A well-side conversation (THeva)

A Well side Conversation!

John 4.5-26

Dear Friends!

Grace and peace are already ours for we belong to the family of Jesus the Christ. I want to talk to you this morning about conversation, spiritual conversation and to be true to our text a well side-conversation. With all the modern technological gadgets such as the e-mail, the face book the twitter, the fax modems and texting are we getting closer to each other as humankind? Have these material devices freed us from our nervousness and anxieties? Are we free from depression and fatigue, fear and suspicion? Do we want to possess more than what we already have? With these questions I invite you now to the famous Jacob’s well. It was hundreds of years ago at this well side, love and romance began between Jacob and Rachel. We are told that she brought her father’s cattle to this well to offer water. Then we read in Genesis 29 that Jacob married the two sisters Rachel and Leah and they became the parents for the twelve tribes, the children of Israel. I am not going into how Leah struggled with Jacob in her marriage relationship. Not even about how Rachel was treated as the husband’s favorite wife. That is a different sermon in itself.

         I understand last Sunday you heard a sermon on a spiritual conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a male, a prominent person in the community, educated, a teacher of Israel and a member of the Sanhedrin. And the person at the well today is a female, nameless, Samaritan by birth means not from the main stream of society. She had very little education and faced a challenge in maintaining relationships. Perhaps she had an addiction for relationships. She was already married to five husbands. She opens up to Jesus that the sixth person in her life who was not yet her husband. Jesus appreciates her honesty.

        John 4 begins with the story of Jesus choosing to go to the Galilean region and continue ministry there. Because more people around the river Jordan were willing to follow Jesus than John. So they both parted ways with mutual consent. And now Jesus is getting to Galilee, but he could have gone there by a different route; it was shorter by crossing the east of river Jordan and to get to Galilee. Thomas Merton once said that everything happens in life is a connection and not a coincident. History tells that the Jews and the Samaritan hated each other based on the century old family feuds. They worshiped in two different places the Samaritans in Mt. Gerizim and the Jews in Jerusalem. They even used separate Torahs.

        It was a hot and humid noon, an unusual time for any woman to go to draw water. Most women in that neighborhood got to the well during the sunset hour and made that gathering somewhat like the United Methodist women’s circle meeting, without coffee and cookies. They engage in conversation; about husbands or the significant others, children and families learn the news both local and global, like the disappearance of the Malaysian jet with 239 people on board and about Ukraine, Crimea and Russia. Friends! The hot noon time may not be the best time for conversations and chit chats. Because this woman was hurt by the many gossips about her and wounded by the judgment of people on her character, she preferred to get to the well by herself quietly at noon. I have worked with families and in churches long enough to say that people often were made to feel by others that they are not good enough. Children are bullied in schools. People of other cultures and races are segregated in communities. The poor are discriminated against the well to do. Fifty years ago the poor came and sat in the back pews of our churches and now they don’t just come inside.

           “Give me a drink”? Jesus asked this woman. There is something unusual about a rabbi asking a woman of a questionable character for water. Now the disciples who went on a lunch break after the morning preaching session are back. They are wondering what was going on between the master and this woman. Are they having simple conversation or something deeper? Isn’t it true that in this vicinity our Patriarch Jacob fell in love with Rachel at first sight? They remembered their history.

        Friends! When two strangers meet for the first time and begin to relate to each other of their thirsts, the spiritual conversation begins. It is about listening to each other, hearing one another’s story, treating each other with dignity. Jesus the truly human had his physical thirst. And the woman was thirsting for some deep meaning in her life.  Her life has become insipid, and she was going through the day today motion without any passion in it. Jesus now tells this woman about the water he would offer, which will quench all the yearnings of every troubled person. Jesus said if anyone wants to worship God one does not have to climb mountains and offer sacrifices, just submit oneself to the truth and be absorbed by the Spirit. ”Give me that drink master “the woman asked. I do not want to feel thirsty again. ”Give me that drink master “so that I don’t have to come daily in the scotching sun here again at 12:00.

        This is a story of a woman John wrote in 45 verses in the 4^th chapter of his gospel. A woman who was in the margin of a society is now brought back into the main stream. No wonder she now gets to her people and brags boldly “I have found the Messiah”. I have found a prophet who knows all about me. Through him I have regained my lost life. I have now found my true self, true love, a depth of acceptance, found the love of God, and the God of love as well.

        I want to close this message with a ”peanuts” comic strip. It is somewhat connected to my main message today. Linus is listening carefully as his sister Lucy boasts of her religious faith and her potential as an evangelist. She says to Linus, “Do you know that kid who sits behind me in school”? I convinced him that my religion is better than his religion. Linus asks “How did you do that”? Lucy replies “I hit him with my lunch box”.