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LINKS TO THE SERMONS |
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| “The Water, the Well and
the Woman” In “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” Roy is an average man with an average family who live in an average neighborhood is suburbia. Then he has an encounter – more than encounter, an epiphany – one that seems to have implanted a new and more mystical program in his otherwise logical brain through which he now interprets all experiences. Unfortunately, no one else in the family or the neighborhood has had the encounter so they don’t understand the new person Roy is becoming. Ultimately he will loose his average family and his average home in suburbia because he is no longer average, he is extraordinary. The movie is a messianic metaphor. At first the transformation is as frustrating and frightening for him as for anyone around him. It’s a frightening thing to start seeing meaning in the mundane. Like a pile of mashed potatoes – He scoops his helping onto his plate, then more and more until the whole serving dish is on his plate. Then he begins to sculpt the potatoes while he mumbles, “This means something.” He shakes off the moment and assures his frightened family that Daddy is okay; then it happens again as he is shaving. A hand full of shaving cream engages his whole attention and again as he studies its shape he says, “This means something.” Such is the power of metaphor. Most people know that on some instinctive level and that’s why they issue such firm denials, things like, “It is what it is and nothing else.” If everything has the potential of carrying alternative meanings, meanings on a variety of levels, then life becomes infinitely more complex than the average control freak can tolerate. So the best defense is simply to reject the whole idea and stay right on the surface. Imagine life as a three dimensional chess game. I can’t handle one dimension; I prefer checkers. I adhere to the KISS rule – Keep It Simple Stupid. Lots of Christians do that; they boil down the mystery of salvation to four spiritual laws and the faith in Christ to a dozen fundamentals and that’s it. And people like that – religion 101 – paint by number – simple and uncomplicated. Some people tend to do that with the Bible. They often begin proclamations with the phrase, “The Bible says.” It suggests to me that they are referring to the surface meaning and are not willing to investigate the levels of meaning that may also exist. Sometimes you have to have a close encounter before your mind is opened to that brave new world; and sometimes that awakening will tend to scare away average thinkers. So you have a choice, to slam the door on the mystical portal and declare that, “Daddy is okay,” or to let go, trust God to guide you through the complexity of this new multi-leveled reality and smile and enjoy the ride. We return this week to the story of the woman at the well to see if perhaps the well is deeper than we first assumed. The woman at the well figured out very quickly that the water they were talking about was not well water. Perhaps it explains why Jesus would talk to woman unlike other rabbis; they picked up the cues quicker. Another foreign woman came to Jesus asking for healing for her child. Jesus said, “Why should I give the children’s food to the dogs?” The disciples were shocked by that harsh response but the woman got it. She responded, I imagine with a little smile, “Even the dogs get the bread that falls from the children’s table.” Jesus is delighted in that response; he spends all his time hanging out with thick headed literalists and finally someone who understands metaphor and satire. He says to the woman, “For that saying, your request is granted you.” After Jesus metaphorical conversation with the woman at the well about water, Jesus continues the metaphor extending it to bread as well. But, the disciples don’t get it. They say, “Someone else must have brought him something to eat. Same with Nicodemus; Jesus talks about new birth
and he says, “Can a person enter his mother’s womb a
second time and be born?” The woman at the well got it – that everything in the conversation was a metaphor. Everything in the story is a metaphor; not just the water, the well itself is a metaphor. Throughout the Bible the well is the place where a young man goes to seek out a bride. When old Abraham wanted a bride for his son Isaac, he sent his servant down to the spring where the maidens draw water and found Rebekah. It’s chapter 24 of Genesis. You won’t believe what the servant said to Rebekah – “Give me a drink.” He wasn’t thirsty. He wanted something much more important from the woman. Perhaps even Jesus opening line, his pick up line, was a metaphor. The woman at the well would know the story of Rebekah just as Jesus did. To this day, singles bars are referred to as watering holes and people don’t go there because they are thirsty and they don’t really care what your sign is. Love is a different kind of thirst that requires a different kind of