Hearing for Ourselves

​That’s a long and packed Gospel reading! There is a lot to say about Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman, but I’m not going to focus on it this morning Instead, I want to look at the woman and the other people from her city.
 
I think of the Samaritan woman at the well as a hero, but we need to remember that she has a scandalous sexual past and a bad reputation in her city. We see that right away. Women normally collected water in groups in the morning or evening, when it was cool. This woman goes to the well by herself in the heat of the day, suggesting that the more respectable women of the city wouldn’t associate with her.
 
Now, pretend for a minute that you hadn’t just heard this story. Put yourself in the place of these townspeople. How do you think you would respond to a woman of very questionable reputation who told you that she had found the Messiah, the one your people have been waiting for for centuries? Or bring it up to today. How would you respond to a woman of very questionable reputation who told you that Jesus has come back and appeared to her first?
 
I would be skeptical.
 
Surprisingly, the Samaritan woman’s people were not. They took her seriously enough to drop everything they were doing and immediately head out of town to see this man she told them about. And, at the end of our reading, they admit that they first believed in Christ because of what she had said to them.
 
I wonder, what convinced them? It must have been Christ’s impact on her.  It must be that something about this woman was different, that her encounter with Jesus had changed her somehow, that she was now shining with new light and new joy.
 
The willingness of the townspeople to believe this woman’s report about something as unlikely as the appearance of the Messiah tells us the kind of impact Jesus can have on people. We should all pray that we are similarly impacted, that we can be more like this woman, more open to the influence of Jesus on us, more capable of convincing others of the good news because of how it has changed us.
 
But we also have to keep going with our story. The townspeople who initially trusted this woman’s report then encountered Jesus for themselves.
 
When they meet Jesus, they learn that he is a Jew. They are all Samaritans. Samaritans and Jews did not normally interact with each other at all. In addition to whatever other reasons they had to hate each other, Jews and Samaritans had very different religious beliefs. The woman alludes to those differences in her conversation with Jesus.
 
Put yourselves in their place again. They first heard about Jesus from a not very trustworthy source. Now they find that he is the kind of foreigner they are especially inclined to despise.
 
How do you think you would respond to this foreigner?
 
Again, I would be skeptical.
 
And again, they are not. They quickly realize that the woman was right about Jesus. And they say to her, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”
 
At least two points are important here.
 
First, God comes to them in a very surprising way. To their great credit, rather than simply rejecting the scandalous woman’s message about a Messiah they would normally be inclined to despise, they take her seriously enough to inquire for themselves. And they are open to a foreign Messiah.
 
There is a challenge for us here. Can we stay open to God, who may come to us in surprising ways and through unlikely messengers?
 
Second, and more important for my purposes this morning, they move from second-hand faith to a direct encounter with Christ. At first, the townspeople believe because of what the woman tells them. That’s a good start for faith. But eventually they need to meet Jesus for themselves.
 
This is a pattern that virtually all of us go through. We first learn about God from others, usually beginning while we are still children.
 
My own experience was probably pretty typical. My mother was my first religious teacher. We weren’t particularly involved in Church, but I went to Christian schools, so Mom’s lessons were reinforced by other adults in my life. As I moved through adolescence, many of my peers pulled me away from Church, but a few modelled Christian commitment.
 
So, as I entered my twenties, I was Christian. But I was still Christian in a secondhand sort of way. I was a Christian mostly because other people had made me aware of Jesus. I was like the townspeople in our reading after they heard the woman’s report about Jesus.
 
That was a good start for me, but it was not enough.
 
Only when I was living on my own for the first time, did I have to decide for myself what Christian faith meant to me. That was when I was, in the words of our reading, “on my way to him.” That was when I really began to “hear Jesus for myself,” when I could first truly say, “I know this is the Savior of the world” because I have met him.
 
In broad terms, I experienced the same move these Samaritans did, from learning about Jesus from others to knowing Jesus for myself. It took them two days. It took me three decades. I’m a slow learner. But fast or slow, that is the move we are all called to make, as we mature in our faith.
 
I wish we knew more about the subsequent life of these Samaritans. But, as is so often the case, we don’t. In the next verse, Jesus leaves the area, and we hear nothing more about this city or its people.
 
But here is something I know. The life of faith is never a perfectly straight road. There are always ups and downs. Surely that was true for them. Certainly it has been true for me.
 
Even now, sixty years in, I often find myself back in the place I started, needing to hear about God from others because my own faith in that moment is not strong enough to stand on its own. Thankfully, at other times, I can hear God for myself, speaking to me through Scripture, or through Christian brothers and sisters, or through creation itself, and I find myself once again able to say to others, “Come and see the God I have seen, hear the God I have heard. Let us drink the living water of Christ together!”
 
One of the great gifts of Christian community is that we travel those ups and downs with brothers and sisters. When we are in a strong place, we support others. When we struggle, others support us.
 
That is what Saint David’s has been for me. That is what Saint David’s will continue to be for you.
 
And so, on this third Sunday of Lent, I thank God for the people in my life who have testified to Christ to me. I thank God for the opportunity to support others in their faith. And I pray that God will help us all to shine with Christ’s divine light and to be a source of living water for each other.
 
In Christ’s name. Amen.