3rd Sunday in Lent                John 4:(3-4)5-42                March 12, 2023

About the early chapters in John, the French Lutheran theologian Oscar Cullman said a reasonable claim can be made that they are organized around questions about worship.^[1] The thesis is reasonable, since John, likely the latest written of the four canonical gospels, comes from a time when the nascent Christian movement was developing a theology of worship  distinctive from the Jewish roots from which it grew, roots still evident in our liturgy. The first half of the service, The Word of God, is very similar to the synagogue sabbath service, but to it we add The Holy Communion as our great thanksgiving for the saving work of Christ. Last Sunday we heard the nighttime conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, which tells of the Spirit of God moving in the water of baptism to bring about a new birth in our lives. And before that, Jesus was at the temple in Jerusalem, flipping over the tables of the vendors and money changers, saying, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19), speaking not of the temple building but his temple body, which replaces brick and mortar as the central sanctuary of God.

   There was, however, besides the temple in Jerusalem, another brick and mortar building  claimed by its adherents to be God’s central sanctuary. That temple was in Samaria, on Mt. Gerizim, so Jesus, as we heard, “had to go through Samaria” (John 4:4) on his way north to Galilee from Judea, for between the two Jewish territories lay the land of the Samaritans, people despised by their Jewish neighbors. Many Samaritans were of mixed race, part Jewish and part Gentile. Foreign invaders had settled there over the years and some married into Jewish families and even embraced the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Others were brought in to colonize the land. There is an account from the time of Alexander the Great when the locals revolted and killed the Greek governor in the uprising. Greek soldiers put down the revolt, cornered the organizers in a cave, sealing it off until they suffocated. Then Alexander the Great brought in a group of Macedonian colonists.^[2] 

   Over the years,  the animosity between Jews and Samaritans made any kind of shared religious practice too problematic, and so the two sides settled into mutual disadmiration.  Into that conflicted state of affairs goes Jesus. He could avoid Samaria altogether by going back north to Galilee by way of the Jordan River because crossing into Samaria can be dangerous. There are stories of Jews who cross the Samaritan border and are never heard from again. But, Jesus takes the road less traveled, bringing his disciples with him - aren’t they just thrilled - making it to the village of Sychar about noon on a hot day, taking a rest by Jacob’s well. He sends the disciples into town to buy food. I can just hear their conversation. “Hasn’t the Master ever heard what Rabbi Eliezer said, how eating Samaritan bread is the same as eating swine flesh?”^[3] 

   While Jesus rests, a woman approaches, carrying her large clay jar that holds the day’s water for her household. It’s an odd time to be coming to draw water. Most of the women do it in the morning when there is still a bit of cool in the air.  Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to anybody.  “Give me a drink.” She is surprised, but manages to respond, “Why would a Jewish man like you ask a Samaritan woman like me for a drink?”  “Oh, if you only knew.” Then begins a long conversation that will change her life forever. At first she doesn’t understand the living water he proposes to offer is of the Spirit and will gush up in her with eternal life. She is still thinking in terms of physical water, how nice it would be not to have to come to the well every day. Jesus, though, helps her make the spiritual connection by saying, “Go get your husband.” She answers, “I don’t have a husband,” and Jesus says, “I know. You’ve had five husbands, and the guy you’re living with now isn’t your husband.” She’s wondering, “How does he know all that about me?” Then there is this silence as she waits for the next shoe to drop, for him to call her an adulteress and pronounce her a miserable sinner, but he doesn’t say any of that. She breaks the silence,  “Sir, you must be a prophet.”

   Now her spirit is awakening, and she has questions for him. “We have always worshiped God here on Mt. Gerizim, but your people say the only place to worship is Jerusalem. So, who has the real temple, you people or us? Now we are getting to why Jesus had to pass through Samaria. He explains that both temples will be rendered of no account because of the hour that is coming, meaning his death and resurrection, which will reveal the right place for worship to be in spirit and in truth. The woman then tells Jesus, “One of the things we have in common is we’re both waiting for the messiah to make what you are telling me about happen.” I can see Jesus looking at her, smiling slightly, and then saying, “Hello. . .”

   Just then the disciples return from shopping. They just can’t believe he is talking to that, that woman. “Make him stop.” “You make him stop!” By this time the woman has left the big clay jar of her old life by the well and dashed back into town to tell her neighbors, the same neighbors she avoids because she doesn’t want to hear their opinions about her living situation, “Come and meet this guy who knows all about me. He might be the Messiah.”

   While she’s gone, the disciples try to get Jesus to eat something, but he tells them, “I’m plenty full, I feed on doing the will of my Father. You know that saying about the harvest coming in after four months? Well, there’s a harvest ready to be gathered in right here, right now.”

   As he’s speaking the woman comes back with a crowd of her neighbors, who are much impressed that Jesus could see so clearly into her life. They ask him to stay and for the next two days, a great harvest is brought in, as they - these Samaritans -come to believe Jesus to truly be the Savior of the world, even the part of the world where they live. When it comes time to leave, Jesus has a whole new group of friends who are no longer defensive about their temple on Gerizim. Everything will work out as it should because they now believe him, love him, are starting a new and deep relationship with him, and their spirits are gushing with living water.

   There is so much to reflect on in this narrative. Here are some ideas that will go with me

during this third week of Lent, and I hope may be helpful to you. First, we are all thirsty,  and to us Jesus still offers that living water, running free and cool, directly from the Source of God’s everflowing font of eternal life. Second, Jesus knows us, the whole us, the real us, even the us we might wish not to be part of us. He loves us anyway and wants to be invited in, so that through the Spirit gushing forth in us we might become the us God intends us to be. Next, worship is not about being on the right mountain, nor even in the right brick and mortar temple. True worship is in spirit and in truth, an expression of an ever deepening relationship with God in Christ, a relationship that thrives when we gather together as the Body of Christ. And finally, during this season when fasting is a spiritual practice commended to us, we do well to consider filling that empty space with heaping helpings of  the work God has given us to do, as we take our part in bringing God’s work to fulfillment, to look around and see the fields ripe for harvest, and to step out and start gathering, to even do so by saying words, words as simple as, “I know a guy I’d sure like you to meet.” It could just be the moment that someone begins to find the Source of living water to quench even the deepest thirst.