LENT 3 March 23^rd 2014

“KNOWN AND LOVED”

Readings:

Exodus: 17: 1-7 – Water from the Rock

John 4: 5-42 – Living Water

In the desert the people are thirsty. On his journey Jesus thirsts. And he’ll thirst again, as we know, when that journey ends on the Cross.

Now on one level, thirst is thirst. It’s not just a metaphor. We have real needs which God knows. The people need to drink and so does Jesus.

But the real issue here is something must deeper. For the Jews it’s about trust. God has not brought them out into the desert to watch them die in the sand. But they’re scared, and so is Moses. They’re not here because they’ve got God taped. “Yes, this’ll all be fine. We’re the Chosen People. From Egypt to Canaan, that’s just a package holiday for us, so bring it on”.  No the desert is where they learn by being taken to the very edge of everything, right to the brink of life and death, to see that God is faithful indeed – even if they are not. It’s about trust.

As indeed it is for the Samaritan woman. This is the best verbal fencing match the Bible has to offer. The woman is struggling to trust Jesus in any way at all. He’s a Jew, he’s a man. He shouldn’t be talking to her at all. So what’s his agenda? So she’s deeply suspicious, but at the same time she can’t tear herself away. This is, I’d say, the closest anyone gets to flirting with Jesus in the Bible, but it’s not that. Although there’s a parallel here it would be a shame to miss. In St Michael’s and All Saints in Edinburgh there’s a pair of stained glass windows, with the well in the background of both of them, one showing Jesus and the Samaritan woman with her water jar. The other shows Jacob with Rachel bearing her water jar, and their eyes meet. Some very important things have happened at this well.  But there’s something even deeper here. This encounter is going to change this woman’s life, although not without her putting up pretty much every bit of resistance she can come up with.

Offered the water of life, she comes back with: where’s your bucket then? No bucket, deep well. You’ll have to better than that, mister. She even challenges him:  Are you saying you’re greater than Jacob? Actually Jesus is a whole lot greater than Jacob, who was pretty much of a rogue, as will eventually become clear to her.

He offers his living water again, and again she almost wilfully misunderstands. No more trips to the well with a heavy jar on your head, great. Sign me up now.

But that’s not it either, so here Jesus gets cheeky back almost. OK, go and get your husband and I’ll talk to him. Ah, here we have it. This bit of the exchange actually hits the target. The defences start to crumble. And what becomes clear is that this woman has a hinterland of brokenness and sadness, which somehow this man knows. (She’s had more husbands than Elizabeth Taylor). How uncomfortable is that? When your mask slips, and you’re known without ever, as far as you know, ever having revealed yourself. But there’s no condemnation, just a statement: This is how your life is, isn’t it?

The woman has one last, feeble attempt at evasion. She tries a bit of theology: Which mountain will God reveal himself on, this one (Gerizim) or Jerusalem? But the answer is standing right in front of her. God’s revealing himself right now, in her presence as if to make the universe stand still for this wonderful moment. It’s perfect, almost like lovers trapped in each others’ gaze. Jacob and Rachel – only better.

Cue the disciples to break the magic: What the heck’s she doing here? is what they want to ask, but daren’t. But what’s happened for this woman no-one can take away. She leaves her water jar by the well, a lovely incidental detail (she’ll need it again – but for now she has all the water she’s ever going to need) and goes off to tell the world: Come and see someone who told me everything I ever did! “He can’t be the Messiah can he?”  But she knows exactly who he is.

And so do the people she brings, almost instantly. They end up saying to her: Now we don’t just believe because of what you said; now we’ve heard for ourselves and we know that this is truly the Saviour of the World.

So this is what’s going on here. The fields are ripe and Christ the sower of the seed is now Christ the reaper of the harvest. While the woman’s left the stage to go off and tell her story and bring her friends, Jesus has had another dialogue with his disciples, which almost looks like a digression, words to be said on stage as a sort of filler while other actors get ready in the wings. But this is John’s Gospel and John never wastes a word. This woman and her friends are part of a joyful harvest of eternity which is starting right now. They’re the first fruits – and they’re the very fruits the religious people would have thrown away.

So what can I take from this? It’s this: God will knock down my defences one by one until I let him in, until I get to the point where I abandon my masks and let him gather me in. Lord, you have searched me out and you know me, says the psalmist. I’m known, and known to the last detail – but never rejected. Every labyrinthine twist and turn of my psyche is as it were unravelled by God’s love, and we’re rejoiced over. There’ll be a harvest feast in the kingdom because of you and me. Here your thirst to be really known and loved is quenched at last. By this you can know that Jesus is the world’s Saviour and yours.