“The Well Looks Different: The Samaritan Woman Meets Jesus," Third Sunday of Lent, John 4:5-42

(complete sermon with citations can be found here)

“The Well Looks Different: The Samaritan Woman Meets Jesus”

Year A, Third Sunday of Lent, John 4:5-42

St. Paul Lutheran Church, Arlington, MA

Vicar Samm Melton-Hill

This sermon was prepared for a live-streamed only service at St. Paul Lutheran in Arlington, MA during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the beginning days of the National Emergency prompting self-isolation and social distancing measures throughout the community.

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“May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen.”

Today is a little odd- a bit weird. Obviously, we are not gathering in our usual way. But, instead we join each other from all over, from our homes, our couches, or maybe even our beds. Perhaps you are still wearing your pajamas, a fresh cup of coffee sits next to you and maybe for the first time in a long time, you had a chance to really sleep in. Maybe your cat is snuggled nicely by your feet, or maybe the dog won’t stop barking at you, questioning why you’re not taking him for a walk or giving him more treats. Perhaps, as schools get cancelled your children have been jumping for joy, maybe they have that giddy feeling we remember when we woke up to snow covered streets and a snow day announcement on the tv. But, maybe also that excitement is soon to turn to boredom. Soon, perhaps the isolation of an extended break will start to get the better of them and they will become antsy and agitated. I imagine some of these feelings are already here for you.

I have a jumbled mix of emotions this morning. There is anxiety in the air and of course, I too am feeling it. Yet, there is also logic and science and so we are self-isolating and social distancing in efforts to protect ourselves and the most vulnerable around us. There is a sadness that has come over me as I watch much of the normalcy fade out of my routine. I am grieving the loss of things, both big and small. For example, the Bruins winning season is on pause. We are not gathering for Coffee with the Vicar. I am not allowed to visit with women at the prison or step foot in nursing homes. And we are not sharing a physical space this morning.

I know this may all seem a bit obvious, but it's also important to name these things and these feelings. There is something missing this morning and I am sad that I don’t get to see you here, together, worshipping in this sanctuary. I want to be sitting on the steps sharing smiles and curiosity with the little ones. I want to be passing the peace awkwardly with you as we figure out how to greet each other outside of our normal handshakes. I want to hear your beautiful voices echoing towards me. I want to share a smile as I struggle to break off a piece of bread to give to you for communion.

These things I’ve mentioned, while some of them can be expected, for the most part, they are the unexpected pieces of my Sunday morning that give me the most joy. It is in these unplanned moments that I experience community the fullest. It is in these spontaneous moments that I so often feel the spirit at work. It is my reminder, that even when things are messy, even when mistakes are made, or things don’t go quite like I think they should- Jesus still shows up. And so, even in the uncertainty of today, the weirdness of worshipping together through a computer screen, Jesus still shows up. And one of those places I find Jesus this morning is in our Gospel reading.

It’s a gift of the spirit that the reading for today is the story of the Samaritan woman, or maybe you’ve heard it called the story of the unnamed woman at the well. We believe that it was Karl Barth, a Swiss Reformed theologian has a famous quote that many preachers hold dear to their hearts. He says to “preach with a newspaper in one hand and the Bible in the other.” In other words, the Word is always transforming before us, the Word is always speaking to us in new and innovative ways based on what is happening in the world around us. Now, I don’t think Karl Barth ever thought we would be live-streaming a quote of his over the internet on the Third Sunday of Lent, but I do think he’s onto something. For example, when I read this Gospel story last week, it spoke to me in a different way than it did on Friday. Though, the message is still pretty much the same, I’ve come with a host of different questions.

In John’s Gospel we hear the story of Jesus meeting a Samaritan woman at the well and go on to witness their conversation. It is the longest Gospel reading we will ever have on a Sunday, and it’s the story of an unlikely woman meeting Jesus for the first time. We don’t know a lot about this woman. We know that she is a Gentile, a person that a Jew like Jesus should not be interacting with. We know that she has had five husbands, though we must notice that we don't know why. Many readers of this story assume that the woman’s five husbands were all the result of divorce, but in fact she may be a widow, she may have been forced into many marriages according to laws and customs that viewed her as the property of men. We know that she has had five husbands, but again, we don’t know why.

We also know that she is at the well at noon. Nadia Bolz Weber, a popular Lutheran preacher, focuses on this seemingly small fact. She reminds us that most women would have been retrieving water from the well in the morning, during the coolest part of the day. Often, gathering at the well was also a time of socializing for women, maybe the only time of their day to connect with another and simply chat. But, this woman that Jesus is speaking to, she is here at noon. This is peculiar.

I wonder if this was purposeful for her? I wonder if she was avoiding the morning gathering because the other women weren’t very nice to her. I wonder if something happened that morning that made her day begin late. I wonder if she was disappointed when she sees another person at the well, when maybe she was hoping for some alone time. Like Nadia, I am also drawn to this line of text: “It was about noon,” because it seems as though the writer of the text wanted to be sure that we know this. While we don’t know exactly why this small fact is so important, I believe it is pointing us towards a greater theme of this story. It is helping us to look at the story and see that it isn’t normal. In fact, it’s abnormal and this is why it is so significant. It isn’t like the other stories in the Gospel.

