Dr. Dale Miller

March 18, 2007

Shortcut Stepping and Soul Quenching Sipping

Part Four of Six Part Sermon Series, "In His Steps"

John 4:1-15

When I am traveling in the car to some place for the first time, I always go by the directions that either have been given to me, or that I managed to retrieve off the computer from the Map Quest web site. In an attempt to save time, the second time I go anywhere I am always trying to find the shortcut. I am determined to find that perfect, workable shortcut. Determined is the polite way of saying stubborn.

The shortcut, however, does not get me someplace faster. I usually find myself taking a more scenic and longer route. I am not ever lost, just temporarily misplaced. Yes, I will stop and ask for directions at a gas station. The way I ask, however, is by frantically getting out of the car, running into the station, and asking the attendant as desperately as I can. I make it sound like it is a dire emergency, a matter of life and death. They respond quickly and feel quite helpful. They feel like a Good Samaritan and I leave the station with my manhood in tact.

The shortest route from Nazareth to Jerusalem, the shortcut, was seldom taken in Jesus' day. Rather than taking the shortcut through Samaria, the Israelites were a determined people, who chose to take the longer route down the Jordan Valley to Jericho, moving north to south. Once in Jericho they would then travel back northwest, up the well traveled Jericho road to Jerusalem.

People would travel a longer route in order to keep from going through an undesirable neighborhood. When Israel had been defeated by Babylonia and most of the Israelites had been taken captive and were exiled in the Babylon area, some Babylonians remained in Israel to govern the country. Many of these Babylonians would marry local woman. These intermarriages, and the children of these marriages, were thought to be so impure that the Jewish religion was defiled.

Hatred for Samaritans was intense. There was no such thing as a good Samaritan. A second-century rabbi wrote: "He that eats the bread of the Samaritans is like the one that eats the flesh of swine." Jesus, the Bread of Life for everyone, does not share the same sentiment.

About noon one day Jesus and his entourage came to Jacob's Well. Jesus sat down beside the well. The disciples went on into town, another mile or so up the road, to buy something for lunch. While Jesus was at the well a woman came to draw water.

The woman had taken to going to the well at off hours. She missed the gossip that way, the judgmental looks from the women who knew her. She went to the well at noon because no one would be there. The well, however, was not vacant this day. Jesus was sitting at the well.

She didn't recognize him, but she could tell that he was a foreigner. She didn't stop since she needed the water. Supper needed cooking. Water was needed to drink. She balanced her need for water against the presence of this stranger sitting by the well. Did he look safe?

There is a line in C.S. Lewis' book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, in which the children ask about Aslan the lion. Aslan is the Christ figure in Lewis' story. The children ask, "Is he safe?" The reply is "Of course he's not safe. But he's good." Whatever the woman thought about the stranger at the well, she still needed the water.

Jesus could have avoided speaking to this Samaritan woman. Instead, when Jesus saw her he said, "Give me a drink." The woman was surprised at his intrusion and said, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?" Jesus answered, "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."

The woman then replied, "Sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where do you get that living water?" Then Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give will never thirst; the water that I shall give will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life." And the woman responds, "Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw."

Jesus is offering God's love to a Samaritan. But it is worse than that. She is also a "she." In Jesus' day women understood their "place." Men did not speak in public to woman, even if they were walking down a street and their wife passed by going the other direction. A man did not bend his dignity to say hello in public. It simply was not done.

Not only did Jesus address the woman, but also he taught her something about God. Another rabbinic saying was, "Better to bury the Torah than entrust it with a woman." Not only is Jesus entrusting the Torah to the woman, he is trying to hand her the keys to the kingdom of God!

There have always been visible fences, boundaries that separate people from each other. Mountains, oceans and rivers have been conquered. We tunnel through them, sail on them and fly over them. They are boundaries no more. The invisible fences, boundaries that separate people from each other and from a loving relationship with Jesus, are represented at Jacob's Well. The invisible fences have been much more difficult to conquer.

In our revised Book of Worship, the United Methodist Church finally changed some wording in the wedding ceremony. After the bride helped her father down the aisle, there use to be that moment when the clergy asks, "And who giveth this woman to be married to this man?" The father of the bride says, "I do."

What is going on with this question? The groom is not given away. There is a good reason for that. The groom is a person. The bride is property. The owner of the property, the bride's father, gives away the property to the new owner, the husband. For years we tried to soften the question by saying, "And who presents this woman to be married to this man?" but it still didn't work that well. Now we ask all of the parents to stand and to respond to a question asking for their support of the couple. Fathers and mothers are included in the response.

