John 4
Imagine, if you will, your worst neighbor.
I’m talking about the guy who let’s his dog out the front door so that your yard gets messed up.
When he goes to work, which is seldom, he backs his truck into your mailbox.
I’m talking about the guy who the cops come after on Saturday night because he’s beating his wife--well, not his wife, but his current girlfriend.”
I’m talking about the guy who never gets invited to the neighborhood association meetings, because the meetings are about him--about the contents of his front year, which include (in part) a 1979 Chevrolet on blocks, two washing machines in varying states of disrepair, a wheelbarrow with one broken handle, and a dog of indeterminate breeding chained to the door handle of the 1979 Chevy--are you getting a picture here?
But to top it off, the guy’s a Michigan fan. A Wolverine, for God’s sake!
OK. Imagine, further, that this guy comes tearing down the street one day in his maize-and-blue, smoke-belching, no-bumper pickup truck with the Wolverine paint-job on the cab, leaning on the horn. This brings everyone out of their homes to confront this guy, because this is the last straw.
You and your neighbors surround this guy and begin to close in on him when he holds up his hands and shouts, “wait!”
The mob stops moving. He catches his breath and starts again.
“There’s a woman down at Wal-Mart you’ve got to come and see…”
Laughter spreads through the crowd, and a voice from the back calls out, “It’s always a woman with you.”
He holds his hands over his heart, “No, this is different. She told me everything I’ve ever done.”
The voice from the back again said, “Everyone in Richland County know what you’ve done.”
More laughter.
But, then you notice that tears are streaming down his face. And something happens. To the whole crowd. And each of you and all of you turn and get your cars and follow this ne’er-do-well to the store to meet this woman who knew everything he ever did.
Far-fetched? More like impossible. But, we’re beginning to expect impossible things happening in the Gospel of John. This scene is precisely what is described in the Gospel of John--actually only two verses of the long reading for today.
But, that’s the most interesting part of this lesson--the interaction of the woman we’ve come to know simply as the woman at the well and her neighbors.
Never mind that she is a Samaritan. The Samaritans were half-breeds (they’d intermarried with the Babylonians, and they refused to come and worship in Jerusalem. They had their own temple at Gerazim--except Gerazim didn’t exist anymore. A Judean priest had destroyed the temple and the city a century and a half before this. That went a long way to foster good relationships between the Jews and the Samaritans.
The woman was correct in pointing out that Jews and Samaritans mix about like oil and water. More like gasoline and fire. When we call the character in Luke’s parable, “The Good Samaritan,” we can’t fathom what that kind of thinking was like for Jews in Jesus’ time.
George Coats, who taught Hebrew Scriptures for a long time at Lexington Seminary, used to say that you couldn’t pronounce the Hebrew or Aramaic words for “Samaritans,” without forming your lips into a sneer.
Never mind that Jesus was talking to a (sneer) Samaritan.
Never mind that Jesus was talking to a woman. A woman in the middle Eastern world, still doesn’t talk to a strange man without a family member present. It just isn’t done. And the attitude of men towards women was, well, shall we say unenlightened.
Women spent a good portion of their lives in an unclean state (actually men did, too, but women got all the stigma). They weren’t considered reliable as witnesses in court. They couldn’t own property. From a man’s point of view, you could talk with a woman, but, why bother?
Never mind that Jesus was talking to a woman who was rejected by her own community. Some commentaries refer to her a “tramp,” because she’s had more husbands that Elizabeth Taylor (well, actually three fewer, but you know I’m not good with math.) Tramp is such a vulgar term, when trollop is so much more sophisticated.
Five husbands, and now, she’s shacked up. Maybe at some point you just don’t bother with the paperwork.
Feminist interpreters say that it is wrong to call this person a tramp or a trollop, because it might have been that she was married to five brothers who were following the levirate law designed to perpetuate the name of a dead husband.
Now, I’m very much open to feminist interpretations of the bible, but only when they’re right. And here, they’re not. Because this woman is rejected by her own. All the other women of the village go down to the well in the early morning, where they can talk and fellowship together. If this woman were welcome to join her neighbors down at the well in the cool of the morning, she would not be there all alone at the hottest point of the day to collect her water. The time of the day and that she is alone speaks volumes.
So, why is this important, never minding that she is a Samaritan, a woman, and a woman who is rejected by her own?
What we have here the longest discourse in all of the New Testament that Jesus has with any one, never mind a misfit Samaritan woman. And it is the first revelation of Jesus that he is the Messiah to anyone. This is an important biblical moment.
That being said, that’s not what interests me most about this chapter. What interests me most is the reaction of the townspeople to her when she comes and invites them to come and see this prophet who just might be the Messiah.
This is the kind of person you would reject out of hand. Come and see? Leave me alone. I have no use for you.
But what about her had changed since the morning? How is it that the sun can rise on a village that barely acknowledges one of its citizens (OK women weren’t real citizens, but even the women rejected her), and by the time the sun sets, this woman has started a massive revival--an event unparalleled in all the Gospels?
It wasn’t what she said. She doesn’t even say what she talked about with Jesus. There’s no theological thesis or even a good joke.
They are changed because she is changed, She walked out to that well as an outcast. She encountered an enemy, but her enemy received her and accepted her just as she was. With Jesus, she gained a sense of belonging so profound, so obvious, and unmistakable, that it bubbles up in her life like a well that needs no bucket.
The outcast who went out to the well at high noon has returned as one who belongs. And the boldness with which she invites them to come and see tells them that she now belongs not only to the one she has encountered at the well--but to them also. They can do nothing other than accompany their sister back to meet Jesus.
When they reach him, these Samaritans offer hospitality to a bunch of Jews and their teacher, whom they now claim to be the Savior of the world. Jesus stays in this village--with Samaritans--for two whole days. That’s longer than he stayed anywhere else other than Jerusalem or his home in Galilee.
This, church, is a world gone mad. Women leading revivals. Jews and Samaritans staying and eating together. Acting like they belong together.
Not long ago, I saw David Letterman interview Dennis Hopper, in which he was talking about his marriage--his fifth. Dave asked about how he got along with his in-laws, given that they were fairly straight-laced and Mr., Hopper, well, has led a very interesting life.
Dave interrupted him and asked, “Do you fit in?”
Hopper answered, “they’ve accepted me.”
Dave came back with, “But, that’s very different from fitting in.”
Hopper nodded and said, “yes it is.”
The audience howled. But it occurred to me in that moment, that in Jesus Christ, we don’t merely accept each other. Samaritans and Jews don’t just accept each other, they fit in. They belong. Jesus Christ drives us to a world in which women and men don’t merely accept each other, but they fit in. They belong. Jesus Christ pushes us to a state of being where gays and straights don’t just accept each other, but they fit in together. Blacks and whites. Americans and Iraqis. And dare I say it: Buckeyes and Wolverines?
John Humbert, our General Minister and President in the 80s and 90s, and a Buckeye, wrote that the number one ill in our society is alienation. The sense that we are not connected to each other. That we don’t belong.
You want to see alienation, picture that lone Samaritan woman on her way to the well, all alone.
That’s what ails our world, church. People are hurting to know that they belong to God and to us.
You know what? We need a revival in Mansfield. Not the kind where you pitch a tent or fill a stadium up with people and then tell them how bad they are. No, we need a revival like the Great Samarian Revival of long ago, where our experience of Christ is so conspicuous and so contagious that those around us cannot help but take notice.
We aren’t just accepted, we fit in. We belong. And that, my sisters and brothers, is good news, good news, indeed for us, and good news for the world. Amen.
First Christian Sermons by Chris Whitehead 