In this story, Jesus isn’t necessarily healing or feeding 10,000, but instead he is asking for help from the woman. He asks for help from her, he asks her to give him a drink of water, and then speaks with her for a long time. In fact, this is the longest conversation recorded between Jesus and any other person in the Bible. Longer than his conversations with his disciples, longer than his conversation with other religious leaders, even longer than most of his sermons. Jesus invested an incredible amount of time as he speaks with the Samaritan woman.

This helps us to see Jesus in a different way. He is reminding us that encounters with the divine may look different than we expect them to.

The imagery of water and the well should remind us of our baptism. The theme of water, is evident in all of our readings today. I wonder if God is calling us to look at our baptisms, our baptismal promises to ourselves and to others a bit differently this week. In this time of reflection during the season of Lent, we are offered an opportunity to look at our baptismal promises in a different light. Reading this story reminds me of a baptism that took place at the hospital I was a chaplain at.

Just after my second year of seminary, I found myself completing an internship as a Chaplain Intern at a hospital across the country. All Lutheran pastors are required to complete an internship in hospital chaplaincy, which I am immensely grateful for. So, I’m as green as they come. I’ve only been at this hospital and in this city for about seven days and suddenly, I find myself standing in the basement of the hospital as a very experienced and incredible chaplain hands me a pager that I didn’t even know how to work and a post-it note with a room number on it. And then, he left.

I am now the only chaplain available in this hospital until 8am and I can assure you, I did not feel like this was a good idea at the time. I have no idea what I’m doing, or at least I don’t think I do. And I don’t even know how to get to the room number written on this post-it note. So, I find a map and navigate my way to the neonatal intensive care unit, or the NICU, where premature infants and very sick infants stay while they are here in the hospital. If you’ve never been to a NICU unit before, it can be an intimidating place. There are a lot of parents struggling with the uncertainty of what comes next for their new child. And often, babies are hooked up to a number of machines or are in an incubator, a large clear glass bubble that helps them breathe and keep them safe.

So, I’m intimidated already, usually when a chaplain is called here late in the night, it isn’t for a good reason and so I think I have an idea of what I am walking into. I find the room and slowly walk in and I am met with the teary eyes of at least a dozen people. I was not trained for this scenario in case you are wondering, this was not in the handbook. And the nurse gestures to me and tells the crowd of people that “this is the chaplain… and she is here to do the baptism tonight.”

My internal reaction was immediate panic. One, I know I’m the chaplain tonight, but shouldn’t like a real chaplain be doing this? Two, I’ve never done a baptism before. And three, why are there so many people here to witness my first solo visit as a chaplain.

As the next couple of minutes go on, I learn more about the family and the child. I learn that it isn’t clear if the child will make it through the night, but it is important to the family that he is baptized should he pass away. So, the whole family from across the state drove in to be part of this ritual. As we talk, my panic slowly turns to peace and compassion. As I am about to step out of the room and gather the materials for the ceremony, the grandfather pulls me aside and asks me “is this like a legit baptism?” I ask why he asks this and he goes on to explain that he is a devout Catholic and he’s nervous about having a protestant do a baptism and especially doing it outside of a church. His questions remind me of how abnormal this situation is. Not many people have to decide if their newborn grandchild should be baptized in an emergency situation, in the dark room of a hospital. This is not what baptisms usually look like.

The baptism that would follow this conversation was like nothing I’ve ever experienced since. A nurse handed me a bottle of sterile water, a sterilized seashell for the water, and whispered in my ear that I’m not allowed to touch the child, because he is simply too sick. Again, this is not what a baptism looks like. A silence came over the room and we went on to baptize this beautiful child, tears continued to fall as I poured the sterilized water over the clear bubble of the incubator and said the same words we use here at St. Paul: ““You belong to Christ, in whom you have been baptized. Alleluia”

This experience has been one I’ve held deeply for many years. I don’t often share it because it's sad. There is a lot of suffering and sadness in this story that feels intimate and private to those of us that were huddled in that room. But, this week, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. As I read the story of the Samaritan woman over and over, I felt myself feeling what she was feeling. She too, went from anxiety and questioning, to amazement and adoration, to peace and thanksgiving. For me, this was my experience of seeing Jesus differently. I know I’m not the only one to have a holy experience like this, I imagine many of you could share similar moments of divine interaction in your own lives. And I want to know what these are. I want to hear how you experience Jesus. Maybe, it’s in a somewhat expected way, through worship on Sunday mornings, or a Lenten practice, or through your interactions with one another. But, maybe it’s in an unexpected way. Maybe, just like the Samaritan woman, it was something you didn’t plan for.

This week, as the world rapidly changes around us, as our routines slowly transition, as anxiety continues to rise along with fear, and as many of us socially distance ourselves, I invite you to look for Jesus in the places you wouldn’t normally look. I invite you to simply let things be abnormal and Jesus will show up.

Usually we find ourselves affirming our baptism on certain Sundays during the year, but the Word today seems to be asking us to take a look at them again and wonder how they may sound different today. I end with the question outlined in our Affirmation of Baptism Liturgy:

“You have made a public profession of your faith. Do you intend to continue in the covenant God made with you in holy baptism:

to hear the word of God and share in the Lord’s supper,

to proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed,

to serve all people, following the example of Jesus, and

to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.”

Amen.

Cover Image: Jorge Cocco. "Jesus and the Samaritan Woman"