Sermon Text
So, I had a psychology professor once who hated making small talk on planes. But he lived in Texas, and every time he flew in or out of the airport, there would inevitably be someone seated next to him that would want to chat. They’d ask: “What do you do? Where are you from? Do you have kids?” etc. etc.
And Dr. Singh was simply not interested. He despised it so much that he eventually had a business card made that said, “Sorry, I’m hard of hearing.” He thought it was a harmless way of dodging the unwanted niceties of small talk.
One time on a plane, however, someone sat next to him and started chatting it up. So he opens his wallet, takes out the business card and shows them,
and the person’s like, “Oh. Okay.” Everything’s going as planned.
Dr. Singh falls asleep, something he does want to do on the plane, and then the beverage cart rolls by. The flight attendant asks each row, “Anything to drink?” And when it’s their turn Dr. Singh starts awake and says, “Yes, I’ll have a coke!”
much to the confusion of his seatmate.
Now, I would imagine that depending on whether you are like Dr. Singh or his seatmate, the way you hear this story from the Gospel of John hits differently.
Some of us want strangers to talk to us by a well. You are outgoing and gregarious; you make friends everywhere you go and make small talk with the people around you.
While others of us are now seriously considering how to make some fake business cards to discourage strangers from talking to us!
Now, I don’t know the Meyers Brigg or the Enneagram of the Samaritan Woman at the Well. I don’t know if she longed for conversation or if she longed to get some time to herself.
Here’s what we do know: Culturally, she was there at the well at a time when no one else would ordinarily be there. Commentators often say that’s because she was ostracized and marginalized in her community, so she would go at the hottest time of the time of day, to ensure no one else would be there, to avoid the glares and the snide remarks of the other people, likely women, who would be drawing water.
And perhaps that’s true. Perhaps she was hiding in broad daylight.
Again, we don’t know the full circumstances of this woman’s life or how she came to have five husbands or who it is that she’s living with now. It may be for disreputable reasons, or it may be that she’s just gone through some really hard things, like the death of multiple spouse and close family members. But it’s clear that while there are rumors about her life and situation, she hides much of the details.
Why else would she be so astonished to hear Jesus speak of her life? It is likely that she herself has never spoken so candidly of her own life.
I find it fascinating that when the woman at the well expresses that she wants a drink of this Living Water that Jesus speaks of, he pivots the conversation to her own personal life.
It’s almost as if we cannot drink of this water that Jesus offers us, unless we are honest about who we are first, unless are willing to be forthright with ourselves and others, unless we are willing to stop hiding.
In 1983, the Presbyterian Church USA wrote a new confession called “A Brief Statement of Faith.” And in it, when we talk about sin, it says this, “But we rebel against God; we hide from our Creator.”
Hide. That’s what we do. That’s what we’ve been doing since the very beginning. It’s what Adam and Eve did after eating of that forbidden fruit; they hid from God in the garden.
And still today, we try to hide. We hide the vulnerable parts of ourselves. We hide the parts of ourselves that desperately need the quenching of that Living Water. We hide our blemishes; we hide our doubts; we hide our fears. We hide behind our things, our clothes, our bank accounts, and our job titles.
Back in 2004, Frank Warren started a blog called PostSecret.com. He intended it to be a temporary community art project. He invited people to mail in postcards that had a secret written on it. The rules were that the secret needed to be anonymous, and something you had never shared with anyone else.
Nearly twenty years later, PostSecret is still going strong today, generating thousands of postcards. Warren reads each one and picks ten to twenty to post on his blog every Sunday.
These secrets cover the emotional spectrum from humor to heartache, and a wide range of misdeeds from adultery to adolescent mischief, and even kind acts and life-saving and life-giving moments that only the writer knows about.
People share things like:
- I wear a fake pair of glasses to work everyday.
- I didn’t have a mask to go into the store, so I walked around the parking lot until I found one.
- Today is the first AA meeting I’ll attend…My husband doesn’t even know.
- I’m scared I won’t be a good mother and my kids will end up hating me the way I do.
We are hiding. But desperately want to be seen and known. So much so that we would send a stranger our deepest secrets.
