New Testament Reading
John 4: 6-30, 39-42
In our Bible Study this past week, Kathleen Williams astutely raised the question of how the story of the Samaritan woman at the well might be modernized. Would Jesus meet the Samaritan woman in the beverage section at Winco? I pondered further over this matter during the past week. I considered how in the story of the Samaritan woman the water in the well is supposed to represent water that is still and stagnant as opposed to God’s living water which can be more literally translated as God’s “running” or “flowing” water. After giving it some thought, it occurred to me that bottled water might be our contemporary version of stagnant water, and so for fun, I did a google search for Jesus and bottled water, and would you believe, bottled water has been branded with Jesus. This past December Newsweek even ran a story about the new phenomenon of religious bottled water. The title reads “Bless This Bottled Water” with the subtitle “Forget Evian or Vitaminwater. The Latest Beverage Trend: ‘Holy Water.’” The article discusses three companies that have gotten into the business of making and marketing religious bottled water. For example, Holy Drinking Water, Inc. has its product blessed by an Anglican or Roman Catholic priest who has had “a thorough background check,” according the article.
My favorite, however, is Spiritual Water, Inc., which sells “purified municipal water” in eleven different bottles. Each bottle has its own Christian image and a prayer that relates to a specific need people might have such as strength, power, or energy. Thus, if one needs to focus mentally, one can grab a bottle of Focus Spiritual Water with the Virgin Mary pictured on the front and the Hail Mary prayer printed on the back. Then, there is also “Formula J’ Water” with the “J” standing for Jesus. The bottle has a picture of Jesus with a crown of thorns and a trickle of blood coming down his forehead. The company website promotes the bottle saying, “Do you need Jesus in your life? Do you want to have Jesus with you thru the day? Grab a cold Formula J’ Spiritual Water bottle, read the prayer, believe in God, believe in yourself and the sky’s the limit…” As my sermon title indicates, you can see that I have been inspired to start my own product line of Jesus-Fortified Water. I trust that none you will infringe upon my trademark.
Perhaps, bottled Jesus water really is our modern day antithesis to the living water that comes from God. What does it say about our society today when both water and Jesus can be so easily commodified? With 31 countries in the world now confronting the problem of water scarcity and a billion people lacking access to water they can safely drink, corporations have made clean water a precious commodity to be sold for a profit. Fortune magazine predicts that water will be the oil of the 21st century, and Coca-cola believes that selling water will ultimately be more profitable than selling coke. What better way to take advantage of the water scarcity crisis than to have Jesus bless a few bottles on his way to the cross? Consider alongside this that the World Bank estimates that by the year 2025 “two-thirds of the world’s population will suffer from lack of clean and safe drinking water.” It seems that Formula J’ might ultimately provide salvation for only the chosen few.
We might also think further about what happens in countries where there are high rates of poverty and a lack of access to clean drinking water. Do such conditions work to destroy communities in ways that go far beyond our biological need for water? Do such conditions of extreme hardship and competition for scarce resources greatly exacerbate prejudice and hostile divisions within communities? This is arguably the case in Uganda where entire communities go on a daily basis to retrieve water from local wells. While I was there, I witnessed the signs of what happens when the scramble for water literally pushes the weak and stigmatized to the side. I heard the testimonies of those with HIV/AIDS who are ostracized and discriminated against at water wells by the rest of their community. Regardless of when they arrive or how long the line is, they are expected to get their water after everyone else. One might easily draw some parallels between the plight of these marginalized persons and the Samaritan woman. Presumably, because of her reputation as a woman who had had five husbands she had been ostracized and isolated to the point where she went to the well by herself under the hot sun of midday when no one else would come.
From the safe distance of the United States, one might view the discrimination against persons with HIV/AIDS in Uganda as a sign of the country’s supposed “backwardness.” But who is really backward? Maybe the real backwardness is in countries like the United States where our government works with banks and international financial institutions to see that the government in Uganda spends money on things like weapons and debt interest rather than health care, education, and clean drinking water.
