1
ICONIC ENCOUNTERS ON THE WAY TO THE CROSS: THE WOMAN AT THE WELL
John 4:5-42
A sermon preached at First Presbyterian Church by Carter Lester on
March 23, 2014
“You have no bucket and the well is deep.” The speaker is a Samaritan woman. Her iconic encounter with Jesus in John 4 is the longest conversation anyone has with Jesus anywhere in the gospels – and yet we do no know her name. Her anonymity speaks to her low status. You see, she has three strikes against her.
First, she is a Samaritan – and for a variety of reasons Samaritans were seen by the Jews as religious heretics and political traitors. Second, she is a woman, and no rabbi was ever to talk with an unaccompanied woman in public. And third, as we learn later, she has had five husbands, and the man she is currently living with is not her husband. It is not clear whether her unsettled marital status is the result of her sin and promiscuity or is simply a tragic set of circumstances. But that the woman comes to the wellalone at the sixth hour, which is noon, and not with others in the early morning as would be the general practice, suggests that she may have been ostracized by her community. Certainly, she would not be the first person ostracized by a community for being the victim of a series of tragic accidents.
“You have no bucket and the well is deep.” The words the woman speaks literally describe Jesus. He apparently is sitting on top of the stone that was placed on top of the well, a well that you can still visit today, and which is at least 100 feet deep. He is hot, tired, and thirsty because of his journey. The disciples have gone off for food while Jesus is apparently willing to wait for the kindness of a stranger to get some water.
“You have no bucket and the well is deep.” You can never be satisfied with reading John’s gospel literally. There is always something going on deeper than the literal meaning. And here, despite being the one who comes to the well with a physical bucket, the woman’s words may actually describe her own life. After all, she is alone and apparently ostracized, living on the margin of her community. Her life has turned out nothing like she would have hoped. Who wants to have gone through five marriages, apparently burying five husbands? Perhaps she is longing for a change in her life, but she doesn’t have the kind of bucket she needs to get relief, and the well of life is very deep.
“You have no bucket and the well is deep.” Perhaps you have met this woman – and she is you, or someone you know. Perhaps you feel like a nobody, with little status, living on the edge of the community rather than at the center. Perhaps you look back on your life and see an unbroken string of tragedies and consequently have little hope looking forward in life. Or perhaps you have lost your way and do not know how you will ever find your way.
“You have no bucket and the well is deep.” Or maybe these words apply to your life in a different way. You have too many responsibilities – at work, they have laid off another group and you are expected to do more work. Or at home, you find yourself trying to balance work and parenting and running nonstop to get your children to yet another activity. Or at school, the work piles up, and the goal of college seems ever far away.
Or perhaps, you come to the well tired from the burdens you are carrying: financial burdens as you continue to look for work or a better paying job; physical burdens as you yearn to feel like your old self; or emotional burdens as you worry about distant parents who are sick and struggling to cope on their own; or adult children struggling at college or in their marriages. It is noon in your life and you are hot, tired, and thirsty. You have too many responsibilities, too many burdens, and too few resources.
“You have no bucket and the well is deep.” Little does this unnamed Samaritan woman know that the man to whom she is speaking has what she needs. After all, he is the one who is looking worn out. And then when Jesus speaks – which of course surprises her because he speaks in public to a woman and to a Samaritan woman at that – but when he speaks, he makes no sense. He talks about “living water,” which she hears as “flowing water.” “Where is such a stream?” she asks - thinking that a flowing stream would offer better tasting water than a cistern.
People in John’s gospel are always surprised by Jesus and have a hard time believing that he could actually be the Messiah or God’s Son. Way back in John 1, a skeptical Nathaniel had said his friend, Philip, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (1:46). And at the end of the gospel, Pilate will put a sign at the bottom of the cross that will say, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews,” (19:19) and it will all be a big joke. Even those who show some respect to Jesus, like those who at the wedding at Cana who call him a miracle worker, or Nicodemus, who calls him a teacher and rabbi, or this woman herself who early in the conversation calls him “a prophet,” fail to understand fully who Jesus is. He is so much more than all that.
