Picture yourself standing on the playground with all the neighborhood kids excited to play dodge ball. The two biggest and oldest kids are the team captains and they look over the crowd of kids deliberating their next pick. You raise your hand and jump up and down shouting “pick me, pick me.” One by one your friends are picked and soon you are the last one standing there. All alone. How do you feel? Inferior? Worthless? A second class citizen?
In a way that is just how the Samaritan woman in today’s scripture must have felt. She was first of all identified as a Samaritan. In the eyes of the Jews, they were the chosen people while the Samaritans were viewed as the rejected people. Their worship of God was seen as inferior to the expressions of worship in the temple. Secondly she was identified as a woman. Women in that culture were viewed as property that was to be used. The scripture also mentions that she did not have a husband and she previously had five husbands. In our culture divorce is common. Living with your girlfriend or boyfriend has become commonplace. So we may be tempted to assume that this woman was also “easy,” a tramp or a whore. In fact as I reflect on sermons that I have heard over the years, this woman has been portrayed just as that. But try to avoid the temptation of infusing our own culture into the text. It may be very well that the woman is trapped in Levirate marriage in which the last male in the family has refused to marry her which would only compound her sense of worthlessness. Jesus didn’t judge so neither should we.
Jesus dismissed the social conventions of his day and began to talk with this woman. Imagine the joy and confusion that she must have felt. It was like someone had finally picked her for the game. She was no longer invisible or being cast aside. In fact Jesus offers her a gift, “living water.” As they converse back and forth it seems evident that the woman did not fully understand what Jesus was talking about.
In the Greek, “living water” has two possible meanings. It can mean fresh running water like a stream or it can mean life giving water. The woman is focused on the literal meaning, fresh running water. There were no streams, only a well; and a man without any way of getting even the well water! For John, the irony of the story is that Jesus is greater than Jacob who dug the well, however the woman falsely assumes the opposite. She was initially blind to the new possibilities that Jesus offered. And so it is with most of the world who lives life alone, abandoned, or worthless; thirsty for the living water that only Jesus can provide. Jesus was able to see into the woman’s life. He sees into each and every one of our lives especially those who are isolated, alone and abandoned.
In this text Jesus challenges the status quo. He dismantles those social, cultural and religious conventions that seek to keep people apart. Throughout time we have sought to label ourselves and others in order to isolate those who are different than ourselves and lord over them. We even do this in the church. John is calling the church to have the same open heart that Jesus demonstrated in Samaria as he reached out to someone very much different than himself. Jesus opened himself up to the entire world and so should we in his name.
What happened when Jesus opened himself up to the Samaritan woman? Because of her testimony many in her village came to believe in him. The disciples became co-laborers in the harvest of the Samaritan village. And all of them spent two days with the messiah in their midst; indeed they worship Jesus not on a mountain or in a temple but in their midst. They received more than they would have ever expected. That’s what happens when we ignore the status quo and latch onto the Jesus quo.
