Lent 3 A March 19, 2017
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie Hutson
Exodus 17: 1-7 + Psalm 95 + Romans 5: 1-11 + John 4: 5-42
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.
March is Women’s History month. I’ve been reading what I can by and about remarkable women in history, some very well known like Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt and Helen Keller and some who are less well known like the mathematicians from 1960’s NASA featured in the movie Hidden Figures. I’ve been reading more about the leader of the Western World and a hero of mine: Angela Merkel and her own history as the daughter of a pastor.
But for every story that is told…..whether it’s told fully and well from its outset, like Amelia Earhart’s and Helen Keller’s or whether it is unearthed far later, like mathematician Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan….for every story that finally offers affirmation and credit, there are stories of women that have, throughout the centuries been co-opted into something they are not. They have been twisted in ways that are not faithful to the text or to what we know of Jesus.
The story of the woman at the well is one of those stories. It is famously one of those stories and every time it comes up in the lectionary cycle I wonder if we can, at last, focus on the story without having to do the work of reclaiming the woman’s identity first. Every time it comes up in the lectionary I wonder if this is the time and this is the year when the roles of women won’t be questioned or downplayed or simply ignored….clearly, according to headlines and what is happening in our world, we are not there yet.
So, who is this woman who encounters Jesus at the well? What do we know about her and what has simply been added to the story to water down her testimony? Why did the writer of John’s Gospel offer such a lengthy telling of this story? How is it significant for us today?
Let’s start with the woman. We know that she is a Samaritan. And this is not a throw away detail, in fact, it’s one of the most important details in the story. It’s helpful for us to remember that Samaritans were historically the enemies of the Jews. The two were divided by centuries of distrust and prejudice, each claiming to possess the one true faith. Jews and Samaritans held different legal traditions and different interpretations of holy Scripture. They certainly did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah, or even that Jesus was a teacher. Remember another place where a Samaritan is used in a story Jesus tells….as he answers the question of who is our neighbor, Jesus describes neighbor as the outsider, as the other, as a Samaritan. So the identity of the woman as a Samaritan is important. It immediately offers context: Jesus is not speaking with a follower, with someone who knows who he is and what he is teaching. Jesus is speaking with an outsider. The woman acknowledges this when she asks Jesus: “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”
The other thing we know about the woman at the well is that she has had five husbands and is currently living with a man who is not her husband. It is a safe bet that IF this was the purpose of this story in John’s Gospel, to offer a moral critique, Jesus would have admonished her for this. He would have judged her. But he doesn’t. He is simply using this facet of her life as a way to show her that she is already known and she is already loved.
So how is it that this detail in the story is the one that so many people have absolutely gotten hung up on? Have been unable to let go of? She’s a woman of ill repute….she’s a prostitute….she’s a loose woman (whatever that means)…she has a shady past. What? Where in this text do we find these details? Nowhere.
“Let’s be clear about one fact. The text tells us that the Samaritan woman had five husbands, but it does not tell us why. We do not know whether she has been divorced or widowed. Perhaps, like Tamar in Genesis 38, she is trapped in the custom of levirate marriage, and the last male in the family line has refused to marry her. Moreover, we should bear in mind that divorce (which is not mentioned in the text) was an exclusively male privilege.”[1] Perhaps her five husbands found her lacking or grew tired of her. Perhaps she was unable to bear a male heir. In those days, as Jesus notes elsewhere, it was possible to merely write three or four sentences and dismiss and divorce one’s wife. “What if this woman with no name needed redemption, not from the excesses of sexual promiscuity but from a series of injustices from five husbands…?”[2]
It is a disservice to the text and a misogynistic interpretation to presume that the woman is somehow morally bankrupt. It is a lazy interpretive move…too easy and taken too readily both in the interpretation of Scripture and in telling the story of women throughout time.
What about this story makes it significant to the writer of John’s Gospel? After all, in the Gospel of John, Jesus is usually found giving long monologues. He seldom engages in any actual conversation. The Samaritan woman, however, engages not only easily with Jesus, but in deep and robust ways. The Samaritan woman, an outsider twice, by virtue of nationality and gender, is the first person of any nationality or gender in John to engage Jesus in serious theological conversation. She asks the hard questions. She identifies Jesus as prophet, which was a divisive point between the Samaritans and the Jews. She tells the story of her people and their beliefs. She even makes a faith statement that is filled with certainty: “I know that Messiah is coming, who is called Christ. When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” And Jesus’ answer to her echoes the words of God in Exodus: I AM. Jesus has offered this first revelatory identifier in John to a Samaritan and to a woman.
In this exchange between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, we find the template for engaging in the hard conversation with our faith. What do we believe? What do we want to believe? What is known to us and what do we still wonder about? Who is Jesus and why is he important to us….or is he important to us? And these are not conversations we can simply have in our heads, or in our imaginings. This encounter between Jesus and the woman puts flesh around the value and critical nature of community. Faith is to be wrestled with and to be challenged, but to do that it takes another. It takes the commitment to coming together for this kind of conversation.
After her encounter with Jesus the woman leaves her water jars there at the well and goes into the city, proclaiming “Come and See”…Come and see this One who has told me everything I have ever done! He can’t be the Messiah, can he?
And they come. First they believe because of the testimony of the woman. But after being with Jesus for two days….after listening and hearing and coming to know this outsider….this foreigner among them….they come to believe because they have encountered him for themselves.
The testimony of the woman….the Come and See…..is enough to move them toward Jesus. She didn’t need to offer a systematic theology of her own interpretation. All she needed to do was invite them to come and see.
Recently one of you asked me what it would take to have more people in worship. I suggest to you that we have the answer and the example in this story. The invitation to come and see is all that is needed. We don’t need to worry about whether or not it will be enough, because we trust that in the encounter with Jesus, lives and hearts are filled and transformed. But we must be bold enough to offer the invitation: Come. See.
The story of Jesus and the woman at the well is a call story. It is a reminder to us all that Jesus sought out a person outside of the normative model of evangelist to use to convert an entire city. It is an invitation to us to listen and consider others whose stories we might rather judge or rewrite or misinterpret…for in those stories….in those lives….in those very people….is the story of God.
Thanks be to God, and let the church say…Amen.
[1] Gench, Frances Taylor. Back to the Well: Women’s Encounters With Jesus in the Gospels.
[2] Ibid