How must the people have talked. This woman was a sinner – obviously. Publicly. She changed husbands the way she changed her clothes. Jumped from one man to another repeatedly until she had tallied a total of five husbands. But even that was not enough. She left the 5th and found her way into the arms and likely into the bed of yet another man.
People talked the way people do, and before you know it she couldn't go anywhere with out catching the glances of those she passed by. Wagging their heads, looking down their noses, judgment, scorn, looks of contempt and disdain, backs turned and glances shot over the shoulder of those who passed back and forth the latest gossip of who she was bedding next. It was all she could take so she put off her daily task of going for water until that time of the day when she would be least likely to run into anyone. She would put up with the heat of the day, perhaps sweat a little more and work a little harder, but it would be worth it if she could avoid the hypocritical judgments of the gossips and tongue waggers.
It was precisely her guilt and her shame that led her to cross paths with the Jewish man who sat quietly by the well on that day. She was hoping to be alone – but as she processed the scene, she may has well have been alone. It was safe to proceed – this man wouldn't have known her from Eve and even if he did, he wouldn't care to talk to her. Men didn't speak to women, let alone Samaritan women. She could proceed with her business confident of her anonymity with this stranger, confident that the silence would not be broken by this man who was sure to take no notice of her.
Much to her surprise, this man spoke. Out of character for a Jewish man and violating social mores and codes of conduct this man sitting alone by the well spoke. “Give me something to drink.”
It was odd. Weird. Out of place. We have all known people like that – people who, as we say, don't quite “get it”. People who are not in tune with the social rules of engagement. Who to talk to, who not to talk to, when to talk, when not to talk. Apparently this man was one of those social misfits. Who knows, maybe he was just really thirsty.
She replied to him with a question – why not, after all, what did she have to loose. She still had her anonymity to hide behind. She could talk to this man and pretend that she was no different from any other Samaritan woman. So what if it was the middle of the day, how was he to know any different? Maybe she got up late, maybe she was busy and involved in the morning when the rest of the women came to the well. He didn't know. He probably didn't care. Either way, her anonymity gave her freedom and it made her bold.
“How is it that you a Jew ask a drink of me a woman, of Samaria?”
If she thought the previous exchange was odd, it was about to get even more so. This man was going to begin saying things that didn't even make sense, speaking almost as if in riddles. Speaking in ways that people don't speak. Saying things that people don't say.
"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."
How did that even make sense? He asked her for a drink and now here he was telling her that she should ask him for a drink. Who was this man?
And that was precisely the point. It was who he was. It was the identity of this man who sat silently by himself in the heat of the day by Jacob's well. Many people had been to this well over the years, each of them searching for the same thing. Each of them searching for water. This man, who did not seem to be swayed by social taboos, came to this well asking for a drink, but searching for something much greater, searching for something that no one had cared to search for before. This man came to the well in the heat of the day, crossing social boundary lines even violating the religious code of righteousness for the day all because of what he was seeking. Jesus, the Son of God was there at the well on that day seeking to save that woman. Seeking to save her from her sin and seeking to free her from her guilt and seeking to give her eternal life.
Jesus loved her. Unconditionally, expecting nothing in return, Jesus loved her. He cared for her. He was concerned for her. This woman had been loved by men in the past. You might even say that she had been loved by too many men in the past. She had known lots of men, each one said that they loved her and who doesn't want to be loved, who isn't longing to be loved. But the affections and the promises of devotion faded quickly for this woman, as each new lover turned out to be interested only in what he could get from her and as soon as he had it, turned her out, passed her along, was done with her and didn't care to have her any more. She was discarded 5 times previous, the same way that children will buy a new toy, play with it till it's used up and then throw it away. This woman at the well was one of those throw aways.
Yet Jesus loved her. He was there in the heat of the day waiting for her, knowing that she would come the same time that she came every day, knowing who she was, only all too aware of her history, of her failures as a wife, her failures in keeping the commandments, knowing that she had been tossed aside by everyone else she had ever known, knowing that even though she may have been taken advantage of, that did not make her innocent. And still Jesus loved her.
