John 4:5-42
The United Methodist clergy singing duo “Dust and Ashes”
perform a song on one of their CDs that goes, “Jesus, met the
woman at the well, and he told her everything she’d ever done.”
Those few words of the song convey the significant way Jesus encountered
a complete stranger, whose life was in moral disarray, and brought her
step by step to redemption.
His encounter with this woman is an extremely intriguing dialogue
between a man and woman who by every moral convention of that day would
never have entered into conversation. Samaritans and Jews held contempt
for one another both racially and religiously, and even if this were
not true, it would have been considered improper for Jesus and this
woman to be talking in that public place. The fact that the woman was
drawing water at this time of day raised certain questions. Was she
just off schedule? After all, most of the women would have gathered
with their water pots in the cool of the evening and used the opportunity
to catch up on the events of the day, or was something deeper that brought
her at this time, perhaps questions about her character, her lifestyle,
that would have made her uncomfortable with the other women. Maybe it
was just easier to come to the well alone. What was her character problem?
In a later part of the conversation with the woman, Jesus reveals his
knowledge of her circumstances, pointing out that she not only has had
five husbands, but that the man she is living with is not her husband.
She abruptly declares that Jesus must be a prophet, and this leads to
other issues, such as the proper place of worship and the manner in
which God’s people are meant to worship. Entire sermons could
be preached on each element of this lengthy conversation beside the
city well, but for our purposes this morning I would like for us to
stay with the opening part of the text.
Visualize it again. Jesus and his disciples had been walking through
the territory of Samaria and had come to the city of Sychar. This is
a historically significant place because it is near a plot of land that
the ancient tribal leader Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s
well was located in this place and it was here that Jesus sat down to
rest while his disciples went into the heart of the city to buy food.
While he sat “a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus
said to her, ‘Give me a drink.’” Thus, we see that
Jesus is the one who instigates the conversation. The woman has spunk,
because she questions his demand. In a day when women customarily walked
about three paces behind the donkey, it is remarkable that she would
speak to him in this way. She says, “How is it that you, a Jew,
ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” She knew that Jews held
Samaritans in contempt; most would not touch the drinking cup that had
been in a Samaritan’s hand, particularly a female Samaritan.
Jesus said to 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.” Jesus may
have been thinking in that moment about the riches of his grace that
he wanted so deeply to confer, not just upon Jews, but also upon Samaritans,
upon all people. But he knew that there is timing to how persons can
receive his gifts. They must be prepared, made ready to receive. His
entire conversation was an act of opening the woman to the moment wherein
she could ultimately receive him as Messiah and invite everyone she
knew to “come and see” him, to “come and see a man
who told me everything I have ever done!” Incidentally, they all
came, everyone she told. Many Samaritans believed on that day and invited
him to stay longer, two more days, during which time “many more
believed because of his word.” These people were grateful to this
woman, who in sharing what she had experienced in Jesus, had surely
risen in their estimation. They said to her, “It is no longer
because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves,
and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”
But again, we are getting ahead of ourselves. Jesus has just said, “If
you knew that 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.” The woman looks at him, jumping to her own
conclusions, and says, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well
is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our
ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks
drank from it?”
She seems to be saying that Jesus from all outward appearances has no
ability to draw water from this ancient well: how could he offer any
other source of water? And secondly, she seems to be taking umbrage
that a well that was good enough for Jacob and all her ancestors, might
not be as good as the kind of water Jesus was talking about. She is
clearly testing him, but does so because she is intrigued. She really
wants to know more. He has peaked her curiosity. And he does not disappoint
her. Instead of putting her down, he explains the special quality of
living water. He says, “Everyone who drinks of this water will
be thirsty again, but 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.”
She says, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty
or have to keep coming here to draw water.” She doesn’t
understand yet that Jesus is speaking of spiritual things, and it is
only after talking about her personal life and her religious thought
that the light begins to dawn. Jesus asks her for a drink, but he instinctively
knows that she is the one with the greater thirst. Only living water
can quench her thirst.
She thinks she can put Jesus in his place by pointing out his incapacity
to draw water. “You have no bucket, and the well is deep!”
It is as though she is saying, “You are handicapped for lack of
the right equipment.” Sometimes the cruel word “cripple”
is used to indicate a handicapping condition. Last Sunday we heard Bishop
Kammerer give a wonderful illustration about a woman with no arms, whose
presence in a pharmaceutical checkout line made her feel uncomfortable
and in need of finding a way to help the poor woman with the checkout
process, only to discover that the woman was quite capable of taking
care of herself by the incredible use of her legs, feet and toes, which
she used to perfection as proficiently as most people do with arms,
hands, and fingers intact. The woman had no arms, but was doing just
fine, despite the small inconvenience of having to kick off her shoes
to do these tasks.
A couple of weeks ago while I was in Atlanta for a meeting at a large
church, I walked into a restroom and saw a little boy of about 7 or
8 standing before the hand dryer, which was blowing full tilt. I didn’t
speak to him, but noticed he had in his hand the white walking stick
of a blind person. He heard me come into the room and immediately started
talking to me, explaining that he wished he had brought his other cane
because this one was hard to use. He told me that it had fallen over
and the little stuffed tiger on the handle had dropped into the toilet.
He said, “I washed it, but I can’t seem to get it dry. It
has little seeds inside and if I don’t get them dry it will ruin
it. This is the eleventh time I have run this thing trying to get it
dry.” I thought he was going to ask me to help him, which I would
have gladly done, but then he assured me that he thought he had gotten
dry this time and everything would be all right.
