Note: I preach in a variety of styles, from traditional text behind a pulpit to no-notes and walking about. An intermediate style begins with a short sketch, though I often wander away from the text during delivery. The following sketch is prepared for the March 23 service and reflects on Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well.It is a continuation of an informal Lenten theme. Under the rubric “something must die in order for something to live,” this sermon will focus on the need for our divisions and prejudices to die that we might know new life.Â
Several options when approaching this text
Popular option to focus on Jesus dismissing his disciples in order to have an exchange with a woman in public, variously interpreted through feminist lens and as an active transgression
This is a red herring. Text is loaded with symbols that would have been obvious to the reader of that period but are largely lost on us. For example, the number of husbands woman at the well has supposedly had is a reference to the Judean concept of the wicked Samaritan — the construction of the Samaritan as the other. In our postmodern age and with eyes open to the historical context we understand that the rivalry between the community centered on Jerusalem and the remnant in the conquered northern kingdom plays an important role in understanding the text. More on that later.
If we turn our attention away from the moral implications of a single man speaking to a woman alone and in public, to the moral implications of hearse of posted polygamy, then we might turn our attention to Jesus words. They are certainly worth examining though like many of the teachings and John are mysterious and slightly confusing and lean toward Gnosticism, that interpretation ultimately rejected in the creation of Christian orthodoxy that salvation comes through knowledge and that one of the signs of Christ is that he knows people and things in a way beyond human capability. So he knows things about the woman at the well and it is his knowledge that convinces her that he is a great teacher or Messiah.
While this line of inquiry is fruitful it seems logical to turn to the glaringly obvious question of Jesus relationship with the Samaritans in re the relationship of the Jews to the Samaritans. Already in John’s Gospel Jesus has engaged in activity and Galilei and Judah. His activity in Samaritan lands represents an important change of scene. And he is not just anywhere in Samaritan lands, he is at the well of Jacob. Our ancestor Jacob. That is an acknowledgment that the Jews and the Samaritans share in the covenant with Abraham despite the construction of the Samaritan as the other.
Let us remember that before the reign of David and Solomon, a period that lasted approximately 100 years, the tribes of Israel were a loosely confederated group spread throughout Canaan and often facing pressure and encroachment from competing peoples. The consolidation of power under David was a necessity in this context. As part of his move to consolidate power David conquered a neutral city that did not belong to any of the 12 tribes. Driving the Jebusites out of Jerusalem and making it his capital gave the appearance of neutrality even if David himself was descended from one house. Things fell apart however during the reign of Solomon and the nation fragmented after his death. The selection of a neutral capital should seem familiar to us as Americans and we have a modern term for the sort of break up that occurred after Solomon’s death, we refer to it as Balkanization.
The residents of the southern kingdom continued to focus on Jerusalem while the tribes and residents of the North rejected Jerusalem is an artificial construct and turned their attention back to Mount Gerezim. During the decades that followed authors in Judah would create text that justified the Davidic monarchy and established a Davidic covenant. In this way they would position themselves as superior to the Samaritans. Meanwhile in the north, a region that during this period came to be called Samaria or Israel, the people returned to a simpler form of worship and stuck only with the Torah or the five books of the Pentateuch as holy text. In fact, to this day the Samaritan remnant only uses their very ancient form of the Torah as a holy book and still engages in sacrifice on the mountaintop. However, the northern kingdom was the first to fall, succumbing to the Assyrians. The Assyrians partially depopulated the region and the vacuum allowed for other peoples to move in. The term Samaritan then comes to include both Samaritan Jews and to lesser extent people who did not worship Yahweh but lived in the region.
The southern kingdom would itself fault Babylon and face the exile. The elite of Judah would eventually be allowed to return and establish a puppet kingdom. Eventually under Alexander the Samaritan remnant would once again establish worship on their holy mountain. This was the basis for much of the tension. The hatred between those who saw themselves as Jews, that is the residents of the southern kingdom, and those they categorized as other, that is the Samaritans, was profound. This is not the hatred of the stranger, this is the hatred we reserve for someone who is close and then betrays us. This is the hatred of the parent for the disowned child, of the brothers who have not spoken in decades.
Jesus gets this. He is fully of this context. He may be from the backwater of Galilee, but he is fully Jewish and fully formed in that tradition. He understands that the Samaritans are the other. Yet here he is at a site that is legendary and while in enemy territory is shared by both traditions. Jacob is our common ancestor. Jesus is offering living water and mysterious food that surpasses what is available from Jacob’s well and that in and of itself is worth considering. But Jesus who used you encountering woman who is Samaritan plows right through those lines as if they are meaningless to God. Here is the lesson for us to learn. Here is the miracle.
Jesus is violating lines drawn by humans over politics, territory, and practice. These are all people who worship Yahweh. And note that the author of the gospel records that many believed in Jesus from that day. That is, here at almost the beginning of his ministry in the Johannine text, there are already non-Jewish followers of Jesus
This is not about the woman’s sinfulness. This is about Jesus refusal to abide by the divisions and hatreds carefully manufactured by his ancestors, lovingly cultivated over generations… For divisions between people, hatred, is not something we are born with. It takes work to create disdain for other humans and that disdain must be carefully tended, a poison garden.
Here is division over where people would worship, over which city was more important, a division that was manipulated, exaggerated, put through the propaganda machine, until it became a reality even though it was never real. Samaritans were just as much people of the promise, of our common ancestor Jacob, as the good Jews of Galilee were of Judah.
Where do you carefully cultivate and maintain the fires of prejudice? And are you prepared for Jesus with his living water to smother those fires.