The Third Sunday in Lent

John 4:15-29

She is a loser three times over. For one thing, she is a Samaritan. For another, she is a woman. And for a third, she is a moral failure.

And yet, at the end of the story, she becomes the first evangelist – the first person in the Bible to lead others to faith in Christ.

And I wonder how this can be!

You might expect Jesus to choose someone else for such an important ministry – someone respectable – someone with a clean record – someone male and not a Samaritan. Billy Graham is my idea of an evangelist. But, no, Jesus chooses her.

You may have noticed that it is noontime when Jesus meets this woman at the town well. That’s rather odd because the women of that day generally went to draw water for their families in the early morning hours. It was a time not only for filling up the water jars, but also for socializing and filling each other’s ears with the latest gossip.

She was probably the subject of a lot of that early morning chatter. Maybe that’s why she waited until the other women had gone home before going to the well to draw her own water. It was noontime when she went to the well that day, and the only person there was a Jewish man named Jesus.

“Will you give me a drink?” he asks.

She is shocked at the request. He is a Jew. She is a Samaritan. Jews and Samaritans do not associate with each other. Not only that, but men do not speak in public with women they are not married to.

When she points all this out, Jesus responds in a very intriguing way that is important for understanding this story. He says, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

That’s Bible-talk for, “Don’t judge a book by its cover. You think you know me, but you don’t. You’re confusing me with the stereotype you have of Jewish men. If you knew the REAL me, you’d ask me to give you the water of life that never runs out, and wells up into eternal life.”

She doesn’t quite get what Jesus is saying, but she likes the idea of water that never runs out. If she could get some of that, she’d never have to come to the well again.

“Sir, give me this water!” she says.

And that’s when Jesus stuns her.

“Okay, I’ll give you living water, but first, go get your husband.”

And all of a sudden this Samaritan woman by the well is brought face-to-face with something she has been desperately trying to avoid, something that makes her come to the well alone at noontime rather than with the other women in the morning.

All of a sudden, she is face-to-face with the truth – about herself.

“I have no husband,” she admits.

And Jesus affirms that she is telling the truth. Then he confronts her with more of it.

“Fact is, you’ve had five husbands, and the man you have now is not your husband.”

And maybe for the first time in her life, the deep, dark, dirty secret is out in the open. What no one has dared say to her, and that she has dared to tell no one, is finally spoken.

The truth is out.

And then something amazing happens. Leaving her water jar behind, she runs into town and tells everybody she meets that she has found the Messiah.

“He told me everything I ever did!” she proclaims.

Barbara Brown Taylor observes that this encounter with Jesus is “a moment of full disclosure, in which the triple outsider and the Messiah of God stand face to face with no pretense about who they are…By telling the woman who she is, Jesus shows her who he is. By confirming her true identity, he reveals his own, and that is how it still happens. The Messiah is the one in whose presence you know who you really are – the good and the bad of it, the all of it, the hope in it.”[1]

Never judge a book by its cover.

All around us in the world, people gather in the morning at the well. They come to draw the water of rumor, gossip, expose and dirt. We have a thirst for finding the worst in others. We love to see peoples’ sin.

And when we do, we use that information to disqualify them from whatever nobility it is that they aspire to.

Who would have thought that the fallen Samaritan woman at the well would become the first evangelist and lead others to Christ?

Not the other women who came to draw water. Not the men she had been used by. Not me.

Never judge a book by its cover.

And never try to hide your truth from God.

You see, Jesus saw something in her. And Jesus helped her to see it too.

First, he saw her sin. He saw her imperfection. He saw her mistakes. He saw her moral failures. He saw the bad.

One of the reasons we like to look at the faults of others is because it draws attention away from ourselves. Seeing the speck in your brother or sister’s eye keeps you from having to deal with the log in your own.

But Jesus tells this woman – and us – that our relationship with God has to begin by worshiping God in spirit and in truth.

