The Lion, The Woman, & The Well

John 4:5-42

There’s an old preacher’s tale about a young couple who got married. They grew up in the same church, and their beloved childhood priest sent them a telegram on their wedding day because he was unable to attend due to the weather.

At the reception, they opened the telegram and decided to read it out loud. It said, “Congratulations, best wishes. John 4:18.” If you know 1^st John 4:18 it says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” What a wonderful message to send on a wedding day.

However, the “1” was left off, and so when they read John 4:18, it said, “For you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.”[i]

There is so much in our gospel passage from John chapter 4. Honestly, it’s too much for one sermon. John’s magnum opus is a work of art, both rhetorically and theologically, and our lesson from John 4 today is a perfect example of the depth that can be found in just one story.

We won’t be able to cover everything, indeed, we would probably need weeks to get through everything that is happening in this passage, and so today, inspired by The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I’ve decided to title this sermon: The Lion, The Woman, and The Well.

At least that is how I want to structure our time together: by looking at two people and the place they meet, I think that will give us enough to chew on for this coming week in our Lenten journey.

And so why not start with the Lion, Jesus himself, and what has brought him to this unexpected place and even more shocking encounter?

Jesus

It’s important to remember that we are only in chapter four of twenty-one in John’s Gospel. This is early in Jesus’ ministry, but he has already made a name for himself while in the region of Judea with his cousin, John—that guy who loved to do baptisms.

In short order, Jesus’ own disciples began baptizing even more folks than John, and word had gotten back to the Pharisees that one greater than that troubling John the Baptist may have now arrived on the scene. Jesus decided to retreat north, back to his home region of Galilee, before things got out of hand with the religious authorities. His time had not yet come.

Jesus had an important choice to make in his tactical retreat. To get from Judea to Galilee, you could either cross the Jordan River, into what is now the country of Jordan, and make your way north along a major road before crossing the river again, or you could take the shorter route, though Robert Frost would have deemed it “the road less travelled.”

It was a dangerous undertaking for a Jew to travel through Samaria. Tensions between the two groups could (at times) lead to violence. A Jewish group had destroyed the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim a century prior, only for some Samaritans to later spread bones around the Jerusalem Temple during Passover in order to desecrate the sacred space.

Even so, Jesus chose the road less traveled. He put himself (and his disciples) in a vulnerable, even a dangerous, environment. But for some reason, he was willing to take the risk. Jesus had the tendency to go where others shied away from—toward the fringes of communities, among people who had been written off by their neighbors for any number of reasons.

And here again, our Lord goes to the fringe, to the edge of safety and security in search of something. He doesn’t keep his eyes down while in enemy territory. No, his eyes are up because he knows there is work to do even in a region like Samaria. Jesus knows that genuine faith can be found in the unlikeliest of places.

This is what the Lion of Judah does; rather than stalking his prey, he is attentive and discerning of all those who pass by him. He is eager to offer salvation to the point of seeming reckless to his followers.

Knowing a person’s heart, Jesus can perceive if a door is open to him. Even if that door is just slightly cracked, even if their faith is the size of a mustard seed, we know that Jesus can do a lot with a little.

The Woman

This is the state of our Lord when he decided to take a much-needed break outside of a Samaritan town and sent his disciples to the marketplace for lunch.  While there, our second person enters the story. We are never given her name, but we sure do know a lot about her. John 4:18 gives us those infamous details.

We know that she did not have an easy life up to that point. She could’ve been as much the victim of thoughtless men’s divorces, or of tragic men’s deaths, or have made one bad choice after another. The only observation Jesus makes of her situation is that the man she is currently living with is not her husband, but someone else's.[ii]

Because of this, she was excluded from her community. Typically, the women of the village would travel together to the well in the cool of the morning and the evening, but this woman came alone in the heat of the day. If her life hadn’t already had enough scandal, talking with a man—let alone a Jewish man—by the well could have really gotten the rumor mill going.

The conversation they ended up having was strange (to put it lightly). And yet, it mirrors the dialogue we heard last week between Jesus and Nicodemus. “So you want me to be born again?” Nicodemus asked Jesus. “How exactly does it work if I’ve already been physically born? I can’t do that again.”

In these two instances, Jesus offered profound theological truths to people who didn’t have the slightest idea what he meant. Basic logic is insufficient when Jesus speaks of heavenly things. It’s as if they were playing in the kiddie pool while Jesus was inviting them to the deep end.

