Sermon March 23, 2014

THE THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT

Year A

March 23, 2014

Exodus 17:1-7

Psalm 95

John 4:5-42

Pastor David Tryggestad

Concordia Evangelical Lutheran Church

Duluth, Minnesota

Where do you go for water?

This past week, our Duluth News Tribune reported a theft that took place at Pompeii, the ancient city at the foot of Mount Vesuvius. Pompeii had been totally covered with ash and molten lava in 79 A.D., and archaeologists have uncovered the ruins of the city to give us a glimpse into daily life in that once-thriving Roman community. The artifact that was stolen was the face of Artemis, the Greek hunting goddess, chiseled out of larger fresco. Now the figure of the woman is headless, nothing but a roughly carved hole in the stone where her head and torso should be.

Mark Twain visited Pompeii in 1867, and he writes in his book, The Innocents Abroad, about what he saw of the excavations, some of which reveal exactly what the people were doing at the precise moment the disaster fell upon them:

In one of these long Pompeiian halls the skeleton of a man was found with ten pieces of gold in one hand and a large key in the other. He had seized his money and started toward the door, but the fiery tempest caught him at the very threshold, and he sank down and died. One more minute of precious time would have saved him. (Chapter 31)

Where do you go for water?

I had a conversation in the sauna at the Y this past week with two other guys. One is a boxer who has recently won three fights in a row. All of the text of John 3:16 tattooed onto his slender torso.

I said to him, “I wonder what it might be like for an opponent to throw a punch at you, with John 3:16 tattooed on your torso.”

The third man said, “What’s that? What’s John 3:16?”

The boxer answered, “For God so loved the world . . .” and the boxer continued.

The third man said, “Oh, is that the sign people hold up at baseball games?”

Where do you go for water?

Mark Twain talks about another artifact in the ruins of Pompeii that shows where the people of that city went for water:

In one of the principal streets was a ponderous stone tank and a water spout that supplied it, and where the tired, heated toilers from the Campagna [that area of southern Italy] used to rest their right hands when they bent over to put their lips to the spout, the thick stone was worn down to a broad groove an inch or two deep. Think of the thousands of hands that had pressed that spot in the ages that are gone, to so reduce a stone that is as hard as iron! (Chapter 31)

Where do you go for water?

The Samaritan woman goes to the well for water, every day, just like all the other women in the city. The well is the place, not only for water, but for community, for relationship, for sharing stories, joys and sorrows, burdens and cares. But this woman is not with the other women, who go early in the morning so as to avoid the intense heat of the sun. This woman goes at noon. She goes alone.

Where does this woman go for relationship? It seems her deep and human longings for relationship have been dashed over and over again.

Jesus says to her, “Go, call your husband.”

“I have no husband.”

“You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!”

How much pain can one person endure?

Our Gospel writer does not tell us the circumstances. We don’t know if she has been a widow five times, or if her husbands have divorced her five times, or if they have simply left her and disappeared.

“You have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.”

Has she given up on marriage? Or is she considered such “damaged goods” that the one she has now will not commit to marriage?

Is it any wonder that the woman does not go to the well early in the morning with the others? No doubt, she is not welcome! She is an outcast among the Samaritans. And the Samaritans are outcasts to the Jews. The woman is an outcast among outcasts.

If anyone had a reason for hardness of heart, it would be this woman. Our First Lesson is about the hardness of heart of the Israelites in the wilderness. Our psalmist warns us against the same hardness of heart.

Yet, if anyone had a reason for hardness of heart, it would be this woman. This woman whose heart has been broken five times! This woman who has been shunned by her community!

How much pain can one person endure?

This woman goes to the well for water. But where does she go for relationship?

I think one of the most revealing details of our Gospel narrative is the simple sentence, “Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city.” After her encounter with Jesus, she leaves without having accomplished the reason for her visit to the well—to draw water from the well. She leaves the water jar and returns to the city. And she goes into community, telling her story: “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!” Here is the astonishing thing: they believe her and they follow her!

The woman comes for water, but she gets much more than water: “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but 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.”

Where do you go for water?

Let’s go back to the ruins of Pompeii, to the skeleton of the man with the gold coins and key in his hands. Where did he go for water? He went for his gold. The boxer with the tattoos in the sauna? He goes to John 3:16. The man who didn’t know what John 3:16 was? I wonder. The Samaritan woman at the well? She goes to Jesus.

Let’s go back to Pompeii and the fresco with the face of Artemis chiseled out. The figure is faceless. Think about what it might mean to be faceless. You have no place in community. You are absent. You are forgotten. You don’t exist.

This is the image of the Samaritan woman. She is an outcast among her own, an outcast among outcasts. It’s as if a thief or a vandal has come and chiseled away—stolen away—her identity, her very person, and now she no longer has any existence.

And then she meets Jesus, and he gives her living water, water that becomes within her a spring of water gushing up to eternal life. She has life in community again. She has been renewed and restored.

Thanks be to God!