For Sycamore Congregational Church, UCC 

El Cerrito, California 

February 27, 2005 

By Rev. Sharon MacArthur, Senior Minister 

John 4:5-42  

So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacobs well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, Give me a drink. (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria? (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)  

Jesus answered her, If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, Give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water. The woman said to him, Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it? Jesus said to her, Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life. The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.  

Jesus said to her, Go, call your husband, and come back. The woman answered him, I have no husband. Jesus said to her, You are right in saying, I have no husband; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true! The woman said to him, Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem. Jesus said to her, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.  

But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming (who is called Christ). When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us. Jesus said to her, I am he, the one who is speaking to you.  

Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, What do you want? or, Why are you speaking with her? Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he? They left the city and were on their way to him.  

Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, Rabbi, eat something. But he said to them, I have food to eat that you do not know about. So the disciples said to one another, Surely no one has brought him something to eat? 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. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, One sows and another reaps. I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.  

Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the womans testimony, He told me everything I have ever done. So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to 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.  

* * *  

We are full of surprises today. We had a super long gospel reading...but a fascinating story, isnt it? We took breaks to sing the story as well. 

And the story itself is one of surprises.  

Everyone is surprised,  

the woman at the well,  

the disciples,  

the townspeople.  

Everyone - but Jesus, who knew that, while his work was primarily with the Jews, he had come for everyone Greeks, Romans, Syrians, and even Samaritans. The Good News Jesus came to preach was filled with surprises...surprises and wonder.  

Speaking of surprises...listen to this story that I read on the internet -  

Once upon a time a new family moved into an elegant suburban in middle America. Most of the inhabitants of this suburb were members in a church that was very progressive. The church had all kinds of committees and ministries. There were meetings all the time. They sent teenagers to Appalachia in the spring to help build homes. Adults ran soup kitchens for the homeless. There were clothing drives and blood donations, and the people in the congregation figured that they were pretty good at what they did. But the new family in their neighborhood was a challenge. They had dark skins but they were not African Americans or Hispanics or Asians. They talked a funny guttural sounding language, and seemed to have a lot of money.  

There was a father and a mother. There were three kids and two grandparents, and they had lots of visitors coming and going in their big home.  

They improved the landscape of the house and painted the window frames. They put up a backboard on the garage. They had three cars a Lexus, a Cadillac and a Lincoln Towncar  

Whenever the women in the family left the house, including the girl who was probably in middle school, they were dressed in the latest fashion.  

The word spread around the neighborhood that they were drug dealers.  

Then another neighborhood rumor began - that they were Arabs, probably Saudi oil millionaires.  

Then yet another rumor reported that they were IRAQI!  

Someone in the neighborhood called the FBI. And the voice on the other end said they knew all about them and were watching them closely. Then some of the kids said that the Lincoln was packed with things that looked like they might be bombs.  

The neighborhood began a nightly watch - cars would drove by the house, just to make sure that there were no dangerous meetings. All they observed were big but quiet parties attended by very well dressed men and women.  

Well, summer ended and school began - guess what happened! 

The three kids showed up for the first day of Catholic school, wearing the approved uniforms. 

A committee of the concerned parishioners went to see their pastor to protest letting these non-Catholics into the Catholic school. They’re Catholics, the pastor said. They’re Iraqi, They’re Caldees said the pastor.  

Whats a Caldee? Iraqi Christians.  

They were Christians, said the pastor, when we Irish were still painting our faces blue. They have a parish down town, but the family moved out here so they could send their kids to a Catholic school. The older girl is quite a basketball player. They made a big donation to the parish. They own a string of camera stores.  

The committee went home, thinking that the pastor had been joking with them. They looked up Caldee on the internet. Sure enough they were Catholics! 

Then they wondered why all Catholics couldn’t look alike! 

In todays political climate and state of global affairs, people may not be fully accepted into neighborhoods & communities if they look as if their have ancestral roots are in the Middle East. 

Two thousand years ago, such prejudices existed too. In todays story, Jesus is traveling through Samaria, a land populated by Samaritans. whom Judeans despised.  

It wasn't always that way - they had lived side by side for many years. But in 586 BCE, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon dealt the Israelites a humiliating military victory, destroying the Temple that Solomon had built and bringing the leaders of Judea to Babylon in chains. 

The sting of that defeat was a painful memory for a long, long time. People were looking for someone to blame long after the Exile ended. Knowing that Israel's safety didnt lay in number of courageous men and superior arms, but in God's protection, people tried to explain how it was that God allowed this to happen. People like Ezra and Nehemiah blamed those men of Israel who had married foreign women. They demanded that all such men immediately divorce their wives, passing along the experiences of humiliation, abandonment, and exile. Many of the men, especially in Samaria, refused, and so they got the kind of treatment thats reported in these words of Nehemiah: 

I contended with them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair; and I made them take an oath in the name of God ... Thus I cleansed them from everything foreign ... 

