Lent 3 - Good news for Outsiders

JOHN 4: 5-26, 39-42

This morning time is short and we face a scripture that speaks profoundly to us. So I just want to highlight a little of the message that comes at us from this encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at Sychar.

Firstly, that this meeting ever happened tells us something important about Jesus. You see, this encounter comes against a background of over 500 years of enmity between Jews such as Jesus and Samaritans. Its roots lay in the planting of new peoples into the area by Assyrian conquerors. With time not only was there a racial issue between two people but a religious issue also. For Samaritan religion had come to a different place than Jewish religion. As the dialogue makes clear one of the differences was in the place of supreme worship of God. For Jews, the Temple in Jerusalem was the place that counted. Samaritans on the other hand looked to Mount Gerizim which was close to the scene of this encounter. Once a temple had stood there but Jewish leaders had destroyed it a century earlier.

By the time of Jesus, both parties had their grievances and so they tended to have as little to do with each other as possible. Indeed most Jews would have avoided going through Samaria but Jesus didn’t.

Anyhow, our scripture finds him thirsty by the well when a Samaritan woman arrives. Firstly he asks her for water and out of that engages her in conversation. Nothing unusual in that you might think. But in that culture it was unusual. For as verse 9 makes clear, Jews did not normally associate with Samaritans. And more than that it was not normal for a man to engage in private conversation with a woman other than a member of his family, something which led to the disciples being surprised at finding Jesus talking with a woman. Do you get it? Jesus was not letting the conventions of the day get in the way of proper and respectful conversation with this Samaritan woman. To most Jewish people, she was an outsider but to Jesus she was quite simply a person worthy of respect.

Now it would seem that her experiences of life had not been altogether kind. We are told that she had had 5 husbands before her current partner. Often this is interpreted as suggesting that she had a particularly sinful lifestyle. Her coming to the well at a time when the Sun was at its hottest rather than earlier in the morning, is often interpreted as suggesting that she was ashamed to be with other women who knew her story all too well. But this is reading too much into her story. The woman may simply have been unfortunate, a victim of bereavement is a society where life expectancy was not all that could have been wished. She may have been harshly treated by men in her life to a point where some of the spark had been knocked out of her so that she preferred to stay away from company. We do not know. What we do know is that if others thought her not to be worth their time, that was not a view shared by Jesus.

Oh make no mistake, here we find the worth of all people being affirmed by Jesus. Differences for him were not an excuse to erect the barriers. Whilst our rag the Daily Mail was this week exposed offering money for stories that would reflect badly on East Europeans living in this country, Jesus systematically knocks down the walls we build against people who are deemed to be other. Indeed, in his respectful dialogue with a woman of other faith, perhaps we can see a model as to how we can dialogue with people of other religions in this country. This means being prepared to listen and even to seek the help of those who are “other” as Jesus does in his request for water, rather than hectoring them or dehumanising them.

Now, this is pretty traditional interpretation. Jesus is on the side of the outsider and this has important significance in how we treat outsiders today be they of other religion, other lands especially asylum seekers or those who are deemed to have in some way or other to have flawed lifestyles. The love of Jesus is for all and we do no favours when we put limits on the love of God.

But I think there is something else going on here. It is too easy for us to see Jesus as the insider and the Samaritan woman as the outsider. You see, that is not the whole picture. This encounter is not in Israel. It is in Samaria. It is on the home turf of the Samaritan woman. She is the one who is at home. And in this place it is Jesus who is the outsider. Consciously and deliberately Jesus has made himself into the outsider. And this can speak to Christian living today. In a real way, Christians need to get used to being the outsider in what is effectively post Christian society. Forget about a past when Christianity in its corrupted form of Christendom dominated. Look to today where we are surrounded by many a Samaria and like Jesus respond to the challenge to engage with a society in which Christians are the outsider. There is a real temptation in times of falling church numbers in Britain, west Europe and increasingly the USA to retreat into a bunker mentality. And yet the example of Jesus urges us away from that. Jesus urges us to positively engage with the diversity of humanity especially with those whose experience of rejection is greatest. If Jesus can be the archetypal outsider, then that is the place for us.

This story is at a well. People who lived in the Middle East in those days as today knew only too well the worth of water - pity Coca Cola with their wasteful use of water do not know this worth. Shortages of water are a problem for much of the world. And yet vital as that is, Jesus offers this Samaritan woman a vision of “living water” which will bring refreshment for all time. This was an is the offer of Jesus. In our world of the rat race in which the rats all too often do their worst to those who cannot keep up, Jesus offers the living waters of his presence, his love and his acceptance. He brings grace, a word that can change the world, through which he gives us a value that we can never earn. This grace is something that we can mediate to others. Just as Jesus stood out against life denying culture in his time, so to are we called to challenge the grey arbiters of power in our world with a vision of grace.

The Samaritan woman rejoiced in her encounter with Jesus. She tells what has happened to her fellow Samaritans. Jesus stays a couple of extra days with the historic enemy. And it is they who discern that Jesus “really is the Saviour of the world.”

And what more of this Samaritan woman? We know no more of what happened to her although I cannot but think that this encounter was life changing to both this woman and to Jesus. But across the world she goes on being celebrated. In Mexico, La Samaritana is celebrated on the fourth Sunday of Lent with specially flavoured water being given so as to commemorate her gift of water to Jesus. In Russia she is honoured as Svetlana which means “equal to the apostles.”

What an elevation for this outsider! But this is the Gospel of the ultimate outsider in which outsiders still find favour.


BIDEFORD METHODIST CHURCH Sunday February 24th 2008