John 4:5-30, 39-42
When I was a child, I always loved it when my mom sang in church. One of her favorites was based on this story:
Like the woman at the well, I was seeking
for things that could not satisfy.
And then I heard my savior speaking:
Draw from my well, which never shall run dry.
Fill my cup, Lord. I lift it up, Lord.
[and here is where she would close her eyes and throw her head back]
Come and quench this thirsting in my soul.
Bread of heaven, feed me ‘til I want no more.
Fill my cup. Fill it up and make my whole.
I loved to watch her sing because you just knew she meant the words. She often inspired me into a closer relationship with God. So I would lift my metaphorical cup on Sunday morning and ask God to fill it; and since we had church on Sunday evening, too, I’d get it topped off for good measure. But there was one problem. By Thursday or Friday I seemed to be dry again. I came to one conclusion: my cup must’ve had a hole in it. It never occurred to me that the song was wrong.
There are two major things about our scripture for today that the songwriter got wrong. First is the statement that the woman was seeking for things that could not satisfy. This could be referring simply to water, but the implication is larger than that. For many years the standard interpretation of this story was that the woman was promiscuous, immoral, a “loose woman” who, at the very least, valued marriage so little that she just got divorces left and right. After all, she’d had five husbands, and the last one she didn’t even bother to marry! What else were we to think?
What interpreters and preachers missed for years was that in Jesus’ time, women could not get a divorce. Only men had the power to divorce, and they could do so for any reason, simply by saying the words. You burned dinner again? I divorce you. Put on weight? I divorce you. Infertile? I divorce you. Just a cantankerous, whining, nagging wife? I divorce you. And then what would happen? Women couldn’t just “enter the marketplace” and get a self-supporting job. (As if it were ever that easy, even in our society.)
Often the best option the woman had was to return to her father’s house, which was humiliating but at least safe. But if her father was dead, that meant she went to her brothers, who might or might not be willing to take her on as a dependent. And if she had no brothers, she had few options left. “If this woman had had five husbands and now had none, it meant that either five husbands had died or five men had married her and then abandoned her in divorce.” Or some combination thereof.
As for her living with a man who wasn’t her husband, we don’t know the nature of that relationship or what their arrangement was or if she had any other choices. It could have been what was called a Levirate marriage “where a childless woman is married to her deceased husband’s brother in order to produce an heir, yet is not always technically considered the brother’s wife” especially since the brother probably already had his own wife who might not have been very excited about sharing.
So when we consider the cultural context, we cannot simply dismiss this woman as of loose moral character. That’s not what the story says. Plus, Jesus does not mention sin. He does not tell her to repent, as he says to others. He does not say that her sins are forgiven.
This story is ultimately not a story about Jesus forgiving our sins, but about Jesus seeing our pain. And isn’t that what we need?
I don’t actually preach much about sin . . . or “the s word” as I call it . . . because I think the word is over-used and often does more damage than good. More importantly, it’s because I think so many of our bad choices and behaviors come out of our brokenness, rather than our sinfulness. Yes, we need forgiveness; but even more we need healing.
When I think about the woman at the well from this point of view, I realize that she must have been invisible. Whether she had a bad reputation or was a victim of unfortunate circumstances, either way either way she was invisible. People saw those things about her, not her. Maybe she even preferred to be invisible, rather than be pitied or ridiculed. Maybe that’s why she went to the well in the heat of the day, when no other women would be there. But Jesus saw her! He saw her past and her pain; saw her brokenness and her thirst. And his ability to see her was part of the healing he offered.
It is part of ours, too. To be known fully—to have all our secrets lain bare, all our shameful dark corners be bathed in light—and to be loved completely not in spite of the darkness, but through it . . . How life-changing is that?! Do you realize that is what you’re being offered? To be bathed in the living water of grace.
This takes us back to the song I sang at the beginning. This is the other thing the songwriter got wrong, and we often do, too: that God fills our cup. God doesn’t fill our cup. Cups are small. Cups are limited. Cups are half empty or half full, depending on your perspective. Cups can get holes in them and can break or get lost. A cupful of water will not change our life.
