John 4:5-42
February 24, 2008
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
Not only was this a long passage, but we no longer are scandalized by the major differences between the Samaritans and the Jews. We no longer are hotly invested in a theological controversy that happened almost 2000 years ago. And on top of that most of us have heard this passage many times going all the way back from childhood. It holds no shock value. It is pretty much the same old same old.
But did you know that there was a rabbinic saying that it was better to eat the flesh of swine than to eat Samaritan bread? Did you know that no honest Jew would speak to a Samaritan, especially one who was a woman, who was also a social outcast because of her questionable reputation? Rabbis were fond of saying “It’s better to bury the Torah than to entrust it to a woman.
Did you know that women were not allowed to worship with men? Did you know that men in their morning devotions often included the prayer, “Thank God I am not a woman.” Holy men did not speak to their wives in public. Did you know that one group of men who were religious leaders was known as “the bruised and bleeding Pharisees” because when they saw a woman coming down the street they closed their eyes, even if it meant walking into a wall and breaking their noses.
While the shortest route to travel from Judea to Galilee is to go through Samaria, Jews avoided this way except Jesus. To the Jews, Samaritans were unclean people—they didn’t worship God in the right place; they didn’t perform the proper religious rituals; in their past they intermarried with non-Jews. If a Jew were to be touched by a Samaritan an extensive ritual cleaning was required before one could be declared clean again.
From the Jews’ perspective of the world, they were the insiders; the Samaritans and women were definitely the outsiders.
Nicodemus and the Samaritan Woman
Taking last Sunday’s story of Jesus and Nicodemus and contrasting it with today’s story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman, we can see who’s the insider and who’s the outsider.
Whereas Nicodemus was a “leader of the Jews…a teacher of Israel,” who comes to the capital city of Jerusalem, this woman is mentioned four times as a “Samaritan” who lives outside of Israel. In case we miss the point of her Samaritan outcast status, John tells us directly, “Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans” (4:9). Moreover, her questionable marital status puts her at a distance from the righteous.
Nicodemus is a public religious leader who would have had no problem walking around in broad daylight is introduced to us as one “who came to Jesus at night.” On the other hand, whereas the Samaritan woman with a questionable reputation should have come to Jacob’s well at night, came in broad daylight.
When Nicodemus took the initiative to talk to Jesus, he had very little to say. He comes to Jesus out of curiosity. Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus ends a bit inconclusively. Nicodemus had very little to say to Jesus except repeatedly, “How can this be?” He ends the conversation confused and full of questions. We wonder how much he really understood Jesus.
On the other hand, Jesus is the one who takes the initiative to speak to the Samaritan woman at high noon. When Jesus speaks to her about “living water,” she immediately engages in a discussion of “flowing water.”
Jesus is the one who strikes up a conversation with the woman while she is out drawing water in the middle of the day. She surely had no intention of engaging in a theological discussion when she was out doing her chores. She wasn’t looking for a savior. Jesus came to her. And in coming to her, Jesus engages her in one of the most lively and interesting conversations in the entire Gospel of John. He speaks to her of deep truths, tells her of the availability of “living water,” gets personal with her, delving into the innermost secrets of her life.
“Sir, give me this water,” she exclaims. She calls Jesus a “prophet” and talked about the different locations of worship for Samaritans and Jews. Did you know that this conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman has thirteen exchanges, the longest recorded dialogue in the Gospels—longer than any recorded conversations that Jesus had with his disciples, family or Pharisees.
This woman who is thoroughly depicted as an outsider, becomes a wonderful image for us of the one who though marginalized, comes forward in the broad daylight to follow Jesus. Jesus comes to her, reaches out to her, and engages in conversation with her. She is welcome to be an insider. Nicodemus, by contrast, is the well-informed and educated leader who misunderstands what Jesus says to him. Though he is an “insider” and she is so thoroughly an “outsider,” Jesus engages her, teaches her, and appears to win her over.
The encounter ends with the woman running to tell her friends, “Come see a man who told me everything I ever did! He can’t be the Messiah, can he?”
Insiders
I was born into the church. When the Baptist church helped my father sponsored my mother and older brother to immigrate to America after World War II, I started going to church when I was a baby. I can’t remember a time when I was not at church. I must have worn out 3 or 4 Bibles already and am working on 2 or 3 right now. Although I might not be able to quote Bible verses as I would like, I pretty much know where to find them if I need to. I know by heart nearly all of the major Bible stories. We went to church almost every Sunday and when I was in high school, I went to church two and sometimes three times a week.
On the other hand, let’s say there was a guy named John who was not born into a Christian home. In fact, John noticed that no one in his family, at least no one that anyone could remember, had ever been active in a church. John said that as a child, he would see people entering a church on Sunday morning, as his family would be making their way to the lake. He would ask his mother, “What happens at a church?” And all his mother would say in response, “We don’t do that.”
In adolescence, as a teenager, just when I needed it, the church was there. We attended the First Baptist Church of Boston. The church had a wonderful youth ministry program. During my teenage years, we had good role models in our youth advisors and pastors who took a caring interest in youth. I became very active in our youth group, serving as president and became involved in statewide Baptist youth programs. I made my best friends there. We went to church camp in the summer and to large youth gatherings across the state. At one of these state gatherings, I felt God calling me into full-time Christian ministry. So it seemed only natural for me to attend a Christian college after high school.
