Jesus Pauses for the Woman at the Well

Jesus Pauses (John 4:3-30, 39-42)

            “Jesus pauses.”  It is not as commonly quoted as “Jesus wept.”  In fact, it is not actually a Bible verse at all.  But it is something Jesus does.  He pauses.  Jesus moves with intention.  His actions have purpose and, it appears, he always has a plan.  Sometimes though, he steps off book, out of the plan.  Sometimes, he delays his movement.  He pauses because we need him to pause.  Whenever we see Jesus do something to help people, something seemingly spontaneous, we ought to know he is in the act of showing what God does.  God pauses to help.

            I thought about saying “Jesus stops.”  It certainly wouldn’t be wrong to say it that way.  Jesus and the disciples were headed North on the road and in fact they did stop.  “Jesus stops” is not radically different than “Jesus pauses.”  However, this is such a brief rest stop and even more than brief, unexpected, that I thought ‘pauses’ gets more to the heart of what we see of God in this story.

            Note verse 3 and the beginning of 4.  “Jesus left Judea and started for Galilee again.  This time he had to go through Samaria, and on his way he came to the town of Sychar.”  From later in the story and also from other accounts in this Gospel and also in Luke’s Gospel, we know there was tremendous animosity between Jews and Samaritans.  Samaritans were descendants of the intermarrying of Jews and the ancient Assyrians.  Thus, the Jews hated them for making the race impure.  This all sounds awful to us but we are far removed from that time in history.  It made sense to the people back then.  “You are a Jew,” she said to Jesus.  “And I am a Samaritan woman.  How can you ask me for a drink of water when Jews and Samaritans won’t have anything to do with each other” (v.9)?

            She did not question the reality of racism.  She accepted it.  She did not blame the Jews nor accept any blame on Samaria’s behalf.  Jews and Samaritans hated each other.  That was reality.  She knew it.  Jesus knew it.  There were Jew in Northern communities and the capital and center of Jewish life was Jerusalem, in the south.  For Northern Jews like Jesus to come from their homes in Galilee to festivals at the temple in Jerusalem, they had to pass through Samaria.  And to get back home, they had to pass through Samaria again.  This was all normal.  Jesus, the disciples, the woman – each knew this was life in their time.  To hate, that was life.  To walk in the region of the people we hate, that was life.  To be thirsty from hours of walking in the hot sun, that too was life.

            What did verse 3 say?  Jesus was on the moved, headed for the work God prepared for him in Galilee.  Samaria was not on the agenda.  He had come to Israel.  This was such an unimportant stop; it seems there was no reason for John to write about it. 

            Then Jesus stepped out of character.  He, a Jewish man, made the most normal of activities, drinking water while thirsty, an extraordinary thing when he asked for that drink from a Samaritan woman.  She pointed out the absurdity of his request.  Men don’t talk to unaccompanied women in the public square.  Jewish men don’t address Samaritan women in any circumstance.

            Jesus responded by pointing out the absurdity of the existence of hate among people.  He dared to announce that the emperor had no clothes.  “You don’t the gift God wants to give you.”  He replied.  “If you did, you would ask and I would give you living water.  Life-giving water.  Water that would quench your thirst forever” (paraphrasing v. 10, 13).  This was exactly when Jesus paused.

            She did not know that.  She could only see him as some kind of loopy prophets.  Prophets and doomsayers were forever coming along from the Jews.  She was bored enough to enter the fray.  She turned from nonsense talk of living water to theology.  She, rightfully, claimed the great Patriarch Jacob, as her ancestor.  She, like the Pharisees, would nail Jesus with deft theological reasoning.  “Are you greater than Jacob,” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

            Theology can be really safe when it is not personal.  When it is removed from my life and serves as an intellectual abstraction, theology never has to matter.  I love theology.  I read heavy doses of theological writing.  It informs my preaching and my living.  But it becomes irrelevant if it goes silent when I close the book.  The theology Jesus lived could not be contained in a book.  He would not let this woman escape his gaze by retreating to theological strongholds. 

            “No who drinks the water I give will ever be thirsty again.” He responded.  “The water I give is like a flowing fountain that gives eternal life” (v.14).