I thought to myself, what an amazing little boy. Such an awful handicapping
condition to be blind, but the boy was going right on and in control
of his situation. He was self-confident and very pleasant - a charming
little boy. A few days later Marianne and I had the opportunity to see
the movie “Ray”, the story of the late entertainer Ray Charles.
The boyhood scenes of Ray at the age of ten, tragically losing his sight
to an eye disease made me think of my encounter with the boy in the
restroom.
When the tragedy of Ray Charles’ blindness came upon him his mother
was determined that he learn to do for himself. She did not coddle him
or allow him to feel sorry for himself. She made him use his other senses
to compensate for the loss of sight. In her words, she did not want
him to become “a cripple”.
Ray Charles had a great gift for music, which he rode to success. One
fan said, “He was born to the piano.” His star rose quickly
in his early twenties, but many corrupting influences took hold of him,
including womanizing, infidelity to his wife, and drugs, the worst of
which was heroin to which he became horribly addicted. One never knows
fully what drives a person to dissolution like this, but in addition
to his blindness, Ray Charles always felt responsible for the drowning
accident that claimed the life of his little brother. He was eaten up
with guilt and had awful flashbacks to the time when the accident occurred.
In later years when his addiction was at its worst and it looked like
it would eventually take away not only his career, but also his life,
he had a flashback to his childhood, but it was not exactly a flashback.
It was more like his mother and little brother came to him in a vision.
He may have been hallucinating, but it seemed as real to him as if they
were right there with no distortion of reality.
In this epiphany he frantically splashes his hands around in a washtub,
trying to reach his brother who had drowned. At that moment his mother
speaks to him, “He ain’t there. Talk to me, son. I ain’t
no bad dream. I am a part of you. Even all that dope couldn’t
keep me away.” “Momma, I kept my promise.” “You
got strong, all right. Went places I never dreamed of, but you still
became a cripple. Come here, Baby; come here” (He weeps) His little
brother enters the scene and says, “Ray, it wasn’t your
fault,” and he hugs him. His mother then speaks to Ray in slow,
deliberate words, ‘Now promise us you never let nobody nor nothin’
turn you into no cripple ever again, that you’ll always stand
on your own two feet.”
From that day Ray Charles determined he would overcome the very thing
that had made him a cripple – heroin. He kicked it cold turkey,
suffering greatly in the process, but he made it on the power of his
mother’s voice speaking to his inward parts that were wracked
in pain, and for the next forty years he went on to thrill audiences
in sold out concert halls, to win Grammys, and be honored as one of
the world’s most beloved entertainers. Among those honors was
the day Julian Bond stood before the Georgia Legislature and declared,
“Today we have come to right a wrong.” In 1961 Ray Charles
had refused to play before a segregated audience in Georgia and a law
was passed preventing him from performing again anywhere in the state.
On March 7, 1979 that law was rescinded. “Georgia on My Mind”
was named the Official State song, Ray Charles was given a public apology
and welcomed back home. In the midst of the celebration, Ray’s
wife, who had stuck with him through it all, turned to her husband and
said, “If only your Momma were here.” Ray replied, “She’s
here. She never left.”
What a story of redemption and of a mother’s powerful influence,
even beyond death. At his worst she was still there in the depth of
his psyche, speaking to him, calling him back to be his best. Don’t
ever doubt or underestimate the influence of a mother or father on a
child’s life for good or ill. Let every parent realize that their
voice will still be heard when all others have ceased. Heroin almost
took Ray Charles away, but a tape ran through his head reminding him
of a promise he had made and by the grace of God, he finally kept his
promise.
Jesus met the woman at the well. Her life was in need of repair and
he had the words of life that she needed to hear. She had been crippled
by emotional confusion and moral turpitude. Jesus caught her on the
way down and brought her up, brought her back, restored her life, and
gave her eternal life.
Jesus helps people become strong. He himself had to stand against the
devil in the wilderness with all his temptations, relying upon the power
of the Spirit to carry him through and as a result of growing awareness
of his empowerment was able to extend this same power to others.
Some people are going try to bring you down. They’ll look at you
and say, “You don’t even have a bucket, and the well is
deep.” Are you going to let that happen? Are you going go weak
and feel sorry for yourself, go looking for a crutch and make excuses
for your behavior, your abusive appetite that can lead to various kinds
of addiction and thereby, allow yourself to become crippled in life,
or are you going to listen to your inner voice of control, perhaps your
parents, your church, your Lord, who may all be saying, “You are
somebody, somebody worthwhile, somebody we don’t want to lose
track of or lose hold of, somebody able to live life as God meant it
to be.
The church is in the business of catching people, like The Catcher in
the Rye, who about to fly over the edge, people who are lost, confused,
on their way down, and showing them a way back. Jesus met the woman
at the well and told her everything she’d ever done. In him she
found her Savior. Jesus is still on the road, stopping along the way
to engage people who act like they’ve got it all together, but
who may be about to die of thirst. We need to keep our eyes open for
those folks and tell them about living water so they can live abundantly.
Prayer: Thank you, Lord, for saving us from crippling influences, crippling
behavior, by meeting us at the watering holes of life and challenging
us, asking us if what we have chosen is truly satisfying, and offering
us eternal life in its place. Thank you for moving in on us before it
is too late and awakening us to something higher, better, more wonderful
than we ever deemed possible. Thank you for your gift of grace and forgiveness
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.