First Presbyterian Church

Rev. Sam Pendergrast

February 27, 2005

John 4:5-42

“With Jesus at the Well”

A year ago I was preparing to lead a mission trip. It was my third visit to the New Dawn Presbyterian Church in Guaymas, Mexico, a mission congregation of the Presbyterian Border Ministry project based in Nogales, on the border between Arizona and Sonora.  A group of twelve made the trip last June. Unlike Jesus, we did not meet anyone by a well. But like Jesus, we did have the opportunity to visit with strangers in their church, their homes and their city and to engage them in conversation.

On any trip like this we cross borders – political, geographic, linguistic, cultural, religious. Some of the borders are internal. They have to do with fears, prejudices or ignorance. These are often the hardest to cross. It’s entirely possible to take a trip like this and remain uninvolved. I knew a young man on another trip a few years ago who smiled and was polite, but spent most of his time reading a book. He stayed safely behind his internal borders, not daring to take the risks of genuine engagement.

The challenge of any trip like this is to take the risk of real encounter with people who are strangers, and to risk being changed by the encounter. Even though we know that we and those who will be our hosts share a common faith in God; even though we know that such a faith is the source of our unity – even so – the differences in religious tradition, worship style, culture and language present barriers to cross. One of the main reasons that I lead trips like this is because of my conviction that it is through this sort of encounter that God becomes known to us in new ways and that we begin to see the world in new ways. We begin to experience the unity the Bible talks about, and the reality of God’s kingdom that bridges all human divisions.

In a way those boundaries are easier to cross in Mexico than they are at home. We cross the lines, but then we get to come home. Our experiment is over. We hope we have changed for the better, but we don’t have to stay. We have a reason to go to Mexico. We were invited by the border ministry to be a part of their program of building relationships between congregations on either side. Back at home it’s hard even to know how to begin. No one has invited us to upset the status quo. When we start to identify and then to cross the borders that maintain social order in Kentucky, we start to upset the system. Think about it. The boundaries we live with at home are the ones we grew up with, the ones that shape our lives every day. They are protected by the habits of a lifetime. These boundaries tell us where it’s O.K. to live, who it’s O.K. to associate with, who we go to church with, who has power and who does not, even what part of town we can be seen in or not.

If you don’t think the rules that maintain these boundaries are powerful, just look what happened two generations ago when African-Americans sat down at a Woolworth lunch counter, tried to register to vote, or sought to be treated with equality in matters of employment, housing and access to public facilities. Clarence Jordan and the others at the Koinonia Farm near Americus, Georgia, endured violent attacks, bombings, hate mail and economic boycott in response to their experiment in inter-racial living. Even though Jordan and his friends refused to participate in marches and demonstrations, but simply sought to live out their vision of life in God’s Kingdom, they were persecuted. Their willingness to break the rules that governed Southern society in those days brought out the hatred of those who defined themselves over against those who were different.

Our human tendency is to separate ourselves from those who are not like us. The call of the Gospel is always to overcome divisions and break down barriers.

The story of Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well is typical of the Gospel call to challenge the status quo. In what, to a first-century hearer of this story, would be a major social scandal, Jesus openly breaks two rules. He crosses the boundary between chosen people and rejected people when he, a Jew, associates with Samaritans. And he disobeys the rules about contact between male and female.

The Jews despised the Samaritans. During the time the Jews were taken into exile, their captors sent other foreign people into that region of Israel to mix with the native inhabitants. This same strategy was used by the Soviets to exert control over the various regions of the old USSR. The Jews in the south around Jerusalem looked upon the Samaritans as half-breeds and collaborators, even centuries later at the time of Jesus. We’ve seen the rotten fruit of long memories like this in Kosovo, Northern Ireland and Rwanda, Darfur, and recently in Kenya. Since they were not welcome at the Temple in Jerusalem, the Samaritans set up a shrine and worship center at Mount Gerazim, near Jacob’s well. This caused further religious division. In 128 BCE Jewish troops destroyed the shrine in Samaria. Jewish religious laws said that contact with a Samaritan made a person unclean, after which a person was allowed to participate in religious rituals only after a period of purification. You can imagine the Samaritan jokes. For instance, in Georgia we used to say, “What’s so great about education in Georgia?” “Alabama.” People tend to want to look down on somebody.

Jews traveling from Jerusalem to Galilee would go out of their way to avoid going through Samaria. They would go down to the Jordan River and then north along the river, instead of taking the more direct road. So when the text tells us that Jesus “had to go through Samaria,” we suspect that the words “had to” have more of a theological than a practical meaning. In fact, the words in Greek are also translated, “it is necessary that,” and are used when Jesus says things like, “It is necessary that the Son of Man suffer....” So, to say that Jesus “had to” go through Samaria is to say that Jesus had theological purpose in going there. He deliberately broke with custom; he deliberately challenged the norms of his religious tradition. He deliberately associated with the hated Samaritans. Jesus not only associated with a Samaritan; he dared to have a conversation with a woman!