In the context of global poverty, where is the living water for us who live amidst the unmerited national wealth of the United States? As the water advertisement says, maybe we need Jesus in our lives, not the commodified Jesus, but the radical Jesus whose love crosses boundaries and challenges status quos. Scholars tell us that when John depicts Jesus speaking to the Samaritan woman, Jesus’ words should not be read as a condemnation of the Samaritan woman for having had five husbands. Jesus’ words instead show that he is all knowing. He knows about the past of this woman he has never met before. Furthermore, in a patriarchal society, a woman having five husbands arguably says more about the likely abuse she suffered as she was passed from one man to the next than it says about any sexual habits that might have raised red flags for our puritan ancestors. Given her likely history of abuse at the hands of men, Jesus was a departure from the norm. It has been my observation that sometimes women who have had negative past experiences with men will meet a respectful gentleman and say with appreciative surprise, “You’re not like other men.” I could very well see the Samaritan woman saying this to Jesus with evident delight. After all, Jesus was breaking all sorts of taboos pertaining to religion and gender just by talking to her. In that simple act, Jesus in a profound, rebellious way affirmed her humanity.
At first, the woman tries to capture in words how Jesus is different than other men by calling him a prophet. Eventually, she calls him the Messiah. She is the first in the gospel of John to learn of Jesus’ true identity. In essence, the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman was a moment of mutual recognition. A door was opened. A veil was lifted. Jesus saw the woman for who she truly was, and the woman in turn saw Jesus for who he truly was.
Occasionally, there are moments in life when we get this small glimpse or experience of eternal life, life that is unfettered and uncluttered by things such as nationalism and religious bigotry, life that is lived purely in the Spirit. In a manner similar to the glimpse our scripture reading gives to us, a Unitarian Universalist minister named Victoria Safford caught a glimpse of life lived in the Spirit when she saw a photograph in a magazine. In the photograph, a woman is lying in a bed with two children, “their arms flung across her body carelessly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, the most ordinary, peaceful afternoon, one child blissfully asleep, the other just a little bit awake.” Underneath the picture, is a caption that reads:
Irene Siegel, a Jewish American, sleeps in the home of a Palestinian family in Beit Jala as part of a human shield campaign to deter Israeli shelling of Palestinian homes. [Irene is then quoted as saying,] “Magdalene, my Palestinian hostess, looked at me sideways and said softly, ‘Are you Jewish?’ And I nodded. She threw her arms around me and said, ‘You know, I love you, Irene. I love you like a sister.’ And I cried. And so did she. And then she talked to me until two in the morning about everything-her fears, her pain, her experiences-everything she had held inside for so long, surrounded as she is by a community who are all suffering the same pain.”
The Samaritan woman had had an experience of eternal life. She had a taste, a sip, of the living water. It could have been a momentary, fleeting experience, but Jesus let her know that it didn’t have to be. Jesus in effect tells her, “Getting in touch with God no longer has to be something you do only in certain places. You no longer need to confine worship to this mountain or even Jerusalem. You can connect with God anywhere. Just call on God wherever you are, and God will be there.” One might imagine what this message would have been like for a woman who had been abused and abandoned by so many. Now, she knew of One who would neither abandon nor forsake her no matter what. God had given her the gift of a water that would never stop running, that would never cease flowing. Once she had experienced this gift, she couldn’t contain herself. She had to go tell others. She had to share her testimony. Maybe that’s what evangelism at its best is all about. Maybe it’s not about sales pitches that turn Jesus into another commodity. Maybe it’s about saying exactly what’s on one’s heart. Maybe it’s about letting one’s experiences of eternal life spring forth like a fountain.
But first we need to find those places in our lives where we can get a glimpse of the living water. Where is it in our lives that the veil can be lifted? Where is it that we can push aside the toxic pollution of our society and see someone else for who they truly are? Where is it that we can pour out the stagnate Formula J’ that’s been sitting on the shelf at the supermarket and instead place our hands into the cool running water of eternal life? At that point, like the converted Samaritans, when we have realized the living water of God, we can then turn to those around us and say, “It’s no longer because of what others say that I believe. It is because of what I have seen and experienced for myself that I believe Jesus is truly a Savior.” Amen.