Grace to you
and peace from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen
The text for this meditation is written in the fourth
chapter of the Gospel according to St John: Verses 5 – 42:
So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.1
So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.1
7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to
her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy
food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you,
a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings
with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If
you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a
drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw
water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the
well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone
who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 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.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so
that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
16 Jesus said to her, “Go,
call your husband, and come here.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus
said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no
husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the
one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a
prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say
that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman,
believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem
will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we
worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 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. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him
must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming
(he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who
speak to you am he.”
27 Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that
he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are
you talking with her?” 28 So the woman left her water jar and went away into
town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can
this be the Christ?” 30 They went out of the town and were coming to him.
31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying,
“Rabbi, eat.” 32 But he said to them, “I
have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone
brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My
food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘There are yet four
months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see
that the fields are white for harvest. 36 Already the one who reaps is
receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper
may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One
sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you
did not labour. Others have laboured, and you have entered into their labour.”
39 Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because
of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to
stay with them, and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of
what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know
that this is indeed the Saviour of the world.”
There is an advantage to reading the Bible in large sections. You notice the continuity in the narrative and
the overall structure and purpose of the Word of God becomes evident. This can lead to some wonderful revelations
concerning God’s love for us. I can still remember the first time I read John 3
and 4 in one sitting. Here are two
chapters that show us that God’s salvation is truly for all people.
We heard the beginning of John 3 in last week’s
Gospel. This is the account of an honourable
Pharisee named Nicodemus coming to Jesus with some honest questions. This morning, we heard the beginning of John
4. This is the account of the Samaritan
woman at the well.
Pharisees were the leading members of society. Jesus meeting with Nicodemus would be the
equivalent of meeting with a Federal Parliamentary Minister. In today’s Gospel we learn that the woman at
the well had a sinful reputation and she was a Samaritan. In the culture of that time and place, she
was at the bottom of society and Nicodemus was at the top. It would be hard to find two more different
people. Regardless of this, both of
these people were sinners and both of these people needed Jesus and His gifts
of forgiveness, life, and salvation.
The beginning of today’s Gospel tells us that Jesus
was in Samaria. This is very
unusual. Most Jews traveling back and
forth between Galilee and Judea would actually walk to the Jordan and cross it
before heading north or south. You see,
Samaria was between Galilee in the North and Judea in the South. Jews would rather make the effort to cross the
Jordan twice so they could walk around Samaria instead of walking through
Samaria. The Jews despised the
Samaritans so much that they didn’t even want to travel through the country of
Samaria.
The second problem was that the Samaritan was a
woman. There were some cultures around
the Mediterranean basin that pretty much treated women as equals, but the
Jewish and Samaritan cultures were not among them. There were strict rules about the interaction
between men and women. Basically, a
woman was not supposed to interact with an adult male without the protection of
a male relative … a father, husband, adult son, big brother, or similar
relative. A solitary woman at the town
well was a scandal waiting to happen.
Thirdly, this woman had a history. She had been through multiple marriages and
was currently living with her boyfriend.
She was guilty of adultery.
So, if we total everything up, Jesus had three very
excellent reasons not to talk with this woman.
No one would blame Him. Everyone
would understand. As far as the culture
was concerned, this woman was a scraping from the bottom of the barrel. Note
that it was the culture that placed Nicodemus at the top of the heap and the
Samaritan woman at the bottom of the barrel.
God’s judgment has a different
standard … His holy, righteous law.
According to that law, we are all the same. Jesus said, [Matthew 15:19] “For out of the heart come evil thoughts,
murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.” The Holy Spirit inspired the Apostle Paul to
write, [Romans 3:23] “All have
sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Moses recorded the Lord’s thoughts after Noah’s Flood, [Genesis 8:21] “The intention of
man’s heart is evil from his youth.”
These verses and many others teach us that God’s law judges us all and
finds that, according to God’s law, we are all scrapings from the bottom of the
barrel.
In our worship services, we confess our sins to
Almighty God. In different variations we
confess: Most merciful God, we confess
that we are by nature sinful and unclean.
We have sinned against You in thought, word and deed, by what we have
done and by what we have left undone. We
have not loved You with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbours as
ourselves. We justly deserve Your
present and eternal punishment. We
tell God that we are the scrapings from the bottom of the barrel because our
sin corrupts us. We tell God that we
deserve the scrap heap of eternal punishment.