- Nehemiah 13:25-30 

And so began the enmity between Judeans and Samaritans. By the time Jesus sat by Jacob's well, and was approached by a woman of Samaria, the hatred that the Judeans had for the Samaritans was centuries old. 

And the stage is set for healing...healing wounds that go deep - healing wounds that are longstanding - personal ones, institutional ones, universal ones. And in Jesus encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well two thousand years ago, we have before us a lesson to learn from and be transformed. 

On one level, Jesus heals someone in a way she is not expecting. It's the story about a Samaritan woman who comes to a well to get water. She is minding her own business, doing the kind of work that women did in those days. She knows her place, is suspicious of the obviously Jewish man who is sitting on the well as she approaches it in the heat of the day; and she is understandably taken aback when he not only speaks to her but asks for her help. 

Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." 

She is a Samaritan. He is a Jew. She is a woman. He is a man. It is a highly public place.  

Jesus is "inviting trouble" in his typical unconventional attitude and behavior. He should not be speaking to a woman in the first place, let alone a member of a tribe of Israel long-despised by the Jewish people. Not only was she an outcast to the Jewish people, she was probably an outcast even among Samaritans. She was probably used to the whispering in the village wherever she went, after all, she did have a very questionable past - and her present isn’t any great shakes either...she has had 5 husbands and is living with someone now who is not her husband! 

And Jesus speaks to her! Now you might remember that men spoke to women directly and in public like that if they were related by blood, or as a possession. So it's no wonder that there's an edge in the woman's replies to Jesus. But Jesus doesnt speak to her like one would speak to an outsider - he receives her as an insider, an intimate who has no cause for shame.  

He brings up her past, and her present, not to shame her, but to take away their power by showing how little they affect how Jesus and the God he proclaims receive her. 

It is hard to tell what is going on in the conversation between Jesus and this woman 

- each word gives us the feeling that it might mean something more than it seems.  

But something happens in the encounter.  

When it starts out, they are perfect strangers.  

When it ends up, the woman is so excited that she wants everyone to know about the man whom she has just met. 

In fact she is so excited that she leaves her water jar and runs back to the city.  

She said to the people, "Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?" 

She leaves behind what brought her to this moment in the first place because she finds something for which she did not realize she was looking for  

- someone who meets her just as she is and has been. 

- someone who knows all about her and accepts her, and loves her. 

- no one else has done that before...she is so excited! 

Is it all about her? or, as our friend, Pastor Moira would observe - God is bigger than we are 

The clue is in what happens next; because, by the end of the passage, it is not just a woman who is excited about Jesus but a whole town full of Samaritans. 

So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to 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." 

A whole town full of people has been transformed. They discover that they "belong" after all.  

They found that, in spite of a centuries' old hatred between two peoples, what matters is that they matter to God. 

And all because of a conversation that got started at a well between two unlikely conversationalists and a man who actually saw people and who helped them see themselves. 

So, here we are at that part of the message when I ask, 

OK so what does this have to do with us, today, with Sycamore, these days just over the threshold of the second hundred years? 

There are wounds of many types -  

like the feeling of not belonging,  

feelings of rejection, 

feelings of not being loved, 

not being accepted, 

being lost or alone. 

Sycamore Church was founded over 100 years ago to be a safe place to come to for many who felt the stings and wounds of racial prejudice, of Anti-Japanese, Anti-Asian climate in the U.S. So, for many, Sycamore was the well where conversations with Jesus took place, first in Japanese and then in Japanese and English, and where stories were shared and those who came can feel accepted and loved just as they are. 

Now, too, we have many folks coming through our doors - some who have been a part of Sycamore for a long time, some who are fairly new to Sycamore, upstairs to worship and downstairs to our preschool and activities and events. I believe we are all one community, brought together by God to share our stories, to feel accepted and loved whatever our stories and whoever we are and where we are in lifes journey. We are brought together in this time and place to be agents of transformation and the healing of Gods people. 

This coming Saturday we will have an all-Sycamore Retreat - led by our own Sharon Thornton and Fumitaka Matsuoka. Please come - you and your stories, your experiences and your hopes are all important - come, hear the stories and experiences and hopes of others...we are in the midst of and doing Gods work. And the thing is this - we may never know what wounds are out there or what wounds we ourselves suffer. We never hear about why the Samaritan woman had five husbands - were they killed? did they leave her? what wounds did they inflict? And our progressive Christians in the suburbs - did they even know that they were suffering from wounds of sorts? the kind of wound that skews life experiences and perspectives - that of racial or ethnic prejudice?  

We may never know what wounds reside in others...but its in the caring and sharing that sets things in motion, a movement toward Gods realm. 

Yes, in Jesus encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well two thousand years ago, we have before us a lesson to learn from and be transformed. May it be so. Amen.