Denice K. Leslie
February 27, 2005
Third Sunday in Lent Year A
John 4: 4 – 42

“In the First Person: The Woman at the Well”

	I came everyday at this hour. The sun is high overhead and no one is around. It’s true. I waited until the noon of the day to avoid the other women of the village who came to the well to draw water in the cool of the morning. They shunned me or pitied me. Either way they would have nothing to do with me and I had stopped grieving that. As if I had any control over what they did. What have I ever been able to control in my life? I am surely the incarnation of my people’s heritage. For I am a Samaritan. 
	We Samaritan’s have lived here far longer than the Israelites of my day. In spite of what your 21st historians may tell you, the fact is WE were always here. WE were Israel. THEY are Judah. Or Judea as the Roman’s say. The north and the south had always distrusted one another. We each had our own elders and our own covenant of Moses renewal traditions. We distrusted the idea of a king. We had never had any King but God. We didn’t need David. We had our own places of worship LONG before David became King.
	 Mt. Gerazim is where we worshipped and still do. It was David who tried to suppress our tribal ways. He succeeded more in the South. After all he comes from the South. He chose Jerusalem, a southern city for the capitol of the new nation. As the first king of Israel he consolidated the Northern Tribes and the Southern Tribes into the Kingdom of Israel. 
	But we in the north were always on the edge of total rebellion. Only because David promised the Northern Elders that he would under no circumstances build a temple in Jerusalem was there peace. It was his son Solomon who broke that promise. And after the nation split in two, it wasn’t too many kings later until the Babylonians and then the Assyrians invaded and took the ruling classes into Exile.
	The people who were carted off were the top level of society—a mere 27,000. And mostly from Jerusalem while the majority of the population—the vast majority of landowners—especially in the north—we were left undisturbed. For a while anyway.
	When the exiles began returning some mere 55 years later—the first among the returnees to come back over the next 400 some years the tension began to build as they kept themselves separated from us—they considered us unclean—they looked down their noses at us and their ways of worship had grown different from ours. Then when Ezra and Nehemiah arrived with a whole new group and attempted to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and rebuild the Jerusalem temple we rose up against them! 
	It didn’t last long. This land has had one occupier after another and while the first exiles were away we too were victims of oppression. We fought the invaders as best we could of course but eventually they took many of us into exile as well and sent colonists from their homelands to colonize us. 
	It is true—our religion, our traditions, our culture became polluted—very nearly lost. Unlike the returnees we had not learned the ways of preventing assimilation –we had not learned the ways necessary for preserving the purity of our faith. 
	We were under constant threat and we learned more expedient ways to live with what came our way. It was a matter of survival. It was under these circumstances that I was sold. Yes! My father traded me to a colonist in return for his holding on to my family’s land. I was 14. It didn’t last long. By the time my foreign master, an aged man, was dead, so was my family. I was then married to the brother of my master as his second wife. But I bore him no children. He died of sickness. As wives we were passed to the next brother. It’s called leaverite marriage. I think you get the picture! 
	Now the last man of this family—can you believe I have outlived all of the others? The last man of this family, he is the step son of the last brother to die and he refuses to marry me. I am permitted to remain as a part of his household—where else would I go? How would I survive? I see the disgust in people’s eyes. I know my place. I am now not only a soiled woman, I am among the walking dead. Completely expendable. Another mouth to feed. And so I am. Living with shame I keep to myself….and my day dreams. 
 	It is one of my jobs to haul water for the household. In the heat of the day as I wend my way down the hillside to the well, I can see it for a mile before I get there. I focus on it as I walk and I let my day dreams take over. I see myself as Rachael coming to water my father’s flocks at the well. I am an innocent, beautiful young woman once more. 
	As I approach the well in the distance there is a handsome stranger—Jacob—(Of course! ) who, on seeing me asks me for a drink. I quickly offer him my water jar and …before I know it he has swooped me up into his arms and kisses me saying, “I am the son of your mother’s sister! I am your kin… and I want you for my beloved wife!” I thrill at the thought. My heart swoons and the joy of the imaginary moment carries me all the way to Jacob’s well. 
	The daily drudgery is thus dulled. Because of course on the return trip I am running back to my family to make preparations for his coming! My bridegroom! My beloved! I will not only marry well and be loved, but I will have a place in history! I will be the mother of Joseph—the one son who saves the tribes of Israel from famine, I will have a part in saving the promise of the God of Jacob! 
	 Isaac’s servant found his wife Rachael at a well just like this! Wells are hope filled places! Romantic places--places of new beginnings. Do you have such romantic gathering places in your century? Places where you go to be refreshed and meet socially? What’s that you say? Night clubs, school dances, bars, spas, Starbucks and churches??? Weird. I don’t mean to be rude but I’ll need to sort that out later. 