The Samaritan woman was confused about Jesus’ promise of living water. Back then, that just meant moving water, like a stream. Had he found a new water source? Could he point her in that direction? That certainly would be good news for the village of Sychar, and she could take the credit for finding it.

For both Nicodemus and this woman, Jesus tells them he is speaking of something deeper than what their feeble brains can fathom. Even so, Jesus, for some reason, tells them anyway. 

In their conversation, the woman repeatedly diverted the subject, trying to bring up the familiar argument about which mountain God preferred to be worshiped on: Mount Gerizim or Jerusalem. But time and again, Jesus directed her attention to something more important…because he directed her attention back to himself.

“I am He,” Jesus says. “‘I AM WHO I AM,’ is not on any mountain, nor housed in any temple, the great ‘I AM’ is with you at this very moment.”

What is shocking is that after some time with Jesus, she does the unthinkable: she believes him. She must have thought to herself, “This stranger is not off his rocker, he’s not some Zion propagandist trying to stir up trouble in Samaria, he really is who he says he is. “

In this one encounter, her heart, which had been broken time and again, was being mended by the man in front of her, and that sliver of faith that Jesus saw in her, well, the door bursts forth, and the living water of God (who is the Holy Spirit) poured into her soul. 

We see a conversion that is so profound and impactful that this woman becomes the first evangelist recorded in John’s Gospel. She was a lost sheep who then brought an entire flock to the Good Shepherd, and they received him with open arms!

The Samaritans of all people. These half-breed heretics embraced Jesus, and shockingly, Jesus embraced them! All of this from the testimony of our unnamed woman.

In this way, she is not only the first evangelist but also foreshadows the women at the empty tomb, who are the first to see that God is doing something utterly new in this world. They are witnesses just as she was a witness.

She paved the way for Mary Magdalene, who saw Jesus on that Easter morning and ran back to tell his friends what she had seen and heard from him. This woman of Samaria is the first of many, but the first nonetheless.

The Well

Last of all, there is the well. Wells not only played a vital role in ancient societies, but they also have particular significance in the Bible, especially in Genesis. Remember, this is called ‘Jacob’s well’ because the great patriarch himself bought the land on which it stands. This well had been part of the living memory of these people for close to 2,000 years. Jesus went to this one on purpose. 

As we’ve already seen, wells were gathering places, where people came and went, sharing stories about their lives with those who walked with them. They were places of refreshment and renewal—without water there is no life, and so, those who carried water back into the community were bringing with them an essential element to human life and flourishing.[iii]

Believe it or not, you can still drink from Jacob’s well. Deep in a crypt under an orthodox Church in the West Bank, you can lean against the same well our Lord did, and with a little elbow grease, you can pull up water with the help of a very rudimentary pulley system.

It’s amazing to be able to see, touch, and taste something directly from the gospels. But I’ve got to tell you, if you drink that water, you will still go thirsty. It’s not the well but the man who was once there who offers living water that will last.[iv] Jesus is the only one who can give us what we truly desire.

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There are wells in our own lives: these places of gathering, of joy and sharing, but for some of us, they can be places of isolation; they can be found outside the village, outside of what we consider “safe.” These can be found both in our community (where people still come together), but they can also be found deep within our souls.

A well is where you go to find life, to be nourished, and that is as much a spiritual reality as it is a physical one.

And it’s around these modern-day wells that Jesus yet again appears. He shows up in the unlikeliest of places, among the unlikeliest of people, and yet what is true for them is also true for us: if the door of our heart is just open ever so slightly, our Lord will perceive that and bring about his redemption and renewal in our lives, and then we might just see that living water pour from us and into our neighborhood and beyond.

This is a gift that only Jesus can give. And by all standards, he is quite reckless with it. He offers it to outsiders, to enemies, to sinners, and somewhere within that list, we can find ourselves.

The Lion of Judah sanctified the Woman and transformed her into a well of living water, drawing others into his saving embrace. And by God’s grace, that is true for us today as well. Amen.

[i] Thank you Eric Priest who said he heard N.T. Wright tell this.

[ii] Dale Bruner’s John Commentary p. 260.

[iii] The woman was not bringing back physical water to the village but spiritual water that would last and bring eternal life.

[iv] Jesus goes from the banks of the Jordan River, watching his disciples baptize those who’ve come in faith, only to have a conversation about living water with someone who would have been considered an outsider to faith.