Yes he was unusual. You might say he was weird. You might say he didn't fit in. You might say he was different. And the thing that set him so far apart from everyone else who had ever spoken to her who had ever dealt with her who had ever looked down their noses at her was that Jesus loved her. And because Jesus loved her in all of her unloveliness, He sought her out. Jesus loved her the way she had never been loved before. Jesus was interested, not in what he could get from her but what he could give to her. Jesus loved her so much that even as he carried out her past failures, even as he brought to light her many sins – he did so not to condemn her, but because of the very fact that he loved her, because he wanted to replace her old life with a new one. He wanted to replace her dead, sin filled heart with a new heart that would bubble up with life, eternal life, like a brook or spring.
You and I are not too different from that woman at the well. You and I have a history of past sins that follows us around. A history that is messy and dirty and ugly. This woman's sin was adultery it was divorce. It was faithlessness to God's covenant of marriage. For that she was dirty and for that she was shamed.
We would like to believe that we are different. Certainly we have known women like this woman before. They work with us at our places of employment. They have children who play on our sons and daughters ball teams. They are in our community organizations. The situation is much the same – for whatever reason they just can't seem to make a relationship work. We talk about them. We pass along the latest information about them, we even laugh and make jokes. But we are no different. We have not mastered our own faults, our own sins, our own failures any more than she has mastered hers. The fact that we are passing along the story and delighting in the latest news reveals our sin of gossip makes us just as guilty as she is. Yes she has broken the sixth commandment but we have broken the 8th as we have borne false witness, as we have tarnished her reputation with our stories and our jokes.
While we often close our eyes to our own sin and need to be reminded, this woman knew she was sinful and she knew she was dirty. Jesus did not have to convince her. All he did was mention the sin. He told her to go get her husband. She said she had no husband. After all, why would she want to bring all of that up with a stranger, why would she want to give this man who had been the first to show her any kindness in a longer time than what she could remember the opportunity to reject her. She deflected the question. But Jesus kept coming. “You are right in saying that you have no husband for you have had 5 husbands and the man you have now is not your husband.” Jesus relentlessly pursued her.
What made Jesus even more unusual, what set him apart from every person that she had ever known, was not the fact that he didn't know that Jewish men weren't supposed to talk to Samaritan women, it was not the fact that he asked for water when he had water he wanted to give, what made him so strange was that he knew her sin, he knew her past, he knew how greatly she had failed and he loved her anyway. He did not recoil from the horror of her failures, he did not turn up his nose at her sin. He brought it out into the open and he loved her anyway.
Jesus had come that day in search of that woman at the well. He came to her even when no one else would. No one else cared. Everyone else had written her off and tossed her aside. Yet Jesus found her, as sinful and as dirty as she was, and Jesus came to wash her, to clean her, to release her from the filth of her sin.
Sin has a way of sticking to us. It is like a stain that has soaked so deeply into the fabric that there is no way to get it out. It has become a part of who we are. Jesus came to undo that stain to release the grip that it has on us. He came with just the right detergent to get out the stain and cleanse us and clean us and to make us new.
Jesus offered to this woman living water. There are many things that we can do with water. When we are thirsty, we drink it and are refreshed. When we are dirty we bathe in it and are clean. Jesus was offering to this woman both. He was offering to her refreshment and he was offering to her a bath that would wash away her sin and that would purify her heart. Jesus would plunge her deep into the river of his blood that would wash over her and that would melt away ever sin that she had ever committed. She would enter that bath filled with sin, hated and despised and she would come out of that bath sparkling new with a righteousness and a purity that could never be tarnished, she would be so clean that she would never again be dirty. Instead of putting on her own righteousness, in the bath that Jesus would give, the spiritual bath – the bath of water and the Word she would put on the righteousness of Jesus.
Jesus came offering to the woman at the well so much. He offered her love, he offered her life, he offered her forgiveness and he offered her the Spirit of God and therefore true worship. Jesus has offered to us those very same things. We are just as sinful, just as dirty as that woman and he has loved us unconditionally. Because of that love that he has for us he taken our sin, our uncleanness and he has died for it all on the cross. He died so that you and I could be washed clean and set free from the stain of our sin. And now, because we are clean, because the sin has been washed away the Spirit of God has come to us, he has entered into us, the Spirit of God has been given to us when we were baptized so that we can worship God in Spirit and in Truth so that we can worship God in perfect communion with him. He has loved us with a love that is everlasting.
Amen.
Now may the peace that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Amen.
