Are You Wooed?

Third Sunday in Lent + March 12, 2023 + John 4:5-42 + Pr. Craig Mueller

Swipe right. Swipe left. These days it’s an app that helps some people decide whether they will meet up for a date. All you get is a split second for someone to see your picture. Will they be wooed enough to swipe left? Your fate, your future holds in the balance.

But in biblical times it was a well. A symbolic place of romantic matching. Of wooing someone. Isaac finds Rebekka at a well. And Jabob, Rachel. And now Jesus, the divine Bridegroom, according to John, comes to a well.

A romantic Jesus? Is that where you’re going, pastor? Like in the “The DaVinci Code” or “The Last Temptation of Christ.” Jesus, a wooer?

I know we are bit discombobulated on this time change Sunday. Some of our bodies and minds are not quite awake. Others of us may be grumpy for a couple of days. And preachers need to do all they can to woo you to pay attention. Hence, the question: a romantic Jesus?

Before we get back to Jesus, what about this woman of Samaria? The way she has been portrayed the last two thousand years, she could be in a tabloid headline. “Shady Lady Finds Living Water in the Heat of the Sun.” Or: “Samaritan Woman with More Husbands than Elizabeth Taylor Turns to Jesus.”

There have been plenty sermons like that. But don’t get wooed by them. I think this interpretation is all wrong. I’ve been wooed by some biblical scholars (Sandra Schneider) who suggest this isn’t a tale about morality at all. At least not in the sexual sense.

Sounds like a simple story of an unnamed Samaritan woman who comes to a well to draw water. But John uses symbolic speech all the time. There is always more to the story than the story. What if this is not actually about a real woman with five husbands? After all, that would have been quite unusual in the religious society of Jesus’ day. What if this is a story about the Samaritan people as a symbol? That changes everything. After all, John is writing six or more decades after Jesus. The emerging community is facing questions about their identity in relationship to Judaism.

Keep this in mind. Jews and Samaritans faced deep ethnic and religious divisions. They had a common heritage. Yet Samaritans worshipped on Mount Gerizim. Jews considered Samaritans half-breeds. If you believed your ethnicity, your religion more pure, more privileged in the eyes of God—you would never want to drink from the cup of a Samaritan!

You’d think the human species would have progressed more since then, right? All you have to do is look at Russians and Ukranians, Jews and Palestinians. And that’s just the top of the bucket. And before we get all judgey, it was only the middle of the last century when signs in this country read “drinking fountain.” An arrow with the word “white” pointed one way. An arrow with the word “colored” pointed the other way.

For all we have moved forward, the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow is still in our DNA. And we seek to mend and repair—to make reparation—for the harm done. For all that has been taken and stolen, all that has been robbed of the human dignity of many in this country.

But what about the scorned Samaritan woman’s five husbands you ask? In John, they may represent the Samaritan people’s adulterous union with other gods. Ultimate idolatry.

And us? We don’t bow before other gods. Or do we? We certainly turn to gadgets and things and substances to fill the void—to satisfy our unnamed longing, our thirst for more in life. For wherever we place our trust, there is our god.

This Samaritan woman is wooed by Jesus, no question. She wants this living water so she will never be thirsty again. But stop! Don’t go literal. This is the spring of living water bubbling up inside us as well. The Holy Spirit. True, authentic worship. Not the human-made religious and ethnic divisions. The true God—the living water—inside everyone. The water that quenches our deepest thirst.

Jesus woos her. But more than that: Jesus woos Samaritans. The gift of God is now for everyone. In that time: women, Samaritans, Gentiles, outcasts. Today? Minorities. People of other faiths or no faith. Those on the margins. Those with strange, questionable backgrounds.

This isn’t a story about bad girl goes good. This is a story for us--about turning from idolatry to true worship. This is about God wooing those preparing for baptism at Easter. God wooing all of us with the water of life. Some of you may know the hymn, “Jesus, Lover of My Soul.” Maybe, for today we could rename it: “Jesus, Wooer of My Soul.”

In the Southwest, the Colorado River is drying up. Without enough water life itself is threatened. Same with floods and too much water. Water, the source of life and death. It drowns and saves. It refreshes and renews. We are haunted by water. We are wooed by water

When the nomadic Israelites were dying of thirst, Moses wooed them to the rock. And from it, gushed water to satisfy them.

What are you thirsty for this Lent? Are you thirsty for spring? For a good night of sleep? For new life? For an authentic way of living in the world? Are you thirsty for justice? Are you thirsty for something more satisfying than the quick fixes that leave you empty? Are you thirsty for healing—for your body, bodies of those you love, bodies scarred and broken, the body of the earth itself? Are you thirsty for some relief from grief or loneliness or depression?

Come to this well, this sacred space for spiritual hydration. For today and every Lord’s Day Christ offers us living water. Easter is wooing us as well. Especially the Easter Vigil. On that night, the water of baptism will flow over millions all over the world. We will renew our vows. We will feel the water on our thirsty flesh.

So come. Drink. Live. At this table Jesus, the living water, satisfies our longings. As nothing else would do.