The Wrong Person gets Living Water

On Monday Ian and I went to the movies with some friends. We saw the movie: Hidden Figures. Now for people like Ian and me who like Maths and Science and technical stuff, it was great. If you aren’t into the technical stuff, it is a wonderful story.

The film is set in the space race era, at NASA; as the US attempt to get a man into space.

This was pre-computers, so all the calculations for the orbit of the rocket were done by people. The same for the calculations of where the rocket would land on re-entry.

Who do you imagine did all those calculations, and checked and double checked them? Calculations that could be the difference between life and death?

…..

Jesus and his disciples are travelling from Judea to Galilee.

Galilee is in the north, then [below that is] Samaria, then south of there is Judea.  Jesus and the disciples are heading north, but good Jews do not go through Samaria, they go the long way to avoid the place. But Jesus and the disciples take the ‘short cut’, which means a three to four day walk.

….

In schools, and some other groups, there can be people who are always left out – children that the other children don’t want to play with, or sit with. It maybe they have look different or smell different, or for some reason are considered ‘odd’.

We meet one of these ‘odd’ people in this morning’s reading. Well, maybe we meet two : )

This is the longest recorded conversation Jesus has with anyone in the Gospels, and

it is with a woman

who is not Jewish,

and worse than that,

she is a Samaritan

with a chequered past.

What was Jesus thinking?!

Well…

maybe he was just thinking

I’m thirsty

She has a bucket

We are at a well

Maybe she will give me some water, if I ask her.

Thirst led to a request, which led to a conversation

A conversation about where to worship.

The people of Samaria and the Jewish people are both descendants of Abraham.

But they were also enemies.

And like many family feuds, it permeated into many parts of life.

Where to worship was one such area. 

This woman who was ‘wrong’ in the eyes of many,

This woman talked theology with Jesus.

The woman who was the wrong gender

and the wrong colour and

from the wrong place,

who was without a husband

becomes a theologian and an evangelist.

She saw in Jesus something that others had not.

And Jesus saw her in ways that others had not.

This woman is often portrayed as a sinner, but there is nothing in the conversation between Jesus and the woman to suggest that Jesus saw her in that way. In the time when Jesus was on earth, women were property of men. And without a man, you didn’t have a home, or food. Without a husband, or son or father, you needed to resort to begging or prostitution. 

……

Each of us will have received messages from family and friends and colleagues, about who we are and what we are. I was told at school that while I was an enthusiastic singer, I was not good enough, and was no longer part of the school choir.

The people who did many of the calculations in the rocket program were black women. In a time when only some schools took non-white children, and educational pathways were limited, NASA realised they needed the best available brains.  That didn’t mean they were treated equally. The bathroom for ‘coloured women’ was across the campus from where one of the characters was working. Her boss wondered why she disappeared for 40 minutes a couple of times a day.

I have lived in country towns where the phrase ‘the wrong side of the tracks’ was real. Disadvantage was shown by the railway track, or the river, or the highway.

It is easy to see people in terms of one characteristic – colour, gender, religion, race, test score. But we are not one characteristic.

The reading about Jesus and this woman, is one of my favourite in the gospels. I really wish she had a name!

This story speaks to me of how we are known, fully known; and loved. Despite what others may say about us,

No matter how odd people think we are

No matter how hard a life we have had

No matter what our life might look like to others

Jesus comes

Is willing to chat, not tell us off

And offers us life giving water

When Jesus offered the woman living water, it wasn’t to wash away her sin.

Living water is about refreshment,

like rain after a hot day

or a hot bath in winter.  

When the woman left her water jar behind. She also left behind her abandonment, rejection, marginalization.[i]

Are there things you would like to chat with Jesus about?

What difference does it make to you that you are fully known, and fully loved?

Are you willing to accept the life giving water Jesus is offering?  

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[i] Karoline Lewis, Holy Conversations in Working Preacher, posted Sunday, March 12, 2017 10:30 PM 

Barriers to Compassion

Gospel John 4: 3 - 30

This passage from John’s gospel is one of my favourite Bible stories. The woman is an outsider, - as a woman, a Samaritan, and someone who has had  rough time in life. Last week we heard of Nicodemus coming to Jesus, Nicodemus, male, Jewish, religious elite - he had it all, he still had trouble getting his head around what Jesus was saying to him. He went to Jesus at night, hiding under the cover of darkness.

