Woman at the Well

A monologue by The Rev. Keenan Kelsey
Noe Valley Ministry, Presbyterian Church (USA)
March 5, 2006

Text: John 4: 1-26

Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, 'Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John'-- although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized-- he left Judea and started back to Galilee. But he had to go through Samaria. 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. A 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.) 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.) 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.' The woman said to him, 'Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?' 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. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.' The woman said to him, 'Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.' Jesus said to her, 'Go, call your husband, and come back.' The woman answered him, 'I have no husband.' 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!' The woman said to him, 'Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.' 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. 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. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.' The woman said to him, 'I know that Messiah is coming' (who is called Christ). 'When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.' Jesus said to her, 'I am he, the one who is speaking to you.'

I AM A WOMAN WITHOUT A NAME. Well, I have one, but I don't think I will tell you what it is. You see, through the centuries you Christians have made up so many odd and some not very nice things about me, that I think I would rather keep my name to myself. You often call me the Samaritan woman, although there were quite a lot of us. I guess it's the same way you say Black women, as if there aren't individual Ethiopians and African Americans and Jamaicans and Kenyans. Or Asian women, as if there aren't Koreans and Japanese and Chinese andCambodians. But still, I am the Samaritan woman.

You call me the woman at the well. Although that's like saying the woman at Bell Market or Safeway. We did not have that water coming through a pipe like you do. Back in my day we went to the wells for water, and we might have to make a dozen trips a day. I always preferred Jacob's well, the one that had been giving water to our people from ancient times. I'd already been to the town fountain I spilled some of that water and was beaten for it. I needed the walk to the well, even at the noon hour. Who would have thought I would meet a Jewish rabbi there! Some of your people -- commentators I think they are called -- they want you to think I was an outcast, but they don't know too much about it. They aren't even very consistent are they? I mean, you make me an outcast, and then you have the villagers listen to me. Would they believe me and follow me if I were such an outcast?

Anyway, this man was there when I arrived. He was dusty and thirsty under that noonday sun. He told me he had just walked hours and hours through high hills and low mountains, coming from Judea. He told me to give him a drink and I answered him. Actually I argued with him. I was kind of annoyed. Who was he to speak me? You all have the idea that I was the shameless one in my story, but wasn't Jesus shameless, talking to me, a Samaritan and a woman?

He asked a simple request, but I did not want to do as he asked. Can you understand that? I bet that every day of your lives, Jesus Christ asks you to do specific simple things like drawing a drink of water -- or giving a confused traveler directions, or stopping your tongue before you think it through, or going on a Habitat work day or a church prayer group. I've discovered that there are always some good reasons to refuse, good excuses. But also, when Jesus asks us to do something for him, we have to let go of a certain amount of control -- take a certain risk, and none of us likes to lose control and take risks.

Anyway, I was starting to get uncomfortable with this Rabbi. He was sort of pushy. I wanted to leave, but somehow, I couldn't. He used a word that didn't mean well water. It caught my attention. He offered fresh running water, the kind from a spring or river, life-giving water, vigorous, abundant water that filled one's being. I didn't understand, but when he talked, I believed him. And I wanted what he offered. Then he told me about my life. Again those commentators of yours-- What do they know? Jesus did not scold me or condemn me. Yes, I carry my scars, who doesn't.? I've been widowed, divorced, childless, abandoned, now kept as servant. We women didn't have many choices back then. Somehow Jesus knew all of it. Boy, you think you have a right to privacy, even to a secret, but I learned that God knows.

This man of God saw my poverty , my rejection. The love in his eyes and the concern in his voice made me bold. Against my will I cried out once more for acceptance and care. I said: "Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw." Jesus gave me -- himself. I had been to the well often -- Jesus noted that I had been five times to the marriage well -- and I was still thirsty for a fulfilling life, a refreshing fellowship.

I actually had a sort of odd fleeting thought about this time. In the Torah, when a Jewish boy and a foreign girl meet at a well, a marriage follows. Moses met his eventual wife at a well. Some shepherds began to bother the daughters of Jethro, the priest of Midian, and Moses came to their defense. When he heard the story of Moses' kind deed, the girls' grandfather, gave one of the girls to Moses in marriage (Exodus 2:15-21). Jacob, the heir of Isaac (Abraham's son), also met his wife Rachel, an Aramean, at a well. And Jacob's father Isaac had his eventual marriage to Rebekah arranged by a meeting at a well between one of his father Abraham's servants and Rebekah.

Was Jesus courting me? I rapidly dismissed this thought and then I changed the subject. I asked "Why is it that we Samaritans worship on Mt. Gerizim there while you Jews worship in Jerusalem?" It is amazing how often religious issues are used to avoid spiritual matters. It is easier to ask why Baptists dunk folk in baptism and Presbyterians only sprinkle people. It's harder to ask what is prayer, or how do I forgive?

