"The Woman at the Well" a Sermon on John 4:5-22 by the Rev. Todd R. Goddard

39Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” 40So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. 41And many more believed because of his word. 42They said to the woman, “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.”

Prayer.

Have you ever noticed how often we greet one another with “How are you doing?” Most often it's the abbreviated form: “How ya doing?” It's such a common greeting, it was the fodder for a beer commercial a few years ago; one guy would call another and ask in an Italian Jersey accent, “How ya doing?” It's a greeting that works well with most people; I'd say 9 out of 10. We ask the question, but we really don't want to hear anything more than, in my case, a polite but distant ethnic German reply, “Oh, not much. How about you?”

There is, however, always the exception. It's somewhat of an unconscious thing, I believe. We just know that there are a few people, that one out of ten person, who you just don't ask “How ya doing?” because you're likely to get an honest answer. They are likely to tell you – every chapter, verse, sentence, and period. It isn't that you aren't interested. You are. But you just don't need to always know all the details of their love life, medical history, or problems with their mother-in-law.

These are the people you extend the abbreviated greeting, “Hey” or “Hi.” They are the socially awkward, the one everyone likes to hate because they ask the question at the end of the class when the teacher half heartedly asks 30 seconds before the bell, “are there any questions?” The whole room groans in travail. Many times, they are the needy ones, the self-centered members of the human race that just like to talk about themselves. They're the ones with baggage.

Jesus was sitting, tired and thirsty from the journey, and resting by a well with no bucket or rope. Along comes a person with baggage.

And she has a bucket and a rope. She didn't come to the well for counseling or spiritual guidance. She didn't come for Bible study or worship. She came for the same reason that most of the women in the world still must do at the beginning of every ordinary day – she's drawing water. And baggage, oh my! Did she ever have a chip on her shoulder!

A five time divorce' with a live in boy friend. She's had more husbands than Elizabeth Taylor. How long do you expect this one to last? My guess is that you can begin to count the hours.

“Give me a drink,” Jesus asks. To a person who has probably heard every pick-up line in the book, this command probably caught the woman by surprise. Men had treated her with an attitude of “what can I get from her.” She was used to being used and abused and thrown away by every man that came along with a wink and a grope. The men in her life certainly were not in it for the stimulating conversation. After all, every successive man brought the woman more baggage. She, like the village prostitute, would find herself cast off into the ditch after each man got what he wanted. Disgusting, we shrug.

She probably carried two buckets, to equalize the load. (Talk about baggage!)

“Give me a drink,” Jesus asks. Wrong gender, wrong race, wrong religion. Rabbi's of their day would not waste words of wisdom by attempting to teach theology to a woman. Let the woman keep the family meal. It's her role to cook and clean, to keep the kosher dishes, to make sure the lamb is fully roasted, that everyone's glass is topped off. It's the man's role to teach, and to be taught. Their authority started in the temple or synagogue and extended into the home. Wisdom was a masculine role; let us not bother the women with this interruption.

She had probably sought out God in the silence of her late night thoughts and prayers.

“Give me a drink,” Jesus asks. Wrong gender, wrong race, wrong religion. She was a Samaritan; you could see the mixed race heritage in her face, her features and her bone structure. It would be similar to a mixed race woman coming to a white only lunch counter in the deep South in the 1930's and ordering a steak sandwich. Just as the Civil War was over more than a generation earlier, so too was the Babylonian occupation and collaboration with the Samaritans over – nearly 500 years earlier. Yet the sin of discrimination and race inspired hatred saturated the social reality of Jesus' day.

“Why should Jews be treated any better than the rest of us?” she probably wondered to herself.

“Give me a drink,” Jesus asks. Wrong gender, wrong race, wrong religion. They were a stubborn bunch. Refusing to worship in Jerusalem at the Temple. Refusing to pay their Temple tax. “Want-to-be Jews” is what Samaritans really were. They kept to their home Temple, the one they set up during the occupation when they were not allowed to travel to Jerusalem (only 25 miles away), the one they built near Bethel, on Mount Gerizim, where Abraham was to have sacrificed Isaac. They want to be Jews, but they don't want to pay the tax or give up their hometown, family chapel.
The woman had baggage, and a chip on her shoulder. And Jesus asks, “Give me a drink,” “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” This was probably a polite way for her to say, “Honey, get your own d*@!n bucket.” She was tipping and ready to unload. She was a fuse and a lighted match. She had a bucket and was ready to defend it; wrestle for it if that's what it took.

But Jesus didn't want her bucket. He wanted her baggage.

Jesus may have been the first person in her life to ask her “How ya doing?” who really wanted to know. He may have been the first man to be more interested in what he could do for her, and not what he could do to her. Her life was trapped in a vicious cycle of use and abuse, slavery and sin. She was a prisoner of recidivism, of water and thirst, water and thirst, wake up - draw water - carry it home - day after day after day. She drew water the same way she drew men in her life. And her treadmill ground on, and on, and on.

Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14but 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.” (John 4:13-14)

Jesus cuts the power to her treadmill and invites this woman to step off, to unload her baggage. The beautiful nature of this narrative is that the woman is ready to make a break for it; she is ready to break the cycle of sin and sadness. “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

It is an amazing thing, what God can do with a willing servant, with one who is simply prompted to ask. It even more amazing to consider that God isn't looking for people with the most experience, the most education, or the most connections. God is looking for people with baggage. (With apologies to Bill – our resident Human Resource specialists) God wouldn't very well in most Human Resource departments. The Lord would be hiring every Tom, Dick, and Jane!

Jesus seeks out those of us who are carrying baggage around behind us. He seeks out the unlovely, the broken down, the worn out. Are you tire of reliving your past? Jesus wants you. Are you ready to leave your addictions and make a new start? Jesus wants you. Are you ready to put the brakes on the sin in your life? Jesus wants you. Are you done waisting and squandering away our Father's inheritance on loose living? The Master is waiting for you to return.

“The woman left her water jar and went back to the city.” (v.28) The woman at the well wasn't ever coming back to draw water. Leaving your bucket behind was huge! People couldn't afford to just go out and buy another bucket. When it's gone, it's gone; and so is your future prospects of drawing water. Leaving her bucket behind is a mighty sign and symbol of the repentance and transformation taking place in her life.

Where she was going, she didn't need the water from the well any longer.

It is an amazing thing, what God can do with a willing servant. The woman was commissioned to witness, to spread her testimony of what God had done for her. “She said to the people, 29“Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” (v.28b-29)

Not just some people in the city. All the people! All the people heard her testify to what Jesus had done for her. The live-in honey was history. “Hit the road, Jack!” Her bucket was left behind. The living water of Christ and His Salvation would now satisfy her thirst. Her baggage had been removed. What had been done for her, could also be done for everyone - for everyone else. “30They left the city and were on their way to him.” (v.30)

“Amazing Love, how can it be?” is the opening lines to a popular refrain. It is truly the amazing love of Jesus Christ that offers us the same living waters as was offered to the woman at the well. We don't deserve it. We can't buy it. Not one of us are worthy or deserving. We are unable to know God's motives for loving us so completely. Yet, it is offered to us just the same.

The only condition to this gracious offering is that we accept His living water. You have to admit, that's a pretty low threshold for faith. God takes everyone with baggage, everyone with a past, everyone who is ready to make a change and leave the old well bucket behind.

Give it up,
and join me.
Accept His gift.
Taste His living water,
that we may never thirst again.

The Word of the Lord, as it has come to me. Thanks be to God. Amen.