I love the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well — I only wish that the author of the gospel had told us the name of the woman … 

 Water and Witness

Psalm 95  John 4:5-42 

From time to time I sit in my office across from a person who has come to ask me a particular kind of question. The exact wording may vary, but the request is the same: Prove it! Prove that God exists. Prove that God is benevolent. Prove that God loves me. Prove it.

I am always somewhat at a loss when this request is made.

My own spiritual journey did not cross through this territory. Somehow I have always had an awareness of God, and never agonized with these particular questions. God has always been a real presence for me, and my own story is about learning to listen to that presence, to discern the call in that voice, and to follow.

More importantly, though, I do not know what kind of answer my questioners really want. Some, I suppose, are looking for miracles: for improbable events that cannot be accounted for in any way but by God’s direct action. Some are looking for scientific proof, perhaps archeological evidence that verifies the accuracy of the Bible’s account of the history of Israel. Some are looking for logical propositions that will convince them intellectually that God exists. Most, I suspect, are just looking for anything that will act as a sign for them, a sign of God’s presence and a hint of God’s nature. They are, I believe, thirsting after the Divine.

These seekers are brothers and sisters to the unnamed woman of Samaria whose story we have just heard. She, too, is looking for something. She, too, is thirsting for something more profound and lasting than the water to be found in Jacob’s well. What did she find at the well that convinced her that Jesus was the Messiah, the anointed one of God? What sent her back into the city, without her water jar, to share her revelation with the people of the city?

Jesus told her the truth about her life. That was the sign that meant so much to her. I do not think she was transformed by the idea that Jesus knew the circumstances of her having five husbands. It is worth noticing, in fact, that the gospel writer does not tell us what those circumstances were (the common assumption that she was a sinner is actually not spelled out in the text). The woman was not convinced that Jesus was the Messiah because he knew the tabloid reports of her life – she was convinced by the sense that he knew her.

What she says is, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet.” [John 4:19] That’s a fascinating comment, because we think of the Hebrew prophets as the voices that spoke the truth that was hidden in plain sight – the truth about corrupt leaders, about misplaced priorities, and about the unfaithfulness of the people. Our United Church of Christ cherishes that prophetic tradition, but most of the time we limit our attention to the prophetic voice that tells the truth about public, corporate life. There is also, I believe, a prophetic voice that tells the truth about our personal, individual lives. The sense of being know is the sense of encountering that personal, prophetic presence.

This experience of being truly and deeply known is a remarkable one. It is like having a spiritual mirror held up for you. What you see in yourself is not exactly unfamiliar, but it is nonetheless surprising.

remember a poem I wrote down in my song notebook when I was a teenager:

I love you for putting your hand into my heaped-up heart

and passing over all the foolish, weak things

you can’t help dimly seeing there,

and for drawing out into the light all the beautiful belongings

that no one else had looked quite far enough to find.

But there was more to Jesus knowing the Samaritan woman than simply recognizing her inner beauty or her essential humanity. He offered her living water first. The conversation that began with his request for a drink quickly turned towards the gift of “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life,” and to her request for this water. [John 4:14] Only then did Jesus make the curious request that she go call her husband. The gift came first.

You see, I believe that the woman’s astonishment about being known was not only that Jesus could see into her life, but that Jesus could see into her life and offer her the blessing of living water, the promise of eternal life. Whether her five husbands were the result of promiscuity, repeated widowhood, or barrenness, made no difference in the offer of living water. She was known and blessed, and the blessing came first.

The blessing would come first, too, in the beloved words we know as the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the poor …“ and so forth. There are some harsh words later in that teaching, but the benediction came first. Jesus fed the disciples before he sent them out to preach, teach, and heal the sick; he even fed them first in his post-Resurrection appearance to them along the sea of Galilee.

What we sometimes fail to see is that this pattern – blessing first – is at the very heart of the gospel. I remember exactly when I learned this explicitly: it was in a Bible study group in the pastor’s office at my church in Seattle. I do not remember how the subject came up, but here’s what Phil Eisenhauer said, “We do not do good works so that God will love us, we do them because God already loves us.” [repeat?]

That is what the Samaritan woman learned, and that is what she hurried back into the city to tell her friends – we know she hurried because she left her water jar behind! And we know she told her friends, because they comment on it at the end of this story.

Our ancient sister teaches us another lesson here: No faith story is complete until it is shared. Our faith journeys are made up of both inner work and outer work, both looking into the spiritual mirror of our own lives and sharing what we have learned there. It is worth noticing that she made only a tentative declaration of her faith to begin with: “He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” [John 4:29] You don’t need to have written your own personal comprehensive theology to begin talking with other people about your experiences. You only need the conviction that faith grows in community, and the willingness to be part of such a community.

Last week, a small group from our community met together and shared our own stories, held up the spiritual mirror to ourselves and spoke aloud what we had seen there. The Board of Deacons began their annual retreat by taking time to hear one another, without hurrying and without any agenda except respectful and reverent listening. The first person who spoke set the tone by sharing real and important events in her life, and the rest of us followed her lead. It was a holy time, deeply moving. I have no doubt that the work of the deacons for the coming year will be profoundly shaped by that time of spiritual conversation.

It was quite a different experience than the one I have with the people who are expecting me to convince them of God’s presence and grace. The stories we heard were not about miracles or science or logic; they were stories about joy and grief, about disappointments and successes, about beginnings and endings. They were not offered to prove anything to anyone, but only to tell our own truths. We were witnesses, in the best sense of that word: we talked with each other about our lives and how each of us had caught glimpses of God at work in us and in the world. We drank deeply of the living water that Saturday morning. May it fill your cup, too.

Amen.