As many of my high school students are learning as we read through John together, I can be a little enthusiastic when it comes to Biblical texts. I was trying to think of an image that would fully encapsulate my exuberance, and one came to me as I was watching my favorite English TV show, Doctor Who. You see, I resonate with the giddy aplomb with which he whirls through space and time with his friends; knowing enough to be dangerous but always teaching, always learning, and with deep regard for his companions. Sometimes the universe of the Bible seems like a dizzying array of literary connections, with constellations of facts, metaphors, allusions, and history. My friends, this is where we find ourselves this morning with our rather hefty Gospel lesson from John’s account of the Gospel.
I simply cannot take you on a tour of all the discrete connections that St. John used when he wrote about the story of the woman at the well and beyond. I don’t have the time to tell you about the importance of Jacob’s well or the deep ethnic and religious chasm that grew between the Judeans and the Samaritans at the close of the Jewish exile. Suffice it to say that the background we need for today is that Jesus should not have had that conversation with the Samaritan lady, if he were the type to stand on social protocol or expectations. But, thankfully, he wasn’t. So I hope you’ll oblige a bit of homiletical imagination as we steer away from the wonderful exegetical minutiae present in our text this morning.
Having the chance to survey such a large block of text, I noticed something: that it could be an outline of anybody’s biography of faith. There’s something to the flow, pun slightly intended, of this story that resembles many peoples’ encounters with Jesus and their lives in him. Like the Samaritan woman, many people may have conceived of themselves as an outsider to Jesus’ message and life. How or why would God ever take any notice them, let alone have a conversation? And yet, somehow, they entered into a fateful relationship with Jesus who did not hold back in telling them about their lives, without condemnation, but with the opportunity for something different. Notice that Jesus doesn’t berate the Samaritan woman for her history but rather he gives her the opportunity to dream of a time when true worship of God almighty would not be based on genetics or location but on Spirit and truth. If you’ve ever been caught in awesome wonder during worship, you are living in the fruition of Jesus’ promise to this woman. In fact, if you’ve ever been baptized and believed in Jesus, you are sharing in the promise to this woman; Jesus’ church was already scandalously too big to fill up with just the folks from Palestine. This story should seem familiar to us, then because in the conversation with the outsider Samaritan, Jesus was showing us that through his ministry, all barriers between people and other people (not to mention barriers between people and God) would be overridden by the waters of eternal life.
And while we’re thinking about water: remember last week’s Gospel lesson, when Jesus was trying to teach Nicodemus about being reborn by water and the Spirit? Plug that into Jesus’ water-based conversation with the woman at the well. As he’s talking about ‘living water,’ or flowing water, the double-entendre becomes evident: Jesus could be hinting at that most assured font of eternal life, holy baptism. I think the next part of the story is heavy-laden with sacrament and incarnation as the woman at the well’s story. Look at how Jesus rebuffs the disciples’ offer of food, how he critiques and orients their work. Our food, even our holy food at the Eucharist, and our work, even our work in the ministry of the Church, are in fact signpost, symbols drenched in a heavenly reality; a reality that is mysteriously present with us and also alien and distant. That distance is spanned by the incarnation of the Son of God, Jesus. Look again at how he stays with the Samaritans, who so many were able to say they believed because they heard for themselves and knew that Jesus was indeed the savior of the world. Likewise he stays with us as we believe by faith, and witness to his ministry to us and to all those who by the standards of this world should not have an audience with the heavenly.
So why would we rehearse a story of faith like this during Lent anyway? I think it’s because as we prepare for Easter, like those preparing for baptism in the early church, it’s important to know what we’re getting into: to a life of reconciliation, and harvest. And beyond that, to be encouraged that despite where we come from, God, through Jesus, wants to bring us into something far greater. Perhaps a bigger universe of faith with Jesus as our guide to teach, prod, pray, and play with us as we wheel, giddy with worship in spirit and truth, through this life and life eternal.
Keep each other in your prayers,
Amen.
Sermon preached by the Rev. David S. Bumsted
The Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota, Florida
3rd Sunday of Lent
23 March 2014