Sermon text: John 4:1–26
Grace, mercy, and peace be yours from God our Father, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
It was about the sixth hour, late in the afternoon. The weary Jesus sat down by Jacob’s well. The disciples had gone into town to buy food. It was one of those rare moments where Jesus was alone. But He wasn’t alone for very long.
Soon a Samaritan woman approached the well. No doubt she saw Jesus sitting there. As she approached, she obviously got close enough to identify Him as a Jewish man — she a Samaritan woman. But she decides to draw water anyway. She expects a silent and mildly uncomfortable visit to the well to carry out the daily chore.
The woman makes her run for water in off hours, in the afternoon, in the heat of the day, when no one else is there. It was the custom of the respectable women of the village to draw water in the cool of the morning. It was usually the first official duty of the day. It was also something of a social event, not unlike gathering around the coffee pot at work in the morning. But the women who were of low stature, low social rank, weren’t welcome in the fellowship of the more outwardly virtuous women of the village. These kinds of women went to draw water late in the day to avoid the harsh looks, the whispers, and the sharp tongues.
So there she is at the well late in the day, with a stranger who’s a Jew. She was caught by surprise. The stranger speaks: “Give me a drink.” Samaritans were half-breeds, and their doctrine had been corrupted over generation after generation of changing, ignoring, rejecting biblical Scripture. They had nothing to do with pure-blood Hebrews. And pure-blood Hebrews had nothing to do with Samaritans.
Jews accepted all the books of the Old Testament. The Samaritans, only the first five: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The Jews believed, and rightly so, that the Lord resided in the temple in Jerusalem, and He was to be worshiped there annually. The Samaritans believed God was to be worshiped on the mountain — which just so happened to be where they lived, as well.
To the modern mind, the rest of their differences would look pretty petty. But to people who took religious doctrine seriously in their generation, the gap between the Samaritans and the Hebrews was vast. In fact, the Talmud and the Mishnah — Jewish books of law and of commentary on the first five books — said this about Samaritan women: “The daughters of the Samaritans are unclean as defiled from the cradle.” Jews who believed in their own righteousness would never, ever ask for any help or take anything from a Samaritan woman. After all, she’s unclean, and it’s infectious.
So when Jesus asked the Samaritan woman for a drink, she replies, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” The woman immediately senses that there’s something different about this particular Jewish man. And this particular Jewish man doesn’t answer her question. He tells her instead, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that says to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
The exchange puts me in mind of something else Jesus said that we’re quite familiar with, namely, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” And just as He did in His conversation with Nicodemus in chapter 3, Jesus turns the conversation into a theology lesson: He takes that which is physical and natural and needed for life — water — and uses it to turn the conversation into a conversation about the gospel and sacramental water.
Even a Samaritan knows the power and value of water in the hands of God. After all, it’s back in Genesis when we’re told that water was there in the beginning. God created the heavens and the earth; He placed water in the sky and water upon the earth and made a division between the two of them. And it was good.
It was through the flood in Noah’s day by which the unrighteous in the world were judged and drowned, and by which the righteous — namely, only eight of them — were saved. Afterward, God attached His promise not to destroy the world again by water. Instead, He used moisture and air, and used the symbol of the rainbow.
In Exodus 7, God turned the water in Egypt and the Nile River into blood. In Exodus 14, He saved people from death at the hands of the Egyptians by dividing the Red Sea to the right hand and to the left, so the people could pass through safely. The New Testament linked baptism to this particular event, 1 Peter 3:20 and 21: “God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
Exodus 15: in that part of the Bible, the people were once again complaining about water. The water they had to drink in the wilderness tasted bitter to them. So God instructs Moses to take a tree and throw it into the waters, and the waters became sweet, and they drank. Exodus 17: the people argued with Moses and said, “Give us water that we may drink.” And Moses replied, “Why do you put the LORD to the test?” Then Moses struck the rock of Horeb — in our Old Testament lesson this morning — and out came water.
