Lent 3
The Gospel of John 4:5-42
Preached at House of Hope Lutheran Church (New Hope, MN)
March 12, 2023
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Grace and peace to you from God the Creator, Christ the Liberator, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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Today marks the halfway point of our Lenten journey. How is this season, this year, going for you?
Take a moment – think back on Ash Wednesday, when we were reminded that we are of the earth and will return to the earth, in the midst of a snowstorm. Return to the first two Sundays in Lent, where we found ourselves in the wilderness and with Nicodemus. And the days in-between those days, as you have been living your life of faith in the world. How is it going?
If you decided to take on a Lenten practice, has it been nourishing and Spirit-led?
If you decided to give something up, have you felt yourself returning closer to God?
If doing anything for Lent this year beyond showing up to worship God was too much, have you still found moments of peace and grace?
And how honest were you with your answers to these questions, even just to yourself?
When people ask how it’s going, I know I often fall into a default setting where I just skim the surface of how I’m doing, and if I’m having a rough time, I’ll often skip over that, and try to keep the conversation light-hearted. That’s due to a lot of factors – we each have different layers of closeness with different people in our lives. We each embody multiple roles as we navigate our lives together, with various power and interpersonal dynamics. And so being intentional about what to share, with who, when, makes sense.
But we also live in systems that push us towards impossible perfection, push us towards squashing down anything we’re experiencing that isn’t shiny and positive, push us towards superficial relationships. We don’t always bring our whole selves to conversations with each other, or even with ourselves, or with God.
Why is that?
Being seen as our full selves is a vulnerable experience. Sharing our fears, our doubts, the times we have fallen short, the times we have sinned against God and our neighbors, even sharing our deepest dreams – this vulnerability is risky. It might feel like there’s a high risk for getting hurt, or being judged, but today’s Gospel text shows us the other side – through bringing our whole selves into conversation, with God, each other, and ourselves, we experience being seen, and by being seen, we are invited into growth, change, and possibility.
The Gospel text for today is long – 38 verses. It is the longest conversation Jesus has. Not with one of his disciples, not with his family, not with God – but with an unnamed Samaritan woman.
We find Jesus resting by a well. He is a stranger in this place, without even a bucket to draw water. He’s likely a somewhat unwelcome stranger – the Samaritans and the Jewish people have previous violent history, leading to the note in the text that Samaritans and Jewish people do not share things in common. But Jesus is thirsty, and tired, and asks this woman for a drink of water. She responds with wondering how he can ask this of her, given their allegiances and social locations. He responds with the promise of living water.
And she responds with a theological question, and the two of them – Jesus, a Jewish teacher, a man, a stranger, and her, a Samaritan, a woman whose name was not considered important enough to record – have a fairly intricate and complicated theological exchange.
Jesus shares the promise of water that will “become a spring of water gushing up to eternal life”. And that sounds pretty good to someone who needs to draw water and carry water from a well each day.
The woman desires this living water that Jesus is offering, even as he is asking her for water to drink, but at that moment, their connection still feels casual, feels surface level. But exchange doesn’t end there.
Jesus tells her to call her husband. She replies that she has no husband, and Jesus reveals not only that she is telling the truth – that she does not currently have a husband, but he also reveals also her past history – that she has had five husbands, and is currently living with a man, unmarried.
There is no judgment in this revelation. There is no condemnation. Jesus speaks it as fact, in the middle of the day, and the woman confirms it as fact. In this moment, Jesus’ revelation of her past is not done for shock value, and it is not done to shame her – it is to prove that he knows her, knows more than she has told him. And it is in this knowing – this seeing, seeing her with her full history, and staying in conversation with her – which reveals to the woman Jesus’ identity as the beloved son of God.
By revealing that she can bring her full, potentially complicated self and history to this theological conversation about living water, bringing her whole self without receiving judgement, or shame, by Jesus staying in conversation – it allows her to see him, in his full identity, as he sees her in hers.
It is here, in the middle of the heat of the day, sitting by a well that encompasses their shared and divergent history, where Jesus then makes his first “I am” statement in the Gospel of John. It is the first time that he names himself the Messiah.
