Sunday, February 2, 2014

The woman at the well: Sinner, saint and model of faith

Scripture: John 4:1-42

            There is this great correlation in John’s Gospel that we miss if we’re not reading the stories back-to-back. Thankfully, we are. Last week we heard from Nicodemus (well, those who came to church against the advice of the sheriff’s office heard about Nicodemus), and this week we get the woman at the well. It might not be immediately obvious what these two stories have to do with each other, and if you didn't read them one after another I suspect there would be little reason to see any similarities whatsoever, but because they follow one another several similarities and differences emerge. In fact, the two stories may well have been set up to compare and contrast.
            When Nicodemus comes to Jesus he does so at night. When the unnamed woman comes to the well it is at noon, in the middle of the day. They both come with questions: Nicodemus about being born a second time and the woman about living water and the one who gives it. One (Nicodemus) intentionally seeks Jesus out, while the other seems to chance upon him while about her chores. But the real contrast is in their response (or lack thereof). After asking his questions, Nicodemus disappears from the story entirely (like the Vikings on Super Bowl Sunday). John gives the sense that this is all about Jesus' explanations and Nicodemus serves no further purpose. On the other hand, the woman prods further, questions more, and wonders aloud about who Jesus really is before finally running off to tell everyone about the man who may be the Messiah. While Nicodemus came at night as a sign of doubt, the unnamed woman comes by day and shows her faith—even in a Jew with whom Samaritans generally would not interact.
            The faith of the woman can be hard to see in part because we have all sorts of baggage about women in the Bible. We get hung up on the stuff about the woman’s five husbands and make assumptions about what led to that situation. None of which is really pertinent to the story, except to show firstly that Jesus knows this woman before ever meeting her, and secondly, that there is some kind of brokenness at work here—whether it’s the woman’s fault or not is completely unknowable and, frankly, beside the point. We tend to bring to scripture all of our insecurities, and our insecurities also happen to distract us from what scripture is saying. In this case, if you bring to this passage a concern about sexual immorality you might miss all the ways that this woman is a model of faith. Conversely, if you bring to this passage a concern for justice and an assumption that this woman has been abused you might miss the power of the woman’s confession.
            Whatever you bring to this story you will find, but it will not give you truth, because it will distract you from Jesus. What is truth in John’s Gospel? Jesus. Anything that distracts from Jesus will lead away from what is true. The woman doesn’t bring the same kinds of assumptions that we do. When she sees a Jewish man at the well she does not assume his motivation (which, if you’ve read the Bible, would most likely be marriage, since every other story in the Bible of a man and woman meeting at a well ends in marriage). Instead of making assumptions, she asks a question without anticipating an answer. Then, in response to Jesus she uses the words “I see”--words often repeated in the Gospel of John as a mark of faith. Finally, when she receives the good news that she has met the Messiah she leaves her water jug behind, showing that, unlike Nicodemus, she understands the difference between earthly things and heavenly things (in her case, between living water and normal water), and she returns to tell her people all about it.
            If we bring our assumptions to this story we will inevitably miss the fact that the woman at the well is giving us a concise model for how to live a life of faith. More than Nicodemus, she is the person we should be striving to emulate. She questions, she listens, she asks for living water, she confesses, she professes her faith, and then she goes out into the world, leaving her work behind, in order to spread the good news. And she does all of this by the light of day, not ashamed for who she is or the unbelievable nature of what she is saying.
            Generally, it’s easy to lift up characters from the Bible as paragons of virtue because they tend to be one-dimensional. We might have a hard time imagining Moses changing a diaper, or Peter staying out too late with the guys, or Mary getting into trouble when she was in school (of course, none of these are things I can relate to, but some of you might). All we really have of most biblical characters is a one-dimensional account of the most faithful or faithless moments of their lives. Meanwhile, most of our lives are spent somewhere between the highest mountains and the lowest valleys, making it hard for us to see in ourselves Moses or David or Ruth or Mary.
            But this is why I find the woman who meets Jesus at the well so fantastic. Here we have a woman who is simultaneously sinner and saint, and I can say this with some certainty not because of her implied sexual ethics (we just don’t know much about that), but because this woman has experienced a broken world and her life has not been all roses. But rather than trying to justify her life experience in spite of that brokenness, she comes to the well looking for a Savior who will take her warts and all. But here’s what I just love: she doesn’t come either downtrodden or full of pride. Instead, she comes with a hint of wonder, her questions barely masking her curiosity. Here is a woman who was marked by sin but not defined by it. In all her humanity with all its imperfection she is still able to revel in the presence of God.
            We are all sinners and saints; we all stand exactly in this woman’s shoes. Exactly. There is no difference. More than that, we have all sinned ourselves even as others have sinned against us. Too often we think of sin only as bad things that we do, but for the woman it was as much her participation in a broken world over which she had no control. When we shift our thinking of sin from individual actions to the reality that the world is full of brokenness, then we can start to see that sin is not just stealing or committing adultery; sin is also cancer and car accidents and hurricanes and tornadoes—not because there is malevolent purpose in any of these but rather because there is no constructive purpose to them at all. To admit that you are broken is not only admitting that you occasionally mess up; it’s also admitting that there are things beyond your control that you cannot fix.
            Jesus knows the woman at the well in her brokenness, but she is not defined by it. That she realizes she is not perfect only strengthens her faith, because that twinkle of wonder that lies just behind every word she has said bursts out finally in the proclamation she brings to her people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” That is a beautifully-worded, stunningly-honest confession of faith. Even laced with uncertainty, there is a child-like wonder in these words: a faith that sin cannot quell.
            This is all of us at our best. We might confess our biblical heroes to be people like Paul or Moses or Ruth or Esther, and all of these are larger-than-life characters whose stories we know in part. But the woman at the well is different, because the uncertainty of her past and the lack of a name means that any of us could be this woman. We might feel like we aren’t good enough; like a Samaritan caught between two different worlds—a half-breed of sorts. And that’s because we are, but not half-bred: we are 100% sinner, 100% saint; caught between the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of God. That was Martin Luther’s giant contribution to our faith: you are entirely sinful and entirely redeemed, which means firstly that you are not so great, but secondly, it means that to Jesus you most certainly are. It also means that none of us can place ourselves any higher on the spiritual ladder than anyone else. The great leveling that Jesus talks about again and again in the gospels—where the valleys will be raised and the mountains lowered—has already happened in God’s kingdom. All of us are fully sinful and worthy of condemnation and fully saint, worthy of redemption.
The question is not who we are, or what we’ve done wrong, or what wrong has been done to us. Instead, the question is whether we go to Jesus by the light of day or by the darkness of night; whether we ask questions with hearts open to the answers; whether we confess the truth that we cannot be the person we want to be, that we cannot treat our neighbors as we would treat ourselves, and that we will always put ourselves before God. The question is whether we ask for God’s forgiveness, and, finally, the question is whether we go from there out into the world and spread the good news.
            The questions are the same questions that the woman faced, because the woman is you and me. Sinner-saint. In this world but not of it. Torn. But full of wonder and hope for what may yet be. That is the model for our Christian faith; just a woman coming to get water.

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