John 4:1-15; Amos 5:21-24
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
March 27, 2022
Jesus is a poet—a creative genius whose vivid imagery challenges us to think and feel more deeply. Throughout the gospel of John he uses metaphors to awaken people around him to a new experience of the holy. Almost always, Jesus’ metaphors lead to confusion; his listeners are stuck in a literal interpretation. A conversation ensues, and sometimes, there is an ah-hah moment. We, the readers, are invited into the conversation, our confusion acknowledged and challenged, so we too might open to deeper truth.
Often, I am so enamored by the beauty of the metaphor that I skip over the event that prompts the exchange. I leap to the promised spring of water gushing up to eternal life without noticing what happened back at that well.
This week, a member of the Green Team invited me to use our Lenten theme as an opportunity to acknowledge the realities of extreme drought and water injustice in our world. Some communities don’t have enough fresh water to live; some waste water as though there were no limits; some poison the water others need to survive. Her email prompted me to delay my leap in the metaphorical meaning of our gospel lesson and pay attention to the physical setting: two people at a well in the desert.
I did a little reading about wells in biblical times. Many communities relied on cisterns, stone structures that collect rain water—the ancient predecessor of our rain barrels. Cisterns can go dry, though, and cannot be replenished until the next rain. Wells are dug deep in the ground into a layer of rock—limestone in Palestine—that collects groundwater in its cracks and crevices. Even during a long dry season, wells continue to fill with subterranean water.
In biblical times, in a desert land, a well was a source of sustenance for life. Wells were places where life was celebrated and hospitality was practiced. Wells also became flash points for power struggles between individuals, clans and nations.
This well, according to the Samaritan woman, was dug by Jacob. Jacob’s grandparents were Abraham and Sarah, patriarch and matriarch of the Israelite—and Samaritan– people. Abraham, according to the book of Genesis, dug wells wherever he and Sarah journeyed. Numerous times, his travels led him to bump up against the Philistines. When the Philistines wrenched control of a well Abraham built, they filled it in with dirt. What a vivid example of how destructive human beings can be when we are trying to consolidate power. An ancient scorched earth policy. It feels painfully familiar, as we watch the brutal destruction of homes and hospitals and schools in Ukraine.
Decades later, Abraham and Sarah’s son Isaac returned to that same area and found his father’s wells, still filled with dirt. He cleared them out and began to use them, only to have a new generation of Philistines fill them back in. Finally, he compromised with his adversaries, settled elsewhere and dug a new well.
The Bible doesn’t tell us whether Jacob tried to re-open his grandfather’s wells and whether he contended with an adversary over water rights. We do know he met the love of his life, Rebekah, at her father’s well, where he defended her from some shepherd bullies. And we are told he dug this well, hundreds of years before Jesus and the Samaritan woman met there.
The setting of this story, by an ancient well in a desert land, evokes truths about who we are as human beings. We are creative, hard-working, vulnerable creatures, who figure out how to work with the earth to enable sustainable living. We are destructive, competitive creatures who hoard and sometimes destroy the very gifts that sustain our lives.
That’s the setting. Then there are the characters—Jesus, a Jew, and the unnamed woman, a Samaritan. John points out that Jews did not share things in common with Samaritans—ironic, because a few lines later the woman mentions Jacob, their common ancestor. The prejudice and suspicion between the two groups did not come from fear of people who were different. This enmity was based on knowing each other too well and hurting each other too many times.
Samaritans trace their lineage to several of the original twelve tribes of Israel. After the exodus, those tribes settled in the northern part of Israel, an area subjected to multiple invasions by hostile neighbors. One of the invaders, Assyria, conquered the north in the 8th century BCE and forced many residents into exile. The Samaritans remained behind. They saw themselves as the faithful remnant who had worshiped the God of Abraham and Sarah continuously in this same place for centuries. They had developed their own rituals and practices, centered on their reading of the Torah, which taught them to worship God on Mount Gerizim.
Their cousins, the Jews or Judeans, saw things differently. They understood the temple in Jerusalem to be the center of their faith. When Babylon forced many of the leaders of the southern kingdom into exile in the 6th century BCE, they developed new practices to help them find hope. They brought those new understandings back from exile, disparaging the practices of the Samaritans as idolatrous. Over more than 500 years the two groups attacked each other’s sense of dignity and identity.
