[Machine transcription]
In the name of Jesus, amen. You may be seated.
In our gospel reading for this morning, Jesus sits down beside a well in Samaria, tired and thirsty. It’s about the sixth hour, noon, and a woman of Samaria comes to draw water. Now, this isn’t the first time in the scriptures that a man has met a woman at a well. In the Old Testament book of Genesis, Jacob runs away from his home toward his uncle Laban’s place, hundreds of miles away. And there, at a well, he meets a woman named Rachel. Jacob rolls away the stone from the mouth of the well and gives water to Rachel and to her flocks. Now Jacob would wait 14 years to marry Rachel, but Moses says they seemed like only a few days to him because he loved her. That’s what happens when a man meets a woman at a well in the scriptures.
Now the Samaritan woman in our text comes to draw some water and finds Jesus sitting beside Jacob’s well. This isn’t the same well as Jacob and Rachel’s well, but it’s a well that had given water to the people of Israel up to that day. But this time, instead of the woman being in need, Jesus is in need. He’s thirsty, so he asks the woman for a drink. Now this isn’t the first time that has happened in the Scriptures either, where a man asks a woman for a drink. A well also shows up in the courtship of Jacob’s parents, Isaac and Rebekah. Abraham had sent a servant to his homeland to find a wife for his son Isaac. The servant stood beside a well in Abraham’s homeland and sought a sign from God. He would ask a woman for a drink of water, and if she gave him water, she would be the one appointed by God for Isaac. And it happened just like that. The servant asked, and Rebecca gave water, and Isaac and Rebekah were married.
However, when Jesus asked the Samaritan woman for a drink, he’s not met with a response like Rebekah’s. Instead, the Samaritan woman is shocked. She’s astounded. He, a Jewish man, is talking to her, a Samaritan woman, much less asking her for a drink from the well. Now let’s step back and think about how scandalous this scene is. First of all, it’s Jesus, a single man, alone with a woman, at a well. But even more so, we don’t look at Samaritans the way that Jews looked at Samaritans. To the Jews, the Samaritans are idolatrous half-breeds.
When the northern kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians in the Old Testament, the Assyrians took all the northern kingdom into captivity and put foreign peoples in their land. The Samaritans of Jesus’ day are a mixture of those foreign peoples and the remnants of the northern kingdom. They’re half-breeds. In addition, the Samaritans practice a sort of polluted Judaism, worshiping on Mount Gerizim instead of Mount Zion and Jerusalem. They had an Old Testament that was edited, that was altered, to fit their theology. In fact, for Jews to even interact with Samaritans would make a Jew unclean. To say the relationship was not friendly is an underestimation, but Jesus doesn’t seem to care about this history, and he doesn’t care about that distinction.
This is where Jesus takes hold of the conversation with the Samaritan woman. “If you knew the gift of God,” he says, “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.” “Are you greater than our father Jacob?” she says. And it’s a great question. After all, if anybody could give living water, Jacob’s probably the best bet. Jacob’s the father of the 12 tribes of Israel. Jacob’s the one who rolled away the stone to give water to Rachel. Jacob’s the one who dug that very well that had provided water for generations. Jacob was a big deal.
But Jesus answers, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, this normal water, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up into eternal life.” Jesus’s actions here are truly remarkable. He kindly listens to the Samaritan woman, he gently teaches her, and he offers her that living water—which we find out in John’s Gospel is the Holy Spirit—which means he invites her into the kingdom of God. John tells us that the disciples are astounded. They marvel at this. They’re scandalized by this. Jesus with a Samaritan woman. And the faithful woman replies with trust, “Sir, give me this water.”
Now, if this was like any other meeting of a man in a well in the scriptures, and there are many more than the two I just mentioned previously, we would expect to hear one thing: wedding bells. And we do, although it’s not the wedding you or I would probably expect. It’s not like the wedding of Jacob and Rachel, though Jesus has waited ages for this like Jacob. It’s not like the wedding of Isaac and Rebecca, though Jesus also would give himself to the one appointed to him by God, like Isaac.
You see, this wedding takes place at another sixth hour, at noon, at the cross, because Jesus is the bridegroom who sacrifices himself on the cross for the forgiveness of the sins of the entire world. As Jesus is lifted up on the cross for our sins, he’s pierced, and blood and water come out of his side, becoming a spring of forgiveness, welling up to eternal life. This spring is still flowing today. In the waters of holy baptism, the living waters of baptism, Jesus took you as his bride. He washed away all of your sins, and he gave you his Spirit. As St. Paul writes in Ephesians, Jesus so loved the church that he gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word. Jesus is the bridegroom, and he invites all of us to become a part of his bride, the church.
He even invites a Samaritan woman who, as it turns out, had not one, not two, but five former husbands and was currently cohabitating with a man who was not her husband. What kind of a crazy bridegroom is this Jesus guy to have such a bride? Well, he’s one who would give himself up for the salvation of every single person, regardless of who they are or what they’ve done. You see, throughout the Gospel of John, we see that when it comes down to it, Jesus draws one distinction in humanity. You’re either a part of Jesus’ bride, cleansed with water, or you’re not. You’re either forgiven or condemned. You’re either of the light or of the darkness, but they’re all saying the exact same thing. You’re either a part of Jesus’ family with his Father, or you’re not. And he wants everybody in his family. He wants everybody as his bride. Jesus draws no other distinction.
