3 Lent Year A

The story of the Samaritan Woman, the Woman at the Well, is one of those stories that I think we’ve heard many times. But each time I hear it, I hear it new, something different makes sense to me. This is a story that incorporates one of the most powerful forces we know as humans, water. Water invokes life, and death. Water invokes washing and baptism. Water invokes peace and power. Water, when absent leads to thirst, when present too much, leads to flood and drowning.

So imagine the day of this encounter we heard from John’s gospel. High noon, in the desert. The sun was bearing down on the dry, arid ground. A Jewish man sits at the well, he is terribly thirsty, his throat is dry and parched; he has just arrived at this well after walking miles in the desert. He sits at the well, but does not have a bucket or dipper to get any water.

She arrives, bucket on her head, dipper in her hand, a Samaritan woman. She had spent her morning cooking over an outdoor fire, and washing clothes in her bucket of water. The rest of the women won’t come to the well until the cool of the evening, she would rather not be the object of their scorn, so she comes at high noon.The Jewish man asks the Samaritan woman for a drink of water.

This is a scandalous encounter. Two things make it scandalous. First is that they are a man and a woman, a chance meeting at a well, and he talks to her. Men and women did not talk to one another in a public place. This is in violation of the Law they both lived by. The second reason that makes it scandalous is that he is a Jew, and she, a Samaritan. The enmity between Jews and Samaritans is notorious. They traced their lineage similarly through Rachel and Jacob, Sarah and Abraham, and Miriam and Moses, but a split had caused them to worship in two different places, the Jews in Jerusalem, the Samaritans at Mt. Gerizim. Each tribe was devoted to its own place of worship, and was completely intolerant of the other. Intolerance actually is an understatement here. These tribes fought and killed each other over the proper place to worship.

Jesus is known to break boundaries, and this is a story that shows Jesus doing just that. So we have a Jewish man and a Samaritan woman. He asks her for a drink of water. She responds with nothing less than an affront, "you a Jew, ask me, a woman of Samaria, for a drink of water." She is fully aware of the scandal of this encounter. He insists, and speaks of the living water that God gives. Her ears prick, her interest heightens; he has said something that causes her to engage the conversation. She states the obvious. "Sir, you have no bucket, how did you expect to get that living water?"

He responds by describing the spring of water that gushes up to eternal life, and that will quench the thirst eternally. There is no turning back from this scandalous encounter. She places her tentative trust in him, "Sir," she says, "give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty again."

Ah, but then he instructs her in this most surprising way. "Go, call your husband and come back." She answers him, "I have no husband." It strikes me as rather odd that during a chance encounter at a well, between a man and a woman, a Jew and a Samaritan, that she would even tell him the truth. She could have easily lied to him and told him that her husband was out working or something. It seems to me that her faith and trust in him had grown, she trusted him with the truth of who she is. He responds to her with the affirmation, "You have told me the truth."

I think this is a story about a woman who wants desperately to be known and to be loved, she has obviously been looking for love in all the wrong places, and the scandal of this encounter is that she finds a radically liberating kind of love at the well, in the middle of the day, in the middle of the desert, given to her by a Jewish man who shouldn’t even be talking to her. The rest of the scandalous encounter is that he, the Jewish man, the man we know as Jesus, is also known by her, she recognizes him as the Messiah, the one they’ve all been looking for. Once again, however, he is not the King who comes in power and glory, but a tired and thirsty man looking for a drink of water.

He calls her to faith by telling her the truth about herself, and she calls him to be who he is, the Messiah, the Christ, the One who has come in the name of the Lord. Through this relationship of these two people at this well, there is an encounter of the holy, there is transformation. She leaves her bucket at the well, goes into the city and tells everyone about the man she met at the well, and that this man who said such amazing things, was the One sent from God.

This story operates on a deeper level as well. The story we hear in Exodus is all about thirsty people, they wonder to Moses about whether they will just fall down dead from thirst in the desert. Moses goes to the Lord, and learns that he must strike the rock and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink. I think part of the reason these two stories are set together as they are is to illustrate the absolute newness that Jesus brings to our relationship with God. The well at which the Samaritan woman and Jesus meet is Jacob’s well. It is the well of the Jewish and Samaritan forebears; it is the well of our forebears. And what Jesus does is to replace the well of our forebears with the spring of living water. Jesus is the new water, the living spring. Everyone who drinks of the well of our forebears will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the spring of living water will never be thirsty. The Samaritan women not only recognized this, she drank of it.

We may find ourselves in the dryness of the wilderness; we may find ourselves doing some wandering. But as the woman at the well encountered Jesus in the desert; we too are assured we also encounter Jesus in the spring of living water. The water of baptism, the water that sustains our lives. Jesus says that we will never be thirsty again, I don’t know about you, but I get thirsty. I think what Jesus may have been illustrating is that when we go to the well that promises us youth, the well that promises us immortality, the well that promises us success and fortune, the well that promises us happiness and prosperity, we will continue to thirst. When we go to the spring of living water, when we go to Jesus, the food and drink that we are given will nourish us, will sustain us, and will give us new life. You see, each time we come here, to this place, we encounter Jesus.
Each time we confess all that we have done, and all that we have left undone, we encounter Jesus. Each time we come to this table to eat and to drink we encounter Jesus. And each time we encounter Jesus, we are changed, we are transformed.

The Lord is full of compassion and mercy: Come let us adore him. Amen