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Choosing to Encounter God in Others
John 4.5-42
March 15, 2020
Not knowing what will happen can do that, though, right? The fear of the unknown can be debilitating. It can prevent us from trying new things or experiencing life in different ways. The fear of the unknown is reasonable, it is a part of our humanity. It is also a part of the story of God. There is the unknown of Adam and Eve leaving the garden. How about Abram and Sarai embarking on a journey based solely on God's promise of a blessing? Then there's Joseph's family during the droughts; Pharaoh's daughter who saved a Hebrew baby from the reeds; the Israelite people in their Exodus; the times when God's people were in exile; Jesus in the wilderness; Mary and Martha when Lazarus died; and of course, the disciples waiting after Christ's crucifixion. These are but a few moments in the narrative of salvation, where God's people go face to face with the unknown.
Throughout it all, God remains faithful to God's promises. In every season of life, God is with us. All of us. The entire human family. Always. Forever. Because God knows the human experience. God knows the importance of community. To care for one another is at the heart of what it means to be God's people. At the heart of the Torah is the mandate to care for the stranger. The commandment Jesus gives to the disciples is that they love one another. Caring for each other is what we as God's people are to do. To care for one another requires us to encounter each other, which can be scary.
Take, for instance, the Gospel lesson for today. We encounter Jesus and a Samaritan woman at Jacob's well. It is a story about an encounter between two people from two different places in life. It is an encounter that not only the woman wasn't expecting, but neither are the readers. At the well, Jesus encounters a Samaritan woman and breaks gender, ethnic boundaries. Did you know that Jesus didn't need to go through Sychar to get to where he was going? It is true. Many Jews would have taken a longer, more out of the way route across the Jordan to avoid Samaria with whose residents they have deep-seated hatred from the divided monarchy. As many theologians note, Jesus didn't need to go through Samaria geographically. Still, he did theologically because God so loved the world, and Samaritans are a part of that world that God loves.[1] The encounter between Jesus and the woman at the well, who unfortunately remains nameless, we are gifted with why it is essential to risk getting to know others.
The encounter begins at the level of human needs. Jesus is thirsty, admitting his weariness asks the woman for a drink of water from the well. "Give me drink," is what Jesus says in verse 7. The woman responds with her question of "How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan, for a drink?" What is unknown to us are the tones from Jesus, and the woman conveyed in the Greek. Both authoritative because of the longstanding division between their kin-people. His response takes this unordinary conversation and moves it into deeper theological water. "If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." Jesus is speaking metaphorically here, indicating that the water he provides continually springs up from the limitless generosity of God. My favorite part of this story is her response, right? So honest, perhaps naïve, but very much so challenging. "Sir, you do not even have a bucket, and the cistern is deep; where then can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this cistern and drank from it himself with his children and his flocks?" The woman flat out asks Jesus who he thinks he is!
The encounter goes deeper yet. Jesus responds indirectly, inviting the woman to think contemplatively about the living water he can provide her. "Give me this water," she replies, and I like to think she does so with an eye roll or a chuckle—perhaps hoping to deflect any more conversation. It doesn't work, and Jesus gets personal. "Go call your husband," he says, and the waters suddenly become choppier. She admits she has no husband; Jesus says he knows. Without shaming her, he speaks of her history of unhappy marriages, to which she recognizes something more about Jesus. She realizes that Jesus is the Messiah, the one we call Christ. In verse 26, we have Jesus declaring his first "I am" statement—which is the same name of God revealed to Moses in Exodus 3.
The close encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman leads to the delivery of the good news of the next step in God's salvation to the woman's kin-people. From the water's deep source within her, she draws life and gives testimony to Jesus Christ. In his humanity, Jesus encountered a woman who was very much so like you and me, and as a result, she meets God. The same is possible for us when we risk setting aside those barriers we place between us and our neighbor, us, and God. If church and my faith have taught me anything, it is that encountering another human being is as close to God as I may ever get—in the eye-to-eye thing, the person to person thing—which is where God's beloved has promised to show up.
Friends, we are called to see not ourselves in others, but the very person with whom we share life. In the encounter of Jesus and the woman at the well, the meaning of community unfolds. As Barbara Brown Taylor says, life together is about seeing the person standing right in front of us. Encountering others is about recognizing the other has no substitute, who is irreplaceable, whose heart holds things for which there is no language, whose life is an unsolved mystery. Once we begin to turn the person into a character in my own story, the encounter is over.[2] In choosing to encounter others, we are choosing to meet the Triune God, who exists as a community.
Loving each other can be difficult. It is difficult who am I kidding. Yet, this is our calling. It is scary, and there is nothing more terrifying than risking vulnerability in relationships. In choosing to encounter others, I find these words from Thomas Merton helpful. The prolific writer and monk said, "The beginning of love is the will to let those we love to be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our image. If in loving them, we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them."
Jesus could have avoided Samaria, but he didn’t. And thanks be to God that he didn’t because if he did, we wouldn’t know the full depth of God’s love for the world.
Beloved friends, remember that when we meet one another and worship God together, with openness and vulnerability, as our true selves, our lives will be transformed just as surely as meeting Jesus transforms the life of that solitary but spirited woman by the well.
And this is a close encounter I’m not afraid of!
[1] Lewis, Karoline. “Commentary on John 4:5-42 by Karoline Lewis.” John 4:5-42 Commentary by Karoline Lewis - Working Preacher - Preaching This Week (RCL). Accessed March 10, 2020. https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=44.
[2] Barbara Brown Taylor, “An Altar in the World." (Harper One: New York, 2009)Page 102.
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