Surely this woman does not expect the Messiah and Son of God to look so weak and vulnerable – or to show up in Samaria. Surely to find God you must somehow be lifted to the highest mountains that are closest to heaven. Or at least travel to Jerusalem where the Temple is and where all of the religious and political leaders reside and hold court. But here he is, in Samaria, sitting on top of the well.
How about you? Do you expect God to be far off – someone who showed up in the distant past, but does not bother to show up much now? Or someone who can be found only when we become a better person and climb some spiritual ladder to a higher and holier place, one far removed from where we are now?
Look again at John 4. What we learn is that the woman does not have to off searching for Jesus, because he is already there – at the well. That is the way it is with us. When we get to a tough place in our life, Jesus is already there. As Alyce McKenzie observes, “Jesus always stands beside us. He sits by the deepest well. He places himself at our side in the most monumental tasks and the most hopeless situations....And he is right next to us, in the heat of the day and at the height of our fatigue. As we stand beside a deep well with no bucket, our spiritual sustenance is not a far-off prize to be earned, but a close resource, around us and within us and available in each passing moment.”[1]
He always stands beside us – and he does not turn away from us. When we look at this scene and the other iconic encounters that Jesus has with others on the way to the cross, we cannot help but notice his strength and toughness. He stands up to the religious and political authorities, and he is unflinching in his resistance to them. He is impatient with hypocrisy and abuse of power by the religious and political leaders. And he is willing to point out the truth to the woman about her life. He is no sentimental fool.
But his toughness and strength is matched by his tenderness and his patience. He crosses barriers and ignores customs to talk with her. He does not wait for her to talk first or ask questions. He initiates the conversation. Jesus speaks the truth to the woman but he does not condemn her. He answers this woman’s questions and shows no impatience. No wonder the woman goes running off to the village, leaving her precious bucket behind. With joy and excitement, she has to tell them, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!” And judging by her joy and excitement, we can believe that there are five very important words that she believes but leaves unspoken: “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done – and he loves me anyway!”[2]
The famous African-American educator, Booker T. Washington, who lived, taught, and preached in the early 1900s, and who once spoke from the pulpit of our church when it was at High and Evans streets, liked to tell a story about how a vessel in the South Atlantic Ocean signaled for help from another vessel not far off: “Help! Save us, or we perish for lack of water!” The captain of the other vessel sent a message in reply: “Cast down your buckets where you are.” Supposing that the second captain had not gotten the message accurately, the troubled ship signaled yet again: “Help! Save us, or we perish for lack of water!” Again the nearby ship signaled back, “Cast down your buckets where you are!”
The exchange went on until the first ship, in desperation, decided it had nothing to lose by following this outlandish advice. When the crew cast down the ship’s buckets, they drew them up and were astonished to find clear, cool, and fresh, not salt water. They had not realized that the powerful current of the Amazon River carried fresh water from the South American rain forests many miles out into the South Atlantic ocean.[3]
Are you hot, tired, and thirsty? Do you feel like life is presenting you with a very deep well and you have no bucket? You can try to get by on your own resources. You can just give up.
Or you can in your fatigue, or shame, or loneliness and let the woman’s prayer be your prayer: “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty.” When we come before Jesus and pray that prayer, He gives us the water we need to satisfy the thirst of our souls. It is always closer than we think, because Jesus is always coming to us, overcoming every barrier that appears to stand between us and God. He comes to us with toughness and tenderness, patience and love. And he says to us:
“Come, I have what you need: living water for your thirsty souls.”
Thanks be to God!
[1] Alyce M. McKenzie, “Deep Well, No Bucket? Reflections on John 4:5-42,” “Edgy Exegesis,”
[2] Anna Carter Florence, “John 4:5-42: Homiletical Perspective,” in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year A, Vol. 2, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 97.
[3] Retold by Alyce McKenzie.