning, teasing tone to it.

These different levels of meaning are typical of John’s reporting of Jesus’ conversations with people. Remember Nicodemus last week who took Jesus literally when he was talking metaphorically about new birth.

When here Jesus tells the Samaritan woman about ‘living water’. Of course he’s not referring to the ordinary H2O, corporation hair oil, Adam’s ale – he’s referring to the new life he’s offering to anyone and everyone  – no matter what race they belong to, where they’re from, or indeed how bad they’ve been.

Just look at what he says about this new living water. Not only will you never be thirsty again, it’ll become like a spring bubbling up inside you – refreshing you with the new life which is coming into the world with Jesus – the whole new state of affairs God is bringing about by his Spirit (& John gets to explain this a bit later in his gospel).

What’s the woman’s reaction?

she hasn’t a clue what Jesus is saying

but there’s something going on inside her because she wants to know more – and I wonder if that’s our state sometimes – intrigued, wanting to know more.

But she’s in for real shock – like everyone who starts to take Jesus seriously. Yep – he has living water/new life to offer all right – but when you start to drink it, it’s going to change every area of your life.  Because if we want to take Jesus up on his offer of living water, then we’re going to have to get rid of the stale, foetid, mouldy, stagnant water we’ve been trying to live off all this time.

In the Samaritan woman’s case the smelly stuff was her relationships.

Jesus saw (and sees) straight to the heart of what’s really going on for every one of us – and the woman’s reaction to what Jesus tells her is a classic example of what every pastor or counsellor or even good friend knows only too well. Put your finger on the sore spot and people immediately begin talking about something else – especially (when it comes to vicars) throwing out some obscure religious question. I’m sure you’ve heard things like this too: ‘Well we used to go to church, but then my aunt said we should go with her – and then I didn’t like the minister’s wife …and now we’ve stopped going altogether.’

Of course they’re all excuses if we’re absolutely honest – and they’re all irrelevant, because God and the church are definitely not the same thing.

God’s claim on every human life is absolute and can’t be evaded by questions about which church people think they should go to, whether they like the minister or not, any more than Jesus’ claim on this woman’s moral conscience could be avoided by the debate, going on for hundreds of years already, as to whether Mount Zion in Jerusalem, or Mount Gerazim in Samaria was the true holy mountain.

In fact, from now on, if Jesus’ mission is really about bringing heaven to earth, churches and holy mountains aren’t going to matter a whole lot. At best they’re signposts to the real thing – and certainly not ends in themselves – and if they become substitutes for it – well we’re really in trouble (aren’t we?). No time for spiritual things while we’ve been keeping church going? Then what are we about? John’s telling us to look to Jesus – to listen to him – to let him bring us new life – living water – a new reign and rule in our lives that frees us from the heavy weight we carry around.