You would think in this world, where we can reach one another so easily, that we would know each other more deeply. But I think if anything, social media has allowed us to hide even better than we could have imagined. Because now, we curate what we want people to see and know about us. There is a sense that people now have full access to who we are, what we do, what we think. But really, it is often just another way of hiding our true selves and presenting who we think would be accepted.
But then there’s Jesus, sitting by that well where we go to hide in plain sight,
ad not only does he notice us, but he asks us for a drink of water, showing first his vulnerability, and then showing us fully who we are and whose we are.
Alyce McKenzie writes:
Our Samaritan woman is not the only first-century secret keeper. Everybody Jesus meets in the Gospel of John has a secret they think he doesn’t already know. … There is the woman caught in adultery from chapter 8; we know what her PostSecret would read. There are the Pharisees and scribes who drag her to Jesus; their postcard would read “We love the sound the stones make when they hit the sinner.” There is Peter who denies he ever knew Jesus not once but three times. His PostSecret would read “Fear fights with faith in my heart every day, and every day fear wins.” There is Pilate’s PostSecret when they brought him before him.
“I am Rome’s puppet. I am the real prisoner, not Jesus.”
Secrets and shame eat away at us, robbing us of being fully known and loved,
robbing us of true joy and gratitude. Perhaps being known and seen the way Jesus knows and sees us allows us to drink of the Living Water because we can only truly live when we are known and when we understand our beloved-ness.
“Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”
I can’t really imagine hearing from someone everything I have ever done, and then inviting others to go and meet this person.
But that’s the promise of Jesus and that Living Water. It washes away our shame. It washes away our need to hide. It covers us and claims us and welcomes us just as we are, even if who we are embarrasses us just a bit.
I recently came across a tweet that resonates deeply with me. It said, “If you’re embarrassed by the person you were five years ago, good! That means you’ve grown. You’ve educated yourself, and maybe even expanded your horizons.” (a scientist, rhubarbtoatu)
I love that mentality. It’s a growth mindset, an embrace that transformational, new life is possible. That right there is a resurrection mentality. Easter Sunday, every day.
Now, Living Water to us as Christians today refers to something in particular, to that which quenches our soul, as only Jesus can. But in his time, that phrase “living water” also meant water that is constantly changing because it is on the move. Water like you would find in a river or a stream, not stagnant water, but water that moves, changes; that is living.
Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher born 500 yeas before Jesus said, “No one ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and they are not the same person.” The water is new, and we, too, are new.
Imagine if we all stopped hiding who we are.
Now, in some ways, some would argue that we have, that these last few years have been revealing in shocking and disappointing ways. It does kind of seem like members of the Ku Klux Klan have stopped wearing their hoods and decided to film themselves destroying the capitol instead.
But even that display of violence and hate to me is a type of hiding from the fear that they actually feel. Maybe, the violence we inflict upon others and ourselves,
is a result of our constant hiding, a hiding so deep that we are no longer recognizable.
If we all took a moment, had the humility to see ourselves the way God sees us,
and were willing to be transformed by the reflection Jesus puts before us, surely change would be possible not just in our own personal lives but in the world.
I believe it’s possible because I have to believe that it is possible. Hope keeps us going. And that Living Water, it keeps changing and changing us.
So to drink of that Living Water, is to embrace that we are a new creation, invited to new life every day. To drink of that Living Water, is to know that we are fully known by God, and wholly loved by God. To drink of that Living Water, is to shed the shame, to stop the hiding, and to live honestly and from the heart.
And we can drink of that water because Jesus comes to sit beside us, breaking all boundaries of what is proper and right to tell us who we are and whose we are, and to invite us to drink deep.
Jesus sees you, all of you.
And this community, imperfect as we are, is also willing to see you. Maybe you are being called to take a risk today, to sit by a well, and attend a new members class. Maybe you are being called to share more vulnerably and honestly
with a community of faith. Maybe you are being called to be a well of living water for the youth of our congregation.
However you are being called by God this morning, know that God sees you, this community longs to see you, and you are loved.
So drink deep of the Living Water and never thirst again. And with wells filled to the brim with God’s grace, let us go out into a thirsty world.
Thanks be to God, Amen.
Scripture
John 4:1-42
4 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John” 2 —although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— 3 he left Judea and started back to Galilee. 4 But he had to go through Samaria. 5 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 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.”