            Cue her eye roll.  She was sure he was a prophet.  A clamoring, impotent false prophet.  He wouldn’t be swayed by her attempts that theology, so she would play along.  If he wanted to be ridiculous, she’d join this odd, out of place Jew and have a little fun.  “Sir, please give me a drink of this water.  Then I won’t have to get thirsty and keep coming back to this well, day after day” (paraphrased, v.15).

            Jesus was done playing games.  He told her to call her husband.  And she had had it.  She was done with the games too.  “I don’t have a husband.”  Who cares if this crazy Jew ridiculed her?  The women in town came to the well in community, but she, a woman discarded by too many men, was no longer welcome in that community.  Her Samaritan sisters disregarded her as much as they disregarded the Jews.  This coo-coo Jewish man was showing her more kindness than anyone had in a long time.  What the heck?  Just tell the truth.  “I don’t have a husband.”

            Prophecy is only from God when it matters, when it is true, and when it is personal.  Jesus delivered blunt, prophetic truth.  “You don’t have a husband.  Five have cast you out.  Now, the man with whom you live doesn’t even bother recognizing you as a wife.  He satisfies himself with your company.  He gives you no regard, no respect.”

            She was completely bare before Jesus.  Oh, her clothes were still on.  But he sees everything.  He saw right to her heart.  He saw her deepest pain. That’s what Jesus does.  He is always, always on his way somewhere.  And he always, always, pauses to look us right in the eye and pierce our souls with truth and love.  Jesus did that with this woman, and we see what God does with us. 

            For her part, the woman was not laughing anymore.  She again raised issues of theology, but this time, she was quite serious and ready to listen.  Then she moved from theology to faith.  “I know the Messiah will come,” she said, “and he will explain everything” (v.26). 

            Jesus responded, “I am he.”

            To review, Jesus paused along the way to Galilee and asked a Samaritan woman for water.  As he did he told her God wanted to give a gift, a gift of living water that would give eternal life.  They carried on a conversation that was times amusing and at times quite serious, personal, and even invasive.  But in the end, she said, she believed in God’s Messiah.  Jesus responded he was that Messiah and he already told her two things.  First, he told her God wanted worshipers to worshiper in spirit and in truth.  It did not matter where worship happened as long as it happened in spirit and in truth.  Second, Jesus told her he could give things only God could give.  And she believed, at least partly.  She believed as much as she could and that bit of faith was enough.  Jesus met her where she was.  He paused on his predestined journey for someone who was in deep pain and who was open to the truth.

            Does that describe us?  Is there pain in me?  Oh yeah.  You?  Definitely.  We live in the legacy of sin.  To be human is to be created “very good.”  To be human is to bear the image of God.  We are the pinnacle of God’s creation.  But, the fall has damaged what God has made.  In our own lives, we re-create Eve’s moment of choice in the garden.  In our own lives, we stare at the forbidden fruit.  And we choose to bite it.  Not every time.  Sometimes we heroically win the victories Jesus won when he resisted Satan’s temptations in the desert.  Sometimes, we choose not to sin.  Too often it goes the other way.  We are sinners.

            Sin hurts.  We are hurt by our mistakes.  We suffer pain from the sins of people who have come before us.  We are injured by sins of people around us.  And our friends and neighbors and the people who we pass daily are wounded by our sins.  This is the legacy of the fall.  Jesus Paused for someone in pain.  Are we individuals and collectively a people in pain?  There is no doubt.

            The woman at the well, though, was not only one in pain.  She was also open to seeing God.  She made not have known just how ready she was to receive salvation.  She wasn’t intentionally seeking.  She was just about the drudgery of a toilsome daily task – hauling heavy buckets of water from the well to her cottage.  That’s where God shows up.  People want “mountain top experiences.”  People want to come to church and to be lifted out of their seats by the majesty of the music.  People want to be carried to the heavens by the fury and brilliance of the preaching.  Maybe that happens in some places.  But what preacher in history could top Jesus?  And what was his genius opening line with this woman?  “Can I have a drink of water?”

