Fountains Of Living Water

Jesus and the Samaritan Woman At The Well

 

Rev. Moira Finley

Trinity United Church of Christ and St. John’s United Church of Christ

27 February 2005

Third Sunday of Lent

John 4.5-42

 

Going to the well is a ritual in our lives.  Most people in our town don’t have a way to store much water.  We can only keep a day’s worth, maybe two, in our homes.  That means every day the journey has to be made from the town out to the well.  It’s about a mile and a half each way, but there’s no avoiding it.  We simply have to have the water.

 

A sort of hierarchy has developed around the well.  Early in the morning, before most people are awake, the servants of the wealthier families go out.  They have to be back to their houses before their employers wake up.  Then, after the breakfast things are cleaned and put away, the Jewish women go out.  They all go together.  Usually one of their husbands or brothers will go with them.  After they return, the Samaritan women go out.  They’re always back well before noon.

 

That’s when I go, right around noon.  By then I’m pretty sure I’ll be alone at the well.  Even though it’s the heat of the day I don’t mind too much.  It’s the solitude I’m looking for.  No one to bother me, no one to ask questions, no one to point fingers and start rumors.  You see, I’m not very popular in town.  I’ve been married five times.  People in town look down their noses at me.  They talk about me.  That’s why I go to the well when no one else is there, it’s just easier without the hassle.

 

Imagine my surprise one afternoon when I made my way out to the well to find a Jewish rabbi sitting there.  I couldn’t manage another trip into town and then later back to the well.  I had to go up to the well, to risk an encounter with this stranger.  So, with hesitation and more than a little fear in my heart I walked up to the well.  I thought I would get my water and get away as quickly as I could, but it didn’t work that way.

 

The rabbi spoke to me.  He asked me for a drink of water.  I couldn’t believe that he’d spoken to me.  Somehow, despite my fear, I became brave enough to question him.  I asked him why he was speaking to me.  To begin with, he was Jewish and I am a Samaritan.  Relations between our people are cool at best.  And then here he was a man, speaking with a woman in public which simply isn’t done.  Again I questioned him.  How could he drink?  The well is very deep and he had no bucket with him.

 

That’s when he made the offer of living water.  He said that anyone who drinks from this well eventually becomes thirsty again.  How well I already knew that.  But, he said, that if I drank the water he was offering it would be like a spring deep inside me that would never run dry, a well of water pouring forth with eternal life.  It sounded too good to be true.  Could he really give me this water, this fountain inside that would renew and restore me?  Could he bring me back to life with this drink of living water?  I begged him for this water, for this chance to feel filled with life, with energy, with possibility.

 

We talked some more.  He asked about my husband and I said I didn’t have one.  He already knew that, knew that I had been married so many times.  I told him that I knew he was a prophet.  How else could he have known these things about me?  We talked about where we should worship God – on the mountaintops as our ancestors had done, or in Jerusalem.  He said that soon we would worship neither on the mountain nor in Jerusalem, but in our hearts and spirits and in our everyday lives.  That’s when I told him I had been waiting for the Messiah, the promised one of God, waiting for the deliverance of the people from bondage.  And he told me what I think I already knew – he, the man who was speaking to me, was the Christ, the one we had all been waiting for.

 

At that moment his disciples came up, but they didn’t interrupt us.  Maybe they were afraid to challenge their teacher?  Maybe they were afraid to speak to a strange woman in public?  Whatever the reason, I was overcome.  I left my water jar there by the well and ran back towards town.  I told everyone I met about what happened at the well, about all the things that the rabbi had told me, about the offer of living water, of renewal, of eternal life.  Because of what I had said, crowds of people went out of the city towards the well to receive the offer of life.

 

The crowds persuaded the rabbi to stay in our town for a few days, to teach us and share our lives with us, to help us really understand what he meant by living water and eternal life.  Two days he stayed.  Everyday we gathered to hear him talk, Jews and Samaritans side by side listening to what he said about living faithfully.  Over the course of those two days dozens and dozens of people came to believe that he truly was the Messiah, the one promised by God to bring us out of despair and into hope.

