In his novel, The Fall, Albert Camus tells the story of a man who spends his life sitting in a bar in Amsterdam. From his barstool, he comments on life. “I never cross a bridge …” he says to those around him, “Suppose … that someone should jump in the water. One of two things: either you do likewise to fish him out, and in cold weather you run a great risk! Or, you forsake him there and suppressed dives sometimes leave one strangely aching.”

The man in Camus’ novel is afraid of life, afraid of risk, afraid of getting involved. He avoids these by confining his life to a barstool and by never crossing bridges. The city of Amsterdam is laced with bridges. You can’t get far without crossing one. That is the condition of this man in the novel: he crosses no bridges, he goes nowhere and he gets nowhere.

By contrast, the encounter and conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman is about two people engaged in high-risk behavior, in the risky, life-affirming work of bridge-building.

This story is astonishing among the gospel stories for its sheer length … and for how elaborate it is. Typically, biblical stories are cryptic and rushed. The gospel writers always seem in a hurry to move a story to its climax. Here, however, we encounter a story that dawdles, a languid story, as slow and sultry as a day in Palestine. The story lingers at the well, lingers over a conversation, lingers over details. Furthermore, the story features two unlikely protagonists who, astonishingly, linger in each other’s company.

In this case, the gospel writer invites us, those who are listening to or reading this story to join him, to pause here, as he pauses, so that we, too, might linger at this well.
As we visit here, I invite you to consider this: the story beckons to us to approach the well that stands between Jesus and the woman, and to bend over and to look down into it. We are invited to look into this deep well and to see there our own reflection … to see ourselves reflected in the story.

As we do so, we might reflect on conversations in which we and another have begun to bridge the differences that divide us. We might reflect on neighborhoods or territories we are afraid to enter or on types of people around whom we feel uneasy. We might reflect on our own experiences of, and feelings about, ethnic identity and religious intolerance.
In other words, it is not enough – it is not good enough, it is not appropriate, it is not seemly – to view this encounter between Jesus and the woman voyeuristically, that is, from the presumption of a safe distance … the distance between ancient Palestine and post-modern Boston. No. The story beckons us to get involved, to take a risk, to enter the conversation, to see our own reflection in the well.

So then, with humility and curiosity, let us enter the story, let us linger at this well … let us see what we shall see.

Jesus is journeying through Palestine and he enters enemy territory. There is bad blood between the Jews and the Samaritans …  inherited bigotry, a long history bloody clashes, each group harboring ugly stereotypical images of the other.

Jesus could have avoided the territory of the Samaritans. There is no geographical necessity for his presence here. Rather, in entering the territory of the Samaritans, Jesus is going out of his way.

He goes out of his way in another way. He pauses at a communal well. In the ancient Near East, wells are women’s territory. It is woman’s work to draw and carry water from the well. Jesus enters not only the territory of the Samaritans, but also women’s territory.

It is mid-day. Typically, no one would be here. Women usually visit the well in the early morning and early evening.

Astonishingly, a woman appears. Jesus initiates a conversation with her with a traditional request, “Give me a drink.” His words are the demand of a man to a subservient woman, of a Jew to a Samaritan.

The woman is indignant at this Jewish man’s demand. The narrator reminds us that Jews don’t share drinking vessels with Samaritans. In other words this is a “Samaritans Only” well. He doesn’t belong here.

Yet, heaping astonishment upon astonishment, Jesus ignores both her indignation and the barrier of cultural convention between them. Instead, he moves the conversation to a different place. He is not like other people, he says, he brings living water. He implies that he is not constrained by cultural barriers … and, neither need she be so constrained.
Perhaps buying time, the woman parries with an observation: “You have no bucket, how can you get water?” At the same time, however, she takes a risky step into the conversation and begins to construct a shaky but unmistakable bridge between them:

“Are you greater than Jacob,” she asks, “who gave us this well?”

Jesus responds by again lifting the conversation to a higher level: “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.” It is a test. He is baiting her. Thirsty as she is, she responds. “Sir, give me this water.”

The conversation continues as Jesus expresses a kind of magical knowledge of the woman’s personal life. He exposes her for who she is. She is not only a woman, not only a Samaritan, but also a fallen woman. In any other environment, these are three strikes and she is out. Not at this well. Not in the company of this stranger. Not with the promise of living water.

