John 4.5-42

THE WOMAN AT THE WELL

John 4.5-42

'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 Saviour of the World." John 4.42.

The above gospel reading, starts with a Samaritan woman talking with Jesus and finishes with that woman talking to other Samaritans, who conclude that Jesus is the 'Saviour of the World’.

Thus she moves from being the first disciple of the Samaritans to becoming the first evangelist to the Samaritans.

Now Jesus probably travelled in his life time through Samaria, which, like a sandwich filling, separated Galilee in the north from Judea in the south. However, whether John is recording an actual historical incident or a symbolic event for his theological purpose in writing is very much open to question.

The evangelist writes, 'Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water and Jesus said to her, 'Give me a drink’.

ooOOOoo

There are three things we should note about this simple incident.

FirstIy, Jesus had contact with a woman in public.

Now this may not appear strange to us in the twenty-first century, but it was certainly strange to those who lived in the first century.

This was something no Jewish man would ever think of doing in public. As Alan Richardson, a former Dean of York, has observed, 'Judaism is the most masculine of all the world's religions’.

Every day, a devout Jew would thank God that he was not born a woman. In fact, Rabbis often used to debate whether women actually had souls!

As far as Judaism was concerned, a woman had no civil rights, and took no real part in religious ceremonies, being confined only to the Court of Women in the Temple.

Rabbis were forbidden to greet women in public, and that even included their wives and daughters. In fact, some Pharisees were nicknamed 'Bruised and Bleeding Pharisees’ because they shut their eyes when they saw a woman in the streets, and so often walked into walls and houses!

Yet, here is Jesus, a Rabbi, a teacher, talking with a woman in public at a well!

Again, as Alan Richardson observes, 'The revolution accomplished in the matter of status of women by the teaching and example of Jesus is hardly ever recognised for what indeed it is, namely, the most important social advance in the history of civilisation’.

This is one of the arguments that is used to advocate the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopacy, namely, that the social position of women in society has changed since New Testament times.

However, it can be equally argued that if Jesus was such a revolutionary reformer, as regards the position of women in society, why did he not include women amongst the twelve apostles, which is the theological basis of ordination?

ooOOOoo

Secondly, Jesus did not just have contact with a woman in public, but he had contact with a Samaritan woman.

This was unheard of in New Testament times because Jews and Samaritans had been at enmity for over four hundred years.

Way back in 720 BC, the Assyrians had invaded the northern kingdom of Samaria and removed many of the Jewish inhabitants, replacing them with other nationalities. Over the years, the Jews that had remained married some of the new settlers, thereby destroying the original racial purity of the Jewish race.

When the Jews from the south returned from exile in Babylon in 450 BC, those from the north offered to help them to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. However, their help was declined because they had not maintained the racial purity of Judaism. As a consequence, they went off and built their own temple on Mount Gerzim as the focal point of their religious life. Hence the animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans.

This desire to maintain the racial purity of the Jewish race has continued throughout the centuries. In the second century, the Jewish writer, Elizer ben Hyrcamus, wrote, 'He that eats the bread of the Samaritans is like one who eats the flesh of swine’. And we all know what the Jews thought of pigs!

Even today, in strict orthodox Jewish households, if a member of the family marries a non-Jew they are considered as being dead.

Yet, here is Jesus, a devout Jew, talking in public to a non-Jewish Samaritan woman at a well!

As far as the Jesus was concerned, racial barriers do not exist in the Kingdom of God. All men and women are equal the eyes of God. No race is better or worse than another. Or as St Paul puts it in his letter to the Galatians, 'There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer male or female, for all of you are one in Christ.' [Galatians 3.28]

ooOOOoo

Thirdly, Jesus did not just have contact in public with a woman - and a Samaritan woman at that - but also a woman with a past.

It was the custom for women to go and fetch water from a well in the cool of the day, at 6am or 6pm.

However, this Samaritan woman came in the heat of the day at 12 noon, presumably because she wanted to avoid meeting with other women because of her immoral life which was the talk of the village.

After all, as the woman herself acknowledges, she had been married and divorced, not once, not twice but five times, and she was not married to the person with whom she was now living!

I recall a seafarer's wife in Liverpool who had been married three times and had five children from five different fathers, remarking to me that, 'God loves a trier!' But as far as the residents of the village of Sychar were concerned, she was not a 'trier'; she was beyond the pale of moral acceptability.

Yet Jesus was prepared to talk to her and to ask her for a drink!

He did not shun her as did her neighbours. As far as Jesus was concerned, no one is beyond the orbit of God's mercy and forgiveness, provided, of course, that they repent of their past and are determined to lead a new life.

ooOOOoo

The picture of God, which St John presents to us, as revealed through Jesus Christ at the well at Sychar, is one whose loving concern extends beyond the boundaries of gender, race and morality. A picture, which leads the inhabitants of the village to conclude that he is none other than the 'Saviour of the World’ and not just of the Jews.

Now John wrote his gospel at the turn of the first century for a predominantly Jewish audience. It was a time when a great debate was going on between Judaism and Christianity.

Ever since the days of the Exodus, some fifteen hundred years earlier, when God had intervened in the life of the Jewish nation to free them from the captivity of the Egyptians and lead them to the Promised Land, the Jews had interpreted this experience as God showing special favours to their nation. The whole of their nation's history, as written up in the Old Testament, is written up to emphasise their special relationship with God, whereby they perceived themselves as being God's chosen people, to the exclusion of everyone else. In short, they had come to believe in an exclusive God.

However, the more the fourth evangelist meditated upon the revelation of God, through the life and teaching of Jesus Christ, the more he became convinced that God was not an exclusive God but an inclusive God. A God whose arena of activity knew no boundaries such as gender, race or morality, as taught and practised by Judaism.

Hence he included this real or imaginary incident of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well at Sychar as a challenge to his original Jewish readers, to broaden their understanding of God.

And we, the readers of his gospel today, need to have our picture, or image, of God challenged, because, like the Jews, we too can be prone to believe and preach an exclusive God, rather than an inclusive God. We too need to be reminded that God is the ‘Saviour of the World' and not just of our particular place in it.

And now to the God, revealed to us through Jesus at the well at Sychar, be all honour and glory, today and for ever. Amen.