But too often that is all we are willing to take. God offers acceptance, and we settle for tolerance. God offers grace, and we settle for leniency. God offers love, and we settle for affirmation. We don’t accept what God has to offer, and when we don’t accept it for ourselves, we sure won’t offer it to anyone else. Not really.
And so we all go around thirsty. We all go around dry and dusty, with cracked lips and parched souls, when God wants to offer “a stream of water gushing up to eternal life.”
Walter Wangerin, a well-known writer, teacher, and pastor, learned this lesson the hard way. One night Walt was working late at the inner-city, African-American church he pastored when he heard a strange whistling sound. His congregants had warned him, a Caucasian man, about working late at night alone, warned him about the bad neighborhood–their neighborhood. He had shrugged off their warnings, and here he was alone in the church, with a possible intruder. But what kind of intruder would whistle?
He worked his way cautiously through the church, his heart pounding, until he finally made his way down to the basement and discovered that the strange whistling was the sound of water moving through the pipes, going to the outdoor faucet. Confused but intrigued, he peered out the window and discovered Marie at the outdoor faucet, filling up plastic jugs of water.
Now, he knew of Marie. She lived across the street. He had tried to speak to her, but she just stared into space. She spent most of her time sitting on her porch, talking to herself, ignoring her small son who wreaked havoc on the entire neighborhood. Then at night, her “clients” would come to visit. She would take the men into her home and lock her son outside like a cat.
And now she was stealing the church’s water. If she had asked, Walt would have given it to her. But she was stealing. He didn’t know what to do. He kept telling himself to let it go. After all, the water cost mere pennies. And if her water had been turned off, her other utilities were probably off, too. And she had a kid who needed to drink and wash and use the bathroom. On the other hand, what was she teaching this child–that you could take whatever you wanted, without asking? And what is the ethic involved in the church supporting a prostitute? Let it go, he told himself. Just let it go.
But then a little while later, he heard it again, the same strange whistling, a figure stooped at the outdoor spigot. Only this time it wasn’t Marie; it was one of her clients. He knew he had to put a stop to this. The church couldn’t afford to provide water for Marie and all her “johns.” He said he had an image of Grace Lutheran Church, the building itself, rolled over on her side like a helpless sow, while all the people of this neighborhood like wriggling piglets were pushing their snouts into her belly and sucking the poor church dry. Many of his church members were no better off than Marie. He had to put a stop to it. But he didn’t want a confrontation with the man,
So he had a brilliant idea. He found the pipe that went to the outside spigot, and he turned it off. He was very proud of his solution. He wanted to live in peaceful coexistence with his difficult neighbors, and he had managed to keep the church from getting taken advantage of while not creating an uncomfortable situation.
The next Sunday he told the story in church. After the service, as people greeted him at the door, they said, “Did that really happen, Pastor?” and “That was good thinking, Pastor.”
But then came Miz Lil. Miz Lil was the old matriarch of the church, and she always spoke the truth. Whenever she had felt the presence of God, she always said the same thing: “You preached today, Pastor.” That day seemed no different, at first. This is how Walt Wangerin tells the rest of the story:
“You preached today,” Miz Lil said. “God was in this place,” she said, keeping my hand in hers. I almost smiled for pride at the compliment. But Miz Lil said, “God was not smiling.” Neither was she. Nor would she let me go. She paused a while, searching my face. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I dropped my eyes.
“God was in your preaching,” she whispered. “Did you hear him, Pastor? It was powerful. Powerful. You preach a mightier stroke than you know. Oh, God was bending his black brow upon our little church today, and yesterday, and many a day before. Watching. ‘Cause brother Jesus–he was in that child Marie, begging a drink of water from my pastor.”
God was in that child Marie . . . and in that woman at the well . . . whether either had a bad reputation based on bad choices or was a victim of lousy circumstances. God is in every thirsty human being standing outside the church or on the outskirts of town. They are thirsty, and a cup of water will not do.
Our world doesn’t need a drop of charity or a dribble of compassion. Our world doesn’t need a cup of mercy. Our world needs a downpour, an outpouring of love, living water gushing up into eternal life.
We live in a thirsty world, and we know where the water is. To refuse to share the good news . . . is sin.