Unexpected

Lent 3A, 3/23/14
John 4:5-42

O Lord, open my lips, that my mouth might declare your praise.

Have you ever been looking for something, and you can’t find it anywhere, and you finally find it right in front of your face?

Think of looking for your glasses when you’re wearing them, or searching for your car keys when you’re holding them in your hand.

Here’s one that happens to young women pastors quite frequently. Thankfully it’s not something I’ve experienced here, but if I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard this story, I could retire next week.

Someone will call up a church where one of my peers works, or they’ll come in for a visit, or show up for a meeting at a funeral home or something… and that person needs to find the pastor. They’ll walk right up to my young female colleague and ask, Excuse me, miss, but where’s the pastor? I was hoping to talk with him.

When she answers, It’s me. I’m the pastor… the person who was asking just can’t believe that the person standing right there is really the person they were looking for. The appearance of the actual pastor breaks all their stereotypes of what a pastor should be.

That’s kind of what’s going on in today’s Gospel lesson.

The Samaritan woman is looking for something, and then Jesus appears right in front of her, and at first she doesn’t recognize him for who he really is – she doesn’t realize that he can be the one to meet her deepest needs. 

Jesus doesn’t look like a messiah.

He doesn’t look like a savior of the world.

The Jews – and the Samaritans too – were expecting a political or military leader to overthrow the occupying Roman forces. Based on predictions in the Old Testament, the people thought that the Messiah God was sending them was going to give them power and freedom, and probably riches, and possibly revenge against the people who had been occupying their Promised Land for so long.

The people didn’t recognize the Messiah when he showed up in the form of a carpenter’s son from Nazareth.

But that’s the wonderful thing about our Messiah. Jesus shows up in unexpected places. He does ministry with people who are powerless, people who are outcasts, and everyone in between. He just… loves everyone, indiscriminately.

This Gospel lesson gives a perfect example of Jesus’ unexpected inclusiveness, especially when you look at it in context.

Today’s story from John 4 couldn’t be more different from last week’s in John 3.

Listen to the first two verses of John 3:

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”

In chapter three, the character that Jesus meets is named, he is powerful, he has standing in the community and he professes to know who Jesus is.

And yet he comes to Jesus by night, under the cover of darkness. It’s almost as if he’s ashamed of his desire to learn from Jesus – as if he fears his status will be in jeopardy if other people know that he’s been to see this Rabbi.

In today’s lesson from John 4, by contrast, the character Jesus meets remains unnamed. She has no standing in society. She’s a woman, which means that she was dependent upon a man for the roof over her head and the food in her stomach. This woman was apparently a widow five times over, or possibly divorced.

You know, right, that a woman couldn’t initiate a divorce in ancient Israel?

By contrast, a man could divorce a woman for no better reason than that his supper had been burned. All he had to say was I divorce you three times, and the marriage was over.

Talk about an imbalance of power.

Anyway, some people have guessed that this woman from the fourth chapter of John was a whore, since she had been married five times and was currently living with a man who was not her husband.

But it’s clear to me that this woman was doing the only thing possible to avoid whoredom. When one marriage ended, for whatever reason that wasn’t of her making, she immediately entered another, so that she didn’t have to enter the age-old profession that women in every society have used to keep roofs over their heads and food in their bellies.

So. In John 4, we have a powerless, nameless woman, who has spent her whole life dependent on others. According to Jewish beliefs, she was at best immoral and at worst an idolater, because she didn’t worship God at the Temple in Jerusalem. This woman meets Jesus in broad daylight, about noon, a time of the day when anyone could have walked past and seen their meeting – which, for the record, broke about a hundred written and unwritten social conventions. Samaritans and Jews didn’t get along, to say the least, and their men and women certainly didn’t fraternize with one another. Until this woman met Jesus.

This woman is the opposite of Nicodemus from John 3. He has status in society; she does not. He is a leader in the faith; she has none by Jewish standards. Nicodemus seeks out Jesus, while Jesus initiates conversation with this woman. He is fearful of his reputation, he has something to lose – she is not, she has nothing to lose.

And yet Jesus meets them both. Rather than telling the wise Jewish teacher to come back in the daytime… or suggesting that the Samaritan woman meet him when others can’t watch and ridicule, Jesus simply responds to their questions and treats them both with dignity.

Someone who does this… well, he can’t be the Messiah, can he?

Despite all the obvious differences, here’s one thing that Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman have in common.

They both take Jesus quite literally.

Jesus tells Nicodemus that in order to see the kingdom of God, one must be reborn.

Nicodemus doesn’t get it. How can you enter back into your mother’s womb and be born again? 

Obviously you can’t, and Jesus explains to Nicodemus that the rebirth is spiritual, a birth through water with God’s spirit.

Similarly, the Samaritan woman was as a well to draw water to drink. Jesus tells her that he has living water that is more sustaining than anything she could draw from the well.

The woman wonders, how can you draw water without a bucket? In a town without a river, where could you get living water, that is, running water, not something that’s stagnant?

She didn’t get it. And Jesus explains to her that the living water is spiritual, and drinking it is a way to eternal life.

Both of these individuals end up having extended conversations about what Jesus has to offer.

But that first reaction is key.

Jesus speaks in riddles sometimes – he’s not straightforward, as people expected the Messiah to be. He doesn’t seem to have a clear goal or mission in life. In death he certainly does. But in life, Jesus confused a lot of people.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus is constantly transforming things in unexpected ways. Water becomes wine. Birthing happens not in the flesh, but in the spirit. The Temple in Jerusalem is really the temple of Jesus’ body.

         Expectations in society are transformed from predictable to unpredictable.

Based on today’s Gospel lesson, especially taken in light of last week’s reading, we know that Jesus will meet just about any person, in any place in society, at any time of the day and with any specific questions that they might bring with them.

And that’s what makes him unpredictable.

That’s not the sort of thing that a messenger from God is expected to do. It’s beneath him, right? If he’s on a mission from God, shouldn’t he be spending his time on important things?

Well, that’s what’s so counterintuitive about Jesus. He meets us in unexpected places.

In fact, the places where Jesus finds us are so unpredictable, we’re likely to have a hard time recognizing him.

We’ll look right at him, like this Samaritan woman does, and fail to recognize him. We’ll say right to his face, Excuse me sir, but I was hoping to talk to the Messiah. Do you know where I could find him?

And the answer will surprise us.

We’ve got fair warning from the characters in John 3 and 4 that Jesus speaks in riddles and we probably shouldn’t take his answers literally.

But figuratively speaking, the Messiah is all around us. We can see his face everywhere we look. In the nice cashier at the hardware store, or in that jerk who cut us off on the highway. In our closest friends, and in the strangers sitting one table over in the restaurant.

Jesus is there to meet us. He comes to where we are – he wants us to encounter him on our terms. He wants to meet our needs.

And this is a beautiful thing.

How wonderful that we have a savior who wants to welcome us with open arms. Jesus will respond to us whether we are rich or poor, young or old, male or female, and even whether we hold traditional religious beliefs or we are a little deviant from the norm.

What a wonderful person.

He couldn’t be the Messiah, could he?

Well, yes, he could. 

And he is. 

And he blesses us by loving each one of us just the way we are. 

Thanks be to God.

Amen.