Let’s say that John on the other hand, had a rather stormy youth. He was in and out of trouble. He fell in with the “wrong kind of crowd” as they sometimes say. John became the leader of this “wrong kind of crowd.” He never did anything serious and there were a few times he got in trouble with the law. School was a struggle for him. When it came time to graduate from high school he had to search far and wide for a college that would admit him. At the traditional baccalaureate service for the high school graduates, everyone in the senior class was there except John.
I suspect that most people here this morning, if you look back over your life, resemble me more than John. Most of us have been here, in the church, as long as we can remember. It would be difficult for us to remember all the way back before we were Christians. I’m here because my parents originally put me here. Some of you are here because someone put you here.
But there are a few of you who are here, who more resemble John. You came to this faith, later in life. You arrived here at this church, innocent and uninformed. The Bible was confusing to you. The strange language that was used mystified you. It is as if you had entered some strange, new world.
Some of us have been here so long that we feel like “insiders.” Others of us still new, fresh, recently arrived, could be labeled “outsiders.” Some of us can identify more with Nicodemus while others more with Samaritan woman.
Jesus Loves the Outsider
When we look at both of these stories, Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman, Jesus appears to do better with outsiders than with insiders. Insiders seek out Jesus. They go to Jesus, trying to figure him out on their terms. But Jesus goes to the outsiders. He seeks them out, engages them. Jesus comes to them, before they have a chance to come to him.
In fact, I don’t think it is too much of an overstatement to say that the Gospels are prejudiced toward the outsiders. Jesus got into all kinds of trouble for spending too much time with outsiders, the uninformed, the unfaithful, and the uncommitted like this scandalous conversation with the Samaritan woman. “This man received sinners!” was the great charge against Jesus in the Gospels. In which Jesus’ reply, “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
In any church including our church, there are mainly two types of people in conversation with Jesus—insiders and outsiders. The insiders know a great deal about religion, or at least think we do, and we are often depicted in the Gospels as those who are confused by Jesus, who have difficulty figuring him out, who think we know a lot about faith, only to be surprised by Jesus when he uncovers how little we know about him.
The outsiders presume, like the woman at the well, that they don’t know that much about religion. And maybe that’s the best precondition for knowing. Outsiders are sometimes made to feel inadequate, second-rate, marginalized by us insiders. This must not be because the Gospels bend over backwards to show that Jesus seeks out, leans toward, reaches out to the outsiders.
In fact, I think it fair to say that a church can be judged by how many “outsiders” it gathers on a Sunday morning. If when we gather here to worship, we have nothing but people like me, “insiders,” then we are not the church that Jesus gathers, because Jesus has decided to tilt toward the outsiders.
Being Seen
Sometimes I have kid you about my ability and especially with my izon high definition eyeglasses to see everyone in the sanctuary even those who sit in the very back. Being seen is a powerful thing. To know that another human being has truly seen you, understood you, received you for who you really are: that is pure grace. Being seen is what happened to the Samaritan woman. Most of us would do anything for it.
Being seen is what a hungry infant wants when she cries for someone to hold her and feed her. Being seen is what a tired four-year old wants, when he throws a temper tantrum at the mall. Being seen is what our fictional person John wants when he got involved with the wrong kind of crowd. Being seen is what outsiders want when they don’t feel welcome by our church.
All human beings long for this communion of being connected with other human beings and to be seen by them. Maybe this Samaritan woman really had the need to be seen and that’s why she had five husbands and the one she’s with now is not one of them. As an outsider, Jesus sees through her tough exterior. He sees everything she’s ever done, and he sees beyond it, too. He sees everything she’s ever tried to be. Everything she’s ever had to do, to survive. Everything she’s ever dreamed she might be, if things were different. He sees her, and loves her, in spite of her. It must have felt like heaven. And then her eyes were opened, and she recognized him.
If there are outsiders here today, do you see them?
Whether you are an insider like me or an outsider who has come for the first time, Jesus sees us. To be seen by Jesus is pure grace because he sees us with the possibility of a new creation in him. Being seen means that we are known, and loved, and forgiven. It is pure grace; simply miraculous.
Now that Jesus sees us, we are called to go out into this world and just as Jesus saw the Samaritan woman running her daily errands of fetching water from a well, we can go about our day seeing people who we almost know or not quite know or perhaps have not known yet and see them as Jesus sees us.
How about the man who sits at the cash register at the gas pump? How about the checkout woman at the supermarket? How about the kid in your class who sits in the back? How about the waitress who pours you morning coffee and calls you “Honey?” How about the neighbor’s kid who mows your lawn? How about that neighbor who backs out his car at the same time you do in the morning to go to work? How about the postal clerk who sells you stamps? How about the guy who picks up your trash? How about our neighbors here in Chinatown?
All of these people want to be seen by us so that they would no longer be outsiders in our lives. All of these people may still be outsiders in our church but when we begin to extend out our boundaries of our church to welcome the people whom we see daily, we will become more like the church that Jesus gathers.
As an insider, I see all you outsiders today.
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, give us the vision to see you when you come into our lives. Help us to be hospitable to all who have come into this sanctuary and teach us to welcome them as you would have. Give us the ability to see so that in our seeing, we offer grace and the respect for your creation. Lord, may insiders and outsiders in your church become united to participate in your kingdom work. In Christ’s name, we pray. Amen.