            God meets us in our plain, everyday, mundane places.  God meets us where we live.  There God acknowledges the pains and disappointments we live with.  God does not deny or minimize the harder parts of life.  God brings living water to our thirsty lives.  God pauses so that we can see Him if we are willing to believe there is something more than what our eyes see. 

            Remember the beginning of this passage.  Jesus left Judea and started for Galilee.  He had to pass through Samaria.  But that region was not a scheduled stop.  His mission was to announce the Kingdom of God among the Jews.  That mission did not include a side trip in Samaria.  However, he met a woman who listened and received the gift God wanted to give.

            In the epilogue of this amazingly simple yet deeply profound story, the woman ran to the town who shunned her for circumstances she most certainly could not control.  In such a tight-knit community, a woman 5 times divorced would be known and scorned.  Everyone knew who she was and avoided her.  But here she was shouting in the center of town.  She was so excited to be that close to God, she told the very people who had been cruel to her.

            For their part, they investigated and Jesus was so compelling and inviting, they asked him to stay with them and he did.  Remember, he was on his way somewhere and just paused to get a drink and share the good news of God’s coming with a woman who was in deep pain and was willing to hear him.  From that pause, John tells us, “he stayed on for two days” (v.40). 

            The people said to the woman, “We no longer have faith in Jesus just because of what you have told us.  We have heard him ourselves, and we are certain he is the Savior of the world” (v.41).  It does not matter how many husbands she has had.  It does not matter if Jesus is Jewish and they are Samaritan.  This is bigger than all that.  Upon hearing, they realized the gift God wanted to give.

            God still wants to give that gift.  The story of Jesus – cross and resurrection – is the story of God coming because God wants to give people life.  God wants to give you and me eternal life as adopted sons and daughters of God.  God pauses and comes beside us because he loves.  That’s what God does.  When God pauses, be ready for the unexpected.  Be ready to receive love and grace.  When God pauses, we also pause to listen to Him that we might receive the abundant life he offers.

AMEN

Baptism Sunday!!

We had baptism Sunday. One new member was baptized and two others (who had previously been baptized) shared their testimonies. It was an awesome service.

Below is the sermon I gave.

What Makes a Person? (John 4:7-30)

Rob Tennant, HillSong Church, Chapel Hill, NC

Sunday, March 27, 2011

3^rd Sunday of Lent, 3^rd week in Church-wide emphasis

When we think of Kobe Bryant, what do we think of? Basketball Player. Some may remember his legal trouble from a few years ago.

Roy Williams: basketball coach. That’s very different than basketball player. And he’s not just any coach. He’s the Tar Heels Coach.

Justin Bieber: teen idol, pop star. Many of you are saying “Jusin who?” But the teens know exactly who he is.

Barak Obama: President. Depending on your politics, good thoughts may come to mind, or angry, disgusted thoughts. Everyone would agree he is our current president and from there the opinions go their separate ways.

What makes a person? Is there more to Kobe than scoring 35 points, or more to Roy Williams than leading a team? Is there more to Mr. Obama? Is there more to Justin Bieber than … well, … anyway.

What person? What defines someone? What defines me? My sermons? My wife or kids? What defines you?

Methodist scholar William Willimon says in baptism, the church defines a person (Peculiar Speech, p.7). The baptism shows that the individual is washed clean of sin, spiritually gifted, chosen by God, called by God, and named by God.

Baptism is an expression of what God has done in Jesus Christ in the life of a specific individual. Here’s the gospel in general terms : Jesus is God in human flesh. He came because God loves us, but sin separates us from God. So, in Jesus, God came, forgave our sins, died our death, rose, and invites us to resurrection. Everyone who believes in Jesus Christ and acknowledges Him as Lord is saved from sin, preserved for eternal life.

Then it gets specific. It’s not everyone. It’s Alexis. Brandon. Rob. In my baptism, Jesus died for me. In his baptism, Brandon acknowledges that Jesus forgives his sins. In her baptism, Alexis proclaims that her hope of eternal life is in what Jesus did for her.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal says, raised a Hindu, he spent several years reading the Bible and reading books by authors like Chuck Colson and C.S. Lewis before Christianity became his own. He’s very much an intellectual. He understood Christianity. But in a movie about the crucifixion and he saw the actor portraying Christ on the cross. It sunk in. He said, Jesus was on that cross because of Bobby Jindal’s sins (Christianity Today, March 2011, p.51).

