February 27, 2005

John 4: 5-42

Water Works

Elizabeth Macaulay

There are some texts that demand engagement in a way intimate and enfleshed. This morning’s account of the meeting of the Samaritan Woman and the Rabbi Jesus is one such text. To hear it and to see it, as we have this morning is one great gift. The other is to wear it as though it were our own. To inhabit the story as though it were our own.

Because, of course, it is.

This morning I share with you the story of how it may have felt to the woman at the well, this meeting with the Jewish man Jesus. I tell the story from her perspective, because imagining what it meant to her first hand helps me to more fully know what it means to me. First hand.

I share her story:

I am known as the Samaritan woman. I have a name, but really, knowing me by my race makes the story of my meeting with the man Jesus even more powerful. So I will remain nameless, beyond my identity as a Samaritan.

What you need to know is that as a Samaritan woman, I am three ways challenging to the man Jesus:

I am a woman.

I am a Samaritan.

I live with a man who is not my husband.

And I was at the well that hot day at noon. It is the most gruesome time to be there, drawing the water that will sustain my family. It is the time of day when being inside thick cool walls is blessing.

But that was not my blessing to share.

Instead of drawing water with the other women of the village –

Morning times of trading advice and stories –

I made it a practice to draw water at a time when I knew I would be

Alone.

Day after day. Alone.

I drew my water at noon because it was easier to work in the silence of my own space

At the well in the heat of the day

Than to suffer the thorny silence of people in this village who

Know well the power of shared community silence –

The powerful and damning silence of public shame and judgment.

There are many in my villages that shun me.

Do they know the fear of public condemnation that is so powerful that I

Leave the shelter of my home at the time of day when I need it most?

Well, yes, they DO know that fear of judgment.

As Samaritans, we sense it every time we encounter a Jew.

They sniff around us as though we are distasteful because we have our own ways,

We Samaritans, of living our faith in the God of Israel. We live in our own pocket of our own people in the midst of the Jews. We spring from the same faith roots, but we are different because we do not follow the strict laws for living Kosher that guide the eating and the living of the Jews. And because of this difference, we are considered to be unclean people.

We know the way it feels to be judged. So we keep to our own, as do the Jews.

So I set out on the day I met the man Jesus

Knowing that the sun would be hot and

The village quiet.

I was surprised to see sitting at the edge of the well a man.

A man I knew in one look was no Samaritan.

Sure that I would have to return at a later time to get the water needed from my household,

I turned to leave.

But this man did not honor the code of silence which I had lived with for so long.

This man spoke. To me. A Samaritan woman.

“Woman”, he said, “Give me a drink.”

Imagine it. In the blasting heat of the day the most unlikely of interchanges between the most unlikely of people.

Me, a woman long used to silence and avoidance, was asked to provide that most essential of human giftings: the gift of water.

Well, I know the way I answered him doesn’t sound very gracious to those who have listened in on the story through the ages.

But I had to ask him:

“Do you know what you are doing by speaking to me?”

He answered with a riddle of sorts – at least that is how it sounded to me.

He talked about how I should have somehow known him –

Even though I was sure I had never seen him before –

And he spoke about something he called “living water”.

A water that would take away thirst forever.

Water that would become in me and in everyone else who drank of it

A spring of water gushing up to eternal life.

Well, wouldn’t YOU want to taste this living water?

I surely did. The very thought of it was amazing in the heat of the day and the loneliness of the well.

He must have caught the excitement my couldn’t-dare-to-hope soul felt stirring. He told me to go and get my husband.

And my heart sank.

I have buried five husbands, and the man I live with now is not my husband.

Oh, I know. It is easy too shake your head and wonder at a woman who could marry so many and welcome yet another.

But I wonder if you have tried to live without food or a home. As a woman without a man in this world I live in, I am guaranteed neither food nor home nor protection.

And somehow, when our eyes connected, I could see that this man knew this! He seemed to understand the way my life had unfolded in a way that no one in my village was willing to. And so we talked, we two, about the things that Jews and Samaritans talk about often, if they allow themselves to see each other as human people with minds possible of meeting.

We talked together about where God is best worshiped, since from the earliest times, our people have disagreed about that. I thought I knew what he would say, Jew that he was, but he surprised me again, because he said it didn’t matter WHERE God was worshipped.

It was the WAY of worshipping God that matters. A way not bound by titles like Jew or Samaritan but a way that invites all to open to God’s spirit and to God’s truth and to the life found there.

Knowing that who decides the truth has long divided our peoples – as it has people throughout the ages – I spoke of the hope of our people: The Messiah. He who would save us from our so-human scrabbling over who is right and who is wrong.

And again. The man surprised me.

The stillness of the square shimmered with the energies of the ages as he made a statement that nearly stopped my breath.

“I am he. The one speaking to you.”

In the timeless stillness of those moments I felt the bubbling up with me of years of

Silence

Pain

Loneliness

Times spent asking on my knees and as I trudged through the isolation of my days:

“Is the Lord with me, or not?”

His words. His words were power filled. But it was not the words alone that began the bubbling up in my soul.

It was the realization that this way he had been willing to engage me as human and worthy of discourse. This acknowledgement that I had a soul so very thirsty for the water of compassion and hope and the news of a world made lush with God’s watering.

This churning aliveness within me was the living water of which this man spoke.

A water brought to my lips not through dippers of well buckets

But invited into my very soul through the grace shown to me by this man who broke the silence of my isolation.

This Messiah. He came to me. The three ways pushed away.

So of course, I will tell the story to anyone who will listen.

I have never been thirsty again.

My soul has been watered by grace.

And I, I am alive and wild with the wonder of it.

Amen

Amen