Third Sunday in Lent
Text: John 4:5-42
The Rev. Dr. Sandy Selby
When times are tough, most of us have favorite passages from Scripture that we turn to for inspiration, comfort, or strength. Given current world events, with the violence of war, instability throughout the Middle East, and volatility in the world economy, many of us have turned to those favorite Scripture verses to be grounded in our faith. One such verse from last week’s Gospel is, for many, one of those favorites: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” “For God so loved the world.” God still does! May we find hope, and peace, in that promise.
Jesus said those beloved words to Nicodemus in the story we heard from John’s gospel last week (John 3:1-17). In today’s gospel, John gives us an example of how “God loves the world” by telling us the story of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well. Last week’s story about Nicodemus, the Pharisee, makes for a compelling lesson in contrasts with today’s story about the woman at the well, telling us of the variety of ways God’s love for the world is made known through Jesus Christ, transforming lives in the process.
He comes to see Jesus by night; she encounters Jesus at high noon. He is Nicodemus, a Pharisee and leader of the Jews; she a nameless Samaritan woman whom we know only as “the woman at the well.”
Nicodemus has seen Jesus around Jerusalem and heard of the trouble he caused when he drove the moneychangers from the temple for making it into a marketplace. And he knows that some people believe Jesus is the Messiah because of things that he has been doing (like turning water into wine)—things that people interpret as signs of his true identity. Nicodemus himself is drawn to Jesus, but wanting to meet Jesus in private, he comes to him at night.
“Rabbi,” he says, “we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answers, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” “But how can that happen”? Nicodemus asks. Jesus tries to explain that in order to enter the kingdom of God one must be born anew from water and Spirit. But Nicodemus is nonplussed: “How can these things be?” he asks.
Commenting on the ironic ignorance of this learned Pharisee, Jesus goes on to tell him how the Son of God will be lifted up so that whoever believes in him will have eternal life. Jesus, the light of the world, has come into the world to bring about its salvation; those who seek what is true will come into the light while those who reject the truth will choose darkness. Having nothing more to say, Nicodemus sneaks off into the darkness.
Jesus and his disciples go out into the Judean countryside and spend time there baptizing people. But feeling threatened by the Pharisees, Jesus heads back toward Galilee, having first to pass through Samaria, territory that is hostile to Jews. Tired and thirsty, he stops at noon at Jacob’s well outside the city of Sychar and waits for someone to come along and give him a drink of water. Eventually a woman comes to the well to draw water, and Jesus says to her, “Give me a drink.” When she expresses her surprise that a Jewish man would ask a Samaritan woman for a drink, he says, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” They talk back and forth about the water that he offers until finally she understands that the living water that Jesus offers is just what she needs. “Give me that water!” she exclaims.
The learned man Nicodemus can’t get his head around Jesus; the woman at the well takes him to heart. The great man Nicodemus rejects the living waters because he has too much to lose; the Samaritan woman gulps them down because she has already hit rock bottom. Nicodemus seeks out Jesus from an inner longing that he himself does not yet recognize. The woman who encounters Jesus by chance realizes that he offers what she has been longing for. Earlier in his gospel, John tells us that Jesus will recognize the longings of reluctant and accidental seekers like Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman for “he himself knew what was in everyone” (Jn 2:25b).
Knowing about the woman at the well, Jesus tells her to go call her husband and come back. Startled, she replies that she has no husband. “You’re right to say you have ‘no husband’” says Jesus, “because you have had five husbands, and the one that you have now isn’t your husband!” Hearing this, the woman realizes that she is in the company of a prophet. Later in the conversation when she expresses her conviction that the Messiah will ultimately come to the people, Jesus reveals his true identity: “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” The woman then runs to the city and proclaims “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” And knowing that in fact this woman has done quite a few things, the people leave the city and go straight to Jesus! At their urging he stays with them for two days. Many of them are convinced by the testimony of the woman at the well; many more come to believe after they have heard from Jesus himself.
We hear no more about the woman at the well from John or any of the other evangelists, but hers is a story of transformation. Jesus talks longer to this woman than to anyone else in the gospels. She is the first person in John’s gospel to whom he reveals his true identity, and she becomes the first female evangelist. Yet for all of these firsts there is great irony in this story, for the woman at the well is the ultimate outsider: a Samaritan and a fallen woman who is an outcast in her own city, which is why she comes to the well alone in the heat of the day. “For God so loved the world” —including this Samaritan woman with a checkered past—“that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
Theologian Belden Lane says that “the irony of the gospel is that it becomes truly ‘good news’ only for those immersed in the bad news of their normal experience” (from The Solace of Fierce Landscapes). The encounter between Jesus and the woman at the well is a progressive exchange of intimacy in which he comes to reveal his own identity even as the true identity of the woman at the well is itself revealed, and the good news of God’s love for the world is made known to her. The woman at the well demonstrates to the people of her city—and to us—how the transformative power of God is like “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life,” as Jesus has told her.
“Change” consists of a series of reactions and adjustments to events occurring around us—it’s something of a mid-course correction. But “transformation” is a process by which we are re-created by God’s creative energy filling us such that it flows out from our very center. At the well, the woman’s darkness and doubts are washed away by the living water that is both offered and accepted.
Leaving Samaria, Jesus goes on to Galilee where his ministry continues to reveal signs of God’s transformative power. Then Jesus and his disciples travel to Jerusalem for the Festival of Booths, a week-long harvest festival that includes ceremonies of water and light. On the last day of the festival Jesus cries out to the crowd, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink” (Jn. 7:38a). There among the crowd is Nicodemus, who earlier in the gospel had gone to Jesus by night. When the temple police go to the Pharisees to ask if they should arrest Jesus, Nicodemus asks, “Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it ?“(Jn 7:51). While Nicodemus acts to defend Jesus, he goes no farther than the law requires. For him, true transformation will not come until he steps beyond the boundaries of the law to enter into a living relationship with God.
Because we don’t hear of Nicodemus again until the day of Preparation for Passover, we don’t know how he came to drink of the living waters that Jesus offers. Perhaps he was among those who stood at the foot of the cross that day on Golgotha. If so, maybe it was the profound irony of hearing the man who had offered him new life born of water and Spirit say, “I am thirsty.” But something moved the man who had first gone to Jesus by night to join Joseph of Arimathea in taking the body of Jesus, wrapping it with spices in linen cloths, and laying it in a tomb.
She first came to Jesus in the light; he in darkness. She came from poverty, he from power. She left converted, he confused. But in the end, the Pharisee with everything to lose and the fallen woman with nothing to lose were both, in God’s own time and by God’s grace, made new.
While Jesus was talking to the woman about the living water he offers, the disciples arrived at the well. Jesus told them that in addition to living water, he offers food that brings eternal life, sowing the seeds of God’s grace to be harvested with abundance and joy. “The reaper,” says Jesus, “is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life.”
This is God's promise that brings nourishment for us, today, in this difficult and disturbing time of war, with peace, hope, and joy seeming so very far away. Today, as we hunger and thirst for liberation from the troubles of this world, Jesus offers us the living water and the harvest of abundant life that is provided by God who “so loves the world.”
We all have favorite verses from Scripture. One of mine is from Psalm 34: “O taste and see that the Lord is good.”
Amen.