An Outsider's Outsider (4th Sunday after Epiphany; John 4:1-42; February 4, 2018)

An Outsider's Outsider

4th Sunday after Epiphany
John 4:1-42
February 4, 2018

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

Last week we were privileged to overhear a conversation between Jesus and an important Jewish leader. It was a conversation that took place at night and Nicodemus, except for his acknowledgment that Jesus is a wise wonder-worker, shows himself to be pretty much in that dark when it comes to understanding how God loves. Pun intended. In John, the puns are always intended.

After that, Jesus and his disciples are to be found in the Judean countryside where Jesus does some baptizing of his own--although the text corrects itself a little later by saying that it was the disciples who were baptizing and not Jesus himself--and has a conversation about John the Baptizer. Then Jesus turns his feet toward Galilee and decides to take the shortcut across Samaritan territory.

That they are in Samaria is important because it sets the stage for his meeting with the unnamed woman at the well of Joseph at Sychar. And, before we listen to their conversation, I think we have to ask, "Who are these Samaritans and why does it matter?"

The first thing that I think we need to remember is that there was no such thing as "Judaism" even as late as the late first or early second centuries, when John was written. There were lots of Judaisms There was a Judaism that was based on the ritual life of the Temple. There was a Judaism that was based on oral traditions that had gathered around the Torah and the Prophets. There was a Judaism that was intensely focused on the hope for a cosmic divine intervention. There were other, less well-known Judaisms as well. They all influenced each other. There was no one body that could speak for all who called themselves Jews or, in the case of the Samaritans who did not call themselves Jews, for all of the children of Israel.

The Samaritans--who, by the way, are still a small ethnic and religious group in modern Israel--traced themselves back to the split between the Northern Kingdoms of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah. It's more likely that they emerged in the period after the exile of Judah to Babylon. The returning exiles--without being invited--tried to extend their control over the peoples who had not been exiled. The Samaritans were one of these peoples. They had never been especially fond of the self-styled elite in Jerusalem. They had gotten along just fine without their help during the sixty years or so of the exile and were not at all interested in being under their control now that they were back. They had their own ritual center. They had a version of the Torah. And they simply continued about their business.

Relations between them and other people who worshiped the God of the Torah were not good. As our text tells us, things were bad enough that the Samaritan woman was surprised that Jesus, a Jew, was willing to speak with her, a Samaritan. Jesus expresses, or least offers, a standard Jewish list of complaints about the Samaritans: they worship in the wrong place, they think they are the source of the Jewish religious tradition, and they are immoral. Actually, it was standard Jewish practice to assume that any people that deviated from the Torah would plunge directly into sexual immorality.

So Jesus and his disciples have stopped in a place where people have slightly different understanding and practice from what was demanded by the authorities in Jerusalem and for that they have suffered isolation. Jews won't talk to them. They are excluded from Jewish institutions. And this, in case you haven't noticed, pretty well describes the people of John's community as well.

It was about noon, our story tells us. Jesus sat down by Jacob's well. He was tired from walking. The disciples had gone to look for a gyro stand or a taco truck or somewhere where they could pick up a quick lunch. A woman came to the well.

Now, this text, like much of the Bible has been read through eyes that assume that women are inferior in every way for so long that we have come to believe that the text itself looks down on women. The traditional assumption about this woman is that she is immoral, sexually immoral, to be specific. She comes at noon. Supposedly, early morning is the normal time for drawing water. She comes at noon because she is shunned by the rest of the community and has to come when other women are not there. But the text does not say that.

The other place where the traditional reading looks is the history that she reveals: She is not married, but has been married five times. The man she is living with is not her husband. But, except for the last man, there is no hint that she has had anything other than bad luck. Men could divorce with no or little cause. Men died. And the last man may well be a relative of one of her husbands who out of piety has given her a roof over her head.

If this sad history were the result of her moral failings, it is strange that repentance isn't found anywhere in the story. Jesus certainly doesn't ask for it. And, if she were being shunned by her community, why would any of them listen to and believe what she says about Jesus.

The traditional interpretation of this woman is wrong. It is an unethical reading practice to assume that women in the Bible are all up to no good. And it's dangerous because that same set of assumptions is used to judge real women in the real world and then you end up with situations in which it takes the testimony of 156 women to put away one exploitive and abusive physician.

It is enough for our story that we recognize that she is Samaritan and (as the observant disciples notice right way) a woman. Jesus is a Jew and a man. Jews don't talk with Samaritans. Men don't talk with women. Jesus does both. And there is the point of the story.

Last week we heard Jesus tell John's community that the authorities aren't so smart and sometimes they are wrong and that John's community should not look to the authorities for permission to be who they are. They should look to Jesus.

Now we hear Jesus tell John's community that Jesus is to be found among communities that have been cast out by the authorities, communities that have taken a different path than other more mainstream Jewish communities. John's community, wounded and grieving, is one of those outsider groups, like the Samaritans among whom Jesus stays for two days.

The hour is coming, says Jesus, when the God's true people will worship neither in Jerusalem nor on Gezerim; they will worship in spirit. John's community is already living in that hour. The outcasts now have the inner track; they have a place of privilege; they are truly God's children.

Now, finally, we have to consider where we place ourselves in the story. Some of us have suffered the trauma like this woman has. Some of us have experienced the exclusion like the Samaritans had. Some of us carry the wounds and the grief like John's community bore. And to them, and to all of us in whatever way we have suffered these things, John's Jesus says, "You are the ones whom God seeks."

But most of us cannot assume those places in the story. Instead, we must look on through the eyes of the disciples, coming back from town with our bags of gyros, hummus, and falafel, and finding to our surprise that Jesus is talking with a Samaritan and a woman at that! And so the question for us is: is there room in our understanding of God's love for a Samaritan woman? If God has accepted her, if Jesus has accepted her, don't we have to as well?

Or, to put it more concretely: Is there room at the table for Samaritans, for those who act and think differently than we do, but who come needing God's love and human solidarity? Is there room at the table for LGBT folk? Is there room at the table for Latinos and Latinas? Is there room for the folks who have needed or are likely to need our material help--and need it repeatedly--so that their families have food to eat and a warm place in the wintertime? Is there room at the table for those whose mental illness makes them behave crosswise to our sense of decorum? Is our table really an open table?

We begin to hear Jesus correctly when we begin to notice who isn’t at the table and make sure that they get their invitations too.

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