Exodus 17: 1-7 Psalm 95
Romans 5: 1-11 John 4: 5-42
What’s my line? To be known is to be loved & to be loved is to be known.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
Back in the 1950’s and 1960’s there was a very popular television show called “What’s My Line?” On this show, the object of the game was for the celebrity guests to figure out the occupation of the mystery guest by asking questions that could only be answered with a “yes” or a “no”. For example, if the contestant were Kelsey. We might ask her “Do you do your job inside?” (Yes). “Does it involve more than one person?” (Yes) “Do you need a book?” (Yes) “Do you learn things?” (Yes). And maybe, if we were very lucky, we would eventually figure out that Kelsey is a student.
So, with What’s my Line as our guide we’re going to take a closer look at the woman at the well.
Was she a Jew? (No)
Is she married (No)
Did she have a questionable reputation? (No?)
Did she eventually believe Jesus? (Yes)
Let’s look at these questions a bit more carefully. The woman at the well was not a Jew, as Jesus was, she was a Samaritan, a despised and long time enemy of the Jews. So it was remarkable that Jesus would approach her, since she was his sworn enemy, as far as the rest of the Jews and Samaritans were concerned. And it was even more remarkable that Jesus would ask her to give him a drink of water. They would normally not have any conversation and they certainly wouldn’t find themselves in need of something from the other.
Is she married? No, she was not married. That is all that we know. She could have been living with a relative, with her father or brother. She could have been passed down from one brother to the next, as they died, in the hopes of giving an heir to the family, which was known as a Levirate marriage.
Did she have a questionable reputation? This is a bit trickier. There is nothing, nothing in the text that states this. And yet, for centuries she has been portrayed as a harlot, a woman of questionable reputation. Still, Jesus never calls for her to repent. He does not condemn her for who she is living with. In fact, neither Jesus nor the writer of John’s gospel mentions sin at all. We miss the entire point of this part of the exchange between Jesus and the Samaritan woman: that he tells her everything about her. That Jesus was a prophet. She recognized that in Jesus and he, in turn, saw her for who she was.
In John’s Gospel, “seeing” someone is the equivalent of fully knowing them. The Samaritan woman saw Jesus for who he truly was, something that even Nicodemus had been completely unable to do in the chapter preceding this one.
Let’s save our final question for a little bit later and turn for a bit to the Old Testament reading. In this passage from Exodus, Moses is leading the Israelites out of Egypt and they are wandering in the desert. They are tired and cranky and in this passage they are thirsty. So they complain. “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” They forget that Moses was bringing them out of slavery into freedom. They forget that it was God who had called Moses to this task and that he really didn’t want to do it in the first place. Because their identity, their “line” if you will, was…well, let’s use our “What’s My Line” criteria and see where it gets us:
Could you do whatever you wanted? (No)
Could you worship your God? (No)
Could you own land? (No)
If they could do none of these things, what did that make them? It made them slaves. And for many of them, it was all they had EVER known. For the rest of them, the memory of being a free people had faded. As a people they had become so integrated into the Egyptian community that they no longer knew what it meant to be the nation of Israel, the children of Yahweh.
Both the Samaritan woman and the Israelites had a self understanding that was flawed. The Israelites only knew themselves as slaves. What was being offered by freedom was uncomfortable and unfamiliar. The woman at the well only knew herself as a Samaritan. That she could move past that was a concept that was completely foreign to her.
And in both cases, they were thirsty…
So often, we also forget our identity. We think that all we are is whatever our “line” is. And in some cases, our stories find us stuck. Like the Israelites and the Samaritan woman, we cannot move past what we have always been told we are. Perhaps we have been told that we are not good enough…good enough athletes or scholars or parents or spouses or partners or children. Perhaps we have been told that we don’t have what it takes…to get ahead in the world, to make a difference, to hang in there. Perhaps we have been told that we are too old, young, stupid, smart, insensitive, sensitive, too something…to ever make anything out of our lives.
And so, like the Israelites, we complain as we wander around. We are hungry, we are thirsty, we’ve tried everything we know how to do. Nothing will ever change. It’s too hard, so why even bother?
Or like the Samaritan woman we sit right where we are and when Jesus approaches us, we are, as she was, so surprised that we can hardly believe it is him.
And in each case, we are given what it is that we are thirsty for. We are given identity that is not in any way related to anything we have done or not done in this life. Whether you or I ever achieved anything that the world would see as valuable is irrelevant in the eyes of God. Because Jesus sees us…Jesus knows us and wants more than anything for us to know him and to bear witness to him in this world. Just like the Samaritan woman did. She is the first person in John’s Gospel to be bold enough to go out and tell others who Jesus is. And the text says that many Samaritans believed in Jesus because of what she had told them. It says that plain as day…right there in verse 39.
Perhaps the questions we’d be better served in asking of the Israelites and the Samaritan woman and ourselves would be:
Do you love God?
Does God love you?
Can you try to love your neighbor?
Can you try to love yourself?
And to those questions, we answer Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes. And we, like the woman beside that well, find ourselves face to face with living water, with Jesus the Christ. We look straight into those eyes, filled with love for us, and think, and sing “What wondrous love is this?” Because for us, who still see ourselves as unworthy…as slaves or Samaritans, if you will…as having fallen short, it is hard, no, it is almost impossible to fathom that Jesus would redeem us. That he would die for us.
But when we come to this table and hear the words, we know that it is true: This is the Body of Christ given for you. For you. This is the blood of Christ shed for you.
And then, what choice do we have but to run from this place…and do exactly what that woman did when she left the well. We tell every person that we meet “Come and see” “Come and see” “Come and see”.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
0 Comments