The baptized individual was first baptized in the spirit of Jesus Christ. Jesus washes each one who comes to him in faith. We are washed clean of sin, spiritually gifted, chosen by God, called by God, and named by God.

Willimon says, “When you join the rotary club, you get a handshake and a lapel pin. When you join the church, we throw you in the water, and half drown you” (Peculiar Speech, p.32). On a more serious note, he says, “Baptism represents a radical break – the one baptized has left the powerful cultural context of her former life and entered a new life in new surroundings and a new community” (p.58). In baptism, we enter a lifestyle that does not come naturally; rather it is a “submission into a project greater than our own lives” (p.65). Jesus is the one who does it. The literal trip to the pool is recognition of what Jesus has done in the heart of the one being baptized.

The story of the Samaritan woman shows the baptism journey, from separation to joining the family of God. The story begins with brokenness.

Drawing water from a well is tiring, hard word. Most students of ancient culture assume groups of women would do this in the early morning when the day was still cool. It was a social time, a way of starting the day as a part of community, a group of people sharing life together.

One woman wasn’t part of that. She came alone, with the noon time sun beating down on her. Maybe she had come earlier also and now she had need of more water so she came again. Maybe she wasn’t a social outcast at all. Then again, maybe she was. John leaves it for us readers to decide.

The gospel does tell us she was a Samaritan woman in a Samaritan town. And Jews did not share things with Samaritans. This parenthetical notation hints at what other writings openly state. Jews hated Samaritans and vice versa and everyone in both cultures knew it. Furthermore, in both cultures, men alone, did not speak with women alone in public.

This is how far Jesus was from this woman. They were a solitary Jewish man and a solitary Samaritan woman at the well when people did go to the well – the hottest time of day. This is the longest single conversation Jesus has in the gospel. Why? Jesus came to demolish the hateful rules humans devise to separate and keep certain individuals down, in the dust.

Jesus and the woman did not discuss baptism but they talked about water. Jesus offered living water. She would never thirst again. Eternal life would burst forth in her. Jesus pours out his life for all who will drink; for all who will see him as who he is – God, savior, Lord.

The woman couldn’t see everything about Jesus – no one in John did. She saw enough to say, “Sir, give me this water.” She asked for what Jesus offered. She listened as he spoke because he, a Jewish man simply speaking to her an outcast Samaritan woman was unusual. She listened and said, “I see that you are a prophet.” Eventually, she ran to the village, the people who left her to go to the well alone. She wasn’t avoiding them anymore. She evangelized. She said, “Come and see. Could this man be the Messiah?”

The woman was in the process of being baptized in the Spirit. As an overarching theme that includes Spirit baptism, water baptism, and new life in Christ, Baptism assumes that people are broken. She had had five husbands, most likely had no children in a culture where a woman’s worth was tied to the sons she bore, and now depended on a man who was not her husband for all her needs. She was broken.

We are broken. We are unmarried. We are divorced. Our spouses have died. We are orphans. We have children who do not come to faith in Jesus. We have children who are diseased. We are unhealthy. We have parents who have Alzheimer’s disease. We have parents we’ve been mad at for 20 years. What does baptism assume about the world? Baptism assumes the people in the world are broken and in desperate need of Jesus.

What does baptism assume about the way the world should be? Jesus knew the conventions of the day. Men with his background dare not speak to women of her background in public. Why did Jesus so flagrantly violate propriety? Jesus did not come to live in the world, but to change the world. He started a conversation about water for one reason; he wanted to give her living water. He wanted her to be saved from sin, saved from a life of rejection. He wanted her to enter the community of the baptized.

When the woman goes off to the village to tell everyone the Messiah is right there among them in Sychar, Jesus says to disciples, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. … Look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting” (4:34a, 35b). He wanted to rewrite that woman’s life story and he wants to rewrite ours, yours and mine. In baptism, Jesus begins a new narrative, and we are invited to enter the story he’s preparing for us. What does Baptism assume about the way the world should be? Baptism assumes that we are broken, but brokenness is not meant to be our story. There is another story we should be living.

