Where Jesus Is [Lent 3A - John 4:5-42]

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

John 4:5-42

Where Jesus is

It had been an excellent morning for Jesus’ disciples.  Jesus sent them on a mission – a very important mission.  And our Gospel today indicates that that mission was a resounding success.  They returned, heads high, smiles wide, having very much achieved their objective.  Not every task on which Jesus sent them was so straightforward, and so it felt good to knock one out of the park.  Twelve grown men, one triumphant food run.  The disciples got lunch.

As they rounded the bend, as the well, the place where they left Jesus, came into view, their smiles quickly faded, the joy of the morning, the satisfaction of a job well done dissipated in the hot noonday sun.  Jesus was still there – right where they left him.  But something was off.  They came upon a most unexpected sight.  It was a disorienting scene. 

They couldn’t believe their eyes, but the vision before them refused to fade away.  “What are you doing?”  “Why are you speaking with her?”  That is what they wanted to ask Jesus.  They didn't, but they really wanted to.  Because, yes, this was Jesus – the very same Jesus they left alone at the well – but he was not acting like they expected him to act. 

Their heads were spinning; their cheeks were burning with embarrassment; their arms were full of probably some kind of bread product; but their thoughts remained internal.  Immediately that internal place filled up with regret.  It was a simple errand.  It did not require twelve grown men.  Why did no one stay with Jesus?  No one stayed behind to babysit him, to keep him in line – which it turns out, was a mistake.  Because when they returned they found him talking with a woman, a Samaritan woman – worse than that, other people saw him talking with a woman, a Samaritan woman.  

The woman with whom Jesus was talking, conversing, maybe even debating, made this trip often.  It was like you attending to your emails or your laundry: it was a never-ending task.  She was Sisyphus.  She would get water; she would use the water.  And so she would again come to this well to get more water, water that would quickly run dry.  And so this well was her life.  And her life was nothing if not tedium. 

Nothing much happened here.  People lowered buckets and the buckets came up filled with water.  Sometimes, on an exciting day, she saw an interesting bird or someone tripped and spilled their bucket.  And on those days, she went home with a bit more bounce in step, but not too much bounce because she didn’t want to spill her bucket.  On those days she had a story to tell her man, the one whom, our Gospel tells us, was not her husband.

That was her life.  Back and forth.  Down and up.  Water and walking.  Nothing ever happened.  Except on this day: the day she found Jesus in the midst of her monotony.  

And he talked to her.  But much more than that, he saw her – and he saw her pain and her struggle and her questions and her anxieties and even the little joys that got her through her days.  He saw it all.  Somehow he saw it all – as if he had been there all along.  And it changed her life, being seen, being known, knowing she was not alone.

It was something the lunch crew had already discovered – which may be why their first scandalized impressions never exited their agape mouths.  They were Jewish men; she was a Samaritan woman.  In many ways, there were many differences.  But also they knew what it was to live the same day on repeat.  They too had spent many hours pulling their livelihood out of deep waters.  Down and up.  And then one day they unexpectedly found Jesus in the midst of their monotony.  They remembered what it felt like to first be seen by him – truly seen in a way that penetrates the soul.  The way it caused her to drop her water jug, it was like letting the nets fall from their hands.  To know the feeling of being known.  And as they looked at each other, and then back at Jesus, they were reminded how life-changing it is to know that you will never again be alone. 

We are living in strange and uncertain times.  As sickness spreads across the globe, so does the threat of isolation.  And though we are connected by social media and its bizarre mixture of panic and cynicism, the world can feel like a scary and lonely place.  It can feel like each one of us is on our own.  Where is Jesus when we need him most?

In 1878, the city of Memphis, Tennessee was hit with a yellow fever epidemic. The epidemic hit so hard that the city actually lost its charter as a city for fourteen years. As people died all around, many fled the Mississippi River area to preserve their lives. But not all fled; there were a few who decided they could not leave. See there were people, suffering and dying. There were people who needed to experience the love of Jesus, needed to know that Jesus was with them in their time of trouble, that they were not alone; they needed to feel that undying love in the midst of their dying. Sister Constance, the head of the Anglican Community of St. Mary, and the sisters of her order, stayed. They knew that death haunted their decision but still they stayed. And in the midst of suffering and death, in the midst of a contagious, fatal disease, in the midst of disaster, they loved. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” And those dying of yellow fever were to them total strangers.

Most of the sisters died. They gave their lives because they took Jesus’ commandment seriously: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” They could have left the city, the people, Constance and her companions, but they were compelled by a commandment, compelled by the Jesus living in their hearts, compelled to love with their lives as Jesus loved with his life.

On the Feast of All Saints, in that same year, the Rev. J. Jay Joyce commemorated the sisters in his sermon. He said, “They brought the light of woman's loving care to many who else had been denied it; and in their vocation and ministry they counted not their lives dear unto themselves, for willingly and gladly they yielded themselves victims, and many left their healthful home on the Hudson to find death on the Mississippi.”

In these strange and uncertain times, days of suffering, sickness, and anxiety, I wonder where Jesus will be found, because I know he will.  I hope in us.  As the world looks for some sign of hope, I want to believe they will find that hope in us, in our willingness to love boldly, in the ways we care for our most vulnerable, in the difficult decisions we make, in the ways we offer our hearts to the common good.

This season will one day pass.  But our mission, carrying on the work of Jesus in this world, continues.  In ordinary times, and in times much less normal, we labor in these fields.  We sow kindness in the fields of strife.  We sow peace in the fields of anxiety.  We sow love in the fields of self-interest.  We embody Jesus in this broken and confused world.

Jesus met the woman at the well.  And yet he already knew her – as if he had been there all along.  Because, of course, he had.  Jesus is always in the middle of it.  He is there in the midst of life, with its joys, and pain, and tedium.  And he is there in the midst of death – suffering with the ones he loves, sometimes behind a medical mask and rubber gloves, sometimes clothed in a nun’s habit, sometimes stained with a thousand tears.  But certainly there.   Always there.