The fact that Jesus shared the Gospel with this woman
teaches us that Jesus came to save the scrapings from the bottom of the
barrel. Jesus transcended the cultural
barriers between Him and the woman in a very simple way. He asked for a drink of water. Then He talked about the work of the Holy
Spirit in the life of the Christian by comparing it to living water … a
bubbling spring that continually brings healthy water to the surface. Last week, Jesus had told Nicodemus that He
must be born of water and the Spirit.
Now this week, He is the source of living water – water that will become a spring of water welling up to
eternal life. The woman was intrigued and that is when Jesus began to work
on her with the law.
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” This was a
reasonable request. As I said before,
men did not normally interact with women outside of their family. Instead, a man normally went through another
man who was closely related to the woman – a husband, father, adult son, or
some other close relative. In this case,
however, this ordinary request began a process that would cause the woman to
confront her guilt. She had no husband.
Then Jesus laid her sins out before her. He said
to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five
husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is
true.” Jesus laid out this woman’s
lifestyle of adultery – a sin that was punishable by death. Even though today’s culture would celebrate this woman’s life style choices,
adultery still is a sin – a sin that earns eternal punishment under God’s Law.
It may seem that God is cruel when He forces us to
face our sin, but that is not the case.
This is actually part of the love that God has for us. As the Holy Spirit shows our sin to us, He
shows us that we cannot save ourselves.
He shows us that we must receive our salvation from outside of
ourselves. He shows us our need for a saviour. This reality check with the law prepares us
for the living water of the Gospel.
You see, once the Law has softened our hearts, the
Holy Spirit uses the living water of the Gospel to show our Saviour to us. Notice how Jesus brought the Gospel to the
woman. The woman said to [Jesus],
“I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he
will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.” The same Jesus who presented this woman with
her sin now shows her the salvation from that sin. Jesus is the Gospel in the flesh. He is the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed
one. He is the saviour from all our
sins.
The Holy Spirit used these words to work faith in this
woman. It was just as Jesus had
said. She became a spring of living
water. The living water of the Gospel
quickly became a fountain in this woman.
The woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the
people, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the
Christ?” The living water produced
an instant missionary.
Think about the woman’s message. A man who tells her about all she did is
telling her about all her sin. In
response, she went to all the people who know her and her reputation and told
them, “Come, see a man who told me about my reputation as a sinful woman.” She confessed her sin to the people and
invited them to see the man who knew all about those sins … and the Holy Spirit
used her confession. He worked the
miracle of faith in this town. This
miracle caused a Samaritan town to invite a Jewish rabbi to teach them for two days.
Eventually, the
people of this town confessed, “We know that this is indeed the Saviour of
the world.” These people only had
the books of Moses, but that was enough.
They knew that this was the Seed of the Woman that God had promised to
Adam and Eve in the Garden. They knew
that this was the offspring of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob through whom all the
nations of the world would be blessed.
They knew this was the fulfilment of all the sacrifices required by the
Law of Moses. They knew that this was
God’s sacrifice who would give up His life for the sins of the world. Because Jesus lovingly hammered a Samaritan
woman with the law, a Samaritan
village came to the knowledge of God’s salvation through the teaching of a Jewish rabbi – a Jewish rabbi who is
their saviour.
The Bible’s main message is that God saves the
scrapings from the bottom of the barrel.
In order to do this, the Son of God took on human flesh, lived a perfect
life under the law, and died on the cross.
He did this to save sinners … the scrapings from the bottom of the
barrel. Only sinners qualify for this
salvation. That is the reason that it is
an act of love for us to remind each other that we all qualify for that
salvation, for we are all sinners.
When flight attendants give instructions for
emergencies at the beginning of a flight, they tell the passengers to place the
oxygen mask on themselves first and then on the people around them. In a similar way, when Jesus tells the church
to proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sins in His name, we need to
proclaim it to ourselves first. We need
to begin with our own evil self and the forgiveness that Jesus has for us. Only then can we proclaim that message to
others. It is only when the church
proclaims that message to herself first that she can go on to proclaim it to
the world.
Our message to the world is not that Christians are
better than anyone else, but that Christians are in the process of becoming
honest about our sin. It is only as we
see our true depravity in the law that we begin to see the love that God has for
us in that [Romans 5:8] God
shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Through that death we receive forgiveness of
sins, life, and salvation, for where there is forgiveness of sins there is also
life and salvation. Amen
The love and peace of our Great Triune God that is
beyond all human understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Amen
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