Healing Old Wounds

Gospel of John #9
John 4:5-15; I Kings 12:20-30; 13

Jesus had to pass through Samaria, and found himself in the village of Sycar, built on the ruins of ancient Shechem where Jacob had purchased land for his son Joseph. His ancient well was still a source of water for that village. Jesus was worn out from the trip, so he sat down at the well. It was noon. 

As a Samaritan woman approached the well to draw water from it, he beckoned to her, “Would you give me a drink of water?” After two millennia, this well exists today, and is enshrined in an Eastern Orthodox monastery on the site. Earlier 19th Century biblical scholars had doubted the authenticity of this well and of this story. What they did not know, for lack of archeological research, and their own unbelief, was that it had been safely hidden through the centuries below five successive churches built on that site. The Bible, again, proved to be the authentic record, the scholars were wrong. 

Jacob's well is situated a short distance from the archaeological site of Tell Balata, which is thought to be the site of biblical Shechem. In accordance with the 33rd chapter of Genesis, Jewish, Samaritan, Christian, and Muslim traditions all associate the well with Jacob. The well then becomes a metaphor for the true life of faith, the life of the Spirit. It is ironic, but no accident, that these four religious traditions all see the well as a sacred place. 

Jesus’ request to the woman seemed reasonable, but the response he got was not quite what one might expect. In fact the Samaritan woman was taken aback, she was indignant saying: “How come you, a Jew, are asking me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink? (Jews in those days wouldn’t be caught dead talking to Samaritans).” Immediately she raised the issue of racial and religious conflict. The Samaritans had intermarried with Moabites, Jebusites, Ammonites, and had practiced their religion. First Kings gives us a background of their initial conflict. This wasn’t just about Jews feeling as if they were better; that the Samaritans were inferior and that they were superior. It was that and much more. They felt that the Samaritans were unclean, lost, no longer worthy to be called children of God. Not only had they, as Jews, written them off, but they believed that God had written them off as well.

So the first wound that exists between Jesus and this woman, and hence between God’s people and the Samaritans, is a political wound, compounded by a religious wound, and exacerbated by a racial wound. We can collectively refer to this as an social wound—the collective social contradictions that existed between Jews and Samaritans, which now seemed to impair the possibility of this woman receiving the Christ of God. And yet a miracle is taking place here, because what happens between Jesus and this woman will heal a 500-year-old wound.

Jeroboam had been an official, a prince in Solomon’s court. He was intelligent, tall, handsome and popular among the people. His ego got the better of him, and he rebelled against Solomon, only to find himself in exile in Egypt. He had a mass following, because he was a member of the tribe of Ephraim. When Solomon died, nine other tribes followed Jeroboam out of the kingdom headed by David’s grandson Rehoboam. Israel, the Northern Kingdom proclaimed Jeroboam as their king. Judah, the southern kingdom, along with the tribe of Benjamin, remained loyal to Rehoboam. King Rehoboam attempted to go to war with Israel, but God said, “No. You shall not fight them. They are your brothers.” 

O how tribalism has been the bane of existence for so many African people. Our tribes are important. Being a member of the Black American tribe of Africans is to be a part of a great cultural heritage, just as to be Zulu or Yoruba or Igbo or Xhosa. But tribalism was senseless in the face of the oppression of subjugation brought on all of the people by the Roman Empire. They needed to forget old hatreds, old wounds, and move toward a common unity as oppressed people. They needed to understand their immediate need for mutual goals; a mutual unified society, a mutual social ethic, and mutual faith experience. 

The wound was not only old it was deep. King Omri (I Kings 16) had gone so far as to buy a hill from a man named Shemer, so that a new capital city could be built. He called it Samaria, after its former owner. He built a temple there where idols of Baal and Baal’s consort Asherah were constructed. He had the people construct two more golden bulls as Jeroboam had done in Bethel, proclaiming, Israel, behold your gods. Jeroboam had even brought foreigners, people who practiced divination, worship of the stars and planets, and other strange beliefs that God had forbidden into the shrines and temples as priests of God. 

Then finally, of course, the Samaritans (Israel=Northern Kingdom) had intermarried with women and men of the nations around them, violating the command to sanctify themselves before YHWH so as not to practice the idolatry of their neighbors. When Judah returned from Babylonian exile, the Samaritans were already living in the land, but of course had no interest in rebuilding Jerusalem or reestablishing the Kingdom of Judah (southern remnant of Israel). The northern kingdom which had been unfaithful to YHWH was scattered and never rebuilt as a nation, yet the small region known as Samaria continued to exist in the north, although no longer referring to itself as “Israel.” The Jews are descendents of the faithful kingdom, Judah. In German there is no word for Jew. Jews are referred to as Juden (the people of Judah).

