READINGS

1. John 4:5-42

HOMILY

We begin readings from Saint John's Gospel.

The last three Sundays of Lent will be readings from Saint John dialogues between Jesus and different people.

Each makes manifest who Jesus is for those who are able to perceive it.

• Today: the Woman by The Well of Samaria;
• Next Sunday: the man blind from birth;
• Sunday after that: Mary and Martha and the raising of Lazarus.

So Jesus has been in Jerusalem and he's been up for a feast, his disciples have been baptizing people.

Nicodemus has come to visit him (so that's actually the first of these dialogues that we get in John's Gospel).

After that, pressure is coming up: the Pharisees are beginning to get annoyed with Jesus and his disciples.

So Jesus decides to move back to Galilee through Samaria.

It's an important point that he was going that way from Jerusalem back to Galilee through that area.

The Samaritans had a well-known tradition of being unhospitable to pilgrims going from manly or other Jewish territories through that territory towards Jerusalem to take part in its ceremonies and feasts.

They felt, as Samaritans, that it wasn't in their business to supply the usual rules of hospitality to people going to alien Temple cults.

On the other hand, on the way back, there was no such concern, so the relations were generally friendlier.

So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 

Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. 

It was about noon.

Jacob's well was part of the spiritual geography that everybody present would have shared in common.

It might be paradigm to us, but it wasn't to them. It was local folklore that everybody would have shared in.

So Jesus is sitting by the well and it was about noon.

It's the sixth hour (in the Greek meaning, 6 hours after 6am, when the day started).

Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.)

So there Jesus is sitting by the well by himself and famously a Samaritan woman comes to draw water.

Now noon is not the time that anyone would normally like to go and draw water.

You would like to draw water either much earlier in the day or much later, when there's some shade.

So the kind of person who comes out to draw water from the well at midday is the kind of person who doesn't want to see other people around.

This was a woman who may have had such a reputation at home.

None of that is clear yet, but that she has come to the well at a time when other people wouldn't be there already said something about her.

Here the Gospel is quite gentle and it says Jesus disciples had gone to the city to buy food.

Here Jesus opened the conversation with her and the first thing he does is he puts himself in a position of dependence on this woman.

He asks her to give him something to drink.

She of course had the capacity to do that.

So he started by inverting the usual power relationship with the man having the means and the woman being dependent.

He has treated her as the person who can help him.

The disciples are gone to buy; he's asking to be given; all those parallels are supposed to be noticed.

The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)

She's bringing out not her precarious position within Samaritan Society, but simply the fact that she's a Samaritan, so there's a certain impurity attaching to that.

A Jewish person wouldn't normally ask something that might be shared, that might cause impurity.

Jesus's response to her is much more interesting than it sounds, because it seems that frustrating: it's not obvious as is always the case with Jesus's dialogues.

Jesus answered her

Jesus answered her, ‘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.’

Now she didn't know who she was talking to.

So he's saying to her:

Instead of answering 'well I'm a Jew and I just happen to need to drink', he's taking the whole matter back and said 'if you knew the gift of God ...'

Now this word gift Dorea (δωρεά) is the only time it appears in any of the Gospels.

The only other times this word appears in the New Testament is in the Acts of the Apostles and in some of Paul's Epistles.

And there it almost invariably means the gift of the Holy Spirit.

In other words, he's not talking about a passive gift at the same level as a drink of water might be or a slice of wedding cake for that matter and you just give someone something.

He's talking about the gift of God which, of course, she could not possibly have known about and the gift of God is the self-giving of us.

It is that which turns us into people who are capable of giving ourselves away.

This is how we receive who we really are.

And it's that which is this making utterly alive of us that is then brought out in the discussion about the world.

It's the notion that the gift of God is something which turns us into gifts.

That's what the gift of God is about.

I think it's really quite important to remember that.

One of the moments when of the gift of God becomes a matter of controversies is when Simon the Magician tries to buy the gift of God and it's understood this is really is the ultimate way that you cannot have it.

