The Woman at the Well

I went to a conference this past week. The same routine happens everywhere: you meet old acquaintances, you say, “How are you?” and they tell you how they are fine, and how great things are going at their church. It's superficial and exhausting.

I was reminded of a girl in college. She was bouncy and blond and whenever I said, “How are you?” in passing, she'd respond, “WONDERFUL!!” On bad days, I wanted to punch her.

I did have lunch with one friend in the middle of the conference. She told me the truth about her life, about the struggles that she has in her marriage and how her husband almost left her because she was working so hard. We were in the middle of a busy conference room full of people, but the rest of the room seemed to melt away, leaving just two of us, having a real conversation.

That's the kind of conversation that Jesus had with the Samaritan woman. A real conversation, about the truth.

Jesus was exhausted. It took three days to walk from Judea to Galilee through Samaria. He was thirsty. He sat down beside a well to rest. And she came, carrying her water jar.

How can I explain what Jesus did? We don't have the social boundaries that they did back then. We can't understand the incredible step that he took in speaking to a Samaritan woman. We cannot comprehend how radical this was, how absolutely crazy.

It would be like a woman of fundamentalist Islamic faith, taking off her veil and going to speak with a strange man on the street.

It would be like a Brahmin, scholar in India, deciding to kneel in the mud and have a conversation with an untouchable.

It would be like two gang members, whose gangs are at war with one another in the inner city, sitting down to coffee together.

You didn't speak to women in Jesus' time. And you certainly didn't speak to Samaritans. They were dirty, foreign, and not loved by God.

Jesus doesn't just speak to her. He asks her for a drink. He is willing to take his lips and touch them to her water jar.

It was like borrowing the Styrofoam coffee cup that belongs to a sickly homeless man.

Or asking a man with AIDS lesions to change your bandaid.

It was that dirty. Jesus did a dangerous, repulsive thing.

We never hear this woman's name. But I picture her as an extravert, a chatterbox, and she was bold. I don't know how she got so bold. Most women would have scurried about, getting the rabbi a drink, wondering why he spoke to her. Most women would have been silent, but this woman blurts out,

Why the heck are you talking to me?

And a conversation begins.

The woman does not understand a word that Jesus is saying. He talks about living water. He talks about resurrection and it all goes over her head. She is thinking about how nice it would be not to have to fetch water, not to be thirsty all the time.

Jesus asks her to fetch her husband.

And she tells the truth.

She doesn't go get some man. She doesn't run away and hide. She tells the truth.

I have no husband.

This was admitting that she was a total failure as a woman. Women lived only to please men and bear children.

What happened to her? Did her husbands die? Did they cast her out (they could do that for any reason at all)? Now she was living with a man who was not her husband, being defiled by a man who would not take her hand.

She tells Jesus.

Remember how people introduce themselves in Alcoholics Anonymous? Hi. My name is Ted. I am an alcoholic.

You must tell the truth to begin a real conversation.

Of all the people in the Gospel of John, Jesus reveals himself to this woman first.

Not to the scholars.
Not to the disciples.
To a woman who didn't understand a word he said. A woman who had little intellect and no status, because she told him who she really was. She showed him her scars.

In the Garden of Eden, when we separated from God, the first thing that we did was to hide.

If you want to know God, you must stop hiding. You must stand, naked before Jesus. You must be honest.

I know that you have a hole inside you. Something that you cannot master by yourself, something that makes your life less than perfect. I know this because you are human.

Tell the truth to God.

Only then will you begin to understand how Christ saves.

- The Very Rev. Kate Moorehead