From Disgrace to Grace: John 4:5-41 - Third Sunday of Lent

Artist: Kristen Visbal, Photographer: Federica Valabrega via Business Wire

⁵[Jesus] came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.⁶Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
  ⁷A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” ⁸(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) ⁹The 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.) ¹⁰Jesus 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.” ¹¹The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? ¹²Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” ¹³Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴but 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.” ¹⁵The 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.”
  ¹⁶Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” ¹⁷The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; ¹⁸for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” ¹⁹The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. ²⁰Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” ²¹Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²²You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³But 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. ²⁴God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” ²⁵The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” ²⁶Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”
  ²⁷Just 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?” ²⁸Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, ²⁹“Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” ³⁰They left the city and were on their way to him.
  ³¹Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” ³²But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” ³³So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” ³⁴Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. ³⁵Do 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. ³⁶The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. ³⁷For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ ³⁸I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
  ³⁹Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” ⁴⁰So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. ⁴¹And many more believed because of his word. ⁴²They 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.” (NRSV)

Photo by Liz Condo for The Washington Post

It could be the world’s most unlikely friendship: between 79-year-old John “Quick Draw” McGraw and 27-year-old Rakeem Jones.

About a year ago, they “met” at a campaign rally for President Trump: McGraw as a Trump supporter; Jones as a protestor.  As Jones was being escorted out of the event by a security guard, McGraw “sucker punches” him in the face. McGraw would later say, “next time we see him, we’ll have to kill him.”

Photo: WNCN

The two men met up last December in court where McGraw pled guilty to misdemeanor and disorderly conduct.  But something very unexpected happened: McGraw apologizes to Jones.  Jones accepts the apology and hugs McGraw.

Late last week, they sat down and had lunch—as friends.  They spoke.  They listened.  They healed together.

Sadly, the humility and humanity these two men share is more the exception than the norm in our world today—as it has been for most of human history.

For as long as human beings have lived in community, we’ve always gone out of our way to exclude certain people. 

In today’s Gospel, Jesus meets such a reject.

Jesus was passing through a Samaritan city called Sychar, and Jesus sits down to rest near Jacob’s well.  A Samaritan woman comes by to draw water, and Jesus asks her for a drink. 

Right away, John reminds us that Jews share nothing in common with Samaritans.  Samaritans may have worshipped the same God, but they were regarded as racial and religious “mutts.” In their history, they had intermarried with pagan peoples, and they worshipped God on Mount Gerizim, not in Jerusalem.

But these are not the only strikes against her…

Jesus knows that she’s had five husbands—and that the man she’s living with now is not her husband.  Bear in mind that women had no ability to divorce their husbands.  It is entirely possible, then, that she could have been discarded by five men (for no reason)—and living with the sixth man is her only alternative to homelessness.

Put it all together, and she was the misfit of misfits. 

And here is Jesus, talking to her.  Jesus, asking to drink from her jar (which would’ve been seen as a vile act of religious contamination)…  Jesus, loving her and answering her questions about God’s truth…  Jesus, welcoming her into God’s family and discarding the disgrace of being a quintuple divorcee…

We’re told she leaves her water jar at the well—because she has been given the living water Jesus has promised.  She goes back to town, and there she tells everyone about Jesus. 

What’s amazing here is that people believe her.  To think that a Samaritan quintuple divorcee is now proclaiming Jesus Christ with the effectiveness of people like Paul…  To think that Samaritans are now included in God’s family…

This is what Jesus does—he takes the tragedies you suffer and the maltreatment you suffer, and sets you free from them.  He destroys the disgrace that clings to you after you’ve sinned—or after something happens to for which you lack the ability to change.  He destroys the labels and prejudices people give you because of who or what you are or where you come from.  He quenches your thirst with the water of new life.

But to experience Jesus in this way, you must do likewise.

You must forgive people who don’t deserve forgiveness.  People called Rakeem Jones a fool for forgiving Quick Draw McGraw.  And—you must embrace God’s image in people who are as reprehensible to you as Samaritans were.  It’s not enough to say “I’m not prejudiced” or “all lives matter.” 

I’m reminded of a man who once raised a ruckus over the addiction support group meeting in his church.  He said, “I don’t feel sorry for those people.  They should’ve never started drinking in the first place.”  Clearly, the cigarette butts he found in the flowerbeds mattered more to him than the fact that these were human beings created in God’s image, who needed compassion.

You must be willing to enter another person’s world and risk being wounded by their woundedness.  You must realize that you may become a misfit in the eyes of people you value and respect because you’re caring about misfits!  You may find the inspiration and love of Jesus Christ in someone as reprehensible as the Samaritan woman.

Furthermore, when Jesus gives you a new identity that’s cleansed of all disgrace, not everyone is going to welcome you with open arms.  In people’s eyes, rejects should stay rejected.  Children of God, on the other hand, persist.  They worship God.  They serve with the compassion of Jesus.  They boldly testify to the new life Jesus brings like the Samaritan woman. 

One of the most painful realities of living in our world today is that we’re inventing more and more reasons to hate each other, as if we need to get rid of people to make the world a better place.  But if you build an ivory tower on the foundation of hate, it’ll eventually cave in on you.  Fact is, no one’s immune to disgrace.  But Christ’s grace destroys disgrace.  He can make it fertile soil for new life for you and the life-giving ministry for others through you. 

Thanks be to God for this indescribable gift!