“Who Are You Looking For?” - Sermon by Senior Minister Deborah K. Stevens, Feb. 24, 2008, at North Broadway United Methodist Church, Columbus, Ohio

Scripture: John 4:5-42

It’s probably best that I begin by disclosing this: The story of the Samaritan woman at the well is my favorite biblical story. On that basis alone, we could spend a long time here with this story today. This is also the lengthiest exchange between Jesus and another person in any of the gospel stories.

Let us do three things: Establish the story within the flow of John’s gospel, make some observations about the character of Jesus as it is revealed in the story, and examine the development of the faith of the Samaritan woman as a model for our own faith development.

Remember that John’s gospel is structured from beginning to end to persuade the hearer to choose to be with Jesus. As the dramatic conflict in the gospel increases, the hearer is more and more forced to choose where they stand – with Jesus, with the crowd of the curious, or with those who are against Jesus and ultimately betray and kill him. Each story develops themes of Jesus’ identity and offers models of response.

Within the flow of John’s gospel, this story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well follows Nicodemus’ nighttime encounter with Jesus. Notice that in this story Jesus and the woman meet at noon, as close to the opposite time of Nicodemus as you might imagine, so there’s already some contrast set up here. Nicodemus represents the established Jewish religious practice of temple worship. The Samaritan woman represents the outcast disenfranchised Samaritans who have created their own separate worship tradition. As some contemporary evangelists would put it, this is the point in John’s gospel when Jesus encounters a new “people group.”

This Samaritan woman is obviously also a woman. This is not an insignificant fact or feature of this story. It is hard to overstate the social and religious inappropriateness of a Jewish man and a Samaritan woman being seen alone together in public conversing in the light of day in front of God and everybody. It is hard to overstate the importance of the gospel writer placing Jesus in a story where there is this kind of a conversation with the Samaritan woman.

So from these narrative details we can begin to deduce something of what the gospel writer wants us to know about the character of Jesus. The gospel writer wants us to know and wanted the early church to know that Jesus is bold about crossing boundaries. The social and religious restrictions that Jesus ignores are numerous and significant. The affront to the sensibilities of the culture caused by this lengthy conversation is incredible. The only sense we can get of how radical this story is is to think about what we know about restrictions that are placed on women in some of the Muslim cultures that have retained the ancient near-Eastern roles as we see them in the Bible.

I have to confess that part of what I really love about the story is that Jesus has a theological conversation with a woman. So when I read this biblical story from my location, from the perspective of who I am and what I do, I am affirmed. I have to call into question the policy of the Methodist church into which I was born. When I was born, women could not be ordained to preach in our denomination. By the end of the story of the Samaritan woman, she is preaching Jesus. She is preaching the gospel. “He told me everything I’ve ever done!” But women for centuries and still today in many faith traditions are forbidden to preach, based on “the Bible says it’s wrong.” Some still read the Bible as a guide for whom to include and whom to exclude, but this story is one of many in the gospels that shows the character of Jesus to be inclusive, non-judgmental and boundary-crossing. This story is part of the gospel writer’s efforts to ensure that the early church remained as radically inclusive as the ministry of Jesus was.

We are today still embroiled in battles over what the biblical text says about who can be part of the community of faith and who can’t, who can preach the gospel and who cannot. Much of this is said to be based on what the Bible says. But not much of it is based on what Jesus demonstrates with his own life if we are to trust the gospel writers, maybe not with the historic facts of Jesus’ life but with stories that convey authentically the character of Jesus’ life and ministry.

There’s a second detail of the story with which I resonate personally – it’s that part about five husbands. I don’t resonate literally with that – I have not had five husbands, I have only had one, and the one I’m with now is my husband. But this is the way this has worked for me: Before I began to claim my call to ministry and live into that, I had had one career and at least five detours into other enterprises, trying to find the thing that felt like it was right for my life. I had a laundry list of graduate degrees that I might pursue in order to try the next thing, but only when I chose seminary did I find that I had indeed begun to drink living water. And so, this woman became for me the model of my hope for my ministry: that many might believe because of my testimony.

