Epworth United Methodist Church

Epworth United Methodist Church
Rev. David Weekley, Pastor
Feb. 24, 2008
John 4:5-42

Is There a Hole in Your Bucket?

In, Simply Christian Bishop N.T. Wright names human relationships as one of the primary ways God connects with us. At our Bible study last Thursday we discussed how this gospel story, about the Samaritan woman who meets Jesus at Jacob’s well, is an excellent example of what N.T. Wright describes as a key teaching of the gospel.

This entire story is all about relationships: there is the broken relationship between Jews and Samaritans, and there are the social relationships between women and men. There is the relationship between Jesus and God, the relationship between Jesus and the disciples.Then, of course, there is a new relationship established between Jesus and the Samaritan, and, following this, new relationships between Jesus and many people from the Samaritan village who came out to meet him and listen to his teaching. Last, but certainly not least of all, there is the new relationship created between humans and God made possible through Jesus and the gospel.

Tired from traveling, Jesus and his disciples stop to rest on their journey; they are at the site of Jacob’s well, located in the Samaritan city of Sychar. The initial fact to notice is that this takes place in a religiously important place for both Jews and Samaritans- Jacob’s well; the second point connected to this one is that Jews and Samaritans did not interact with one another. For Jews, Samaritans were considered impure and irreligious; they were outcasts.For Jesus to choose to stop and rest in a Samaritan city is significant, and tells the hearer of that day and our own something about God’s inclusivity despite human prejudice and bigotry.

The next amazing thing that occurs is that a woman approached the well to draw water at about noon.While this may not sound unusual, it was: in those days, high noon was a very hot time of day and no woman would go alone then to draw water unless she had to for some reason.Women generally traveled to the well together in the cool of the morning and again in the twilight shade. The most likely reason this woman goes alone and at noon is that she is socially unacceptable in her own town. As a shunned Samaritan woman, she is an outcast among outcasts! What occurs next is the most stunning thing of all: in those days women and men did not speak in public; a Jewish man would never, ever speak to a strange woman, especially a Samaritan woman.

Yet, Jesus initiates a conversation! He asks her for a drink of water [this is just to get things going, of course], and she expresses her shock, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” This allows Jesus to engage the woman in a spiritual conversation: The water Jesus offers her is not literal water, it is spiritual water. Apparently the woman “If you knew the gift of God, 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.” does not understand so she asks how he would draw such water since he doesn’t appear to have a bucket and the well is deep.

Then Jesus becomes more direct, telling her he is talking about a different kind of water, spiritual water, an inner flowing of life that in experienced as, “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” [John 4:14] Still thinking more about literal water and the need to keep drawing it from the well, the woman asks Jesus for this water; this time he is very directly engaging her in a very personal and spiritual conversation; a conversation which ultimately reveals Jesus’ and God’s care and concern for her, not condemnation for the past.When the woman asks for this water, Jesus says, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” He says this to her knowing full well she is not married to her current partner.The woman says, “I have no husband” and Jesus takes this opportunity to really reach out to her in order that she and others may reach out to him. Jesus says to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’, for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.” This convinces the woman that Jesus is at least a prophet, and she says that she knows that Messiah is coming, perhaps asking Jesus if he might be that One in a round-about way. Jesus says, “”I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” AS he makes this statement the disciples return and are shocked to find him in conversation with a woman, and a Samaritan- but they seem to know better than to ask by now.

In response to her encounter with Jesus the woman, in such a hurry that she leaves her water jar behind at the well, runs into the streets of her city shouting to the people, the very people who have treated her as an outcast, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” In response to this, we are told the people left their city to meet Jesus. Initially, people believed in Jesus because of the woman’s testimony that Jesus told her everything she had ever done, but after meeting Jesus and listening for themselves, establish their own relationship with Jesus, they believed because of that: “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.” [John 4:42] Jesus is not a prophet, not Messiah for the Jews, not even Messiah for the unlikely combination of both Jews and Samaritans. Jesus is the Savior of the world: God wants a relationship with everybody!

This is exactly what the gospel says. Go home and read it again, and again, and again. Read it until you believe it.God is the living water flowing through every aspect of our lives- experienced in our celebrations and hardships, our gifts and our challenges, in our spiritual searching and our moments of doubt; but, most profoundly, God is the living water flowing through all of our relationships, beginning with our relationship with the Jesus revealed in the gospel.

This relationship is established through invitation, and through response; it is maintained through the bonds of worship, the reading and study of Scripture, daily prayer, and personal spiritual disciplines such as fasting and the giving of our gifts and talents in the service of Christ. Until you are willing to entertain a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, well, there’s a hole in your bucket, and no amount of spiritual water God pours in can survive that vortex.Relationship is the thing that plugs the hole.

I believe this is what Jesus meant when he addressed the woman’s question about where is the right place to worship. Jesus responds, “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship God in spirit and truth, for God seeks such as these to worship.” If you have never done so before; or if it’s been such a long time you’ve forgotten- why not respond to Jesus’ invitation to relationship this morning? Like the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well there is nothing God does not already know about your life; there really is nothing to fear except fear itself.

This is what the Samaritan woman and the people of her city learned when they responded to God’s invitation in Jesus Christ; may each of you here this morning discover that again here today.
Prayer:

Living Water, flow among us and into us;
bring us to life, fullness of life in You.
Pour your mercy and grace into our hearts until our understanding and compassion and our relationship with You grows strong enough to embrace our deepest conflicts, our wildest dreams, and our most fragile hope.

Amen.