We’ve discussed that I am a word nerd. I am also what some may refer to as a Chatty Cathy. I have a habit of…speaking. For someone whose vocation is Minister of Word and Sacrament, in which I am regularly called upon to proclaim blessing, this is good news. It is occasionally more appropriate in my line of work not to speak, to hold space for silence, to bring a non-anxious presence to a room. The balance, I suppose, of knowing when to speak and when not to speak, is part of the work.
As a clergy woman, I am well aware of the many historical and present-day scenarios, specifically in the church, when I would not be permitted to speak, and certainly not to preach the gospel or preside at the eucharist. The acknowledgment of my call to ministry in the ELCA is a gift I take seriously, especially for my sisters and siblings for whom silence is still the expectation.
For centuries, people of marginalized genders have been expected to listen, rather than speak. And, while remaining silent, serve at the pleasure of those who are empowered to speak. Today, however, we read of a conversation that defies all expectations. In the middle of the day, at the well in a city of Samaria, a woman speaks to Jesus.
Why is this conversation noteworthy? I am so excited to tell you.
We don’t know her name, because there were still some gaps in the “women are people” idea at the time the Gospel According to John was written down, but we can work with that. What we do know about her is that she is part of the Samaritan community, estranged cousins of the Jewish people.
The Samaritans and the Jews have a shared history—you’ll notice that she names this, calling Jacob “our ancestor” during their conversation—but they diverged at a crucial point. The exact history of the schism is blurry, but the division itself is stark. Samaritans believe in the same God of Israel, but they have differing beliefs about the Torah, and, most significantly, regard Mount Gerizim (in Samaria) as the holiest place on earth, rather than Jerusalem. These differences caused centuries of strife between Jews and Samaritans, a separation which exists to this day.
In the time of Jesus, this separation would have prohibited interaction between Samaritans and Jews—they couldn’t speak to one another, eat or drink together, worship together, work together, let alone intermarry. Their communities are not just separate, they are enemies. Both Jesus and the unnamed Samaritan woman would have been steeped in this prejudice by their communities.
So what is Jesus doing in this region of his enemies? Well, just before this, he is in Judea, and needs to get home to Galilee. You may not have a map of “Judea, Samaria, and the Surrounding Areas in New Testament Times” handy, but the back of my HarperCollins Study Bible does, and so I can tell you that the way from Judea to Galilee is—you guessed it—through Samaria.
Jesus is tired from the journey he has been on, and he stops to rest. His disciples scurry off to the city for food, leaving Jesus alone at the well. When the unnamed Samaritan woman comes to the well to draw water, Jesus, knowing exactly who she is, speaks directly to her, “Give me a drink.” This is perhaps not the most polite request of all time, but he is exhausted, and it could be expected that a woman would draw water for a man. However, the unnamed Samaritan woman is surprised. “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” She asks.
It is surprising to her and would have been surprising to John’s hearers that “Jesus initiates contact with a Samaritan woman, an outsider and inappropriate interlocutor. After her shocked reply, Jesus proceeds to speak about the living water he could give her.
The woman’s [skeptical] reply, ‘are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us this well?’ focuses on the common ground of the Israelite history they share.” [1] It is with this acknowledgment of their shared foundation that Jesus opens up the conversation about his identity as the Messiah—which he has not spoken about to anyone else before.
This is what is further scandalous about this encounter. That Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah is basically the thesis of the Gospel According to John, and this conversation with the unnamed Samaritan woman is the only time Jesus outright says this truth to another person!
“That the person he trusts himself to is a Samaritan and a woman is deeply significant, not only to [this gospel’s] first-century audience, but to anyone….The gospel truth of Jesus’ life is that he brings a new way that results in all people—[people of every gender, every ethnicity] outsiders and insiders—worshiping in Spirit and in truth.” [1]
Back to the content of their conversation, we see a pattern similar to the conversation Jesus had with the Pharisee Nicodemus in the previous chapter, the subject of last week’s text. As readers of the New Testament, we know that Jesus makes some cryptic pronouncements, and is not always straightforward. Both the unnamed Samaritan woman and Nicodemus “misunderstand Jesus because they are thinking too literally, prosaically, or conventionally.” [2]
Other stories in John also feature this miscommunication, like confusion about flesh versus bread, or how Jesus, the carpenter from Nazareth, could possibly have been born from above. This gospel invites us to wonder about the power of God to cross boundaries, turn things inside out, and make all things new.
