Delivered on August 26, 2010 at the "New Directions for Lutheranism" Conference (TEXT: JOHN 4:27-42)

The opening verse of this text from the 4^th chapter of St. John of course plunks us down abruptly into the middle of one of the best-known stories out of that Gospel.   But let me put this story in context.  Right after the prologue (in chapter one) Jesus is hailed as the Lamb of God by John the Baptist, and promptly takes on several of John’s disciples as his own. In chapter two Jesus performs the first of his signs at Cana in Galilee, the turning of water into wine at a wedding.  Then, as the Passover is coming  he travels to Jerusalem with his disciples,  drives the moneychangers and the sellers of sacrificial animals out of the Temple, has a secret middle of the night conversation  with a leading Pharisee, spends some time with his disciples baptizing in the Judean countryside, and then decides to return to Galilee by way of Samaria.  Reaching the outskirts of the Samaritan city of Sychar, Jesus decides to rest a spell next to the well of Jacob, while the disciples go into town to buy food.  And then, well, we know the story:  “Jesus met a woman at the well, and he told her everything she’d ever done.”

But where we pick up the story is after the long incongruous conversation Jesus and the woman have beside the well, and just after Jesus’ declaration to the woman’s statement of faith that the Messiah is coming,  “I am, the one who is speaking to you.”  Suddenly, the disciples reappear, carrying the 1^st century equivalent of a bag of groceries and a take-out lunch.  And we have a few minutes of awk-ward:  the disciples don’t know what  to make of the sight of Jesus sitting next to this woman, this Samaritan woman, with whom he is clearly having an intense conversation.  They are shocked into silence, while the woman appears to realize how truly weird this scene is, because she abruptly gets up and leaves, forgetting all about her water jar.  And as the disciples then try to create a normal atmosphere:  “Rabbi, eat!  Just eat something, ok?” Jesus brushes them off by saying he has food they don’t even know about.  (Which really sends the disciples around the bend;  you just know they’re thinking, he ate with that woman,  and they are even more horrified.)

And then it comes, Verse 34:  “Jesus said to them,  “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work.  Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’?  But I tell you, look around you, and see  how the fields are ripe for harvesting.” 

I thought I knew what this story was about.  I’ve been studying it for longer than I care to admit! I well know that one never completely knows all that there is to know in the Scripture, never can completely understand all that there is to understand, that there are always new insights to be gained, but still, I thought, I know this story.

But I wasn’t prepared for what I saw, this time, that I had never seen before.  I saw the disciples, sitting there with Jesus, looking around at each other, and at their setting.  I saw the crowds streaming out of the city, headed pell-mell to Jacob’s  well, to see for themselves who was there.  I saw the fields, just like the hymn says, white and the harvest waiting.  I looked, and I saw:  Samaria.

Not Judea.  Not Jerusalem.  Not even Galilee.  Samaria.  And the crowds?  Samaritans.  “Look around you, and see:  how the fields are ripe.”  And the first fruits, the first major group in the Gospel of St. John to be gathered in, are all Samaritans. 

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son,  that whosoever believeth in him might not perish, but have everlasting life.”  Whosoever.  And the proof of that comes in Samaria.  God has no standards at all.  He’ll save anybody--anybody that believes in his only begotten Son.   And those who don’t believe?  Well, the only thing I know for sure is that one’s pedigree, no matter how long or how good or how impeccable, won’t make up for not accepting that this one, the Son, is the Anointed One,  sent from the Father,  and believing on him.

Nicodemus, a teacher of Israel, doesn’t see, doesn’t get it.  Those who work every day in the courtyards surrounding the Temple don’t see, don’t get it.  Even the disciples have a hard time getting it.  But a many-times-married Samaritan woman gets it.  A crowd hearing her hesitant, hardly daring to hope witness gets it.  They come out to see for themselves, then beg Jesus to stay and teach them, and he does!  For two days!  And at the end, they make the boldest profession of faith:  “We have heard for ourselves, and we know that this truly is the Savior of the world.” 