	Actually, wells are not only romantic places—I mean it’s the water in them that’s important. You remember the story of the prophet Elijah? How he was instructed by God to leave Israel and go to an Edomite widow during a famine? He waited for her to draw water and then he said, “Give me some water from your jar to drink.” And when the widow did so he went home with her and healed her only child, a son. Yes, wells and water are also symbols for my people of healing and well-being. What woman in my culture has any well being without a son! I cried whenever I heard this story! How I wished I were that woman!
	As I was saying, I came to the well at noon time and I enjoyed being left to my own thoughts…but this one day as I was making my way down the hill to the well there WAS a man sitting there on the well stone. What was he doing there? He was obviously a stranger. 
	As a virtual household slave I was sent on errands in the village daily so I knew everyone on sight—whether they acknowledged me or not. I needed no male sheltering as I was already considered an outsider, unclean, and no one would voluntarily give me a moments notice other than whatever discourse was necessary to transact the task assigned to me. So I knew this man was not from the village. 
	First I was fearful. Then I laughed! What had I to fear I hadn’t already experienced? Death might be a good friend! Then I was angry. I resented this intrusion into MY space! Perhaps he didn’t see me. He looked to be napping. I decided to make as much noise as I could. I began to sing! And I shuffled and kicked rocks and dust up. He looked up and he didn’t budge. How rude! Why doesn’t the man move off!! 
	This is a pubic place and I am a woman. Men and women do not mix in public unless they are family. He is sitting so close to the well lip. With the sun blazing overhead you would think he would seek some shade somewhere. You had a saying about a century ago, “Only the British and dumb animals stand out in the noon day sun!” Well, he obviously wasn’t British! And I already knew how stupid I was. So I told myself with some bravado, “What do I really care!”
 By now I was at the well. I hoisted my water jar into my arms and sought the rope of the well to secure the handles. That’s when he said those words I had said in my day dreams so many times before, “Give me a drink.” Only this was no day dream. Reality is far different from fantasy. I was stunned. 
	For a moment I thought he might be mentally off. His manner of dress told me he was a Jew. No Jew in his right mind would ask an enemy, let alone a WOMAN for anything. It’s a well known Jewish maxim: “He that talks to a woman brings evil upon himself….”I finally found my tongue and said as much. He said, “Woman, if you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you give me a drink, YOU would be asking HIM –and he would give you LIVING WATER.”
	“Running water?” I was almost convinced that he was off his nut. There were no streams of water around here and the well was very, very deep with no streams leading into it that I knew of. So I thought I will humor him and get out of here as quickly as I can. I lowered my jar into the well as if nothing was a miss and said saucily, ‘Mister, I don’t see that YOU have a bucket. So just how are you going to get any water out of this deep well? Are you going to cause a stream to flow here? Jacob gave us this well where he and his flocks drank—are you implying you’re greater than the prophet Jacob?”
	He laughed and said, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life!” 
	His quick response halted me in my task. My jar was about half way down into the well—it was a long way to the water and I knew from experience if I lowered it too quickly it would swing against the sides of the well and hit the baked tiles that covered the walls for the first 15 feet down and shatter. Many shards of broken water jars lay in the bottom of this well. Like my life—broken --shattered. Perhaps this is why I halted at his words. 
 I was feeling that day dream feeling—that too good to be true feeling of desire rise up in spite of my better judgment and I blurted, “Mister, if you can give me this magic water so I NEVER have to come here to draw water again, so I NEVER have to feel thirst again—GIVE IT TO ME!!. RIGHT NOW!” I wasn’t screaming—no I’m sure I wasn’t. He had hit a deep place with in me I thought I had buried. I hated my life, I hated the labor of coming here day after day with no personal reward for my efforts—no family of my own. No man of my own. No household of my own. No life of my own. Why am I alive? This is no life. I thirst for life! I desire so much and I can’t desire anything! It’s so useless. I crave what I can’t have. I learned to stop trying to have anything long ago—years ago. I must make myself numb to such feelings in order to survive!! 
	 I was bending over the lip of the well. It would be so easy just to fall in. The jar was suspended between the lip of the well and the water deep below—I am the jar I thought, empty, and incapable of reaching the water on my own! There were no tears. Of course not. I am dry as dust. Stuck! I hated him for stirring up hope. 
	He said to me, “Go, call your husband and come back.” I said dully, “I have no husband.” He said to me gently, “You are right in saying you have no husband; for you have had five husbands and the one you are with now is not your husband. What you have said is true.” 
	I sat down. How did he know anything about me? Someone must have actually spoken to him about me. Why would any one do that? That didn’t make any sense what so ever. And if anyone had, why would he bother to remember? person. A real This was absurd. Maybe I was the one with the mental problem. Maybe I was losing my mind. 