When Jesus and the Samaritan woman encounter each other at that well, they carry with them the weight of centuries of mutual hurt and distrust. When Jesus asks her for a drink of water, he is asking for so much more. He is asking her to trust that it is possible to heal all those centuries of hurt. He is asking her to act on faith in that possibility, to act in a way that helps bring healing to fruition.
As I read about the painful history between Jews and Samaritans, I found myself thinking about the painful histories that shape our world today—between Israelis and Palestinians, between descendants of those who were enslaved and descendants of those who held slaves, between asylum seekers and border keepers, between so-called liberals and conservatives, between Eastern and Western Europe, between Ukraine and Russia. Can we hear Jesus’ request for a drink of water as a call to us to trust in the promise of healing and to act on that trust?
One more thing I noted about the set-up for this story. There is Jesus, with all his healing power and spiritual wisdom, thirsty, sitting beside a well, and he doesn’t have a bucket. He needs the Samaritan woman to help him. No one, not even Jesus, can do it alone.
Whew! All that wisdom before we even get to Jesus’ poetry. “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
We pondered this line in our Monday outdoor prayer circle. “Is Jesus saying this is supposed to be a one-time thing?” one person asked. “Whatever happened to going back to the well?” This promise that if we believe in Jesus we will never again thirst didn’t ring true to our experience. I realized that I have always envisioned this spring as something I would find deep within myself—a deeply personal spiritual experience, a deeply personal source of spiritual sustenance. The more we talked, the more that image didn’t feel right.
Since that prayer circle, three pictures have swirled around in my mind, leading me to a fresh interpretation of Jesus’ poetry. The first comes from what I learned recently about the water cycle. As rain water percolates into the earth, drawn downward by gravity, it collects in pockets and fissures in rock. It moves not only vertically but also horizontally—creating underground aquifers—springs. A well goes deep down in one place, perhaps tapping into the spring; a spring connects different places—and maybe different peoples—together.
The second picture comes from our Hebrew Bible reading: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” As a faithful Jew, Jesus’ spiritual imagination would have been shaped by prophets like Amos. When he talked about a spring of water gushing up to eternal life, was he drawing upon Amos’ image of an ever-flowing stream of justice and righteousness?
The final picture comes from my own evolving understanding of Jesus and his ministry. I picture Jesus sitting at a table, eating with tax collectors, touching someone who has been ostracized, celebrating with friends. To believe in Jesus is not to make some abstract declaration of who he is; to believe in Jesus is to try to follow his way. His way invites us to seek and offer a healing touch, to give and receive freely. His way challenges us to stand up against injustice and calls us into community.
Jesus, in this story, is not promising the Samaritan woman a deep source of inner peace. He is promising her that if she follows this way, she will become part of something greater than herself—a healing river that bubbles up in the deserts of our world, a force of love that flows in an unending quest for justice. He is not promising that she will be free from moments of despair and distress; he is inviting her to trust that, when she is most in need, a stranger will come with a bucket and offer her a drink of hope. He is challenging her to trust that the aquifer is there and inviting her to find people who will dig down to it together.
Ultimately, Jesus’ poetry leads us back to the physical setting of the story. When we follow in his way, when we choose to be part of this ever-flowing spring of healing and justice, we are challenged to pay attention to what happens at the physical wells—or reservoirs and dams and water systems– in our world today. How do we ensure that there is clean drinking water for every community? What habits must we change so our excess does not lead to someone else’s thirst? Rain barrels, native plant gardening, eating less meat, insisting that we develop renewal energies that will slow down climate change—our actions can contribute to an ever-growing, ever-flowing movement for climate justice and clean water for all.
When we follow in Jesus’ way, we are challenged to name the realities of history—the centuries of hurt and distrust that shape our divisions—and to trust that healing is possible. We are called to risk offering a cup of cold water, a first step on the long journey toward healing.
When we follow in Jesus’ way, we recognize that we cannot do it alone. We learn from Jesus to ask for help—from a friend, from a stranger, even from someone we have been taught to distrust. As we do, we open ourselves to this aquifer of community, healing and justice.
Our Lenten theme “Out of the waters…” leads me back to one of my favorite folk songs, written by Holly Near in the 1970’s. “Can we be like drops of water, falling on the stone, splashing, breaking, disbursing in air, weaker than the stone by far–but be aware that, as time goes by, the rock will wear away.” We are drops of water, and we are so much more. We are part of an ever-flowing spring gushing up to fullness of life. May we splash with joy, knowing we participate in something greater than ourselves, greater than even the hardest rock. Amen.