We could say, well that's where that question came from historically, but we never meant it today. Of course not, but that's what we did. It is not just that she is a Samaritan; it is that she is a Samaritan woman. But, it is more shocking than that. She is a bad woman of Samaria.

We need to hear the pathos of her words when she says to Jesus, "Oh, sir, give me this other drink, that I may never thirst again, and never have to come here again to draw water?" Can we hear the deep sorrow and emotional exhaustion of being an outcast among her people?

When the disciples returned from the Samaritan village with some food they were shocked to discover Jesus talking with her. The text says that they start to say something about it, but they hold their tongue. I'm so glad they didn't embarrass themselves again.

The woman takes off and leaves the water jar next to the well. She hasn't drawn the water because she is in a big hurry to do something. She leaves, only to quickly return bringing a whole group with her. I would imagine it was not the upper crust of that town. I fantasize that it was a collection of all the outcasts of the village. She knew they would want to hear the welcoming reception and message she had experienced.

Jesus and his disciples stay an extra two days to visit with these people about God, the Law, and life.

Allow me to lift something out of this text that doesn't happen. Jesus said to the woman that when she returned he would give her that drink that wells up to eternal life. When she comes back with her friends, however, she never mentions the drink again. Jesus doesn't mention it either.

I think she did not have to mention the drink again because she had already been given the drink.

• She was a Samaritan and Jesus treated her like a human being. That's the eternal drink!

• She was a woman, and Jesus treated her with dignity. That's the eternal drink!

• She was a Samaritan woman of bad reputation, and Jesus treated her with respect. That's the eternal drink.

Why? Because when we enter the Kingdom of God, the new reality for living begins now! The old water jar was obsolete.

A lot has happened since Jesus' day. One thing is still with us. We still have our Samaria's. We have those people and those places we don't desire to encounter. We usually cluster our Samaritans into groups: the wrong political affiliation, the wrong job, the wrong economic ideology, the wrong race, the wrong sexual orientation, or the wrong "you-fill-in-the-blank."

We have our own Samaritans and we don't want to go into Samaria. We don't want to rub shoulders with "those" people. We don't hate our Samaritans; we just don't to go into Samaria. It's much nicer to hang with Jesus, basking in the glory of the presence of Christ. It feels so good when we can sing, "And He walks with me and He talks with me, and He tells me I am his own."

But where is Jesus taking us? Jesus knows that spiritual shortcuts lead to short-changing the fullness of God's kingdom. To where is Jesus walking us? To where is Jesus talking us? Jesus is walking us into the middle of Samaria. He spends an inordinate amount of time there. He even turns to those Samaritans and says, "And you are my own." What? Watch out, Jesus! A person could get nailed to a cross for saying something like that.

It is a little surprising the disciples went with Jesus on the trip. They followed Jesus, but they weren't always that courageous. They got their courage from Jesus. The drink that Jesus gave the woman that day, the drink that wells up to eternal life, was the same drink that Jesus had given to his disciples. It is that drink that Jesus gives to anybody who gets thirsty enough.

After all, don't we own at least one water jar that we lug empty, day after day, hoping to find a little water in the well? Our water jars are the "cant's" and "oughts" and "should haves" of our lives. There have been times when we let our family down; the times we have let ourselves down; and the times we let God down. Or maybe our water jars are the parts of ourselves we keep hidden best, our handicaps and insecurities, our quiet fears and loud but unnecessary embellishments.

Jesus says to us: Go and get your secrets and bring them to me. Then we can set our water jars down, giving them to this man who offers us living water. No matter what we have done we are worthy. We are known and loved by God. When we accept God's love for our lives, then, we are able to love ourselves as God loves us. When we can love ourselves as God loves us, then we can love all others, including the Samarians of our lives.

Several years ago a magazine article told of a woman who lived in one of the poorer sections of New York City. She had lived there all of her life and had raised her family there. They had always lived in poverty and she had never been able to provide them with enough of anything. Now all alone, she became involved in a community program for the elderly. One day the group went to the beach. She had never been there before, had never seen the ocean. She stood there on the beach and said, "Look at all that water. For the first time in my life I am able to see something there is enough of."

When we go stepping to the well of the living water, we will experience the grace of God, the compassion of Jesus Christ, and the vitality of the Holy Spirit. We will experience such a vibrant grace in our lives that we can be vessels of grace - grace, grace, grace upon grace. Amen.