In ancient Judaism, there was a group of Pharisees called the “bruised and bleeding Pharisees” because whenever they saw a woman coming along the street they would close their eyes. Jewish men, especially the religious leaders, were to avoid contact with women to whom they were not related. Otherwise they became ritually unclean. Women in those days were valued for their ability to produce children and keep a house, and were considered the property of their father or husband. A woman who was widowed, whose husband did not have a brother to marry her, as was required by law to produce an heir, and who did not have another relative to take her into his household, was reduced to begging and poverty, or worse. A man could divorce his wife simply for displeasing him. A part of Jewish morning prayers recited by pious men of the day read, in part, “O God, I thank you that you have not made me a Gentile or a woman.”

Many who have commented on this story over the years have read modern social situations into the story and have made assumptions about the Samaritan woman’s moral status that are unwarranted. It is more likely that the woman had been at the mercy of the marriage laws of the day and was living at the time with whoever would take her in. Whatever her circumstances may have been, in the story as we have it no judgment is made that she is a sinner. If Jesus had brought up her marital status for that reason, it seems he would not have let the subject drop.

On the contrary, Jesus has a different agenda. Just as he “had to” travel through Samaria, he “had to” sit down at Jacob’s Well and ask this woman for a drink. He “had to” have with her his longest single conversation recorded in the Gospels. He “had to” stay two more days with the despised Samaritans. Jesus sat down and started a conversation with this woman, treating her as fully human, worthy of entering into a relationship with him. As she begins to realize that he takes her seriously, and as he reveals by his knowledge of her life that he is a prophet, the conversation naturally turns to the central religious dispute between Jews and Samaritans: where is the right place to worship? Is it in Jerusalem or on Mount Gerizim? Jesus’ answer conveys the same message that his taboo-challenging behavior does: God doesn’t play favorites. God’s categories are not determined by our prejudices. There is not one right place to worship. There is no one group that has it right. God seeks to free us from the narrow boundaries we have set up.

Finally, when Jesus says that God seeks those who would worship with our true and honest selves, he means that worship is about God and not about us. The change in the Samaritan woman, from a tired woman drawing water to a bearer of good news, comes about simply because Jesus reveals himself to her. She responds to his invitation even before she is sure what she is talking about. She goes to her neighbors and says, “He can’t be the Messiah, can he?” She shares her experience. She doesn’t argue with people or try to convince them of a particular truth. She simply shares herself, her questions, her experience. When we truly meet God in worship we are changed. Then we can approach others without defenses or hidden agendas. Then we become instruments of God’s kingdom.

Such a moment came on a day in early February 1960 at a Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. Four black students at North Carolina A & T had had enough of being treated as second-class people. They walked into Woolworth’s and sat down at the lunch counter. They were ignored, then ridiculed, then verbally abused. They went back the next day. They were threatened. Drinks were poured on them. But after several days the sit-in had grown to more than a thousand people. Similar demonstrations had spread to cities all over the Southeast. One day early in the first week of sit-ins, an elderly white woman sat down on a stool next to one of the four students who began the protest. She said, “Young man, I’m disappointed in you!” Afraid to look at her, wanting to be respectful, he hung his head farther and answered, “Yes ma’am.” Then, to his utter amazement, there among that jeering crowd, she took his hand, smiled at him and said, “What took you so long? It’s about time!” And as she sat there holding his hand, some of the anger went out of the crowd.

An elderly white woman holding the hand of a young black man at a lunch counter protest. Jesus sitting in the hot sun talking with a Samaritan woman. Moments when God’s new reality breaks through all our old categories and transforms us. We still have a long way to go. There are boundaries we accept that keep our communities and nation categorized in ways that divide us. But now and then our eyes are opened and we see God’s Kingdom breaking through. Like that commercial for some phone company that shows an endless table that stretches forever through room after room, God’s Table makes room for any who will gather, and shows us a vision of a God in whose realm there are no divisions.

Think what our world would be like had God decided to stay safely behind the internal borders of divine perfection. The word became flesh and lived among us. And on a hot, dusty day in the desert, Jesus dared to cross borders that the culture and religion of the day had set up. What about you? Where are you like the Jews who would have been scandalized by this story? Where do you still need to let go of old fears and categories that separate you from those who are different? Where does God still need to transform you? What borders do you need to cross? And where are you like the Samaritan woman, ready to bear the good news of your surprising transformation to your neighbors and be an instrument of God’s blessing?

Despite our fears, despite the divisions that separate us, God continues to come to us and offer us the vision of a new reality. In this new world stopping to ask for a drink of water from a stranger is the most natural thing in the world. In this world old prejudices are overcome. In God’s world, who we are and where we live is far less important than the one who comes to us and offers us living water. May we be ready for the encounter. To God be the glory. Amen.