By this time, the woman is freed from the inhibitions with which she first approached this encounter. Now she asks a direct question, a terribly important one for the people of her day, for her people: Who is right, the Samaritans or the Jews? In other words, who is right: the Protestants or the Catholics? The Mormons or the Jehovah’s Witnesses? The Muslims or the Christians? The Israelis or the Palestinians?  The Orthodox or the Pentecostals? The United Church of Christ or the Church of Christ? Who is right?

Jesus responds by telling her of a new order that renders all such religious controversies obsolete: “The time is coming and, indeed it is already here, when true worshipers will worship God in spirit and in truth.”

On their return from an errand, the disciples see Jesus talking to this woman. The narrator tells us they are astonished. They stare wide-eyed and walk a wide circle around these two unlikely conversationalists. And we are again reminded that those who follow Jesus, those who profess to follow him (we who profess to follow him) are sometimes the last to see the light. We are reminded and humbled that Jesus’ vision for the church is always a step ahead of his disciples … and wider than our own limited horizons.

For her part, generously and joyfully, the woman acts. She rushes off to share what she has discovered, the living water from which she has taken a drink. She does not keep this news to herself, but is moved to share it with others. She invites them to experience what she has experienced, to taste what she has tasted. Bearing in mind the ancient antagonism between Samaritans and Jews, it is nothing less than astonishing that so many are moved by her story.

In my brief five weeks among you I have heard over and over again that this church is for many of you a deep well, a source of living water. Over and over you have told me of conversations you have had here, of encounters with strangers, of opportunities for risk-taking and bridge-building, of experiences of acceptance, of mercy, of grace, of comfort which have quenched your parched lives. Perhaps there are others here – visitors and new comers – who are looking for a spiritual home that offers, and indeed and welcomes such opportunities.

Perhaps we have discovered in this story a working definition of a church: church as a deep well, a place of living water, a gathering place of unlikely people – people who come from different backgrounds, different countries and different religious and ethnic traditions. People who are very rich and people who are very poor; people who vote Republican and those who vote Democrat, Green or Independent. People of the city and people of the countryside. People who are whole and well and those who are broken and battered by this world’s storms.

Here we gather and linger and converse about many things. Here, one conversation at a time, two people at a time, we begin to dismantle the barriers between us …  barriers of belief and ideology, barriers of behavior and preferences.

Yet, even this is not enough. It is not enough to only invite people to our well … our public space … or even to talk among ourselves, important though that is and different though we are. Jesus models how to go out of our way to enter another’s territory … to meet them in their space, to visit their wells. For us, that might mean going out of our way to an African American church in Roxbury, a synagogue in Quincy, a mosque in Cambridge, a Haitian Church in Dorchester.

Today you will hear about an extraordinary new partnership between Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, Citizen’s Bank, Old South and the interfaith community in Boston. This partnership is the result of countless, one-on-one relationship-building, bridge-building meetings. During these meetings, people from vastly different religious communities grew to know each other, trust each other, and develop together a common purpose for the common good. They took risks and built bridges.

The reason the gospel writer invites us to linger at the well, is that bridge-building takes time and it is costly work. Jesus and the Samaritan woman model for us the risks and the rewards of conversing together across barriers on matters of faith and life, of enmity and neighborliness, of right and wrong. To seek out and create such opportunities can be costly – a cost Albert Camus’ character was not prepared to embrace – a cost that Jesus and this unnamed woman invite us to take.

Where, then, might you find opportunities for such conversations? Where are the communal wells at which you might encounter strangers?

In this story, we have stumbled upon a deep well. It is rare to have found a deep well. But it is rarer still, to look down into it until the shapes we see reflected in the water, begin to bear the image of our own true selves.

There can be then but these brief final words of conclusion … be well.

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Texts Consulted:
Jesus & His World: An Archeological and Cultural Dictionary, by John J. Rousseau & Rami Arav
Interpretation: John, by Gerard Sloyan
The Story Teller’s Companion to the Bible, ed. Dennis E. Smith & Michael E. Williams, Vol. 10, (p.57f)

1. Albert Camus, The Fall, Vintage Press, 1956, p. 15
2. The image of seeing our own reflections in the well is taken from a lecture by biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan, “Jesus and the Kingdom: Peasants and Scribes in Earliest Christianity” (1996)

 

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