This week we hear of the woman, who is ‘other’ in so many ways. She doesn’t come to meet Jesus, they both happen to be at the well at the same time, noon. Hot, dry and thirsty.

Some background: Samaritans traced their lineage back to ancient Israel, BUT, they had intermarried with the Assyrians when under occupation in 580’s BCE. They were therefore considered unclean by the Jews, and their land was polluted or defiled, because they were.

And in the time of Jesus, women needed to be in the protection of a man: father, husband , brother, or some other male relative. A woman was of similar status to a slave. 

This woman, we aren’t told her name, is often portrayed as being immoral, a loose woman, but there is nothing in the reading to suggest that. Jesus doesn’t call her to repentance, he doesn’t mention her living situation as a sin.  As a woman, if your husband died, divorced you, or abandoned you, the outcome was that you needed the security of a household headed by a male, otherwise begging and prostitution were the only ways you could survive. 

Think back, it is not that long ago that women were unable to get a home loan without their husband’s approval; and think back to Henry the Eight, a wife was only as good as the male heirs she produced.

So it is quite feasible that this woman had a sad history, rather than an immoral history.

…..

Back to the encounter between Jesus and the woman. Jesus had stopped to rest at the well, while his disciples went to town to get food. The woman came to get water, it is an unusual time of day, but with a long sad history, maybe she isn’t welcome with the other women, maybe she is thought of as bad luck, or maybe she ran out of water, and just needed to get some more.

Jesus breaks the cultural and religious codes by asking her for a drink – a Jew would not speak to a Samaritan, especially not to ask for help; a man and woman who were not related should not speak to each other. Here Jesus is asking her for a drink, and he doesn’t have anything to drink from – this is wrong on so many levels. But it is Jesus who is breaking the rules, not the woman.

When Jesus offers life giving water, her first thought is physical, concrete, no more carrying large pots of water. But she stays in the conversation.

Jesus speaks to this woman, knows who she is, asks her for help, and she believes. When she says “I see you are a prophet”, that is a statement of belief. She sees that Jesus is a prophet, because he has seen her, as a person, as someone with dignity, she has worth and value, and she is not used to being treated that way. Jesus has seen her, and she has recognised something special in him.

Then, again, against all the rules, Jesus and the woman have a dialogue about faith and worship. It was considered foolish to waste your time trying to teach a woman, or even having a discussion with a woman.

So astonished was the woman, that she ran back to the city, leaving her water jar behind, and told everyone; now that means the men who were discussing politics and religion in the town square.

….

Jesus speaks to us with compassion, understanding and the offer of living water, water gushing from inside us like a spring – an image of abundance and constancy.

But from speaking with people I know some of us don’t feel like there is a never ending, abundant, continuous source of living water within us, there are certainly days when I don’t.

What stops us from accepting the offer of life-giving water? The woman could have insisted that it was inappropriate to speak with a Jew, or a male, and especially a Jewish male, and never found out what Jesus had to offer her. She could have stuck to the idea that water came from the well and was carried in jars. She could have not continued the conversation, and never come to the realisation that the man she is speaking to is a prophet from God.

How often does our social conditioning, our aversion to people different to us, our unwillingness to share our resources, our attempts to be self-dependent, our  reluctance to discuss questions of faith, prevent us from being open to new experiences, to new learning, to new opportunities and to relationship with God.

This is a story for anyone who has ever been put down, because of their age, their gender, their educational level, their job or lack thereof, their choices in life; this is a story for those with few options. This is a story for people who are marginalised, for those who carry shame. This is a story for those who don’t even know they are searching for something better, because life is about putting one foot in front of the other, of doing whatever is necessary to survive. This is a story about compassion, about hope, about that which binds all people, the need for water, the need for life, the need for identity.

This woman not only receives life giving water, compassion and the answer to the hottest issue of her day - where to worship - she also has a new found sense of herself. 

This is a story of the transforming power of compassion and love. While we all need that transformation in our lives, we can also be agents of healing and hope by offering that compassion and love to those who need is most. Because when we have that life giving water, we, like the woman, will want to tell others; it will show in our lives.

What prevents you from receiving the compassion and love that Jesus offers you? What prevents you from showing that compassion and love to others?

* some ideas from UCC SAMUEL  and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-lose/misogyny-moralism-and-the_b_836753.html