quenching. The lover writes in the Song of Solomon, “You are an orchard of pomegranates with all choicest fruits, henna and nard –saffron, calamus and cinnamon and frankincense and myrrh and aloe - a garden fountain, a well of living water.” (SS 4: 14&15) You don’t have to be a biblical scholar to figure out that he’s not talking about a spice rack next to a faucet. Maybe the woman at the well knew immediately that Jesus wanted something much more than a drink. Maybe the story is becoming more and more scandalous as we go deeper; if what I said about the societal meaning of wells and the common pick-up line is correct, then what was Jesus doing at a well at noon talking to a woman of questionable virtue? What is the possible deep meaning here? The righteous and respectable appreciate Jesus and admire Jesus and support his causes. But, a movement needs people who will fall in love with Jesus and all the reckless abandon that implies. You go looking for the outcasts and the marginalized and those are the ones who fall in love – and she did and she brought the whole community to him so they could fall in love as well. To this day the respectable and socially acceptable are part of the church but the places where the faith is alive and contagious tends to be where the ones Jesus called “the poor in spirit” are – they are the ones who fall in love with Jesus. Jesus was looking for the thirsty for love, so he went to the watering hole, the well. She knew from the moment Jesus spoke of living water what the conversation was about and what he wanted had nothing to do with what was 75 feet down in the well. Her question in response was a symbolic one, “The well is deep and you don’t have a bucket.” Jesus must have loved that response. She had challenged Jesus to put up or shut up and by the end of the story it is not just her but a crowd from town that is engaged in spiritual dialogue and discovery; this from the witness of a woman who was an outcast in her society. At the end of the story comes this marvelous affirmation, “It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.” In other words, the well was deep and he had no bucket but he could still deliver on the promise. That is how evangelism is done. Even the most one dimensional literal thinkers among us understand that water is always a symbol. Water is the symbol of birth, and of new birth in the sacrament of baptism. Water symbolizes cleansing and, according to Paul, death and resurrection. My daughter came home abuzz with the newly acquired information that her body was made primarily of water. Water is essential to the creation and sustenance of life. Jesus comes offering living water, to those who are thirsty, not thirsty for H2O but for life, for life in the spirit. A couple of chapters henceforth and Jesus is going to face the biggest challenge to his ministry. It’s like one of those things that political candidates say that gets misinterpreted, blown out of proportion and trumpeted all over the media; there is no way to get the tooth paste back in the tube. Jesus will say, “Unless you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, you have no life in you.” (John 6: 53) They didn’t get that it was a metaphor. The disciples should have gotten it; they had been part of the exchange with the woman at the well. Many of his disciples were offended and they murmured. Jesus tried to explain about the metaphor. He said, “It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” But, still, many of his disciples stopped following him. John explains that apparent failure in verse 65 of chapter 6. “No one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father;” Unless they have the close encounter that gives them the ability to see the layers of meaning below the surface of things – unless God opens their eyes – they won’t get it. So old Roy ended up loosing his average life to enter a space craft bound for another world, another reality. And the woman at the well ends up being the first missionary for Christ to the Samaritans. Before Jesus ascended into heaven he would challenge his disciples to carry the good news, not just to Judea, but also to Samaria and to the ends of the earth. After Jesus was gone the Spirit would send the disciples to Samaria, first Phillip then Peter himself, and they would marvel that God had given the Samaritans the Holy Spirit and all the gifts that come with that blessing. Thus those outcast and under-class Samaritans become the first step for the gospel reaching outside it’s comfort zone and into the whole world – all because, I submit to you, one woman got it; we call her simply, the woman at the well who I also submit, is a metaphor in this story. She is a metaphor for the kind of person who is likely to be sought out by Jesus and who is most likely to fall in love with him and go on to change the world. This church wouldn’t need a marketing plan and an advertising budget if we had more such as her as disciples. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.
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