Oremos…
Que las palabras de mi boca y las meditaciones de nuestros corazones sean aceptables ante ti, Señor, fortaleza y redentor nuestro. Amén.
Jesús y el tentador, Jesús y Nicodemo, y esta semana, Jesús y la mujer en el pozo.
La mujer en el pozo, por supuesto, no es un hombre. No se nos dice su nombre. Lo primero que sabemos de ella es que es samaritana. Y Juan señala que judíos y samaritanos no compartían cosas en común. Los estudiosos enfatizan que no se trata solo de que no compartieran cosas; evitaban activamente, deliberadamente y cuidadosamente estar en el mismo lugar al mismo tiempo.
En el mundo antiguo, ese era el entendimiento común de la enfermedad o padecimiento, la esterilidad y la aflicción; el sufrimiento debía ser el resultado de una acción pecaminosa.
y la Palabra de Dios a la que aferrarse cuando se siente rechazada o desesperada.
Y las personas a quienes se lo cuenta pasan de la indiferencia y la incredulidad a la fe.
Dios Santo, gracias por el amor transformador que nos das y por la presencia redentora de tu Hijo Jesús. Ayúdanos a escuchar tu Palabra e invitación. Muéstranos qué necesitamos dejar o soltar y cómo podemos servirte. Ayúdanos a seguirte fielmente.
Amén.
Let us pray…
May the words of my mouth and the meditations
of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, Lord, our strength and our redeemer.
Amen.
Yesterday morning, I was in my study at home when I heard our gate open and two voices on our porch. Our dogs started barking and someone knocked on the door. Instead of answering, I texted Jamie who was outside in his garage and asked if he was expecting anyone. He said no. I stayed at my desk, and eventually heard the voices move away.
You may be able to guess what was happening. One of the local congregations was dropping off information for their Maundy Thursday worship. I found an invitation tucked into our door when I went outside later. If I’d answered the door, we might have had an interesting conversation about Jesus, faith and worship. In Shelby I knew a widowed woman who often sat and talked with the evangelists who knocked on her door because they were friendly conversation partners and she appreciated their gift of time.
When I was a student in campus ministry, we often canvased neighborhoods, knocking on doors, hoping we could offer a word of encouragement to people who weren’t connected with a church or congregation.
Certainly, going door to door is one model for evangelism.
Another model is what Pastor Mark is leading people through on Wednesday nights here at Grace.
As you may remember from his ministry moment introducing our Lenten theme, “Listen Up!” we are focused on listening. In our Scripture during Lent, there are a series of conversations happening: Jesus and the tempter, Jesus and Nicodemus, and this week, Jesus and the woman at the well.
When we listen well, we learn something about the other person. Here we share a common story - God’s story – but how we have encountered God is different for each of us. I can tell my story, but I can also learn about God by listening to you tell your story.
The stories of Nicodemus and the woman at the well begin with an encounter. While we have heard them over two weeks, their proximity in John’s gospel prompts comparison and discussion of what they share and how they are different.
Nicodemus of course is a man, and he is named. That doesn’t always happen, and it happens even more rarely for women. And he is a Pharisee, a religious leader in Jerusalem. That means he has agency, influence and power.
The woman at the well of course is not a man. We are not told her name. What we know about her is first that she is a Samaritan. And John makes the point that Jews and Samaritans did not share things in common. Scholars emphasize it’s more than just that they didn’t share things in common; they would have actively, deliberately and carefully avoided being in the same place at the same time.
We also know that the woman has been married five times. John doesn’t include this detail to shame the woman and invite us to judge her. It’s a fact and remembering the beliefs and practices of first century Israel, it also tells us that she would likely have been considered cursed to have suffered so much loss. Remember the story we hear later from John about “the man born blind”? Even then the disciples ask Jesus,
“Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
In the ancient world, that was the common understanding of illness or disease, barrenness and affliction – the suffering must have been the result of sinful action.
This woman, for reasons we cannot know, had been married and separated either by death or divorce five times, and now was dependent on yet another man for her basic needs.
And yet, as different as each person is,
both Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman encounter Jesus.
Nicodemus goes to him at night, cloaked in darkness. The Samaritan woman meets him unexpectedly, when she goes to Jacob’s well at noon, when the sun was high overhead and beating down on them.
In John’s gospel, light and dark are synonyms for belief and unbelief.
We see how Nicodemus struggles to understand and we hear him ask “How can this be?” (3:9), trying to reconcile the truth Jesus has spoken with his understanding of the world.
The Samaritan woman listens to Jesus talking about living water and responds, hearing the invitation in his words. She asks, “Where do get that living water?” (4:11) and then asks Jesus, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
In a literal sense, neither of those will be true; of course, she will become thirsty and of course, she will continue to need to go to the well,
but she understands he is not speaking literally,
and she understands
he is promising her relief.
He is promising her continued relationship with God,
the comforting presence of God in her life
and God’s Word to hold onto when she is rejected or despairing.
And encountering Jesus, engaging in conversation with him and entering into relationship results in transformation.
John tells us the Samaritan woman
who has come at noon to the well to draw water
when she knows she can avoid people talking about her,
leaves her bucket there and goes back to the city,
where she begins telling people about Jesus.
And so,
she becomes the first witness,
besides John the baptizer,
in this gospel.
Instead of hiding she is now proclaiming what God has done in Jesus.
And the people she tells move from disregard and disbelief to belief.
They now want what she has. They want to meet Jesus and listen to God’s word and be changed. They want to leave behind the burdens they have carried and be freed to live in faith in God.
Let us pray.
Holy God,
Thank you for the transforming love you give us,
and for the redeeming presence of your Son Jesus
Help us listen to your Word and invitation.
Show us what we need to put down or let go and
and how we can serve you.
Help us follow you faithfully.
Amen.