We saw it last week, last Sunday, with the story of Nicodemus. Nicodemus was rich, he was powerful, he was crafty and connected, he was a Pharisee, he was a ruler, a member of the ruling council. Jesus calls him a teacher of Israel, but Jesus doesn’t really care about those distinctions. In fact, those things get in the way of Nicodemus believing. We see it this week with the Samaritan woman. As the conversation continues, she tries to drive a wedge between the Jews on the one hand and the Samaritans on the other hand. “You worship at this mountain,” she says, “but we worship at that mountain.” But Jesus will have none of it.
“Yes, yes,” he says, “but that’s in the past. The hour is coming when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.” In other words, true worship is not defined by who you are, your ethnicity, your location, or any of those things. True worship is defined by Jesus’ spirit and faith. Jesus refuses to draw another distinction in his bride or not. In other words, Jesus refuses to label people.
Now we have a tendency to label people. We like to form groups. We are, as Jonathan Haidt says, tribal. And groups aren’t inherently bad. They really aren’t. Whether they’re nations, denominations, gardening clubs, so on and so forth, groups can be fine. God created us with a desire for community that groups fulfill. They can be a really, really good thing. But since the fall into sin in the garden, our groups can also create issues, because Satan tempts those people that are in the group to view those outside of the group as less important than them, to view them as the other, as the out group. We’ve seen this throughout all of world history, especially with our wars, but especially in the last decade across the world and in America.
People are labeled as white, black, and brown, affluent or homeless, liberal or conservative, American, European, Middle Easterner, transgender or cisgender, and on and on and on. Sometimes these labels are just descriptions. They’re just calling a thing what it is, which is fine. But far too often these labels also signify malice or anger against a group of people for whom Jesus died. They signify maybe even that we don’t think they’re worthy of the kingdom of God. But remember, Jesus only makes one distinction in humanity: whether you’re in his bride or you’re not.
In our story with the Samaritan woman, he does not label her as an adulteress. He does not label her as a Samaritan. He does not label her as a woman beneath him. Rather, he sees her as someone who could and should be a part of his bride because he came not to call the righteous, but sinners. In the conversation with her, it’s as if Jesus is trying to get her to see herself not as an adulteress, not primarily as a Samaritan, but as someone whom he loves, as the very Bride of Christ for whom he died, because in the end, that’s all that really matters.
He wants the same for you too: to not see yourself defined by your sin or your shame and what’s been done to you or what you’ve done, and to not primarily identify by your class or your ethnicity or your occupation, but to see yourself primarily as a son and daughter of the Heavenly Father, as the forgiven beloved bride of Jesus.
You know in marriage, there’s this old cliché that husband and wife after decades of living together start to look like each other, and I’m not sure that’s true. Actually, I really hope that’s not true for the sake of all the wives in the congregation. But in a marriage, husband and wife do start to become like one another in other ways. They often can adapt similar routines or ways of doing things after living with each other for so many years. With the help of his wife, a husband begins to see things that she sees, things that he would have never noticed if she hadn’t pointed out, and vice versa.
Husbands and wives often begin to find joy in and love similar things, chiefly, among them, if God gives them, their children and their grandchildren. Well, the same dynamic holds true for us, the bride of Jesus. Here’s how it works. Jesus, our bridegroom, continually showers us with his love week in and week out. Every Sunday morning, we kneel, we confess our sins, and Jesus in the absolution says, “I’ll take that sin from you.” Then he embeds his gospel in our ears, telling us he really, really loves us.
And then to put the icing on the cake, he draws near to us and he touches us with his body and blood for the forgiveness of sins. As the bride of Christ, it’s all grace upon grace, love upon love. Slowly but surely, Jesus forms us more into a bride like him. We adapt similar ways of doing things like Jesus, our bridegroom. We learn to kindly listen, to gently teach and rebuke, and to offer living water, the gospel, and the Holy Spirit to all people, just like Jesus treated the Samaritan woman.
We begin to see with eyes that are cleansed and restored by the Holy Spirit—eyes that don’t make much of ethnic, class, or group distinctions, but eyes that make the one distinction that really matters to Jesus: whether they’re part of his bride or not. And we begin to love those things that Jesus, our bridegroom, loved, which means we love his heavenly Father, we love his word, we love his sacraments, but we also love all people because we know that Jesus died for every single person and wants to take everybody home as his bride.
When anybody repents, regardless of who they are or what they’ve done, we rejoice with Jesus, our bridegroom. After all, we see this bride-bridegroom dynamic in the story of the Samaritan woman herself. After she believes in Jesus, after she says, “Sir, give to me this water,” Jesus’ love begins to work on a problem in her life—her serial divorce and her cohabitation. Then Jesus molds her with his teaching and love because she is a part of his bride.
You know, throughout 1,500 years of church history—that’s as far back as I could find it—church theologians, pastors, and people have viewed the Samaritan woman as more than a Samaritan woman, but as someone who represents the Church, the Bride of Christ. And I think that’s exactly right. After all, her response is the exact response that Jesus desires this church to have: “Sir, give to me this water.” And also, if I can add, “May everyone around me, no matter who they are, receive this water too.”
You, O Bride of Christ, know the gift of God. You know the one who is speaking to you, Jesus. So ask him to give you a drink, and he will always give you living water. In the name of Jesus, amen.