March 23, 2014

Clay Nelson

Lent 3     John 4:5-42

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I resonate with the retired bishop who said, “The older I get the more deeply I believe, but the fewer beliefs I have.”  For that reason I struggle with the Gospel of John, which has been used by the early church to create creeds and formularies that describe a Jesus I no longer recognise.  I find my self at war within myself: my training and formation by an institution grounded in those creeds in opposition to what my reason and experience proclaim to me to be true.  As a result, whenever called to preach on John’s gospel, I do so with some trepidation.  No less so today as we join Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at Jacob’s Well. 

It is often read literally as a historical event where Jesus is reproving a woman of unsavoury character while claiming for the first of many times the name of God, “I AM.”  This claim has been used by creedal Christianity to assert that Jesus is fully human and fully divine.  However, this dualistic theological idea would not have occurred to the writers of John.  Because of how it has been used I am tempted to walk around the story and not engage with it.  But in doing so I would miss an important point that enriches what I believe, while not necessarily supporting the beliefs I have been taught.

There is a lot packed into this story but not all of it is explicit and no simple reading of it does it justice.  While biblical literalists often use the Gospel of John to support their notion that Jesus’ mission was to be God in human form that he might be a blood sacrifice for our sinful selves, this story suggests a very different mission.  His purpose was raising our consciousness to understand that we who are divided by race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, politics, theology--the list seems endless--must seek reconciliation with one another if we are to find our true selves.  It is a story of enlightenment.  Last week Nicodemus came to Jesus in the dark of night.  The very next chapter in John begins with Jesus meeting the woman at the well under the midday sun.  This movement from darkness to light is the gospel’s subtle way of saying this encounter is very important to what Jesus was about.  Yet, the message of reconciliation seems to have been too subtle for the church with her all too human nature, which has regularly divided and subdivided into competing groups for over two millennia.  We at St Matthew’s are all too aware of this phenomenon.

To comprehend John’s purpose behind this story, which never happened but, nonetheless, I know to be true, we must understand the purpose of wells in Hebrew literature.  Like the bars on K Road, wells were where people went to meet a potential future spouse.  Abraham sent his servant to a well in his hometown of Nahor to find Isaac a non-Canaanite wife.  The servant came back with Abraham’s niece, Rebekah.  When it came time for their son Jacob to find a wife, Isaac instructed him to find a wife amongst his kin.  Jacob stopped at a well near Haran where he met his first cousin Rachel.  Eventually she and her sister Leah were both his wives in one of those traditional biblical marriages conservatives go on about.  Moses also met the woman who would become his wife at a well when he was on the run for murder.

So, with this understanding of meeting at wells as a mating game, did Jesus come to the well where Jacob found Rachel to look for a bride amongst his kin?  John is saying yes.  Immediately preceding his encounter with the Samaritan woman he meets up with his cousin, John the baptiser.  There is a dispute about who Jesus is in relationship to John.  John clears it up by describing Jesus as the bridegroom and himself as the best man.

If Jesus is the bridegroom is he seeking marital bliss with the Samaritan woman?  If so, who is she?  First, remember this is a fictional story.  She is a character in the story.  She never existed. Thanks to the parable of the Good Samaritan we all know that Jews and Samaritans are not keen on each other, but there is a lot more to it.

Who were the Samaritans anyway? It’s not a simple answer.

After Solomon’s unwise, oppressive reign there was a civil war around 930 BCE between the ten northern tribes who wanted to secede from the Davidic dynasty and the two southern tribes, Judah and Benjamin.  The North won but, like the American Civil War and our Land Wars, the repercussions continued.  The tribes of the North tried to redefine themselves vis-à-vis Jerusalem by building their own capital city they called Samaria.  Then they transformed the sacred shrines in the Northern Kingdom into their own indigenous holy places to compete with the Jerusalem Temple.  With time they no longer identified themselves with the royal house of David but with original patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and especially Jacob, who had changed his name to Israel.  Their holy scriptures ended with the Torah, rejecting everything produced by the Davidic dynasty.

The hostilities between the two kingdoms did not abate. Their history was one of constant warfare. They often allied themselves with opposing powers.  For instance Assyria was the Northern Kingdom’s ultimate enemy and the Southern Kingdom’s ally.  This went on for about 200 years until Assyria destroyed the Northern Kingdom while Judah looked on from a distance.

To prevent future rebellion Assyria transported many of the people of Israel into exile in Assyria and repopulated their former homeland with people from other conquered countries. Eventually these people inter-married with those left behind.

But this isn’t the end of the story. A couple of hundred years later it was Judah that was conquered by the Babylonians, with many taken into exile. Perhaps having learned from what happened to the ten lost tribes, they kept themselves separate from non-Jews by adopting such practices as strict Sabbath day observances, kosher dietary laws and mandated circumcision. When they eventually returned they saw themselves as quite distinct from and superior to those who had remained in their conquered land. They saw them as having mixed blood and corrupt religious practice.  This is when the “half-breeds” became known as Samaritans while those returning from exile were the Jews.

All this is encompassed in the woman asking Jesus, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”

It is on this question Jesus’ courtship of the Samaritan woman turns.  They have a deep theological conversation about human boundaries and what role Jesus would play in a world of deep divisions.

When they discuss water from the well versus the water of eternal life, Jesus is promising a life together that will last forever.  His living water is the spirit that binds human life together. That bridges the divide between competing groups. 

When he explains that with living water she will never thirst again, she takes him literally thinking she will never have to draw water again.  He then asks her to call her husband.  She acknowledges not having one, to which he says, “No, you have had five.”  This is not about her being somehow immoral.  It is a reference to II Kings (17:24-34) in which we are told that the king of Assyria resettled people from five countries throughout Samaria.  Samaritans inter-married with them and accepted their gods. These are the five husbands of the unfaithful Samaritans symbolised by this Samaritan woman. 

She is impressed by his knowledge of her life, but continues to hang on to the divisions between them, asking does this mean Samaritans will have to worship in the Jerusalem Temple. He basically tells her, “bollocks.” By the time John’s gospel is written neither temple still exists.  John through Jesus isn’t talking about religions that all too often divide people. He is speaking about enlightenment -- being one with the Spirit that is God. Then we will be fully human as he is fully human. This is the marriage Jesus is offering her and us.

John is offering a new vision for Christianity, one that unfortunately didn’t take hold.  One where there are no divisions between us.  In this story he is saying if Jesus can bridge the gulf between the Jews and Samaritans, no gulf is too wide.  Granted it isn’t an easy sell.  The disciples when they return are shocked.  But they usually don’t get it.  On the other hand, neither do we.  When we resort to creeds and defining right beliefs and right worship to determine who is in and who is out, aren’t we perpetuating the divisions between us?  Aren’t we divorcing ourselves from the Spirit Jesus offered?  We continue to thirst.