The Woman at the Well

A Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent (Year A)
March 12, 2023

Text: John 4:5-42

Now, O Lord, take my lips, and speak through them. Take our minds, and think through them. Take our hearts, and set them on fire. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Last week, I—along with a few of our members from St. Mary’s—traveled down south to Pensacola for the 52nd annual convention of the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast.

Now, if you’re unfamiliar with what this means, our diocese gathers once a year to conduct the business of the church. It’s something we’re required to do, but it’s also something we enjoy doing because when we come together, it really feels like one, big family reunion.

I had such a great time getting to spend time with old friends and meeting new people. It was great to spend time with one another and to worship together.

This year’s convention theme was “This is my story, this is my song.”

We reflected on the story of Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus, which we heard last week in our Gospel lesson from John. We talked about how stories are important— the way we make meaning of our lives, and we shared parts of our life story with other people at our tables. We also reflected on moments in our lives when we felt the Holy Spirit moving in our lives and in the life of our parishes.

One of the highlights of the convention for me was hearing a remarkable presentation from a woman named Becca Stevens. Becca is an Episcopal priest and the founder and president of an organization called Thistle Farms, which was created back in the mid-nineties to serve as a ministry for women survivors of abuse, trafficking, and prostitution. The mission of Thistle Farms is to create a safe space where abused and neglected women can come to be healed and then carry that light with them out into the world.

One of the ways people know about Thistle Farms is because of the products they make to support their ministry—things like candles, soap, and essential oils—all things to promote health and healing.

Keeping with the theme of the convention, during her presentation, Becca shared with us a story about a woman named Ty. The way Becca tells the story, Ty was the victim of abuse from a very young age, which eventually led to trafficking and prostitution. One day, she was arrested and charged with multiple felonies and sent away to prison for several years.

After she got out of prison, she went to Thistle Farms and began the long road to recovery. While she was there, she learned how to make candles, which according to Becca, is a big deal because that is their trademark product. After about a year and a half at Thistle Farms, she had to go back to court because she had one more pending charge against her, and despite the glowing testimony from the people at Thistle Farms, the judge said she had to serve fourteen more years in prison.

So, she went back to prison, and thanks to the efforts of the people at Thistle Farms and lawyers who worked for Ty, she only had to serve an additional three years.

Here’s the most incredible part of Becca’s story.

The very next day, after Ty was released, she came back to Thistle Farms and started making candles again. Becca asked her, “How are you doing it?” “How aren’t you so mad?” “How can you come back here and continue on?”

She said, “I need this as much as anybody.” “I need community.” “And you guys didn’t abandon me, and I’m not going to abandon you.”

Today, Ty serves as the Director of Manufacturing for Thistle Farms.

The love that was once shown toward her in her most desperate time of need is the same love she’s now sharing with others in their time of need.

That’s what happens when we encounter the love of God in Christ Jesus—a love that is merciful and full of compassion. It heals us and makes us whole, and it prepares us to be a source of love for others.

I wanted to share that story with you today because I see a lot of Ty’s story in the story of the Samaritan woman in our Gospel lesson for today and her encounter with Jesus.

Now, before we can talk about the significance of the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, we have to take a look at the cultural context.

First, if we back up a few verses—to the very beginning of the fourth chapter of John—we learn that, soon after Jesus’ interaction with Nicodemus in Jerusalem, some of the other Pharisees get word that Jesus is baptizing more disciples than John the Baptist (although the author of John writes that it wasn’t actually Jesus; it was his disciples).

Jesus decides it’s time to get out of town to avoid any conflict. So, he plans to head back home to Galilee.

And the author of John’s Gospel writes, “But he had to go through Samaria.”

Now…if you look at a map of first century Palestine, you can easily see that Jesus didn’t have to go through Samaria to get back home. Yes, it was the most straightforward route, but he didn’t have to physically go through Samaria.

He chose to go through Samaria—through the land of the Samaritans—a group of people who were despised by the Jews. For Jesus and his disciples, this was like traveling through enemy territory. The Jews hated the Samaritans, and likewise, the Samaritans hated the Jews.

Rather than taking the longer but safer route around Samaria, Jesus went straight through it. And when he arrived at a Samaritan city called Sychar, he stopped to rest by a well in the blistering heat of the noon sun.

Normally, no one else would be around the well to get water at that time of day. Most people came to the well in the early morning or evening, before or after the sweltering heat of the day.

But, while he’s resting there, he sees a woman of Samaria come to the well to draw water, and he says to her, “Give me a drink.”

The woman is shocked by Jesus’ words. Jews didn’t speak to Samaritans, and even more than that, men didn’t speak to women in public.

The request Jesus makes by asking the Samaritan woman to give him a drink might not sound like a big deal to us in our own time. But, in the time of Jesus, it would’ve been considered highly inappropriate.

But, that doesn’t stop Jesus.

What follows is a long exchange between Jesus and the woman at the well—the longest conversation that Jesus has with a single person in all four Gospels.

To me, this seems to suggest that this is a very important story—one that we should pay close attention to—and one that was probably very important to the earliest Christian communities, including the first audience of John’s Gospel.

There are so many layers to this Gospel text that we could focus on.

 But, the part I want us to focus on today comes at the very end of the story.

Astonished by everything Jesus has said—astonished that Jesus would show compassion and take the time to speak with her, a Samaritan woman who has likely been outcast from the rest of the community given her history of five previous marriages—the woman goes and tells other Samaritans what she has seen and heard.

The author of John writes that many Samaritans from the city come to Jesus and believe in him because of the woman’s testimony. They ask him to stay longer, and he ends up staying two more days. And other Samaritans come who believe in Jesus—not because of the woman’s testimony—but because of what they’ve seen and heard themselves.

They tell 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 truly the Savior of the world.”

Because of Jesus’ willingness to go where others don’t want to go—because of his willingness to cross boundaries that others aren’t willing to cross—he shows us what it means to love others as God would have us love. He shows us that true love—in the fullest sense of the word—means being willing to “let go and let God.”

What that means is being willing to let go of our own selfish need for control and those barriers in our lives that prevent us from loving more fully and allowing the love of God to flow through us.

The Samaritan woman in our Gospel lesson for today represents that person or that group of people in our lives that we would rather take long way around to avoid.

She represents that person or group of people who we would rather forget even existed.

This is an important lesson for all of us because we all have those groups of people in our lives, don’t we? Those groups we despise, or reject, or think less of.

Maybe it’s people who look different than we do or act differently.

Maybe it’s people who practice a different religion or speak a different language.

Maybe it’s those who have less money than we do or those who live in the poor parts of town.

Maybe it’s those who are less educated than we are.

Or, maybe it’s people like Ty—who, on the outside might seem like a helpless cause, but who are actually waiting for someone to show them a little bit of love so they can begin to heal.

Those are dividing walls we create for ourselves.

They’re not God’s walls. They’re ours.

And with God’s help, we can work to tear them down.

Because the truth, dear friends, is there’s not a single person in this world we can look at and see someone who isn’t loved by God.

The story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well teaches us that there’s no where Jesus isn’t willing to go—nothing Jesus isn’t willing to do—in order to show others—and us—the magnitude of God’s love. This truth will come into sharper focus in just a few short weeks as we come to the beginning of Holy Week and our journey with Jesus to the cross.

God loves each of us more than we can possibly imagine.

But God’s love isn’t ours to keep for ourselves.

It’s ours to share so that others may come to know the love of God in Christ Jesus at work in their own lives. Amen.