 

After he and his disciples had gone on their way some things stayed the way they had been.  Some of the people in town still weren’t sure what to do with me, how to interact.  The women still didn’t want to be seen with me, thinking that I would be a bad influence on their marriages.  The worst of it was the people who came up to me and told me that it wasn’t my testimony that had convinced them to believe in the Messiah.  Now that they had heard him for themselves they had no need of my witness, of hearing my experience at the well.  That hurt the most, them dismissing me as if I didn’t matter at all.

 

Other things did change.  A few of the women asked me to join them on their daily journeys to the well.  One of them said that if the Messiah had spoken to me, had treated me as worthy, they figured they should too.  That was wonderful.  Now, instead of making the trip to the well in isolation and fear, I had a few friends to go with, to talk with on the way, to share my life with.  They said that before they’d been afraid of me, didn’t know what to make of someone like me, but now that we’d all received the Messiah’s news they weren’t afraid anymore.

 

But I suppose the biggest thing that changed because of the Messiah’s visit was me.  I was a different person inside because I had received the living water.  I still had to go to the well everyday, to provide for my family’s physical needs.  I still had to do the cleaning and the routine things of everyday life, but it was different.  I can’t quite describe why, but now the tasks of my life didn’t seem like a burden.  The trip to the well now seemed like an opportunity to experience God’s presence in my life, to cherish the life giving power of the ordinary water I would draw from the well and give to my family.

 

And I am different in other ways too.  When I look around our town I see a lot of people hurting, suffering because they’re outcasts in their own way.  For some it’s the burden of diseases that can’t be cured, that cause them to be cast out of the faith community, separated from everything they knew and everyone they loved.  For others, it’s the trouble of being labeled as “possessed by demons”, of being feared as wild or violent.  For others yet, it’s poverty and hunger that keep them at the mercy of the wealthy in town.

 

Before the Messiah’s visit, I would look at these people and think they were completely different from me, that we didn’t have anything in common, and that there was nothing I could do to help them.  Now, after having talked with the Messiah, I know that we have so much more in common than we have differences.  We’re all traveling through this world in a little bit of isolation.  Sickness, life circumstances, poverty, all those things keep us cut off from one another, trapped in our shame, solitary people going through the world without connecting to one another.

 

And now, I know there’s something I can do about it, about helping to rebuild connections between people who are just existing in the same space.  I haven’t done anything dramatic yet.  I haven’t gone to the village leaders and asked for space and money to start a community center, though I thought about it for a while.  No, I thought I should start small.  I’ve been approaching the people one at a time.  I sat and talked with a man who has leprosy.  He said it was the first time someone had talked to him like he was a person in more than ten years.

 

I took some food to a family on the edge of town who never seem to have enough to go around.  We sat over cups of tea and talked, not about why they were poor, but we talked about what they were interested in, what they cared about, what the kids were excited about.  I went out to where one of the women who is possessed by demons lives, out in the caves beyond the walls of the village.  I didn’t see her that day, but I left some clothes for her and some food as well.  A few days later I saw her wearing the clothes and she smiled.

 

That’s when it occurred to me that maybe I was going about things in just the way the Messiah would have wanted me to.  Not everyone can start a movement, can attract followers like he did, can travel the countryside and change the systems of oppression and injustice.  Most of us have to stay where we are and tend to the needs of our lives and families.  But all of us can do something where we live, can create and nurture relationships, one person at a time.  That’s what I think the Messiah was talking about when he said I’d have a spring of water inside me that would never run dry.  I think he meant that I would find what I could do, each day to bring God’s kingdom closer to reality, that I would know what part I could play in the mystery of creation.

 

Everyday we have the chance to change someone’s life.  We can make it worse by acting with hatred and prejudice, or we can make it better by acting with compassion and love.  My goal is one relationship a day.  I have to see someone I already know, connect with them, make sure I know what’s happening in their lives, what they’re excited or worried about.  Or I have to reach out to someone I don’t know, find ways that I can help them, either with the material needs of life or with a friendship, with a listening ear.  It’s not as hard as it sounds.  We can all do it.  We can make sure that the human family stays connected, that people have their needs met, and most importantly that people feel they are valuable.

 

I really must go now.  I have some people to see.  I hope you’ll take the Messiah’s advice.  Look inside yourself for that spring of living water, find that eternal spirit which will never fail, and then go and live, led by that water.  Make connections.  Reach out to people.  Love everyone.  If we all do it, I’m sure the world will be a better place.

 

Amen.