What does baptism make possible? First, baptism makes the new story possible. Do we define the Samaritan woman as a ‘Samaritan’ or as a woman or as one who failed at marriage five times and now goes to the well alone every day? Not any more. Now, she is the one who talked with Jesus. It is to her Jesus said, “God is looking for true worshipers who worship in him spirit and in truth.” Now, she is the one who evangelized an entire village with an excitement not often seen in people who have been in church so long they take God for granted. Baptism makes a new story possible.

Baptism also makes a witness possible. The new story is only good news when it is told. She said, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!”

Alexis says, “Let me tell you about the day I was baptized at HillSong. More importantly, let me tell you what Jesus did in me that led to my baptism.”

I say, “Let me tell you about everything my Dad and Mom and Grandparents and Sunday school teachers taught me in 1978, 1979, 1980. It all came together in the compassion a counselor showed me at the Detroit Baptist Camp in the Summer of 1981. Let me tell how somehow in my 11-year-old mind, I knew that camp counselor was being used by Jesus to call me to himself.” And you tell your story. Baptism gives us a testimony.

What does Baptism make impossible? Who could possibly be farther from God than an outcast Samaritan woman? How about an intellectual writer raised in abusive fundamentalism by oppressive, hateful preachers that him to doubt the existence of God? Or, an Egyptian, an Islamic intellectual? Jesus reached that Samaritan woman by violating conventions and talking to her. Jesus reached the Christian author Philip Yancey in spite of the fact that Yancey’s biggest doubts about God came from his childhood church experiences. Jesus reached Mark Gabriel in Egypt when a Christian pharmacist slipped him a copy of the New Testament and Gabriel read the whole thing in a night. He was imprisoned and almost by his own father, but Gabriel renounced Islam, accepted Christ and escaped Egypt. And he had no missionary or pastor leading, just the Word and the Holy Spirit.

What does Baptism make impossible? Baptism and the stories around baptism – people being born again – show that it is impossible for us to be out of God’s reach. Someone can choose to reject Jesus. We this often in the Gospel of John, highlighted with the betrayal of Judas Iscariot. But, we are never out of Jesus’ reach. Even after Peter was arrested in his own depression for denying Jesus, the resurrected Lord reached out to him. Baptism shows the extent to which God will reach for us in our brokenness. It is impossible to be out of his reach.

What new culture does Baptism create? Baptism creates the born-again culture. Throughout out Paul’s letters we find references to putting on the new self; clothing one’s self with Christ; in Christ we are new Creations. This is the movement from lonely Samaritan woman at the well to “Sir, give me this water.” From “I have no husband” to “Could this be the Messiah.”

My movement from cultural Christianity that has more to do with where I grew up than what I believe; from that to Jesus is mine, and I am his. I am not defined by the name “Tennant” or the state of Michigan or my English heritage. I am defined by Jesus on the cross, Jesus resurrected, leaving the empty tomb behind.

You are not divorced; failure at marriage; dying of disease; beleaguered parent of a wayward child. Those realities may be aspects of your life but you aren’t defined by them. You are child of God. You are one of the baptized, those washed and made clean of sin. You are a new creation.

The verse to hold on to as we close is a part of the Samaritan woman’s testimony to us. In John 4:15, she says, “Sir give me this water of eternal life.” That is our prayer as we go.

If you have never been through the water baptism, step out today. Today, receive Jesus for the first time. Ask him into your life, and His Spirit will come and wash you clean and make you new. Let today be the day everything changes as in Christ you are born again. Say, “Lord Jesus, I need this Living water. Lord Jesus, I want to be defined this way: I am a child of God.”

If you have been baptized, this is your prayer. Many are baptized, but continue living the old life, settling for water and things and pleasures and security and answers that do not satisfy. So today, my fellow baptized one, step out. Pray, “Lord Jesus, I need living water. I don’t want to be defined by my role in the family or my job title or the church where I have my membership. I want to be defined this way: I am a child of God.”

Pray this way continually – every day of life. God will give us a story to tell and when we tell it we are witnesses and through our witness, the Holy Spirit draws people to Jesus into the community of the Baptized.

AMEN