Chris Breslin—Year A Lent 3

Anthony: All right. Let’s transition to our next text of the month. It’s John 4:5–42. It’s a lengthy one, and so we have decided to spare you all of that reading. We’re going read a portion of that and then discuss it. It is the Revised Common Lectionary passage for the third Sunday in Lent / Easter preparation, which is March 8.

Chris, would you read it for us, please?

Chris: Sure.

So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶ Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. ⁷ A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” ⁸ (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) ⁹ The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) ¹⁰ Jesus answered her, “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.” ¹¹ The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? ¹² Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” ¹³ Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ 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.” ¹⁵ The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” ¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” ¹⁷ The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband,’ ¹⁸ for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” ¹⁹ The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” ²¹ Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²² You[g] worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³ But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. ²⁴ God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” ²⁵ The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” ²⁶ Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” ²⁷ Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” ²⁸ Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, ²⁹ “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” ³⁰ They left the city and were on their way to him. ³¹ Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” ³² But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” ³³ So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” ³⁴ Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. ³⁵ Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. ³⁶ The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. ³⁷ For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ ³⁸ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” ³⁹ Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” ⁴⁰ So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. ⁴¹ And many more believed because of his word. ⁴² They said to the woman, “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.”

Anthony: This is the lengthiest continuous conversation Jesus has with anyone recorded in Scripture. It’s a woman, and not just any woman, but a Samaritan woman. Chris, what might this tell us about the God revealed in Jesus Christ?

Chris: Looking specifically at Jesus, sometimes it can be helpful to come up with kind of adjectives that are just like really particularly descriptive to the passage that you’re focusing on. And the two that I came up with were, this is the circuitous and exhausted Jesus. Okay.

Anthony: Tell us.

Chris: Yeah. I don’t think it is like a small detail that Jesus goes a really strange way along to go through Samaria in Sychar. One of the commentators, Dale Bruner, has a great John commentary, and he says, Jesus leaves “strategic Judea in Jerusalem in the south for a season away in seemingly less auspicious Samaria and Galilee in the north. Yet deep things happen in these externally out of the way, less impressive places. God is no more respecter of places than he is of persons. Wherever he is at work is a very significant place.”

And so, Jesus going this circuitous way that doesn’t seem at all accidental — surprising but not accidental, right? Samaritans, from what I can gather, are shady because they are synchronistic, they’re pluralistic. There is a history here. They sort of worship God, but also keep some of their own worship practices alongside of that. They’re not like pure in like a religious purity kind of thought purity sort of way.

I’m not sure there’s like a great analogy here, but I don’t know. I was trying to think what this could be like for a conservative Christian, someone who they might be like nervous and interfacing with — like maybe like a Mormon or a Rastafarian or like an indigenous American who like has some Christian thoughts and practice and worship, but also has a lot of other stuff going on, right? Maybe we can imagine as gaps widen in our world. Who is your theological outgroup, folks who are like a little bit exotic, but also a little bit dangerous, right? In some ways the theological commonalities of Jews and Samaritans are maybe more confusing in light of the theological and cultural differences.

And so, Jesus, it seems, despite the past in this present, sidles up to this woman at the well. And there’s a history of wells in Scripture, and particularly this well. Abraham meets Rebecca at the well — that’s Isaac’s future wife. Hagar is met by an angel of the Lord at a desert spring of water, which is basically a well. And this is Jacob’s well. So, I think that’s hinting that this is like the middle of God’s unfolding story. And that’s happening in a kind of a strange place that Jesus purposes to be.

So, the other word was exhausted. What the heck does it mean for a Christology that Jesus was exhausted?

Anthony: Yes.

Chris: And then the outpouring of that, like Jesus is exhausted. So, it seems like the disciples spring into action. They’re gone because they’re going to buy food to help him, and then he asks for help from someone who has no business helping him.

Anthony: Yeah.

Chris: Like, even if Jesus isn’t the Word made flesh, even if he’s just some random Jewish dude, like you shouldn’t be asking her for help. I also think like it’s an interesting contrast between this woman and our previous pericope with Nicodemus, like man, woman, Israelite, Pharisee, and a Samaritan, teacher, housewife, night. It says he met the woman at high noon, like in the middle of the day. Even how they respond. Like, Nicodemus refers to Jesus as teacher. She refers to Jesus as prophet and Messiah. This exhausted, out-of-the-way person. So, those are some of the things that I noticed. Those are some of the things that that I feel like I learn about the God revealed in Jesus from this story.

Anthony: I’ve had the privilege of worshiping with Oak Church, where you pastor, and one of the things I’ve appreciated about you, you have a narrative way of preaching, and I know you value imagination, that we would spiritually imagine what’s happening and contextualizing that to our world. I’m going to ask you to do the same here.

We get brief insight on this woman’s testimony about Jesus, but what do you imagine she told her friends about Jesus and how she might’ve responded to this incredibly unexpected conversation?

Chris: Yeah. Start with what she said, “I know that Messiah’s coming. He will proclaim all things. Come. See. He told me everything I’ve ever done.” And then she says, “He can’t be the Messiah, can he?” Yeah. And then, this human-divine Jesus goes and eats something. And after that, the Samaritans ask Jesus to stay with them and he does. So, in the process of that hospitality and that intimacy more come to trust in Jesus, and I think this is all because of this incarnation ministry move of Jesus.

Some initially trust what the woman said, but more were coming to trust in Jesus because of what he said, what they saw, and that he was with them. This again, like in light of the Nicodemus encounter, that idea that some can’t and some willfully won’t see in here, I think it’s remarkable that when Jesus comes close to these theological Creole folk, they are opened up and included in the very life of God.

So, in a lot of ways her testimony is opening them up to an encounter and experience with Jesus. She is like an evangelist host. She makes room for these encounters to happen by her questions and by her proclamation, but also by her, like, invitation and introduction of them to Jesus. It’s really remarkable how her encounter and experience then gives way to all of these other encounters and experiences.

Anthony: And when the Spirit comes upon you, you will be my witnesses. Hallelujah.