With all of this negative history, Jesus does not begin by addressing her historical, ethnic, religious and racial issues at all. His response is curious, “If you knew the generosity, the grace of God and who I am in relation to that grace, you would be asking me for a drink and I would have given you living water. It seemed as if Jesus was flirting, he was speaking to her in a very personal way, and so she began to speak to him in a flirtatious manner. “How are you going to give me water, man? You don’t have a container to place the water in. How then will you give me this “living water” to the extent that I will “Never thirst again?”

Then Jesus made it even more personal. He ignored the personal flirtation and its implications and went on, “Everyone who drinks the water you are talking about will get thirsty again and again. Anyone who drinks the water I give will never thirst, not ever. The water I give will be like an artesian spring within you, gushing fountains of endless life.” To this she replied, “Sir, give me this water so I won’t ever get thirsty, won’t ever have to come back to this well again.” Now she was hooked. Now she knew he was not “talking some jive talk” that a man might if he had unscrupulous motives. At that point he took it another step even more personal. “Go call your husband?”

Repentance is not about feeling bad. God is not interested in us feeling bad about our lives. We already do that quite well without any help from God. Repentance is God’s way of leading us out of the trap of addictive behavior that life sets for so many of us, toward the light of a recovered self, a new self filled with the Christ of God. “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Her life was a sad a tragic one. Contrary to many commentators and popular opinion, there is nothing here to suggest that she was an immoral woman, a person of bad character (for a good reference on this I would refer you to "Inner Healing for Broken Vessels," by the late Dr. Linda H. Hollies). 

In fact, that she had been married five times meant that she was quite a catch. Five different men had produced money, livestock, property or all three as a dowry to gain her favor as acceptable spouses. Obviously she was, or had been quite beautiful, quite attractive, quite desirable (what made for a desirable wife often had much less to do with beauty than with ability and efficiency). After this succession of marriages (we don’t know if they had died, if they had divorced her), she was now living with a man with no seeming desire to marry him. Who would want to marry again after five marriages? Given the social position that most women found themselves in during the first Century, it is highly likely that she was, herself, needing a husband in the same manner that one might need “a hole in their head.”

She had been in relationship after relationship, but it had not found satisfaction, joy, love and peace. Now she wasn’t even going to try to go in that direction again. She was ready for a change. She was ready to have the old wounds of all of these relationships and the seeming failure (or loss) that accompanied them, healed.

In the Bible in Contemporary Language paraphrase we read Jesus words in Matthew 11:28-30-- 
“Come with me, get away with me, and you will recover your life. I’ll show you how to find real ultimate peace and satisfaction. Learn the unforced rhythms of God’s grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly."

This is what he was inviting her too. How do we know that she got it? How do we know that both the old political, religious, racial and social wounds and that the wounds inflicted by personal, addictive behavior were also healed. Because John tells us in verse 28, she left her water jar. She went back to the town and said to all those Samaritans, come see a man who told me everything that I ever did. Is not this the Christ? They came out of the town and made their way toward him. She did not say, come see a Jew. She did not say, come see a paternalist who accepts us even though we are not as good as he. She did not say, come to see a Jew who is different from other Jews, he accepts us. 

No. She said come see a man who is a prophet, who has gifts, who comes from God. She left her water jar. It had represented 500 years of bitterness and enmity. It represented old wounds from five marital relationships that had ended in loss. For the fact that she was coming to get water at noon when all of the respectable women had gotten theirs early in the morning, as was the custom, the jar represented her shame. It represented all the attempts through various relationships, trying to find the real and only satisfaction that exists, the renewal of our relationship as children of God through the Christ. 

She left that old thing behind. She didn’t need it anymore. She went in faith with the promise of living water. Jesus rose above old wounds, old hurts, “The time is coming, when the true worshipers will worship God, neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, for those who truly worship God, worship God in Spirit and in Truth.” Wow. What Jesus has is for everybody. No matter what tribe, what ethnicity, what race, what religion; the promise of God’s reality through the Christ, through the powerful Spirit of life in the Christ of God is there for all. 

He heals old wounds. Deep ones—ones that we can’t talk about-- he plugs up the holes in our hearts. Come see a man. Come to Jesus. Come to the Christ and experience new, full everlasting life, as Christ recovers the child of God in you. Amen.