Jesus is clearly a man who knows his audience. In our gospel lesson last Sunday we read the story of Nicodemus. This Sunday we have the story of the unnamed Samaritan woman. Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman. They couldn’t have been more different, yet Jesus knows them both and adapts his responses to them accordingly.
Nicodemus, we learned, was a leader of the Jews. The woman, on the other hand, had no status in the Jewish world. Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. Jesus comes to the woman by day. Nicodemus wants something from Jesus. Jesus, on the other hand, wants something from the woman.
Nicodemus tries to use reason with Jesus and is confused in the process. The woman engages Jesus in what turns out to be a rich theological discussion and understands who he is and what he offers her.
Nicodemus doesn’t understand how Jesus’ teaching can be. The woman not only understands, she leaves her water jar and went back to the city to share the good news with the people. Nicodemus seems to drift off in the story doing nothing. The woman begins to share the good news with those who do not know it. She evangelizes to the people and they invite Jesus to stay with them and he does. Many more believed because of her action and his word, for they heard for themselves and they learned that Jesus is truly the Savior of the world.
There are in these stories striking similarities in our lives. As Jesus was one on one with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman, Jesus is one on one with us. Whether we go to him or he comes to us, it doesn’t matter. Both happen.
Usually, like Nicodemus, we go to Jesus when we need something, speaking our prayers of petition. Just as likely, Jesus will listen instead to our hearts. That is the place where Jesus truly wants to engage us. It is with our hearts that Jesus fills us with his profoundest wisdom, his greatest strength, his unlimited love and his saving grace.
Less usually it seems Jesus is the one who initiates the contact. The scripture makes is clear, Jesus does seek us out. He tells us things about ourselves no one else knows. He teaches us things about himself we certainly don’t know. Jesus, we learn, wants something from us. Something we don’t know we have to offer. Something only God can want. In the process, our lives are changed forever.
I believe it is our nature to try and figure these things out. To try and figure God out as we try and figure our own lives out. Like Nicodemus, we use our best reasoning ability. We aren’t always so bashful with God. We will generate enough courage and try and reason out our situation, thoughts about our life and God’s and how they might have meaning together. We do have a history of success with our courage leading the way. Using our brains to know who we are and how we are to live our lives results in practical, productive and workable answers.
Yet we find ourselves filled with doubt in the middle of the night and we struggle with where to turn for help. We don’t really understand how Jesus’ teaching can be true. It lacks good reason. We see our lives in contrast to Jesus’ teachings and we are confused like Nicodemus. So we dig safe trenches in our lives to which we crawl for safety while we gather our wits about us for the next assault on our confusion about what’s important. In our illusions we drift off, away from Jesus, until the night becomes so dark we seek him in our despair.
Then we learn how Jesus is seeking us all along. Oh, this is such good news. The Samaritan woman engages Jesus in a discussion about God that has depth and insight and follows Jesus lead. Not her own. In this way, she not only begins to understand who Jesus is, she begins to understand about her life and the sole purpose for which she lives.
Consider for a moment that we are to write our name into the story, that we are the unnamed. In so many ways we see hope and possibility through her we may never otherwise find.
Notice how she engages Jesus in a critical dialogue seeking him, not relief for herself. Jesus says, “Give me a drink”. The Samaritan woman said, “How is it that you, a Jew, asks a drink of me, a sinner.” 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.” She presses Jesus about this. “Sir, where do you get that living water?” And Jesus answered with greater detail and truth, “…those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty…it will become in you a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
For the first time in her life she believes there is a nourishing possibility for her like nothing that has come into her life before. She asks Jesus, “Sir, give me this water,” She opens her heart and soul to Jesus, in her new found faith she holds nothing back and reveals herself, her intellect and her heart, to what Jesus already knows about her. She offers her life to him. She begins to understand, Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ who will come and proclaim that those who worship him will have eternal life. She knows when the Messiah comes he will proclaim all things to us. Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” Poor Nicodemus never made it to this level of understanding, belief, faith, or salvation.
But we can. We have come seeking earthly nourishment of body and soul and found life’s offerings may separate us from God. In our sinful nature we come to the well for water at a time of the day when others are not around so we will not have to be confronted by our sin, only to find Jesus waiting there for us. It is true, Jesus is waiting for us and when we show up he wants us to give him a drink of this life we think is so important, he will take it from us and give us in its place, a life that will become in us a spring of water gushing up to eternal life. The vessel we bring is our body and soul. Jesus will fill it for us.
Like our advocate, the Samaritan woman, we will leave our lives beside the well and go to the rest of the world proclaiming, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He is the Messiah. And many will believe because we have believed and lived our lives to teach his way.
In God’s amazing grace, in living as Jesus teaches us, in bringing others to Christ we accomplish what his disciples urged Jesus to do. When they returned to him they encouraged him to take some food. His response was, “I have food to eat that you do not know about…My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work…Doing God’s will brings about the harvest…and if we will but look around in our lives we will see the field is ripe for harvesting.” Many will believe in him because of our testimony.
We are the harvest crew that finds the people dying without Jesus.
The Rev. Arturo Malicara, a friend and hospital chaplain, reminded me often, people are indeed dying and they do not know Jesus, and each one of us who profess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior can help save them.
Ali Selem’s beautiful and understated 2005 film, “Sweet Land”, tells both the story of the power of love and the power of finding something wonderful that satisfies the deepest hungers and thirst of life. The film tells the story of a young German mail-order bride, Inge, promised to a struggling farmer, Olaf, arriving in Minnesota in the wake of World War One. The local minister and town judge both refuse to perform the marriage ceremony because, as they judged, of Inge’s socialist affiliations, her inability to speak English, and the loose morals and dissipated lifestyle of foreign women. Without rights or citizenship, with no family and no community – Inge stood alone, facing a hostile, unfriendly new world.
Though the marriage is forbidden, Olaf and Inge fall in love. Neighbors go to great lengths to make sure Inge knows she is not welcome, she does not belong, and that she is despised. Ignoring the disapproval of the townsfolk, Inge struggles to make a home and a life through hard work and devotion to Olaf. Conditions worsen, and they risk losing their farm. There is a deeply moving scene toward the end of the film where it appears the farm will be lost and Inge and Olaf are once again denied marriage. They stand outside the farmhouse with the local preacher. Olaf tells him that the farm is Inge’s home now, but the pastor shakes his head and says, “It can’t be. She doesn’t have the proper papers.” Her reply is that she has a home and citizenship and a marriage in her heart. The preacher says, “That’s not enough. It has to be real.” Inge than asks, “Do you have God in your heart?” The preacher stands mute for an unbearable time, than nods, smiles, and admits, “You’re right…my heart.”
It is by the faith and witness of a woman, an outsider, who reminds a community what is of true value, and creates a deep, abiding change in their lives. The townspeople repent, accepting Inge as one of their own, and stand with the young couple to save their farm.
We see in the character Inge the Samaritan woman by the well. An outsider who is found by Jesus and in the process, finds Jesus and a new life. Through her encounter with Jesus, and through our own, we find something of true and lasting worth – God’s spring of water overflowing with everlasting life.
That is if we have God in our heart.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
Additional References:
Lectionary Homiletics, Volume XII, Number 2, Mar – Apr 2008, Pg. 28-35.
Pulpit Resources, Volume 36, No. 1, Jan – Mar 2008, Pg. 33-36.
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