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Sermon preached by the Reverend Patrick T. Gray at
The Church of the Advent Jesus was tired. It’s not the way we typically expect to start a Gospel lesson, particularly from John’s Gospel. You may remember from last week, that our lesson ended with that great statement of God’s salvific plan - John 3:16 - “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life.” And this is probably the most famous of John’s statements that he makes about the Son of God, but John makes quite a lot of them. It’s a commonplace that John has a “high Christology,” that is, he focuses on what it means that the divine Word has become flesh, that the divinity of Christ is his main concern. I’ve heard this emphasized so much, that in one case, a commentator said that is why John’s Gospel is represented by the eagle, because John’s theology soars high above the other Gospels, with the implication being that John is “unconcerned” with Jesus’ humanity. But I don’t know if that’s quite right. Surely, John’s statements of Jesus’ divinity are some of the most glorious and wonderful that we have in all of scripture. And yet in this very same Gospel of John, we also hear about a Jesus who weeps, a Jesus who falls asleep, and in our passage this morning, a Jesus who gets tired, tired and thirsty. So I would say that, in John’s Gospel, Jesus’ humanity is as much on display as his divinity.(1) And he was tired, so Jesus sat down on top of a well. And in the Middle East, you could literally sit down on the well, because wells like this one would have large capstones that looked like doughnuts, placed over the top of the well, so there’d only be a small hole in the center for lowering a bucket. That kept the dirt out, it kept children from falling in, and it provided a workspace for you, when you transferred the water into a jar or a leather bag. So you could literally sit on the well. And apparently, that’s what Jesus did. But Jesus didn’t have anything to draw the water from the well. His followers had gone to town, probably taking with them what he needed, so here he was, in the hottest part of the day, tired, and getting thirstier by the minute, and he was alone. He was, in other words, pretty helpless. And all of a sudden, a Samaritan woman came to draw water from the well. Now the fact that this woman was alone most likely meant that she was a “bad woman,” a social outcast. Women in these villages would go to draw water in the early morning or just before sundown, not in the hottest part of the day. And the women would always go to and from the well in a group, not only for the sake of propriety, but to help each other, because we all have those images of women carrying huge jars of water on their head. And they did that, but those jars full of water were heavy. So the women would help each other. So suffice it to say, this Samaritan woman was not considered an upstanding citizen in her village. Now Jesus, when he saw her, should have stood up, and moved away from her. And it’s not because she was clearly a social outcast. This was simply the expectation of how men and women behaved in public, particularly if both were alone. If you’re a stranger in this culture, you don’t even make eye contact with a woman in a public place. And Jesus should have given her at least a good twenty feet, which would indicate that it was safe and appropriate for her to approach the well.(2) But he didn’t do that. He just sat there. And it wasn’t because he was too tired to get up that he didn’t get up. He was about to break a social taboo, so he must have had a reason. But whatever reason Jesus had, the woman could have stopped when she saw Jesus sitting on the well, refusing to budge. But she decided to draw near anyway. Maybe she thought this Jew was trying to keep her, a Samaritan, from getting any water at all. Because, you see, Jews and Samaritans hated one another, and had been hating each other for centuries. Three hundred years previous, the Greeks had used Samaria as a base for their control of Jewish territory. And eventually, after about a hundred and fifty years, the Jews found occasion to retaliate against the Samaritans by destroying the Samaritan temple on the summit of Mount Gerizim. And of course, this led to further retaliation, about one hundred years later, when the Samaritans penetrated the temple area of Jerusalem and scattered bones of the dead across the area on the eve of Passover in order to defile the temple and make it impossible for the Jews to keep the Passover feast.(3) So for the Jews, Samaritans were Gentiles, pagans, no matter what they claimed, because of their collusion with the enemy. And maybe that’s what the woman thought. Maybe she thought Jesus, because he hated her so, was going to use this social taboo of men and women in public, as a means of keeping her from drinking. But maybe she hated the Jews as much as the Jews hated her, as much as she thought this Jew must hate her, and she wasn’t about to let this Jew “win,” as it were. She wasn’t about to let a Jew keep her from drinking, even if it meant breaking a social taboo. So she went to the well, with Jesus still sitting there. But the surprises kept coming. Jesus spoke to her, he spoke to her and said, “Give me a drink.” By Jesus’ inaction and her action, they had already broken the man/woman social taboo. But now Jesus breaks another. He speaks to a Samaritan. Jesus right then and there sets aside centuries of bitter history. And in order to get a drink from her, he would have to use the vessel that she brought to draw water. And both Jew and Samaritan each thought the other impure, and would never share something in common. He spoke to her, which was bad enough, but he also, through what he said, was willing to use what she used. It’s like those of us who like the idea of the common cup that we share at communion, but when it comes to actually drinking from the common cup, that’s a different story. It makes some a little queasy, it feels unsanitary to some. Imagine that feeling, and multiply it by a thousand. Then I think we’re getting close to what Jews and Samaritans thought about sharing something in common. And Jesus the Jew was willing to have this cup in common with the Samaritan woman. But let’s also remember what he said. He not only spoke to a Samaritan, he not only desired to share her cup with her, he asked for help. What he said is done not out of power, out of being in control, but out of humility, of need; Jesus was basically saying, “I am weak and need help! Can you help me?” Now I’ve already said how much I enjoy those Christological statements about the Word made flesh in John’s Gospel. The high-falutin’ theology that believes Jesus is the one that truly reveals who God is, what God is like. And if that is true, then God asks for help. The complete self-emptying of God that is the incarnation, the complete and true servanthood that Christ reveals is a servanthood that is at the mercy of those whom He came to serve. And if this weakness of Jesus is true, then we his disciples need to share in it. I’m pretty excited about the things happening here at the Advent, particularly around missions. Many of you know we had a team of four all ready to go to Kenya, to learn and participate in the work of a medical missionary couple in Maseno who have established not only a hospital and orphan feeding program, but a theological college as well. But then Kenya literally blew up, and the trip got postponed. But this trip will happen once things settle down. And I’m excited that we have a group of about ten (including Fr. Warren!) heading to Mississippi in April, to do a building project as part of the continuing Katrina relief in that area. It’s things like this that make my old Evangelical heart feel good. And yet we need to be careful. We need to be careful as we continue to serve, to serve our brothers and sisters internationally, nationally, locally. Because this place will only continue to attract those folks who wish to serve, who desire to reach others with God’s love, this place will only continue to raise up people like that. Kenya and Katrina are just the beginning. But we need to be careful. We need to always bear in mind what true servanthood looks like, and it looks like Jesus, it looks like the Son of God asking a Samaritan woman for a drink. Because ultimately, what we’re talking about is the manifestation of love, of God’s love. And as one theologian put it, “The only way to build love between two people or two groups of people is to be so related to each other as to stand in need of each other. The Christian community must serve. It must also be in a position where it needs to be served.”(4) It’s in our weakness that we’re able to call forth others, to call forth that which God desires to see. We need to continue to grow and think big, but it better be tempered with the knowledge that when we go, we go in need of the people to whom we are sent. If we are truly bearers of the Gospel, we will give, and we will receive, and all our other gifts will find their proper place.(5) Amen. (1) Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels ( Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 201. |