Desire [Lent 3A]
The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson
John 4:5-42
Desire
This is a story about desire. It's about those things that desire drives us
to do – transgress boundaries, take
chances. The story begins with a basic
human need – thirst: the desire for water. Jesus was thirsty. And this woman has a bucket. And a well.
And the well is deep and full of water.
Disregarding her ethnicity and
gender, or perhaps disregarding his own ethnicity and gender, Jesus asks for a
drink. And in that moment, the woman – unnamed in this story – is very
much aware of her ethnicity and gender, or perhaps is very much aware of his
ethnicity and gender.
None of this was supposed to
happen. A Jew wanders into Samaritan
territory – into Sychar. A Jew wanders into Palestinian territory – into the West Bank.
A man walks into the “wrong” neighborhood and drinks from the wrong water
fountain. Someone is seen fraternizing
with the enemy. A 1st century rabbi strikes up a theological
conversation – with a woman – in public. So
you see the problem; Jesus' desire overwhelmed his sense of decency.
“Why are you
speaking with her?”
That is what they want to ask Jesus.
They don't, but they want to. The
disciples were in the city buying lunch.
No one stayed to babysit Jesus – which
turns out to be a mistake. Because when
they return they see him talking with a woman – worse than
that other people see him talking with a woman.
She'll probably tell people too.
It's embarrassing when it's your leader who doing this kind of
stuff. It really reflects poorly on the
entire company. Was the water really
worth it?
The Samaritan woman engaged Jesus
in conversation. I mean, rather than
just giving him some water and walking away.
Really she challenges Jesus – calls out
his social transgression. And then the
dance begins – back and forth. The conversation, on the surface, does not
seem entirely successful – more like
a collection of somewhat related statements.
Two unlikely partners talking politics and religion – gender issues hanging over the entire
interaction. Very inappropriate.
And what begins with Jesus' desire
for water, arouses in this woman a deeper desire, a soul desire: the desire to
filled. The desire for a spring of
water, gushing up in a barren land. A
well to which she did not have to travel in the heat of the day. “Give me
this water, so that I may never have to be thirsty.”
It is easy to look at this passage
and think that the woman just didn't get it.
She seems to be talking literally; Jesus seems to be talking
spiritually. But before we sell her
short, keep reading. Because she does
get it. Her responses and her questions
end with her knowing her savior. So she
gets it; she gets what she most desires.
The one who aroused, awakened, the desire also fulfills it. She gets the water for which she thirsts and
she becomes a conduit through which living water flows into other desperate
lives.
The detail of this story on which
many preachers focus is that the woman has had five husbands. And many preachers then conclude that this
woman has lived a shameful and sexually deviant life. But that is not in the text. There are a few possible
interpretations. It could be that the
five husbands were five brothers who died and the youngest is now refusing to
take her as a wife. It could be that her
husbands died or divorced her; she was not allowed to divorce them. In either case her security, which was tied
to marriage, was constantly in flux; her foundation unstable.
Or it could be a more symbolic
interpretation. It could be an allusion
to the Samaritans' pantheon of gods. And
a suggestion that she was not fully committed to YHWH – flirting but not married. Either interpretation reveals in the life of
this woman a kind of desperate need, a deep soul thirst – just floating through life without anything
eternal. Her life was an exercise in
survival – just survival. Until Jesus. Because once she found her savior her once
desolate life was worth living. And
worth sharing.
But there is a deeper desire at
work in this story. Our thirsts are
quenchable. Physical thirst can be
quenched rather easily. If there is
water available, a nice glass full of it will do the trick. And even spiritual thirst is quenchable – as the woman in the story discovered.
Quenchable, however often
unquenched. The problem with spiritual
thirst is that we are often much less attentive to spiritual thirst than we are
to physical thirst. And because of our
inconsistency, because of our fickle spiritual desire, a deeper, primal desire
is required.
What really brought Jesus to the
well? Scholar and former Fr. Jeremiah
New Testament professor Stephen Moore explores this question. He says, “...Jesus
desires a drink. But he has another
desire that well water cannot satisfy... What Jesus longs for from this woman,
even more than delicious spring water, is that she long for the living water
that he longs to give her.”[1] And it is this desire, Jesus' desire, that
drives a Jew into enemy territory, that transgresses boundaries and takes
chances, that offends his followers, and transforms lives. Before the woman at the well desired Jesus,
Jesus desired her.
And before we desire Jesus, Jesus
desires us. If it were the other way
around, we would have long ago died of thirst.
In what seems to be a rather implausible scenario, it is actually Jesus
who is desperate to be loved by us. We
are the object of Jesus' desire.
And that desire is a desire that
cannot be quenched – an
unquenchable thirst. Jesus will stop at
nothing. He wants us to want him. Jesus longs for us to love him.
This is a story about desire – about Jesus' burning, unquenchable desire. As Moore reminds us, “'The well is deep' as the woman says. Desire, however, is bottomless.”[2]
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