The gift of God is that which, by nature, turns you into giving yourself away.

The richest thing you could possibly have, because, as you give yourself away, you're on the inside of God's self-giving.

This means that you're held by the Creator and turned into an endless source of generosity for others.

This is what Jesus is attempting to offer.

If you knew the gift of God.

In other words, what it's like to be turned into this self-giving and who's asking you for this gift precisely giving you the chance to get involved in this self-giving of yourself away, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.

Jesus is doing: I'm inducting you into a conversation, which is going to end in you being able to give yourself away with living water.

The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?

Reasonably enough, she's staying at the practical level and wants to know how this giving of water is going to happen.

Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’

So we're being set up for Jesus being more than Israel, the founder of all the peoples of all the tribes of Israel including obviously Joseph to whom Jacob had bequeathed this field.

Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.

Once you get onto the inside of being able to give yourself away, because that's what the spirit does.

It turns you into give yourself away.

You'll never be thirsty.

You'll be held in being by the one who is turning you into this show of generosity.

The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’

I'll be turning them into fountains of this.

The woman [reasonably] said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’

So she's partially understood it: give me of this water.

She's asked for it so I may never be thirsty, but also she's got a good practical considerations for she'll have to keep coming here to draw water.

As you know, this is a boring, tedious task and anyone who can save for that task (you know, before the advent of bottled water) is doing her a favor.

So now Jesus sounds as though he's not answering her question 'give me the water', but in fact this is how he answers her (and I think it's very important that he's answering her positively here and he's giving her that water).

Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’ 

The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’

So he's asking her to go and do something for him as a way of getting into the outflow of goodness and generosity.

Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’

So Jesus knew she had no husband.

He wanted to get her into the position of getting used to asking him for things so that she could give things away.

The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. ...

Now why did she say that?

Well, the easy answer is to say 'well, he's detected that she had an interesting matrimonial history' or that he's making reference to the fact that the Samaria was considered a place that had been under the rule of five idolatrous Kings and was now under the rule of someone who was also an idolatrous king.

So he's referring to Samaria's prophetic history.

This history again would have been well known and this would be a Jewish way of referring to Samaria and its past under the rule of these idolatrous Kings.

That's the part of the history which you get in the Hebrew scriptures, but it appears to be a mixture of the two.

He's referring to her marital status, which almost certainly means that she is a greatly mistreated woman.

If she's a person of unstable marital life, it's almost certainly because she has been passed amongst people for their own advantage.

So the notion that she's particularly a bad person makes no sense at all.

She's a particularly vulnerable person, which is why he's able to speak with her.

He's speaking to a vulnerable bearer of her city's idolatry as has been pointed out.

This makes her rather like the Gerasene demoniac, who was clearly living out in himself the violences of his entirely pagan city.

But here the woman is rational and she knows what's going on.

She understands why she has to live in this precarious and humiliated situation, but she also understands that Jesus is not trying to get at her.

He's talking about her town as well.

... Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’

So she's still trying to keep alive the prophetic exchange.

The exchange about the theological principles rather than getting on the inside of what Jesus is actually offering her.

He's asking her to do something, so that she can then enter into the inside of this self-giving.

And Jesus says to her:

Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.

You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. ...

Here he's probably referring to the Davidic line that promises that he is in fact to fulfill in Jerusalem along with the definitive sacrifice of the Atonement.

He knows where all this is coming from.

He knows that there is the possibility of learning who God really is through that.

All the Johannine irony that is going to come about concerning the Temple, the sacrifice, all of that could only have happened in a place where there was something to be ironic about.

You need yourself to turn that on its head to make available: here is the man; here is the shepherd; here is the king.

The passage of God's revelation through knowledge comes from that subversion from within of the Priestly and Prophetic tradition associated with Jerusalem.

So he says: 'yep salvation is from the Jews, but the hour is coming and is now here'.

In other words, I can anticipate this for you.

... But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him.

So just as Jesus had sought her out, he was seeking her and is going to turn her into just such a worshiper.