But the Samaritan woman is sure that Jesus means actual, physical, drinkable water. And why wouldn’t she? Here they are at Jacob’s well. He is asking her to quench his thirst.
Here, you can thank our lectionary compilers for the callback to the reading from Exodus, in which our merry band of Israelites are…not so merry. They, too, are parched. Moses has led them out of slavery in Egypt—thanks be to God!—but has led them into the hot, dry, desert.
They have traveled for what feels like years, lugging their children and their livestock and all their earthly possessions. If it’s summer, which, for the sake of our imaginations we will assume it is, the temperatures are soaring over 100 degrees, easily. Aren't you thirsty just thinking about that?
They complain to Moses about their physical thirst and about their perception that God has abandoned them. “Is the Lord among us or not?!” they ask.
When we read stories like this from the Torah, and shake our heads at the grumbling and ungrateful Israelites, we forget that we, as the reader, have access to the whole canon and can know the whole story. We know about the coming covenant and the Promised Land. “Yet at this point in the text, the Israelites are just a band of runaway slaves in the wilderness….their need…is real. They do not have water to drink.” [3]
Miraculously, Moses follows instructions from God and draws water from a rock. God is present in the desert as a promise of accompaniment in their struggle, and as cool water on a parched tongue.
Another remarkable thing about Jesus’ conversation with the unnamed Samaritan woman at the well is how long it goes on. This is the longest single conversation Jesus has with any individual in this gospel! Both of them have a lot to say.
Probably, if you’ve heard a few sermons about this conversation, you’ve heard that this woman’s promiscuity—five former husbands and a current man who is not her husband—adds a layer of scandal to the conversation. But, in all he has to say, Jesus does not condemn this woman or call for her to repent, or anything he might do if he was concerned with sexual immorality. “Neither Jesus, nor [any editorial by] the gospel writer make[s] a value statement about the five husbands; it is likely that the woman’s past is not her fault.” [1] There’s nothing in the story that leads us to anything but a compassionate conclusion about this unnamed Samaritan woman’s life story.
“There are a number of reasons why the Samaritan woman might have the past she has. Perhaps she was married off as a child bride, then widowed and passed along among her dead husband’s brothers, as per the ‘Levirate marriage’ practice of the day. Maybe her various husbands abandon her because she’s ill, disabled, or infertile. Maybe she’s a victim of abuse.” [4] We don’t know.
But what we do know is that when Jesus meets her, he sees her for who she is, as a whole person. He engages her in conversation and in revelation about who he is, transforming her life as she knows it. Not her marital status, not her social location, but her deepest self-understanding as a child of God.
Preachers will hem and haw about whether to offer a tidy conclusion that the moral of the story this week is that the good news comes to us metaphorically, as a “spring of water, gushing up to eternal life” or that God’s love for us is so specific to our very humanness, that God provides the literal water we need to survive.
I think, though, that it has to be both! In our encounters with others, “We must offer not only the living water of Jesus but the compassion of our hearts toward [people] whose most basic needs of food and water await fulfillment.” [3] To the Israelites, parched in the desert, the presence of God is cool water to drink. To the woman at the well, compassion is living water, inviting her into something entirely new.
We’ll sing, in just a moment, one of my favorite hymns, Baptized and Set Free. As we make our way through its verses, I hope you will feel that God is with you in the waters of your baptism, in the crashing waves of the Pacific Ocean just a few miles from here, in the next refreshing sip of water you take today, and in the wellspring of hope that rises in your chest. I hope you’ll feel sated and I hope you’ll feel free. Amen.
[3] Nyasha Junior, “Third Sunday in Lent” in Preaching God’s Transforming Justice, Year A, 143.
[4] Debie Thomas, “The Woman at the Well” in Into the Mess and Other Jesus Stories (Cascade 2022), 38.