MORECAMBE PARISH CHURCH 19 March 2017
The story of the Woman at the
Well has a very odd ending. We are left in the air. She had brought her
townspeople to meet Jesus and many of them believed in him v 39, so much so
that they persuaded him to stay longer. But the woman - what about her? We are
not told if she believed that he is the Saviour of the world or whether she was
left dithering and undecided.
And the story of the journey
of the people of Israel is also full of dithering, indecisiveness. For a short
while after they came through the Red Sea all was hunky- dory. Their pursuers
had drowned, they were delivered and all was happiness.
But it wasn’t long before
difficulties made them miserable and grumpy. They were short of water, and when
they do find some, it is bitter. They grumble and complain to Moses about God.
God shows Moses how to turn it sweet and drinkable; back to happiness.
A few miles further on they
are hungry. They’d probably finished the supplies they’d brought from Egypt, so
what do they expect to find in a desert? They grumble and complain to Moses
about God. So God rains down bread from heaven in the form of manna, to be
freshly baked every day. And quails were driven in on the wind for supper; back
to happiness.
But they get sick of it and
are miserable and grumpy again.
By the time we get to the
chapter we had read to us, Moses is tearing his hair out. Wouldn’t you be?
They’d run out of water again. Guess what? They grumble and complain to Moses about
God - again. No wonder Moses says to the Lord, v 4 “what shall I do with these
people?”
So God had him strike the
rock of Horeb and water came out. Even the name they gave the place reflected
their attitude: ‘quarrel’ and ‘test’. These fractious people had not really
decided to trust God. They would only trust God if He did everything they
wanted.
So when a new challenge is
given them it throws them into a panic and they pick a quarrel with Moses. ‘Let
Moses do the believing in God for us!’ They were behaving like infants,
refusing to make the decision for themselves. They had all these opportunities
to trust God and they just dithered and wouldn’t commit themselves to this God
who had done so much for them.
Back to the Woman at the
Well! You would have thought that given half the chance to talk to Jesus face
to face, she wouldn’t dither. But the conversation is full of avoidance. All
the way through she is trying to put Jesus off; keeping him at a distance,
keeping the conversation jokey.
Jesus has broken all the
customs of the day for a Jew. He asks a favour of a Samaritan, a race despised
by the Jews, and a woman at that. And what’s more, a woman of questionable
morality – why else would she come on her own at midday instead of with her
community in the cool of the morning? Jesus is breaking down all the barriers
of race and gender and social norms. So perhaps it’s not surprising she puts
her defences up.
She’s resorts to what she’s
good at - the quick repartee:
“How is it that you, a Jew,
ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” She comes off the page as cheeky, even
flirtatious. And Jesus at first responds
with warmth and humour but everything he says has a serious point to it. She
resists his seriousness, cleverly turning what he says into a debate about
their mutual ancestor Jacob. Anything to keep the conversation away from her
own personal circumstances!
But Jesus won’t let her get
away with it – every time she tries to turn the conversation away from the
personal, Jesus brings it back. “Go call your husband!” (v 16)
She finds herself being
confronted with what she has been so carefully keeping from him and she has to
name her shame: “I have no husband”. The superficial way she usually converses
with people is gone. She’s left completely exposed before the only person who
has ever shown real understanding and acceptance for who she is.
She can’t bear that
penetrating gaze for long and switches back again to discussion, to keeping it
all at the level of the mind – a safe place to run when the gaze of Christ
becomes too personal. But Jesus wants our hearts as well as our minds.
“God is Spirit” says Jesus to
her “and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth.” The Spirit
has a way of getting behind our defences and showing us the truth about
ourselves and the truth of God’s unconditional love, poured out like living
water slaking our thirst for reality.
But she’s not ready. For one
last time she clings on to the safe, the impersonal. “I know the Messiah is
coming – he’ll tell us everything.” But it’s something that belongs to a time
in the future; it can’t change anything for me now.
And then, to this Samaritan woman, to this
outsider, this nobody who hasn’t shown any evidence of believing him, Jesus
says the same words that God used in revealing himself to Moses in the desert:
‘I AM’, I AM He. I am the one you’ve been avoiding but the one you are really
looking for. And for a moment all her defences come crashing down.
What will she do? The moment
of truth is here, the Truth about everything, is now standing there right in
front of her, demanding a decision. And she runs away. She runs to find people
who will make the decision for her.
For the first time in her
life they listen, they give her the respect she’s craved for so long. They go
to find this Messiah for themselves and they believe, (v 42) no longer because
of what she said but because they’d heard for themselves and know “this is
truly the Saviour of the world.”
Perhaps she just can’t
believe that her life can change - just like that, that she is being offered
salvation so easily, so freely. We are left wondering - did she allow the waves
of God’s grace to overwhelm her, or did she do what the Israelites did and
refuse the invitation to trust? We will never know.
But we can end the story for
ourselves. How will we decide? Keep
Jesus at a distance or respond to the offer he makes: “the water I give will
become in you a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” v 14
Sue Kiernan
Brilliant! The best commentary on the woman at the well I've read or heard.
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