( © by Rev. Larry A. Langer, First Presbyterian Church, Jasper, IN, March 27, 2011)
“Seven Who Encountered Jesus: (3) the Woman at the Well”
John 4:1-42 and Psalm 95
“But Jesus had to go through Samaria…A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (John 4:4, 7)
Our sermon today begins with “hatred.” We wouldn’t expect a sermon to begin with such, would we? We expect all of our sermons to begin with at least the premise of love, then conclude with the actuality of love, the love of God in Jesus Christ and our love for our neighbors.
But today’s sermon begins with hatred. It is a hatred between the Jews and the Samaritans. It had been going on for about seven and a half centuries, since 722 B.C. Without going into the detail of the “two kingdoms” of the Jews, the Northern and the Southern, let us be satisfied that when the Northern Kingdom fell in 722 B.C., the Jewish survivors intermarried with those described as “heathen colonists brought in from Babylonia by the Assyrian conquerors.”[1]
So, if we remember our teaching from the Torah, the first five books of the bible, one of the requirements God had for the Jewish nation to be strong and for a Jew to be a good Jew, was that they would always marry a Jew and never marry anyone who wasn’t a Jew. So, to a “good Jew,” one who tried to “live by the rules,” these Samaritans were looked upon as “unclean traitors to Jewish blood.”[2]
Furthermore, the Samaritans were confused, even heretical in their religious beliefs. Even though they earlier worshipped many gods caused by the strangers bringing in their own gods, they did begin worshipping “Jehovah,” but only accepted the first five books of the Bible, cutting off the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures.[3]
Plus, they hated the Jews! They had offered to help rebuild the temple in Jerusalem after the Jews returned from Babylonian exile – and were refused. It made the Samaritans bitter. And, as we know (and hear in the dialogue between Jesus and the woman at the well) the Jews say that the true place to worship God is in the temple in Jerusalem. The Samaritans adamantly refused, though, and said that their place of worship was in their own temple on Mount Gerizim in Samaria, which had been built about 400 B.C.
Then, when the Jews burned this temple at Mount Gerizim in 128 B.C. because they said it was “heretical,” the relationship between the “good and right Jews” and the Samaritans deteriorated even further!
Samaritans, in turn, would on occasion even stop and detain “Jews” traveling though the territory of Samaria. So, the “good” Jews would add hours to their trip traveling from Galilee to Jerusalem going around Samaria, rather than take the high road straight through Samaria. Says one commentator, “Little wonder then that a Jew would attempt to avoid any contact with these unclean dogs.”[4]
Let’s pause for a moment and think about whom we avoid at any and all costs and why we avoid them. Who do we laugh and sneer at and think, “I am certainly glad I am not like them!” Who would it concern us if our child married “someone different”? Did the person our child married concern us, especially to the point of hatred?
I mean, really, every last one of us has someone or some group of people or some absolute prejudice that causes us to harbor and exhibit feelings of hatred. And you know we all have heard the great prejudicial “but,” even from “good” church people: “I know I am supposed to love everyone, but…”
There are people we won‘t talk to, have business dealings with, eat at the same restaurant with, shop in the same store with, speak with if they move in next door, treat them for a physical ailment, accept them in the pulpit, or even if they somehow become a relative of ours.
There are people we hate! And we might not even have the same reasons as the ones between the Jews and the Samaritans: Not worshipping God and God alone; not accepting help when it is offered; and ruining something we hold dear (like when the Jews burned the Samaritan temple, for example).
Is it any wonder, then, that the text says in verse 4, seven little words, “But Jesus had to go through Samaria…But Jesus had to go through Samaria.” Remember, Jesus and the disciples could have taken the longer way around, but now, “Jesus had to go through Samaria.” The New International Version of the Bible says, “But Jesus needed to go through Samaria.”
One commentator writes:
What a world of meaning there is in that phrase! He did not need to save the three days He could gain by passing through this ill-regarded province rather than crossing the river and going up the eastern desert route. There did not seem to be urgent needs in Galilee that would cause Him to shorten the journey.
No, there is a deeper reason, an inner constraint of love and obedience. He knew the ignorance and spiritual hunger of the Samaritan people, and the Father had sent him into the whole world – not just part of it. He (simply) could not avoid these people in spite of the long history of resentment and antagonism between Jews and Samaritans.[5]
“Jesus had to go through Samaria.”
What runs through our minds – or rather who runs through our minds – as we think of this verse? Where does the Lord say we have to go? To whom does the Lord say we have to go?
We all know the hymn; we sing it, but do we do it?
It may not be on a mountain height
Or over the stormy sea;
It may not be at the battle’s front
My Lord will have need of me.
But if by a still, small voice He calls
To paths that I do not know,
I’ll answer, dear Lord, with my hand in Thine,
“I’ll go where You want me to go.”
(That verse is relatively easy; I think that is what any of us would say. Verse two is a bit tougher.)
Perhaps today there are loving words
Which Jesus would have me speak;
There may be now, in the paths of sin,
Some wanderer whom I should seek.
