Unlikely Messengers

The woman coming to the well of Jacob outside the town of Sychar was an unlikely messenger. But we do need to be aware of the highly imaginative and unwarranted descriptions in the past of this woman which may distort or warp our understanding of what took place at that well. It is easy to brighten her nails with colour (red being the most likely candidate), darken and thicken her mascara, deepen the blush on her checks, plunge her neckline and shorten her hemline. To be sure, Jesus knows she has been married five times and now "has" a man who is not her husband, but what are the particulars? Deaths? Divorces? Legal tangles? Or is it promiscuity? What if she had buried five husbands? What if she had been thrown out of her houses by successive men and completely disowned? We do not know. All we know for certain is that Jesus, as is his custom in John, reveals special knowledge of the individuals he encounters and alerts them that in meeting him they may encounter the transcendent. Jesus does not urge the woman to repent or change her behavior. He simply reveals that he really knows her and her life and then makes her aware of whom he really is and the kind of life he offers. Nothing more but then there is nothing less here either.

Jesus starts by striking up a conversation with the woman (John 4:5-42). A male Jew speaks to a Samaritan, and not just a Samaritan but an unescorted Samaritan woman. Such a person was a total mortal enemy of any God fearing, Jewish man of that day. Added to this, were disagreements about where to worship so that one could worship properly: some wanted to worship on one hill in Samaria while others insisted that it had to be on another the hill in Jerusalem. If the walls are to come down there has to be some ground on which a conversation is to happen. What is more common to people of every language, race and nation than necessity of water?

Jesus then offers her a drink of living water. Strange to us perhaps but the conversation moved from the physical need to have water to the need to have the Spirit to live and to worship God. The woman wanted this water, this drink that Jesus spoke of but did not fully understand the implications of drinking in the Spirit. She was not resistant to it the way that Nicodemus had been.  Like any human being she wanted to pursue the physical because that what change her life. She would not have to do everything the hard way anymore. All of us can relate to that, we want the physical things that the world has to offer; we want what we perceive to be good and helpful precisely because we see it, we know it and it is familiar and reachable. But Jesus is offering more than indoor plumbing so that the woman can hide away from people and from God.

The water was changed into wine at the wedding in Cana. Now water becomes living water for a person who is in need of freedom and life. She is not asked to repent of her past or even her present. According to John, she starts to change because she discovers that she is known by God and that God is watching and interested in her and her life. This woman’s life changes not because of demands made from a pulpit or an altar for some form of human piety or perfection though both Jesus and the woman acknowledge that the state of her life needs to change.   This woman’s life begins to change because she is allowed to discover the joy of the presence of Christ in her life and allows her to begin to see Christ in her community (Remember the baptismal covenant? Seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbour as yourself?). This is why she goes to the very people she has been avoiding, and who for the most part have been avoiding her, and says to them, “Come and see the man who told me everything I have ever done!” Even if they weren’t look specifically for Jesus at that moment there must have been something in the invitation that drew these people out of the town and to that well to see this man. She draws them into the presence of Jesus and then learns who he is for themselves. She was the most unlikely of messengers.

But where does all of this leave the rest of us? With the apostles of course! Some of them are now apparently upset that the townsfolk might have been tending to Jesus’ need and robbed them of the opportunity to do what they perceive is theirs and theirs alone to do. Jesus clearly points out to them that they need to be aware of what is going on around them spiritually; to see that they are going to reap harvests where they have not worked for it. We as a Church can choose to focus on what we are doing or not doing internally and allow that to be our focus or we can look up. In essence they’re going to draw in all the people who have been waiting for the moment that they to discover that Gods knows them and is amongst them and their communities. They are going to be the ones to establish the new community and to rebuild the relationships that have been long since served between God and people… all they need do is open their eyes and be ready.  

The goal of this Church outside of worship is to live the fourfold action of planting, watering, praying and reaping – to be the Good News of God in the world – just as we celebrate the fourfold action in our worship of taking, offering, breaking and giving through Eucharist. We too, in our time and in spite of all our weakness, shortcomings and foibles, are called to be unlikely messengers of God’s good news. We are called to live out our liturgies beyond the walls of our church building; to draw others into the presence and liturgy of God.  Let us live that good news out loud this week.