No Heroes but Us

Lent 3A-26

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

Jesus and the disciples pass through Samaria on their way from Jerusalem north to Galilee.  They took the shortest route –yet no self-respecting Rabbi would take this short cut.  Jesus and the disciples are walking themselves into enemy territory. Their relatives in Jerusalem regarded Samaritans contemptuously as half-breeds, who were contaminated by intermarriage to idolatrous pagan religions.

Jesus sent the disciples into town to buy lunch. He is sitting beside Jacob’s well when he meets a Samaritan woman and strikes up a conversation. It may seem unremarkable to you and me, until we realize this is the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone in the bible.

Typically, Christians cite this passage to prove a unique claim of Jesus — “I am he” — that Jesus is “living water,” a name that identifies Jesus as divine. As he and the woman talk, Jesus layers spiritual metaphors for water: liberation, yearning for salvation, hospitality, healing, and renewal of life. And wisdom, like a spring, bubbles up through his words, his poetic and symbolic insights. Jesus himself drinks water, he gives water, and he is water. I am he, Jesus said. (Diana Butler Bass)

The encounter is an interesting parallel to the story of Eve. In Genesis, the devil tempts the woman to eat forbidden fruit to gain divine knowledge. At the well, Jesus invites this woman to drink God’s water to gain spiritual wisdom. The entire story is a reversal of disobedience; here, Jesus and the woman re-enact Eden with a different result. The woman’s eyes are opened; she understands. (Bass)

Jesus sees her. And in seeing her, Jesus does not pity her or berate her or reject her, rather he engages with her in a theological conversation. Jesus does not condemn her for having had five marriages and for living with someone who was not her husband. In fact, as bible scholar Caryn Reader (The Samaritan Woman’s Story) points out, this long passage never mentions sin. When Jesus refers to her “five husbands,” Reader suggests, he likely was not referring to her sexual history but to her economic story.  Jesus is saying to her, “I see you. I see how you’ve been tossed around like a sack of grain. I see what that must have done to your heart.”

This unnamed Samaritan woman became an evangelist.  She becomes an example of discipleship in stark contrast to Nicodemus, the powerful, educated, religious leader whom we read about last week.  The fourth-century Archbishop of Constantinople, John Chrysostom pointed out she does not bring only one or two disciples to Jesus like Andrew and Philip, she brought a whole city.

“In fact, in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the Samaritan woman comes to be called “Photine,” the illuminated one. She is celebrated as a person who, after meeting Jesus and telling her neighbors about her discovery, traveled around the Mediterranean world preaching the gospel. According to legend, she ended up in Rome, preached to Emperor Nero, and died there as a martyr. Lost in the western tradition is the fact that this woman was called the first evangelist and “equal to the apostles.”” (Amy Frykholm, “Living Water: Third Sunday in Lent,” Journey with Jesus, 3/01/26)

Let’s pause for a minute to let this story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman soak like water into dry ground.

• Here, the Son of God is tired, weary and thirsty.
• Here, the Messiah, despite that weariness, listens with understanding to an outsider of an enemy people.
• Here, Jesus breaks through the barriers of nationality; the political separation between warring factions; the social barriers between a man and a woman; and the religious divide between a woman and her God.
• Here Jesus is challenging the barriers of orthodoxy and what it means to find solidarity between people of different religions.
• Here is the beginning of the universality of the gospel.
• Here, grace is poured out like water.
• Here, God acts through Christ Jesus to love the world, not in theory, but in simple words and actions.
• Here Jesus’ core message once again turns the normal dominance pyramid on its head.

Who are the Samaritans—the outsiders—the enemies—whom God in Christ Jesus would have us love and listen to today?  They are all around us. Close at hand. The marginalized, the targeted, the powerless. What would happen if we, like Jesus, chose to love our enemies rather than bomb them? For centuries, governments have pursued a policy of peace thru strength, but war and the threat of war do not create peace. It creates a lull, l-u-l-l, a temporary pause between wars and conflicts. We are not naïve to the reality of evil in the world. Yet Jesus has shown us a better way. The kin-dom of God begins with listening and builds, person to person, through relationships of trust, solidarity, and love.  Peace comes through non-violence rather than the threat of violence.

It is easy to be discouraged today.  There are days we may even feel hopeless. The backlash against a world of equality, accountability, and openness is significant.  Backlash is one way of measuring how much progress has been made. The backlash we see is not comprehensive or global.   Our elected leaders are racist.  They are authoritarian. They are misogynistic.  They are homophobic. They are destructive. Their power, therefore, is brittle, shallow, and dumb.

Form where is our help to come?  Photine, the illuminated one, showed us that leadership mobilizes the shared strength of the whole community rather than one man.

Writer and activist, Rebecca Solnit, recently said something Photine and Jesus would have agreed with. “One of the great weaknesses of our era,” Solnit said, “is that we get lone superhero movies that suggest that our big problems are solved by muscly guys in spandex, when actually the world mostly gets changed through collective effort.”  Solnit points to the Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, who said before he died that the next Buddha will be the Sangha. According to Solnit, “The Sangha, in Buddhist terminology, is the community of practitioners. It’s this idea that we don’t have to look for an individual, for a savior, for an Übermensch. I think the counter to Trump[ism] always has been and always will be civil society… Maybe changing the world is more like caregiving than it is like war. Too many people still expect it to look like war… I just want us to understand that most of the important change is collective.” (Rebecca Solnit, “The Interview,” New York Times, 3/07/26)

Water is very heavy, but the living water of the gospel is light.  In nature, water that does not flow soon becomes stagnant and unhealthy to drink.  Religion that does not open our hands, hearts and fisted minds to welcome the stranger as we would welcome Christ is no longer healthy religion. Only water that is flowing out is “living water”.  This is the invitation of the gospel, to become a Beloved Community that sees each other in our success and struggle calls out our shared strength.  We are invited to a collectivist, rather than individualistic, approach to life.

Some years ago, at worship with our friends at Emanuel Congregation on Sheridan Road, flipping through the Jewish hymn book there in the pews, I noticed one prayer that could be a re-statement of how Jesus and Photine call us to be the living water of the gospel which flows freely among us, through us, and from us. The prayer reads:

May the door of this synagogue be wide enough

to receive all who hunger for love, all who are lonely for friendship.

May it welcome all who have cares to unburden,

thanks to express, hopes to nurture.

May the door of this synagogue be narrow enough

to shut out pettiness and pride, envy and enmity.

May its threshold be no stumbling block

to young or straying feet.

May it be too high to admit complacency,

selfishness and harshness.

 

May this synagogue be, for all who enter,

the doorway to a richer and more meaningful life.

(Mishkan T’Filah: A Reform Siddur, p. 124)