Jesus should have condemned the woman for her sins.  Jesus should have condemned the Samaritans for their sins.  And certainly he speaks plainly and bluntly about their sinful condition, whether it is as Samaritans who have rejected the worship of God as the law and the prophets commanded it, or as a woman whose marital situation is, to put the best construction on it, inventive.  But as Jesus said to Nicodemus,  God didn’t send his Son to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. 

But who expected God to start with Samaritans?   

It doesn’t even say that they repent and begin to worship in Jerusalem!  Just that they recognize, and believe.  They see.  And in the Gospel of John, seeing Jesus as he really is, is a key to believing, and to receiving this salvation from the Father.

But the most threatening part of this story?  This isn’t just a story about the past.  Jesus is still going to Samaria.  God may love the world, and call us to make disciples of all nations, but he’s going to make our first assignment Samaria. 

And just where is that? And who are our Samaritans? 

Well, we know who they are.  They’re those who are so like us, it is like looking in a mirror with just a little distortion. It makes us uncomfortable.  Because they’re wrong.  We know they’re wrong.  And they shouldn’t be wrong, because they’re so much like us, they should know better, like we do.  They have no excuse for being wrong. 

And we know that they won’t change.  They’re wrong, and stubborn, and determined not only to be wrong, but to teach others to be wrong as well.  So now we can’t teach together.  We can’t worship together.  More and more, we don’t eat together.   We’ve abandoned any kind of dialogue with them; it’s no use!  We talk at each other, and about each other, not to or with each other.  We have given up on them, and they have given up on us.   In fact, we are all better off if we just stay apart, separated from each other.  Don’t even try to do anything with each other.  Because, well, because they’re Samaritans, and we aren’t.  Enough said. 

Except, what if while we are following Jesus, what if we find him talking with a notorious, public sinner of a Samaritan?   What if, before we go off making disciples of the world, we have to go through Samaria first?

Like all good stories out of the Bible,  this one leaves me with more questions than answers, with an uneasy feeling about what Jesus may be up to.   He must be about fulfilling the work of the Father who sent him, but that looks like it means going to places and people that I don’t want to go to anymore.  What if Jesus goes to people who don’t follow the rules, and they respond in faith?  What if Jesus goes to the country of fundamentalist-Biblical literalists, or justice-seeking political activists, or even liberal mainline Protestants ? What if Jesus goes to the country of bisexual, transgendered, queer, questioning, publicly accountable life-long monogamous same-gendered-relationship gay and lesbian concerned reconciling Lutheran pastors?  Will I follow him, even into that country?  Will you? 

Where is Jesus going today?  What well is he even now sitting down at, and what conversation will he strike up with whoever comes along, someone who is as shocked as we are that Jesus would talk with them?  Will we look around and see, or will we avert our eyes, and plug our ears, and insist that such a thing can’t be happening?  This Jesus, a scandal and stumbling block to all who insist that their blindness is sight, is a door, a shepherd,  a bread of life, a well of living water, a light of grace and truth to all whose eyes have been opened by him.  Will he raise us up, stubborn stones that we are, to be living sons and daughters of God, grafted in to Abraham’s family along with all the Samaritans who seem so bent on following their own way, with their own spirit, over on their own mountain ?

Make no mistake, this Lord insists on being the Savior of the World.  Even of Samaria.  Even, at the greatest cost, of Jerusalem.  Even of ---.

At the end of the Bread of Life controversy in chapter 6, John writes:  “Because of this many of Jesus’ disciples turned back, and no longer went about with him.  So Jesus asked, ‘Do you also wish to go away?’  It is Peter who speaks for the 12, and by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit speaks for all of us, faulty and frail followers, the words of faith that cling  to the only true salvation to be found:  ‘Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.’”   Look, and see.  The harvest is waiting, and in Samaria.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Erma Wolf is an ELCA pastor currently on leave from call. She recently completed a term as Vice-chair of the Lutheran CORE steering committee. This sermon was preached at the Lutheran CORE Theological Conference in Columbus, Ohio. Pr. Wolf lives with her family in South Dakota.