O Savior, if thou wilt be my Guide,
Tho’ dark and rugged the way,
My voice shall echo the message sweet.
I’ll say what you want me to say.
(And then the refrain, which perhaps you can say with me)
I’ll go where you want me to go, dear Lord,
Over mountain, or plain, or sea.
I’ll say what you want me to say, dear Lord.
I’ll be what you want me to be.
Jesus was compelled to go through Samaria. Is there somewhere today that Jesus is compelling us to go?
We are compelled to come to church today. Even if we came “out of habit,” we still had “a choice”; at least we would say we did. But when it comes right down to it, we were compelled to come here at 10:30 am on this Sunday morning, because this is where Jesus wants to meet us. For the woman at the well Jesus had to show up at noon. He had to be there. He had to come here at 10:30, and we did, too.
Like Jesus and the woman, Jesus and we begin the “small talk” conversations – You know, “the hi’s” and “how are you’s” and “gee, you are looking well today,” and “that sure is a pretty sweater.” We also might converse about some project here or how a friend or relative is or make a joke at someone’s expense or talk about a trip we have taken or are going to take. Sometimes Jesus can and will meet us in these conversations and/or snippets of dialogue, but I wonder. Maybe if we take the time and interest to stop and go a bit more in depth, because we felt there was something just under the surface waiting to come out, Jesus will meet us.
Yes, Jesus had to go through Samaria because he had to minister to the woman one-on-one. And, did you notice that when the disciples returned and were “surprised to find Jesus speaking to the woman,” no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking to her?” And, did we notice that there wasn’t any lead-in story with the disciples arguing with Jesus that they shouldn’t go through Samaria; that “good Jews just don’t do that?” No, the ministry of Jesus Christ and the necessity of the ministry of Jesus Christ had begun to infect the disciples and they were beginning to realize what Jesus’ ministry meant to people.
Anyway, Jesus and the woman sparred at first, talking about well water versus living water, the temple in Jerusalem where the “real Jews” went versus the temple at Mount Gerizim where the Samaritans worshipped. I am sure that these details were important to someone, but truthfully, they weren’t important to the woman or Jesus. The woman had a heart-hunger that needed to be met and Jesus had a heart-hunger to meet it. That is why Jesus was compelled to go through Samaria: To fill a heart-hunger.
He also wants to fill our heart-hunger, too. So, we have the recap of the encounter in our Bible, the very word of God. In it, Jesus says, “I tell you there will be a day when people will worship in spirit and in truth.”
Don’t we worship in spirit and in truth? Or, do we really wonder what this means? In one sense, isn’t Jesus merely stating the obvious? Worship should be “spiritual.” It ought to be appropriately religious and uplifting. And of course, worship ought to be about truth. But one preacher said, “(Just) gathering to celebrate our collective illusions and lies is not worship – it is a sad delusion.”[6] So, two quick thoughts.
One, when we worship in “spirit,” it is not so much a “place” as it is wherever the Holy Spirit of God blows upon us. We get true worship when we are “blown together” in one place by the Holy Spirit of God. This “one place” doesn’t have to be a physical place. In fact, it is “in one place” where people are “in agreement,” in harmony, and believing and working together in the same way and for the same purposes.
The word about God in the Old Testament comes from Genesis 1, “And the spirit of God ‘brooded’ over the water; it brought forth something out of nothing.” In the New Testament the word is pneuma, meaning simply “wind.” The wind is air in motion. This implies the Holy Sprit is God in motion. Therefore, worship is wherever the Holy spirit of God blows through, blows strange people together (or moves together people strangely!), moves us to someplace we wouldn’t be had there not been given the gift of the Holy Spirit.
And truth? John’s Gospel has a very particular view of truth. In our definitions truth tends to be an idea, a proposition, some statement that we make like “this idea is truth,” we say. But in John’s Gospel, Jesus makes statements like, “I am the truth.” Now the truth about God has become a person, has become personal. God is no longer an abstraction, a vague generality. God has a face and a name – Jesus the Christ.
Every time we Christians gather for worship, blown in by the wind of God, we believe that we are able and do worship in “spirit and truth.” Why? Because worship is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Worship occurs in those wonderful moments when the Spirit of God blows through our dead, dark and infertile world and brings life (or through our weak, sad and non-productive lives and brings life). And, worship is also in truth. It is not some vague, pie-in-the-sky, incomprehensible imaginative spiritual high in which we have a strange and other-worldly feeling.
Worship is when we are encountered by Jesus, (and he changes our life. We do something different because of him!). It really isn’t worship, worship in spirit and in truth, until Jesus shows up. Worship in truth is when we have a sense that Jesus has intruded, arrived, and taken a seat beside us. Worship for us is to be encountered by Jesus Christ our Savior whose love is not the love we expected, whose way is not the way we expected to walk.[7]
And, by the way, when we are worshipping in the spirit and in the truth of God through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, just like the men and women of Sychar who went to see Jesus, a Jew, we truly cannot hate anyone, either.
Amen.
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