It is in the character of Jesus to meet us at whatever well from which we have been drawing, to meet us at whatever well from which we have been drawing plain old ordinary water and there introduce us to the living water. Nothing in this story suggests that it is in the character of Jesus to condemn us or set conditions for the receiving of the living water. There are no conditions. Jesus does not tell the woman, ‘Go and straighten out your personal life and then come and see me.’ There are no conditions. There is no demand for change in her life. There is nothing Jesus asks before he engages this woman in meaningful dialogue. There is nothing he asks of her before she goes off and testifies to her experience. He relates to her, embraces her, engages her for who she is: a woman with five husbands who wants to talk about true worship. He has a theological conversation with her.

This story is infused through and through and through with grace and unconditional acceptance. If the church is to be the body of Christ, we can do no less than model this gracious unconditional boundary-crossing love.

The woman’s conversation with Jesus shows her to be much more adept at theological reflection than Nicodemus. Her actions after leaving Jesus show her to be the first evangelist. This takes us to our third theme: the model of faith development that is demonstrated by the Samaritan woman.

Her exchange with Jesus begins with suspicion. ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a Samaritan woman?’ When Jesus then speaks of living water, she gets hung up just like Nicodemus on the literal. ‘Sir, you have no bucket,’ she points out to Jesus. She gets from Jesus something of what his response is. She gets that the water she will get is different, but her first response shows only a partial understanding. She at first wants to be delivered from the need to come to the well and get water daily. She wants to never get thirsty. ‘If you give me that water and I don’t get thirsty, I’m not going to have to shlep out here to this well every day and haul the water back.’

But the discussion quickly moves beyond that matter of convenience. At this moment, Jesus begins the conversation with her about her husbands. She changes the subject so that the discussion about true worship ensues. She does not let his question about her personal life derail her from her question about Jesus’ identity. She discerns from what he has told her, not that she should straighten out her personal life (or at least, if she discerns that, we’re not told that right now.) She discerns that Jesus is a prophet. She begins to suspect, ‘Could this be the Messiah for whom we have all been waiting? The one that we are looking for?’

Jesus discloses his identity to her. He has not disclosed that he is the Messiah yet in the gospel of John to his disciples. He discloses his identity as Messiah first to her. Something about this shift in this conversation so captures the attention of this woman who came to get the water for her daily household that she leaves her water jar behind. She left her water jar and goes forth to witness about the living water.

The narrator gives us a great counter-twist to the story when the disciples come back. They become interested in whether Jesus has really been given some food or not. Meanwhile, while the disciples are trying to figure out who might have given Jesus food and how he cannot be hungry, many Samaritans from the city believe because the woman has gone off to testify.

This is, of course, not a story that’s really about water. This is a story about the sources that we choose to go to for meaning and purpose and direction in our lives. And some of those sources are such that they never satisfy us. Some of us are at that point in our faith where we don’t yet trust Jesus enough for the living water that we return again and again and again to get our bucket filled up with other things, dredging up more and more of that which does not satisfy.

This is a story about faith that goes from coming to that well with the bucket for what doesn’t satisfy every day to at least literally interpreting that there is water and a bucket. The woman at least moves to that point. She goes from literal interpretation to the level of deeply internalized meaning. She gets hung up for a minute on the bucket, but she doesn’t stay there. She goes on and begins to deal with principles and truths toward which the concrete and literal water and bucket point.  

It is easy to get stuck in our own faith development. It is easy to become so hung up on things like ‘You have no bucket’ and ‘Surely no one brought him food,’ that we return again and again to drink from a well of literally defined faith that never satisfies and cannot transform.

