Woman at the Well John 4-42 O’CUC 12/3/23
Back in the old days, theology and biblical interpretation was limited largely to old white European well educated rich men. In the last half century or so that has begun to change. When catholic priests mostly in South America began to engage the local people, mostly poor, peasants, uneducated exploited and oppressed. They discovered hat people of faith, from very, very different backgrounds, ,experience, culture and ethnicity found wonderful new things in the biblical story. They hear the stories from their own point of view and the bible then opens up to them fresh and powerful perspectives that can be a revelation of the divine to them and to all others who are prepared to see that the Spirit speaks to all people in their own place, time, circumstances and culture.
Accamma’s story “By our Lives” WCC p48
Accamma is a woman of the oppressed castes of India. Dalit women like her are despised and rejected, trampled into dust. (also called “untouchable”) That is why she calls to mind the Samaritan woman.
Accamma went to the well to collect a pot of water. As she walked she passed by the upper caste well in the centre of the village. She could not stop there, though. After more than a mile she reached the well reserved for Dalits. She put down her pot, sat down on a stone and wiped the sweat from her forehead with he edge of her faded sari. She sighed deeply as images of that morning flashed across her mind. What was her life worth? All she could do were the most menial, lowest paid jobs. She had to give in to her landlord’s sexual advances whenever he sent for her. Even at home in her own slum she found no rest.. She felt like the slave of a slave, one of the countless women worn out by frequent childbirth, beaten, overworked. Accamma drew the water, adjusted the pot on her head and began to walk home.
This is Acamma’s story as she tells it. She sees this untouchable women in the story from John – she could be that woman. She reflects on that story. She likens Indian society to a number of earthenware pots placed on one on top of another. At the bottom of the lowest pot is the dirt. The dalit – untouchable woman. And it is true that they are treated like dirt. When they go to the well in some areas, they can’t even draw the water themselves, they might pollute the water! She must wait until an upper caste woman deems it right to draw water for her. and her body is fair game for any man of a higher caste who wants it.
The story of the Samaritan woman has many parallels in our world. There are very many women who see themselves in this woman. She has gone to the well as part of her daily duties, a duty that is related to her survival of her family- water is a necessity – you have to have it. But then she was faced unexpectedly with a deeper thirst – one she barely knew she had.
This story triggered in Accamma – a need to tell her story, to see where this Biblical story intersected with her life. As Jesus speaks to the Samaritan woman, that lowest of the low caste woman hears him speaking to all the outcasts, despised ones of her society. She even hears him speaking directly to herself, to her own experience of being a despised one.
Jesus offers all these despised ones, his life giving water. And it’s not just the offer of the water of life on its own that is so crucial about this story. It is the person Jesus chooses to make this offer to.
This Samaritan woman is not just anyone. She’s a woman, she’s a Samaritan, and she’s a person of more than slightly dubious moral background. Now I certainly don’t want to say that Jesus’ offer of Life-giving water is not made to everyone, the gospel as a whole makes it very clear that God’s grace is available to all people
What I do think is significant the identity of the person j chooses to make such an offer in this forthright and amazing form.
Jesus breaks every convention of his society you can think of in this encounter. In Jesus’s time there was a kind of invisible barbed wire fence that encircles the entire Samaritan community. They were outlawed by Jews because of their mixed blood and historical religious differences. Although closely related by blood, faith and history, the Jews hated them much more than they hated Gentiles ie non-Jews – and they considered Gentiles to be complete barbarians. Nothing compared to the contempt and loathing the Jews held for their cousins the Samaritans. They were ostracised and disenfranchised. Jews would never dream of sharing a meal, or even drinking cup with a Samaritan, - unheard of. She is also female - a man would never get into a conversation with an unaccompanied woman – and she was a person with questionable morality.
She is a sinner in the same we are all sinners. She was considered a “sinner” as she was a person whose lifestyle her society frowned on and saw as immoral. Like many women even today, a life considered by others “immoral” was their only option. A woman has to survive and care for her children, and often that means doing “immoral” things. Like Accamma who had to let her landlord sexually assault her whenever he wanted, or else she and her children would be homeless. In Jesus’ day things were much the same a woman without a man to provide for her was in big trouble. She could be divorced on a whim by her husband. Then her only options were to find a new husband – or a man willing to provide for her without marriage – begging or prostitution.
The Samaritan Woman was a sinner by her society’s definition. She was also a person who had been separated from God, She found a thirst for God and a spiritual life, but she had never encountered God.
She was also sinned against. She is someone who has been used by men in her life and then deserted her to fend for herself. She is a victim of the society that treated women as throwaway commodity. And she is sinned against by her society by an accident of her being born Samaritan. Wrong religion, wrong ethnic group.
Jesus speaks to this woman – more than that he treats her like a real human being - as an equal and so cuts these barriers to shreds with every word. It is a reflection of the power of Christ to smash all the human barriers of this world with his water of life like flood waters breaching a dam wall - J’s water of life sweeps away all oppression, and leaves behind unity, harmony, freedom and an intimate, revolutionary relationship with God. He rips to pieces the hatreds, the suspicion, prejudice and despair. He offers her the living water of spiritual renewal with God – a God who knows everything about her and speaks the truth about who she is – and he doesn’t make an issue of it doesn’t condemn her for it, – just speaks the simple truth, and offers her that water which will quench the thirst, the thirst she has for God, for forgiveness – as she is a sinner – but also for healing for her sinned against-ness. She who is the lowest of the low. The Samaritan woman found in Jesus both healing and a sense of her own sacredness, and this is what she goes onto pass onto the people of her village.
Like the Samaritan woman, we thirst for the living water – water that will forgive us as sinners and will heal the wounds we carry with us, that are products of the fortunes of life, or of the other people’s actions who have sinned against us.
We stand at the well to draw life from our faith – sometimes a faith that has run dry-we stand at the well hoping to find authenticity about life. We stand here alongside the Samaritan woman, alongside Accamma and the many like her, and we can take the cup and drink from the wells of living water deep within ourselves, a gift of the Spirit of God – Here we find our God
Rev Anne Ryan