Exodus 17: 1-7 (New Jerusalem Bible)
John 4: 5-30 (Common English Bible)
Water is the background from both readings in this Sunday’s lectionary readings. Water is essential to all life. Our human bodies are made up of around 60-70 percent of water. In Exodus, Moses realizes the exiles from Egypt will die of thirst in the desert without water. In reading from the gospel of John, Jesus realizes the Samaritan woman needs something more nourishing from the well than the literal H20.
The Hebrews who left the slavery in Egypt to follow Moses were becoming nostalgic. They were getting hungry and thirsty and thought this new thing Moses was leading them to was a mistake. The former slaves remembered their lives in Egypt. Weren’t things better in the good old days, at least we had something to eat! Of course they had already forgotten how God had provided them with manna and quail in the desert.
Like so many people often do, the Hebrew people in the wilderness saw God through the lens of fear and blame. But God responds to their complaints in the midst of their doubts with water to keep them alive.
Jesus did the same for the Samaritan woman at the well, but in a different way. To fully understand this story, one needs to understand the origin of the division and animosity between Jews and Samaritans. The kingdom of Israel divided after the death of King Soloman, the son of David and Bathsheba. The Northern Kingdom claimed the title of “Israel” but their king was not descended from David. The Southern Kingdom was called “Judah” and their king was descended from David.
About 200 years later, around the year 720 BC, the Assyrian army invaded the Northern Kingdom and forced nearly all its citizens into foreign lands. This is where we get the term, “the lost tribes of Israel.” But some citizens were left behind and they intermarried with foreign people people the Assyrians had brought into their conquered lands. It was a common tactic by the Assyrians for those they conquered. A small-scale contemporary example of this, is what Vladimir Putin wants to do to Ukraine. The Jewish people of the Northern Kingdom lost their religious identity. So the Jewish people of the Southern Kingdom, Judah, which had not been conquered, yet, no longer considered those in the conquered Northern Kingdom as real Jews. They were considered as half-breeds because of intermarriage.
When we turn to the story of Jesus and the unnamed woman at the well, the one thing to remember is the symbol of the “well” has an important meaning in the Bible. It’s a symbol of marriage. A well is where Isaac and Rebekah met. It’s where Jacob and Rachel met. And it’s where Moses and Zipporah met. I mean, who could forget that scene when Charlton Heston fights off those belligerent men pushing Yvonne De Carlo around about who draws the water first? But don’t get too excited, I’m not saying that Jesus married the Samaritan woman, but the well still has a meaning.
Now a lot of preachers like to focus on the woman’s past. She has been through five marriages. But I’m not going there. Neither did Jesus. Jesus acknowledged her marriages, but he did not condemn her or ask her to repent. Women have always been treated to a different standard than men. King Henry VIII married six times and very few condemned him. If they did, they were sent to the Tower of London and never came out in one piece. Just ask Thomas More.
But can you imagine the surprise when the Samaritan woman sees a strange man at the watering well. When he lifts his head, his complexion is dark and his facial features are of those who live in Judea and not Samaria. The woman gasps, and realizes this man is a Jew, the people who despise us! Jesus can only smile and asks for some water to drink.
Before I go any further, it’s important to realize that John’s gospel, from the very beginning of the Jesus movement, was regarded as a “spiritual gospel.” What that means, unlike the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, called the “synoptic” (Greek for similar) gospels, John’s gospel was written under the influence of Greek philosophy, full of symbolism, idioms and metaphors.
As I mentioned earlier, the well has been a symbol of marriage in the Bible. And Jesus could be cast in the role of the symbolic bridegroom, instead of the groom. Jesus is wanting the Samaritans to become part of his new movement, to experience the eternal water of wholeness. The Jews and Samaritans much like the Catholics and Protestants were divided with violence. Religions are still divided against one another even though the core beliefs of most faiths are similar.
Instead of the five husbands the woman had, their symbol could stand for a verse from II Kings chapter 17, in which the King of Assyria brought pagan people from five nations and placed them within the cities of Samaria. They were put there to corrupt the faith of the Jewish people of Samaria. This would be a form of spiritual adultery. Jesus is presented here how the ancient religious divisions in the human family can be overcome in the new consciousness that Christ comes to bring.
Above all, this story, whether literal or symbolic, is about barriers that divide people. Jesus tells the woman, this is God talking to you. I AM the One who speaks to you. God is too big to be confined in a Temple, whether in Samaria or Jerusalem. And God is too big to be confined in any one religion.
The Samaritan woman was overjoyed from what she heard and became an evangelist to her fellow Samaritans. And according to the later verses (31-39) she was successful with the gospel message. Whereas Moses brought literal water to his followers to maintain their physical lives, Jesus brought the everlasting spiritual water to the Samaritans. Jesus is a barrier-breaker. Before him falls the human division between Jew and Samaritan, men and women, white and black and straight or gay. A vision of the Realm of God happening right now among us.
AMEN