And given this morning’s reading, let’s not overlook the forgotten bride at Jacob’s well. Jacob needed to secure a wife for his son Isaac. So Abraham sent one of his servants to a foreign land to fetch a bride. And the servant asked how he would know he was bringing back the right girl. He’s told that the woman who comes to the well and draws water for him is the right one, and to bring her back as the bride for his son. And so it was — and her name was Rebekah.
All of these examples are from the book of Moses. So the Samaritan woman would have known all of those stories. In Jesus’s own ministry, water was constantly present and used as a means of grace. Jesus’s ministry began in the waters of the River Jordan. His first miracle: water into wine. John 4:1 — excuse me — we’re told that His disciples baptized more people than John the Baptist baptized. When Nicodemus comes to Him at night, Jesus tells him he must be born of the water and the Spirit. In the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 5:6, our Lord says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” Jesus walks on water twice. He stills the storm and the waves once. Jesus preaches on living water several times. He tells the sick to go and to wash themselves and be cleansed of leprosy and their sin with water. A soldier sticks a spear into the side of Jesus, and blood and water come out.
The conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman began with a simple request for drinking water. But it was turned into a conversation that gives rise to great spiritual questions of the day. Jesus tells this Samaritan woman she ought to be asking Him for this life-giving water. But like Nicodemus, she doesn’t get it. He’s talking about heavenly things; they’re thinking about earthly things. She thinks He’s talking about ordinary water without sacramental power: “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where do you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well?”
Jesus answers the question in the affirmative. He is in fact greater than Jacob, the one who gave them the well. He is greater than Jacob. And the gift that He gives is infinitely greater than the wells that Jacob left behind. Jacob left a hole in the ground with ordinary water at the bottom of it. But Jesus turns it into something greater: “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
She thinks she’s found a bread king, a miracle worker: “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.” She sees it as an escape from the judgment of the righteous women in the village. She wants to be rid of the burden of drawing water each and every day, and tolerating the internal exile she now lives in.
After each exchange, Jesus brings her closer and closer to the truth. But before He goes any further, He must show her the truth about herself. We call it the mirror of the law. Before a person can truly appreciate and trust in the gospel, that person needs to understand the actual state of their own soul, their own condition. They need to understand that they are grievous sinners, and they in fact need a Savior and the gospel.
So Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” And the woman answered and said, “I have no husband.” And Jesus said, “You have well said, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly.” He knows what she is. He knows what lifestyle she leads. He knows her sins, and He knows her situation.
And she knows something about this man as well. She declares, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.” That is, she admits — she confesses to her sin. She doesn’t contest it. She doesn’t hide it. She doesn’t try to excuse it. She simply acknowledges it to be a fundamental fact about her life.
But Jesus isn’t about to be sidetracked. She said, “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.” Jesus said to the woman, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
It’s fundamentally a double whammy. Not only is her personal life a mess, but her religious beliefs as well. The doctrines she was raised on are a mess, too. Jesus tells her that the time has come and is at hand for her to worship the true God: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
In our day, usually the moment the conversation turns to religion or personal matters, nine out of ten people get offended and terminate the conversation. “How dare you?” But this woman doesn’t do that. She stays. She listens. She knows that Jesus is talking about the advent of the promised Messiah. And she says, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” And Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
I had several professors at liberal colleges and graduate schools who maintained that Jesus never once claimed to be God. I pulled out these verses. They told me I was mistaken — that those sort of verses shouldn’t have been in the Bible, was their argument, I guess. But she admits she’s had five husbands. She admits that her doctrine is flawed. Yet Jesus promises her water that will quench her thirst for righteousness in Him.
She believes, and returns to her village, and she tells everybody what the Christ has declared about her. It’s not in our reading, but she goes back to the village and says, “He told me everything about me and what I am.” Of all the people in the village, Jesus came to the worst of them, and forgives her her sin. That’s the message that ought to be preached to the whole world.
Christians aren’t better than anybody else. Like the sinful woman at the well, Christians are constantly engaged in the process of becoming more and more honest about our sinful states, and our need for a gospel, and our desire for life-giving water. “If anyone thirsts,” Jesus said, “let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” And First John says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” So drink of the water, confess your sins, and receive the absolution from your heavenly Father and your brother Jesus Christ. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.