I was watching a church service on TV the other day, and I was amazed at how many different groups of people fell under the judgment of the preacher. And he was right about some of those people whose sin he was exposing. He was telling the truth about them!

But what was HIS truth? While he seemed quite comfortable speaking the truth about others, would he be as comfortable speaking his own truth?

If he was the man by the well, what would Jesus expose about him?

What inner secrets? What ungodly thoughts? What sinful deeds? What doubts? What human weaknesses?

And more importantly, what would Jesus expose about ME?

Or YOU?

Jesus saw her sin.

And Jesus saw her HOPE!

“If you knew who you were talking with, you’d ask him for living water that wells up to eternal life!”

This whole conversation with the woman by the well begins with Jesus seeing through her sin to  the possibility of a beautiful life!

Jesus saw her sin. And Jesus saw her potential.

And Jesus paved the way for her to move from one to the other.

She had to embrace the truth about herself – that she was a sinner. And in so doing, she embraced the truth about Jesus – that he is the Messiah who came to save us from our sins and give us living water that wells up into eternal life.

It strikes me that only when we come to God in spirit and in truth and find that there is love waiting for us can we be set free to become the people God created us to be. And when WE find forgiveness and new life, we – like the woman at the well – start seeing others differently, too. She ran off to tell everyone she could the Good News of what Jesus had done for her! She wanted them to find forgiveness, too!

A central part of living as a Christian is learning to look at others not in terms of their sin, but in terms of the image of God within. As Barbara Brown Taylor says, “The Messiah is the one in whose presence you know who you really are – the good and the bad of it, the all of it, the hope in it.”[2]

The story of the woman at the well shows us the reality of human frailty, along with the reality that there is something worth redeeming in all of us.

On September 1, 1983, Korean Airlines Flight 007 – a regular commercial flight from Anchorage to Seoul – was shot down over Soviet airspace. 269 people lost their lives. Declassified documents now show what happened, and how human fallibility contributed to the tragedy.

A sleepy crew entered some incorrect information into the Boeing 747’s inertial navigation system that would send the jumbo jet straying off course and over Sakhalin Island where the Soviets had a secret submarine base. That night, they were going to test a new missile. And an American RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft was watching from a distance over international waters.

The Russian radar operator noticed the RC-135 go out of range of his scope, and then reenter as Flight 007. Two SU-15 interceptors were scrambled and intercepted the jet at 33,000 feet. All the human mistakes made that night fell onto the shoulders of the lead pilot, Major Gennadi  Osipovich. He flew up alongside the jetliner, saw that it was a Boeing but knew that the Americans were likely to disguise a spy plane as a commercial aircraft. He flashed his landing lights at the jetliner, but got no response. He fired his cannon over the nose of the 747, but the rounds were not tracers and were not seen.

As time became critical, the well-planned Soviet defense system worked like clockwork. Everything went as it had been planned to go in the event of such an intrusion. Finally, the order was given from the ground to shoot down the aircraft.

Major Osipovich pulled up behind Flight 007. As ordered, he fired two air-to-air missiles, and the jumbo jet with all aboard went down.

In the years since the tragedy, Osipovich has insisted that the aircraft he shot down simply had to be a spy plane and not a commercial airliner. He says he cannot believe he could have killed 269 innocent civilians.

Not only that, but he wasn’t even supposed to be on duty that night. He had switched off with another pilot so that he could go to his child’s school the next day and give a talk on world peace.

Never judge a book by its cover. Never dismiss another human being because of what you think you know about them. Never underestimate the complexity and confusion of life. Never fail to appreciate the depth of frailty and sin – both intentional and unintentional – in your or anyone else’s life.

But most importantly, come to God in spirit and in truth. As he shows you who YOU are, you will learn who HE is.

And then you can bring the Good News of God’s redeeming and forgiving love to everyone you meet.

“He told me everything I ever did!” the woman said.

And she drank the living water of Jesus Christ.

______

[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, “Reflections on the Lectionary”, The Christian Century, February 12, 2008, P. 19

[2] Ibid, P. 19