Faith development is a life-long process. This woman I don’t think makes it to the end of what we would consider mature faith development before the story leaves her. But she surely moves a long way from ‘You have no bucket’ to testifying so that others believe. Faith development for us is a life-long process, just as psychological, emotional and physical development is a life-long process. No one expects to think, respond and make decisions or perceive the world like a 15-year-old when they’re 40 or 50 or 70 or 80. But the truth is, many of us think nothing of holding on to the contents that we drew from the well of faith early in our lives as though that water would stay fresh forever.

The living water that gushes up within us comes when we let go of our attachment to the first bucket we drew from the well. The living water that gushes up within us comes when we permit our lives and our opinions and our attachments and our use of power to be redefined and redirected by the living water of an active engagement with Jesus Christ. This woman engages with Jesus Christ. She moves from one level of faith to another within the story. She never exhibits absolute certainty. ‘Could this be the Messiah?’ she asks as she is sharing her story. But she acts based on what she knows. ‘He has told me everything I’ve ever done.’

No matter where we are in our own faith journey, we have something to tell about our experience with Jesus. What are we waiting for?

James Fowler has written extensively about faith as a series of developmental stages using the research from modern psychological knowledge, and his research has verified that many of us get stuck at a particular level of our faith and it takes a sort of traumatic wrenching us away from our bucket to move us to the next level of faith. Sometimes the circumstances of our lives do this. Sometimes we decide that we’re dissatisfied with the water that we’re drinking, that we’re still thirsty and we want to move in our faith to a place where something more sustaining and more eternal and more life-giving comes to us. But Fowler has verified that many of us get stuck at a particular level and only the exceptional human being ever reaches the most highly developed stages of faith.

Listen to how Fowler describes conversion: “Significant recentering of one’s previous conscious or unconscious images of value and power and the conscious adoption of a new set of master stories in the commitment to reshape one’s life in a new community of interpretation and action.”

Fowler makes the point that to experience this lifelong process of conversion, we need guides on the journey. We need others who model for us what that looks like. My model, biblically, is the Samaritan woman.

We’re looking, all of us, for relationship, for community, for meaning, for purpose, for love, for acceptance – all those things that are embodied in that living water. The Samaritan woman was looking for Jesus. I’m looking for evidence of the power of Jesus the Messiah to deliver living water into the lives of persons. So I’m looking for people. I’m looking for people in whom springs of living water are gushing up. I’m looking for people who cross the boundaries to get water and offer it to the thirsty. I’m looking for people who will tell their story about the time they met Jesus. I’m looking for people who are not hung up on the details of the bucket. I’m looking for people who will not settle for reaping the faithfulness of the past but will sow seeds for the future. I’m looking for people who will leave their water jar behind to run – not walk, but run – and tell somebody that they’ve just met the one who has come to save the world. I’m looking for people who are ready, willing and courageous enough to be converted to reshape life in a new community that embodies the character of Jesus as we discern it in these stories.

By Palm Sunday, by the events of the last week of Jesus’ life as they are described in the gospels, we are forced to decide, as Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan put it in their book “The Last Week” we are forced to decide which parade we are with. The Gospel of John wants to know, by the end of the gospel are you with Jesus or not? Maybe it’s Nicodemus that puts you with Jesus. Maybe it’s the Samaritan woman that puts you with Jesus. Maybe it’s the man who’s healed from blindness that puts you with Jesus. But somewhere, sometime, somehow, somebody’s experience with the life and character of Jesus will become your story.

That’s how we get converted – we let that story reorder our images of value and power, and when our images of value and power are reordered, this is the parade we’ll be in: We’ll be in the parade with the prophet of Israel riding on a donkey. We cannot be with Jesus and be in the parade with the emperor of Rome, the system of dominance. In the end, we have to choose which story is our story. Are we with the one whose power comes from serving love or the one whose power comes from domination by violence?

I’ll tell you who I’m looking for: I’m looking for the people who are in the parade with Jesus. I’m looking for the people whose lives are ordered by the experience of living water. I need those people. They are the ones who will show me how to be faithful. They are the ones who will show me Christ. May we all encounter such faith.

Amen.