Those of us of a certain age will remember a bumper sticker with the initials W.W.J.D.? What Would Jesus Do?
It was a way of prodding people to think about their actions, their behavior as if Jesus were confronted by the day to day issues we all face.
I think of this gospel passage in this way.
No other Christian scriptural source suggests that Jesus ever had a mission to Samaria.
He had a mission in Galilee.
He had a mission in Jerusalem and the surrounding area.
In all likelihood this gospel writer had a community that included Samaritan converts to Jesus.
The Jewish converts may or may not have welcomed these strangers with open arms.
The gospel writer wants all the members of the community to view each other with love and respect.
So this is a “what would Jesus do” way of making everyone a legitimate heir with Christ to the love of God.
What is even more intriguing is that the main protagonist with Jesus is a woman who then becomes an “apostle” to the people of her town.
She, like those chosen in the other gospel accounts, leaves behind her what she was doing to fulfill her mission to her people.
She leaves behind her water jar.
The term in the Greek language for one who is sent, is our word “apostle”.
This gospel writer never uses that term for Peter, James, and John or any of the other of the twelve.
Those accompanying Jesus in this passage are called disciples, followers.
The gospel writer makes a strong point about the role of at least one woman in the community near the end of the first century.
It is no wonder that this gospel account had the greatest struggle making it into the official canon of sacred scripture.
Only men in the second century had a say about what counted as divinely revealed.
What intrigues me even more is Jesus’ reference to her five husbands.
This is a very strange remark that has gotten a lot of smirks and elbows in the ribs from those who heard it over the centuries.
Might the gospel writer be using this to make another point to his community?
One possibility looms large for me.
Samaria was referred to as the Northern Kingdom of Israel until it was conquered by Assyria in the early 700s before the Xtian era.
Somewhere between 10 and 20 % of the conquered people were sent into exile and other tribes moved in to take their land.
The remaining descendants of the patriarchs of Israel were surrounded by people who worshiped other deities, particularly (wait for it) 5 other deities.
Lacking the cohesion that they had enjoyed before the war, the remaining Samaritans took up cultic practices with their new neighbors while still pledging allegiance to the God of the Mosaic covenant.
The Jews of the Southern Kingdom of Judea looked down their noses in disgust at this failure, while the Samaritans defended their own ancestry.
Which takes me to the point of this reflection.
When I examine the gospel accounts, including this one, I do not find Jesus concerning himself with the so-called “sins of the flesh.”
Jesus concerns himself with sins of malice and sins of idolatry.
The sins of malice arise from greed and covetousness.
The sins of idolatry arise from what today we might call entitlement or privilege.
When I or we defend what we think we are entitled to, then we are moving into the realm of depending on something or someone other than the God of Jesus.
The Samaritan woman at the well does try to defend herself at first.
When Jesus points out to her that she is defending her place in life because she is entitled by virtue of being a descendant of the patriarch, Jacob, she relents and recognizes Jesus as a prophet and then as Messiah.
I submit to you that the idols of our own age, and that to which we think we are entitled, are often our ideologies and the righteousness that we feel about being right and others being wrong.
Nationalism and fascism and capitalism and communism and other “isms” of the modern world have been the altars where we sacrifice blood offerings.
This lent is a time to contemplate the love of God and to scrutinize our lives to locate that which forms a barrier to that love entering in.
Those barriers, those ramparts in our lives will be the acceptable sacrifice so we may worship in spirit and in truth.
When Paul speaks of justification by faith, he is saying that all that we hold dear and cling to has to be transformed by the love of God in Christ Jesus.
The Samaritan Woman at the Well is the apostle who enters our assembly today and says to us, “Come and see someone who told me everything I have ever done!”
And when we come to Christ Jesus we will ask him to stay with us.