March 27, 2011
Exodus 17: 3-7 + Psalm 95 + Romans 5:1-2,5-8 + John 4: 5-42
Such a familiar and wonderful piece of John’s Gospel! You can turn it over and around and move with all the details always wondering and discovering more. For instance, why did she come at the sixth hour? By their counting that would have been noon. What John is suggesting is that it was an odd time to come for water. What matters is that she is not coming in the cool early morning when every other woman of the town would have been there.
In my way of wondering, I start trying to imagine why.Did she spill what she had drawn in the morning?Or was she just too tired or lazy to get there in the cool of the morning?Did she have some unexpected need and simply not have enough?Or was she perhaps avoiding the other women of the townfor some reason we might only imagine.
Whatever it was, she needed water, and at that well she met someone who also needed water. Two of the most opposite people who could not have been more different discover they have the same need. All of a sudden in that discovery, these two opposites, these two who were set up by history, prejudice, custom, and tradition began to talk to each other; and all that had divided them began to fade away because of something they shared in common.
The tension between Jesus and this woman crosses the boundaries of gender, nationality, race, and religion. In the course of their conversation, all four barriers are crossed and community is created. It is amazing what can happen when people talk and listen to one another. It is amazing what boundaries can be crossed and what differences can displove. Their conversation addresses and transcends each of the barriers that seperate Jesus and the woman. While Jesus develops the symbol of living water, she grows in her perception of who it is that sits in front of her.
I wonder why we can’t do that now in this time.I wonder why Arabs and Jews, Christians and Moslems, East and West, the Left and the Right, Blue and Red cannot discover that they thirst for, long for, hope for the same thing. I wonder about that today; and so I pray that I might begin to look for what unites me to those who seem so different.
Then there is that water jar that she leaves behind. I wonder about that too. They couldn’t have been inexpensive, and I doubt that she had two of them. For any woman in that place at that time, the water jar was as important as any tool for living, yet she leaves it there. Is she just a scatter brain that can’t keep track of her stuff? Will it be there when she comes back? It is such a suggestive detail that John must have wanted us to remember that water jar and wonder about it. Maybe she just isn’t going to need it anymore. Suddenly the one who is thirsty is giving water while the one with the bucket seems to thirst; or perhaps now in a desire to quench the thirst of this one she now calls a “prophet” she runs back into town. Little by little throughout the conversation what happens is revealed as she first refers to him as a “Jew” then as “Sir” then on to “Prophet” then “Messiah” and finally with the crowd to “Savior of the World”.
Then the disciples show up with their provisions. Then the whole town shows up with their faith; and we discover what it is He really hungers for. The bread and the water are smbolic. He never does drink nor does he care to eat the bread they brought from town. That water and that bread are symbolic for his desire to do the Will of the Father and bring together all of God’s children.
When the story is placed within the context of Johns’ Gospel, there is even more to wonder about because the verses just before these tell the story of Nicodemus who now stands in contrast to this Samaratin woman. He was a Jew. She was a Samaratin. He was a respected leader. She was a village peasant with five husbands in her past. Nicodemus came at night. She comes at noon. Yet the two of them have something in common. They both believe because of the insights Jesus has into their lives.
The story that began with one woman ends up with the whole village. It began with total strangers, opposites of the most extreem sort, and it moves through all the barriers we use in this life to keep apart and destroy our unity and recongnize what we have in common; and it ends with the confession that “Jesus is the Savior of the World.”
This is really where the story ends with a confession of faith based not on signs and wonders as so many demanded again and again, but rather upon the Word of Jesus the Christ. Suddenly, she is no longer important. They dismiss her saying: “We no longer believe because of your word.” And with that, this woman who has no name is no longer needed and simply disappears like John the Baptist and like that useless water jar. Witnesses to Jesus work themselves out of a job for they know from the beginning that it is the Christ that matters, not them. The story is a lesson from John to the Church about its role and its mission: bring people to Christ and get out of the way.
One sows and another reaps.The one who sows has by the time of the harvest already gone, disappeared into Joy.These holy days of Lent could lead us to the well where we find a Christ who thirsts for us just as much as we thirst for Him. At that well, in the conversation of our prayer, it might just happen once and for all that we leave the water jars of our lives behind since what those jars are all about will never quench our thirst. And then having been moved deeper into our relationship with this Prophet, Messiah, and Savior, we might, by our Joy, bring a whole village to the well spring of living water and then disappear into Joy.