	Unless … unless he was a prophet! But I have no sick child to save! Only the bewildered child within myself. And Elijah was long dead. And this man is a stranger and a Jew and knew no one here--- It was so far fetched ---- was it possible he was a man of God? Plenty of God’s work was done at wells. I knew that. But not to people like me. Not to non-Jews. Not to Samaritan enemies. And most definitely not to an unclean, Samaritan WOMAN. 
	But a voice inside reminded me, Elijah went to a poor, starving, Edomite widow woman. She was unclean, she was not an Israelite, and she was female! And God sent the prophet to her. Saved her life—her child. If God cared for her, why not me? I had to know more. 
I got to my knees sat on the edge of the well next to him and looked him full in the face. My head covering lay in the dust unnoticed and I said, “If you are a man of God tell me why? I rushed on, “I mean, we Samaritans worship God on this mountain, and you Jews worship God in Jerusalem,” I stammered on, “I don’t really understand what this is about? What has God to do with me, you being a Jew?”
	He did not laugh. I was so grateful. He nodded his head as if what I’d said was not nonsensical gibberish and made perfect sense to him. When he spoke to me it was as if I were a person. An equal. A member of his family. The way a true husband would speak to his wife or a father to a daughter. “….believe me, the worship of God is not about a place—it’s about a relationship with the Living God. We Jews, as the chosen people have been chosen to show the way of salvation through the God of Jacob—you Samaritans no longer know this! The time is coming when true worship of God will be in spirit and in truth—for the Father seeks such as these—such as you to worship him.”
	I was struggling to understand. “I know the Messiah is coming and when he comes he will explain everything to us—that is our hope; and then we will no longer be lost.”
	He put his hand on my shoulder and said to me, “I AM he, the one who is speaking to you.” 
“I AM he…” His words rang in my mind and heart. “I AM he…” “I Am” This is what God said to Moses when Moses asked him, “Who shall I say has sent me?” “I AM.” 
	God? Here? Now? In his presence? I got down in the dust on my knees and bowed my head. I was flooded with a sense of inward joy and peace. A healing enveloped my spirit. The future opened and I felt like a bride. Here at long last was the bridegroom I had so desired! Only this was no fantasy. There was an inner sense of release and assurance that my outward circumstance was no impediment for God. I felt a sense of liberation within my situation. Not that IT had changed. I was still the household, slave—but I had changed. 
	Speaking to him changed me. I knew that to him I was SOMEBODY. I didn’t need the outward status of position or progeny or male protector to make me a full person in my own right. I didn’t need the approval of others. I had the love and approval of God. 
	 I knew then what I needed to do. I left him then. I had to run to the village to prepare others for the bridegrooms coming! I had to share him with others and I did it with a willing heart. I went with my head up and my shoulders straight right into the village square and spoke to everyone I saw. They saw in me a boldness of spirit and the confidence of one who belonged among them. They were astonished at the change that had come over me—no one challenged me—they listened. I told them the truth, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! Can he be the Messiah?” I had nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to hide. The truth is its own proof. People began to speak excitedly saying, “The Messiah?” “The Messiah!” They believed me! Soon a whole group went out to see him for themselves. 
Once they had spoken with him they believed, not on account of my words alone, but because they were as changed by him as I was. He stayed with us in the village for two days and when he had left they told me, “We have heard for ourselves and we know this is the Savior of the world!” 
	The change in me did not immediately change my circumstances. I didn’t expect any change. I simply went about my work with a new spirit. I was different. The whole village was different.	 When my mistress died my master relied on me more and more with the tasks of supervising the household. I was glad to serve him in this way and to know that at long last the desires of my heart were fulfilled –not through this man alone—although he was changed by Jesus as well— but through the Savior of the world. 
	Several months later a member of the village returned to tell us the unbelievable and shocking news of Jesus death! He was crucified. Only traitors and rebels –those who are a threat to the powers that be are killed in this fashion. Our villager had witnessed his death. He told us that among his last words, the Messiah said, “I thirst.” I will never, ever forget those words! Yes! I thought, as tears of grief and thanksgiving ran down my face, I know why! He thirst because he had poured himself out for people like me, people like us Samaritans. People far off from God, marginalized by the powerful: the abused, the forgotten, the beaten down, the socially rejected, the vulnerable and weak. 
	 And just as he thirst for us he thirst for those who put him to death out of fear of what they believed they would lose if he were who he said he was. He died to make the powerless powerful and the powerful care! His body shattered like a water jar—his blood spilled so we—you and me-- could be healed. 

For discussion, email denice@clovismumc.org