Reflection: "Living Water"Many of us know what it feels like to be used up by others and then discarded.
No matter how hard you try to give your best, being as helpful as possible, but you are taken for granted and later discarded like a used Kleenex tissue. Unfortunately, too many human encounters end up like that. Such encounters diminish us as a person and belittle us, eating away at our sense of worth and wellbeing. When we’ve suffered bad experiences and our good nature is exploited, we can become bitter, cautious and suspicious of future relationships. We may even become anti-social characters; outwardly aggressive and abrasive types, while underneath we’re afraid, feeling the pain of old wounds and we erect barriers so that we’re never used that way again. I believe that the Woman of Samaria, whom Jesus met at Jacob’s well, was like that. She’d endured five, maybe six, marriages of the hurtful kind, and had taken to avoiding human company. Isolation was better than more hurt, so when she found Jesus waiting at the well, she was on her guard. It’s far too generally assumed that this woman was a hardened sinner. A brazen marriage wrecker, sly and ruthless, exploiting male weaknesses. Many of the sermons I’ve read and heard have tended to paint her as a sexually promiscuous woman. Personally, I believe the woman is more likely to be the one who was mistreated and demeaned. We know that she had been divorced at least five times and now she was living with a sixth man. But remember, in those days, men held almost all the rights to divorce. A man could divorce his wife on the smallest pretext, just by attesting “something unseemly in her.” This unseemliness could be as trivial as the husband not liking the way his wife looked first thing in the morning, or the fact that she boiled his egg too hard. To make a divorce effective, the husband just had to call a male witness and write out the dismissal notice. A divorced woman, unless she had independent means, lost all status and value in the community. She was seen as a rejected woman, a disgrace. Her own family often wouldn’t receive her back in their household and her existence became precarious. High class women were not likely to employ a divorcee - and put temptation in the way of their husband. In reality the options were: Find work as a servant, or marry again very quickly, or become some man’s mistress, work as a prostitute, or just starve. I think this woman of Samaria was likely to have been greatly sinned against by men. More than likely, she was exploited by men and then discarded. Her status and dignity in the community would have been torn to shreds and like many of life’s victims, she may have been turned into a scapegoat, just to ease the conscience of “respectable” citizens. The woman of Samaria was a diminished person; devalued; a tattered remnant of how God created her. Her six close encounters with men were all of a damaging kind: used and abused. Her ego had shrunk and her encounters with the righteous women of the village were damaging ones. They had reduced her sense of self-worth to near zero. Then one day, under the burning heat of the midday sun, unexpectedly, she had an encounter with Jesus. I invite you to picture her at high noon, when all sensible people would be either indoors, or those out in the fields would be sheltering in the shade. Imagine her shouldering the large water jar, slipping out of her dwelling, and scurrying out of the village, through the heat haze, to Jacob’s well. The other women had been there in the cool of the early morning, chatting and laughing together. And they would be there again in the shade of evening, exchanging the gossip of the day. But this bruised woman makes the journey alone, to avoid the scornful glances and the barbed words. She has had enough of that pain being inflicted on her and even the midday heat was preferable. As she arrives near the well of Jacob, she has no idea that she’s coming to “the well of salvation”, so we watch her surprise as she finds a stranger there – a Jew. Samaritans and Jews did not get on well together. Then Jesus takes the initiative, and the most beautiful encounter takes place. Jesus neither ignores her, nor avoids her and doesn’t treat her as if she has some kind of disease. Instead, he does something very lovely - he asks her to give him a drink. The diminished person is asked to give help to the most complete human being who ever lived, empowering her enough to reply: “How come that you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” Having given her some dignity, Jesus is able to offer her something: the riddle of the living water. “If you could understand who it is who is talking with you, you would ask me for a drink of living water, welling up with abundant life.” The woman scoffs, as Jesus has no bucket and the well is deep, but I hear no evasion in this response, no verbal fencing, as he did in his encounters with the Pharisees - just honest puzzlement. Jesus treats the woman with respect, despite what others are accusing her of. She tells him that they are awaiting the Messiah, so he informs her that he is the one they are waiting for. At this point John tells us that the disciples returned from the village and they’re surprised to see him speaking with such a woman, making them feel awkward and probably embarrassed. The disciples felt ill at ease in the presence of such an encounter. Like many converts, they saw themselves a cut above the other outsiders whom Christ came to seek and save. I suspect that we sometimes feel the same way. We can become ill at ease when we encounter others who may not be the same as us. But the grace of Christ breaks down barriers. I guess we’re secretly glad that his open arms have included us. Even so, after a while we can tend to become smug, and a bit self-righteous. Then we get uncomfortable whenever Christ includes outsiders and invites them to sit at his table and eat the same bread and drink from the same cup. But this scorned woman, who an hour before had slipped out of the town like a moral leper in order to draw water from the well, now had the confidence to go back with her head held high, and preach to the people who had despised her. Her encounter with the Lord had given her back her self-respect and her new dignity evidently impressed many in the village, because they invited Jesus and his disciples to share their hospitality for a few days. Remarkably, we read that many people there put their trust in Jesus as a result of the woman’s testimony. They also came to experience an encounter with Jesus, where old ways of thinking and acting are cast aside, and all things become new. So, here we are, in our own time, and I guess we can feel that it’s a bit like it was at that well in Samaria. Here we find the Messiah waiting for us with living water; with a wondrous, inclusive, healing love. For us to be renewed in spirit and truth will only happen if we must allow this encounter to occur. Christ is already here with us and he definitely is available, so the rest is up to us. We should pray to Jesus, asking him to give US the living water, so that our lives may be cleansed. Pastor Rick
1 Comment
Lena Beryl Blok
10/3/2023 07:08:25 pm
Thank you Rick for your message. How great it is that we have the
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