So I asked a political question. And it was a good one. You know, 'Samaritan' wasn't always a dirty word. We used to worship together with Judeans, the people who lived around Jerusalem. They worshipped together in the Temple in Jerusalem, the Temple King Solomon built. But the Babylonians destroyed that Temple in the 7th century BC.

There were at least two schools of thought on why Israel was defeated. Everyone agreed that Israel was defeated because God's people weren't doing God's will. But they had different ideas on what God s will was, One school of thought comes from people like Isaiah, who said that God doesn't dwell in a house made by human hands, so God isn't interested in buildings. In fact, according to this prophetic school, God wants justice for the poor, and if you're going to build a building, that usually means spending lots of money that could be spent on the poor. Too often, it means taking money from the poor to build Gods house, letting some of Gods people go without a home entirely.

The other view of why Israel was defeated said that God had abandoned Israel because Israel wasn't sufficiently pure. Once the captive Israelites returned from Babylon, Ezra and Nehemiah wanted to make sure nothing like their defeat ever happened again, and the cure they prescribed was being more careful about purity. They were particularly angry with those who had been allowed to stay in the land when the elites had been hauled off in captivity to Babylon Many of those left behind had married foreigners. And Nehemiah demanded that men who had married foreign women divorce them and abandon them immediately.

Most of the men of Samaria decided not to abandon their wives. So Ezra and Nehemiah, who thought that God wanted Israel to be pure one culture, no mixing it up with people who were different decided that Samaritans were creeps. Ezra and Nehemiah pretty much won the debate. Once the Temple was rebuilt, Samaritans weren't welcome to worship there; the Samaritans ended up building their own temple, worshipping near the place that Abraham offered Isaac for sacrifice. Samaritans weren't welcome to study the Torah in the schools of Judea, so they formed their own schools. And no self-respecting Judean would be caught dead sharing a cup with a Samaritan. As time went on, Samaritans started having more than a few choice words about Judeans; the hatred became mutual.

Do you know that even today, that right down to 2002 there is a tiny sect of Samaritans left, right there at Mount Gerizim? They are slaughtering sheep and goats and making sacrifices, although such practices ended in Jerusalem long ago when the Romans destroyed the Temple and the City.

I asked a political question, but Jesus turned it back to spiritual question. Jesus boldly stated "The hour is coming when neither in this place nor in Jerusalem will you worship God, for the hour is coming and in fact is already here when true worshippers can worship God in spirit and in truth wherever they are, for God seeks that kind of worship. God is Spirit, and those who worship must worship in Spirit and in Truth." There go all the divisions that have separated human beings one from another. Denominational boundaries and sectarian shrines aren't holy, people are. Cities and States and Nations are not sacrosanct--it is God who is holy, with God's holy people.

The divisions of Samaritan and Jew, like the divisions of Arab and Jew, of Christian and Muslim, of Orthodox or Reformed, of Protestant and Catholic, of Sunni and Shiite, these divisions are all artificial and make-believe, Jesus says, and the hour is coming when true worshippers recognize that God is Spirit and looks for worship that has discovered that.

The form of worship, the place of worship, the type of worship are all important but only as means to the end that we worship God in spirit and truth. There is always a problem when we become so preoccupied with the means; we never get around to the end.

Wow, after this, I could not sit still. I had to rushed back into Sychar and exclaim, "Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?" In an hour, I had experienced grace, the grace of God, and knew it. The others came, and they sensed something important too. Jesus stayed with us for two days and taught us and loved us.

Remember what I said about expecting a wedding? Maybe there was a sort of marriage. I changed. The relationship with Jesus changed me, and I felt yoked to him, part of him. And you know that Christ speaks to you today just as he did to me long ago. The only question for is, "Will you keep the dialogue going?" Will you respond positively to Jesus' requests of you, will you take risks and step out on faith, or will we get up and say, "I don't feel like doing that." Will you be able to accept that God sees us as we really are, not the masks we wear or the public persona we present? Will you stay with the conversation to the end? Whenever we are willing to be challenged by God and to confront the reality of Jesus Christ face to face, we are able to leave one more water jar behind, and go out serving, witnessing, and growing, as Christians.

Like the woman at the well, we will be called to cross barriers of culture and custom. Like Jesus, we and our agendas will be transformed as we learn to love those we were taught to fear. Like the Samaritan villagers, we will hear Good News from those we least expect to teach us. Can we do it? For the sake of each of you, for the sake of the church, for the sake of the world, I hope so.