“I am he, the one who is speaking with you”.
Jesus says this aloud for the first time, to a women he’s only known for mere minutes. This moment of connection and conversation is one of shared vulnerability, and beyond the theological, beyond the practical, this conversation is one that holds the possibility of growth and change, for both of them.
It is vulnerable, and risky, to name yourself as who you are for the first time, especially to someone who has no historical reason to wish you well.
It is vulnerable, and risky, to have revealed parts of your past that strangers might judge, especially by someone who is a stranger.
They are both changed by this encounter. The woman leaves to share her testimony, her experience of Jesus, and she is well-thought of enough for others to listen to what she has to say. She is respected enough that simply by sharing her conversation with Jesus, others go to see him as well. She is entering into the work of God in the world.
Jesus has named himself, “I am he” for the first time, perhaps it’s even the first time he’s spoken those words aloud, never mind to another person. This is a turning point, an expansion, and a continuation, in his ministry. Ministry that now includes the Samaritans, a people who have historically been at odds with his own community.
Jesus and the unnamed Samaritan woman are not the same at the end of the passage as they were at the beginning.
The disciples return from getting food, and have missed a lot in their time away. Jesus has just finished this intricate and complicated theological exchange, has named himself, “I am he”, and his conversation with the unnamed woman where they were both seers and seen has left him nourished and full.
The disciples on the other hand are coming to the well a little…confused. Confused that Jesus was talking with a Samaritan woman, and confused that he somehow got food when they were off buying food. There’s a disconnect – the disciples are focused on the practical, the logistics, while Jesus, in this moment, is in the midst of his Divine identity. It almost feels like he is returning to a conversation that he’s had with the disciples before – the Kingdom of God is here, now. The harvest is here, now.
The disciples are often catching up in the Gospels – asking questions, not understanding, needing things explained – while often simultaneously they are jostling for positions of favor. We definitely get glimpses, at times, of the disciples each trying to be The Best Disciple. Which is a very human thing – tied together with the vulnerability of bringing our full selves into a conversation is the common desire to want to be first, and best. We don’t bring our full selves because we have been taught that vulnerability makes us weak. We don’t bring our full selves because we are pushed to bring the best and shiniest version of ourselves, as we push ourselves towards doing new things that no one has ever done before.
But that desire – to flee vulnerability, and seek to win, for lack of a better term – often severs us from knowing each other, and from wisdom.
Once we have been seen for our full selves by God and our community, and have been changed by that, what’s next, if not trying to be The Best Disciple?
There is a long history of liberation and God in the world, and our whole selves are invited into that unfolding.
“Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
This week, Judy Heumann died. Judy was called by many the mother of the disability rights movement. She was the first wheelchair user in New York State to be granted her teacher’s license. She led protests, shut down traffic, and helped develop and implement legislation, including the Americans with Disabilities Act. She was an advocate for independent living, and led an active and full life. I share this because we (ableist society), but I also share it because when I go to my job at an organization that “uses the power of the creative arts to activate and amplify the voice and choice of individuals with disabilities”, I am entering into work that began long before me.
And when Indigenous climate organizers and their allied communities protest the destruction of the Roof Depot site in East Phillips, Mpls due to concerns about increased pollution in an already polluted area, or when climate activists are arrested protesting a proposed police training facility that would destroy part of the Weelaunee Forest watershed, they are entering into ancestral work that began long before them.
The arc of this Gospel passage invites us to bring our whole selves, to be known by Jesus in order to know God, and to enter into the labor of God in the world – which will likely look different for each of us. The threads of our lives and our labor entwine with God and each other, and hopefully draw us towards living water, liberation, and new life.
We are midway through this year’s Lenten journey. I pray that as we travel closer to Jesus’ arrest, crucifixion, and resurrection, that you are nourished by living water. That you see others, and allow them to see you. And that you hear the ever-present call from God – that others have labored, and you are invited to enter into that same labor for liberation, and love. Amen.
Reed Fowler 