Sermon – He Told Me Everything I Had Ever Done!

Listen to the woman at the well as she reflects on the events of that day. As told by Judith Janaeck.

He came to me, when I wasn't even looking for him or expecting him. He asked me for a drink and then offered me "the gift of God."

"How strange," you say.

I cannot blame you for thinking it is strange, because even I never expected God to seek me out amidst the everyday, ordinary tasks of my life, to offer me "the gift of God"! I thought God only gave gifts to the people who deserved them--good people, righteous people, morally pure people, "other" people, not people like me, a Samaritan, a woman, a sinner.

Yet this man, this Jesus, came to me and offered me "the gift of God," the gift of unconditional love. Love without conditions, without any hidden motives or agenda, without any strings attached.

Love like that, for me, for the likes of us!

Before I even knew who he really was, before I could clean up my act, before I could say the right words or do the right things, this Jesus came to me and showed me the love of God in his gracious acceptance of me a woman, a sinner, a Samaritan.

At that moment, my life changed. Oh, not that suddenly my life became easier. I still had to live in that village. I still had to face my past, and my present situation. I still had to face myself and live with the consequences of the choices I had made. I was still me, a struggling, failing, faltering human being. And yet, in the loving, compassionate acceptance of that man Jesus, I was finally free to love others, free to forgive others, free to love and forgive myself for all my mistakes and shortcomings, free to live as a daughter of God, an heir of all the promises of God.

[by Judith A. Janaeck from Forgotten Followers Carol J. Schlueter, ed., Wood Lake Books]

 

There is tremendous power in honest, open, caring relationship. There is tremendous power available when we relate to one another, without judgment, and without manipulation.

Much has been said about this conversation between Jesus and the woman at the well. Preachers and Bible students have marveled at the crossing of barriers, to a woman, a Samaritan, assumed to be a sinner. Much has been said out of this story in sermons. But perhaps not nearly enough. We still more often hear the Bible quoted to exert power, to condemn sinners, and to proclaim my view of righteousness as right, for everyone, for all time. Yet here is Jesus, quietly talking about living water, offering life, a new life, without any mention of the barriers being crossed, without any worry about what people might think -- working with such quiet power of God's all encompassing love that no one could even ask him about these barriers being crossed.

So, our topic for day becomes "Relating Empathetically."

Miracle at the well of Jacob is a miracle of empathy, not so much of omniscience, or God's all-knowing.

Someone showed up at my front door one day, needing to talk. Didn't take long to learn this was a consultation about tensions with a boy friend...

The man who came to see me explained how he'd had a conversion experience and he had to leave his former life.

I found myself in a dilemma of pastoral care -- of biology and his charismatic conversion.

I knew his friend. He had a relationship with our church, and I knew about his sexual orientation. But I did not know this friend from another town.

How could I respond? When my own feelings crowded in. My beliefs were being put to a test as we talked.

I've come to understand that orientation is not so much a choice or influence of environment but more a condition of being. And my affirmation of the choice this man was now making, or his making this choice, was not going to change his "condition of being."

And yet, I couldn't say that. He was telling of a powerful experience of Christ entering into his life, changing him, offering him another way to be. I didn't have the words that wouldn't just work against the wholesome direction he was trying to travel. So I had to affirm HIM; and the choice that he made, not because I thought it would work, or because it might change his inner being and his drives, but because he was a person looking to God for help in a struggle. I had to pray with him, that we both might trust God in Christ, who makes sense out of our lives, and offers us living water to quench our deepest thirst.

These situations don't make it easy, but I have a feeling that I sometimes relate more empathetically when it is hardest, because then I am acutely aware of the need. I have a feeling that I miss at other times, when it should be easier. Relating with empathy means coming without assumptions, listening to what is really being said, not to what we expect, or what we think we already know.

The encounter between Jesus and the woman at the well is a case in point. How did Jesus come?

"He told me everything," the woman says.

She says this to the people in the city. The very people who presumably ostracized her so that she was going the well at noon when no one else would be there.

"He told me everything about me."

Already she is so full of his caring about her as she really is, so full of God's mercy that it doesn't matter what the "everything" is -- she wants everyone to know about this Jesus.

It is an incredible scene. But lets back up. Lets try to leave these assumptions we've been bringing to it, and come to the scene the way Jesus does, ready to relate to a person.

My assumptions have been showing. Now I'm caught. Let's listen to the text.

Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come back." The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, 'I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!" The woman said to him, "Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people worship is in Jerusalem." (John 4:16-20)

Everyone knows that the Samaritan woman was a loose living strumpet who bounced casually from one man to another. And when she had that conversation with Jesus at the well, she was shacking up with some guy. 

Except John's Gospel doesn't say that. I began to squirm when that little fact was called to my attention. If the Bible doesn't say it, how come I "know" it? Yes, Jesus mentions the fact that she's had five husbands, but he doesn't call her a "tramp." She is surprised that Jesus knows this about her, but she doesn't seem to feel guilty about it.

Jesus doesn't say she was divorced five times. She could just as easily have been widowed five times, and maybe the reason she isn't married to the man she's living with is because she's trapped in the levirate marriage custom and she's stuck with a brother-in-law who won't do his duty. Or maybe the man is just the head of the household where she's been offered shelter. Maybe she's at the well late just because she has no daughters to send. Yes, and that could cause her to be ostracized from the folk in the village, too. And still have standing to succeed so dramatically as the first evangelist.  

I'm not a great biblical scholar so I can't argue the point one way or another. What bugs me is the assumptions I've made--the assumptions I've heard from dozens of pulpits and in many Bible studies--assumptions that are rooted in the pervasive sexism of my own mind and of popular culture.  

An old Simon and Garfunkle song-- The Boxer --includes this line: "...a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest."

But why did I want to hear it that way in the first place?  

Awareness comes so slowly, tiny scrap by tidbit, as I stumble around in the wilderness of my own assumptions. Will I ever glimpse the promised land of liberation? 

Not likely. I'll slide into my grave with my assumptions intact, hoping for another chance in another life.  

Meanwhile, you know what they say happens when I ass/u/me something about another person. I make an ass out of u and me.

The miracle in this encounter is not some mysterious mind reading, some divine omniscience. Rather it is the pinnacle of empathy across barriers. Crossing the barriers at all is a wonder. Crossing in such a way that a person on the other side can say, "he really knows me. She understands how it is for me. And Christ at work through this person has a real offer of another life for the real me.

It is no less miraculous than mind reading, but empathy doesn't require supernatural powers. It does require the release of our natural powers. We can join with Jesus in this.

We can look past the barriers, to the real person on the other side. I realize that my success rate is no better than yours, but this is the challenge I'd like to put before us today:

When the barriers are crossed miracles take place on both sides where there had been a wall. The woman marveled, "He told me everything." Without embarrassment she could announce this good news to the city. Meanwhile, the disciples and Jesus were getting back to normal, -- -- maybe. Except that Jesus is experiencing the miracle of broken barriers. "I have food you don't even know about."

Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 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. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, 'One sows and another reaps.' (John 4:34-37)

"Sower and reaper rejoice together." The miracle is experienced on both sides of where the wall used to be. When we relate with empathy, we experience conversions of our own, and find the value, the deep down value of just being human, in one another.  

Let us challenge every attempt to use Jesus to build barriers. Instead, let us allow Jesus to use us to break them down.