God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’

So it's going to be this strange relationship between people in which we are unable to turn each other into gifts by bearing witness to the gift that we are receiving.

That is going to make all the difference from here on out.

The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ...

It's interesting because it suggests that she doesn't really know.

She assumes it's a name or just a name of a person.

I know that Messiah - doesn't say the Messiah.

I know that Messiah is coming, who is called Christ, when he comes, he will Proclaim all things to us.

She picks up that something is coming through the line of the Jews and this person called Messiah, the anointed one who is called Christ.

She's got enough of her Samaritan tradition and enough of the sense of what the Jews thought to be aware of this strange figure called Messiah.

Jesus said to her, ‘I am he, the one who is speaking to you.’

So he discloses himself in his giving himself away.

At this point, their discussion is interrupted.

This is a beautiful interruption, literally at the moment of Jesus disclosing that he is the one, giving her this water that he is this fulfillment.

So we get no sense of her response yet.

Just then his disciples came. 

They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, ‘What do you want?’ or, ‘Why are you speaking with her?’

They would have thought that that would be a non-proper or prophetic thing for him to do, though he had spoken with his mother at the wedding in Canaan in Galillei.

They would also be astonished at a woman being there at that time and probably suspected that something might not be quite right.

But they problably didn't understand what it was about.

Then the woman left her water-jar and went back to the city.

So she left the jar with which she was going to be drawing water from the well and went back to the city.

Curiously, in doing this, she had responded to Jesus's request go and find your husband and bring him back.

I have no husband. And then Jesus is indicating that she and the life of the city have lived in the same idolatry.

She said to the people, ‘Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! 

He cannot be the Messiah, can he?’ 

They left the city and were on their way to him.

So something about how she has felt spoken to that didn't shame her and that put her in the same place as the inhabitants of the city, enabled her to talk to people without shame.

Because of that, she develops quite a power of invitation.

She convokes other people of the Spirit.

The gift has started to work itself out in her.

She's being able to give herself away in the midst of others.

So they left the city and were on their way to him.

Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, ‘Rabbi, eat something.’ 

But he said to them, ‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’

So he now tries to explain to them what he's trying to explain to her that it's actually in doing things like this that he gets nourished.

So the disciples said to one another, ‘Surely no one has brought him something to eat?’

Jesus said to them, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work.

So he's attempting to get across to them that the gift which is just given to that Samaritan woman is the gift that he's going to be trying to give to them.

Do you not say, “Four months more, then comes the harvest”? 

But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting.

There are all sorts of people who are ready even now to be invited in, people who live in places less complicated than Jerusalem.

Less full of religious ups and downs and constructions and restrictions and all of that stuff and those are the people they're ready for harvesting.

Anyone who takes them out of their shame is bringing them to life.

The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 

He's saying this is what's actually been going on with Samaritan woman.

She, the Samaritan woman, is already receiving the wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together.

She's a model of what's going to happen with you

For here the saying holds true, “One sows and another reaps.” 

I sent you to reap that for which you did not labour. 

Others have laboured, and you have entered into their labour.’

He's trying to give to them that she's an example:

Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me everything I have ever done.’

She had been told the truth.

She'd been able to live it and she'd been able to share it

So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there for two days.

So not the three days, which will be in Jerusalem.

Three days was always the time given before a theophany in a chosen Holy place.

The two days is not quite theophany

And many more believed because of his word.

As he spoke, they began to understand what he was saying.

They 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 Saviour of the world.’

Through her witness, she's been able to give herself away.

She's not in control of it.

She's been able to give herself away and, because of that, it's become a multiplied and a fruitful thing.

The gift that Jesus is bearing witness to enabling others to bear witness to and which is able to spread especially amongst the humiliated, the apparent heretics, those who are not caught up in bizarre discussions about laws and things like that.

That is where it flows easy and the disciples need to be shown this to be able to learn that this is the way that the Lord enjoys: sharing the harvest with reapers and laborers.