John 4:5-42
Drawn to the Water
James Sledge March
19, 2017
In
this sermon, people playing the parts of Jesus and the Samaritan woman come to
the well. They speak the words spoken by these two while the pastor narrates
and offers some observations at several pauses in the action. As such the
scripture reading is woven into the sermon itself. The congregation joins in
reading the last verse of the scripture which also concludes the sermon.
So Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of
ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.6Jacob’s well was
there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was
about noon. (Jesus walks out and sits down.)
7A Samaritan woman came to draw water (Woman comes to the well.), and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”
(8His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9The
Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a
woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)
A Samaritan
woman. I’m not sure it is possible for us to
appreciate the force of these words. We have no experience with the enmity
between Jews and Samaritans or the status of women in Jesus’ day. But there are
those we’d rather not talk to if we met in a strange or unfamiliar place.
Perhaps our Samaritan woman, the one we don’t share things in common with, is a
black male, a Syrian refugee, an illegal alien, an unhinged conservative, a
raving liberal, a transgender woman.
That
doesn’t apply to Nicodemus, the last person Jesus met. He’s a respected,
educated, religious leader, a white Presbyterian of his day. He came to Jesus
in the dark of night, impressed and curious, but also wary. This unnamed woman,
an outsider many of us would rather not speak to, is approached by Jesus, a man
she has never heard of, because he is thirsty in the noonday heat and needs her
help.
10Jesus answered her, “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.” 11The woman said to him, “Sir,
you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12Are
you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons
and his flocks drank from it?” 13Jesus said to her, “Everyone who
drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14but those who drink of
the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will
give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” 15The
woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or
have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Living water. For Nicodemus the term was born again. In the gospel’s original language, both terms have double meanings.
The literal meanings speak of being born a second time or of fresh, flowing
water in contrast to that from a cistern. Figuratively they speak of being born
from above or of life-giving waters. Both Nicodemus and this woman hear Jesus
literally and so misunderstand him. For Nicodemus, this becomes a total
roadblock.
But
while this unnamed, female, outsider misunderstands as well, she remains open.
Something about her, her lack of religious certainty perhaps, her need for
water perhaps. “Sir, give me this water. I’m tired of being thirsty and I’m
tired of having to come back here over and over. I’m tired of the all the
drudgery and barely keeping my head above water. I’m tired of whatever I do not
being enough. Sir, whatever it is you have, please give it to me.”
