All the women at all the wells
John 4:5-42
The Rev. Sara Fischer
I do not believe this is by design—except possibly God’s design—but this morning’s gospel is perfect for International Women’s Day.
The story we call the Woman at the Well is a familiar and much-loved story that is unique to the Gospel of John, one of several very long readings from John that we hear every three years during Lent. I’ve visited the site of Jacob’s Well. I even brought home a vial of water from that well, long since evaporated. Like many ancient sites, a church was built on top of the well. This one was inhabited for many decades by an orthodox priest who spent his days writing icons of Jesus at the well and filling vials of its water for pilgrims like me to take home.
Many of you have likely heard many sermons about the socio-religious-political setting of this story, the conflict between Samaritans and Jews, what it meant for Jesus to be talking to a woman who was also a foreigner, and why she was at the well at noon instead of in the early morning when her more respectable neighbor-women would have been there.
Whether you use the phrase Empire or Christian nationalism or institutional Christianity, women have historically held a low value in such systems and the systems that predate them, and had little control of their own bodies or property. Today’s gospel tells a story of a woman breaking free from that oppressive norm. (I say this in the past tense but as we shall hear, the devaluing of women for the sake of Empire continues to this day.)
The words of Jesus are living water to us only if we believe that they speak to us today, in our own context. So what is happening today?
Our country is fighting an undeclared war. Some of you may be in favor of that war. Many of the dead on the ground in Iran—I won’t devalue them by calling them “casualties”—are innocent women and girls. One of the very first air strikes over a week ago hit a girls’ primary school, killing over one hundred young girls as if their lives were less valuable than others.
In our own country, innocent citizens and guests here legally are being rounded up and jailed or deported because of their last name, the color of their skin, or their country of origin. Mothers are being separated from their children and children from their mothers.
People are living and dying in extreme poverty on our streets. Black and brown women and elderly women, like the woman at the well, are extremely vulnerable. Our local elected leaders do not have the funds to provide them the mental health, addiction treatment, and housing they need, yet quickly, urgently, agree to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars to a multi-billionaire for renovations to our basketball arena. Where is that same sense of urgency when it comes to the poorest women and girls in our community?
The Episcopal Church at the national level had a flurry of press releases on the trafficking of women and girls twelve years ago, but nothing since. The Episcopal Church—which loves to make public statements—has been strangely silent on the decades of sexual abuse and human trafficking engaged in by Jeffrey Epstein (may he rest in peace if he possibly can), and his friends. Every moment of silence devalues women and girls.
What can we do about all this? This is always my question. How do we respond, as Christians, in the face of such suffering at the hands of other humans? First, we can pray. Jesus, when he was overwhelmed, went apart to pray, to pray deeply, to draw from the well which we all have inside of us to reach God and the hope that God plants inside each of us. Our response to the world, especially when we feel powerless, must always begin with prayer.
You might consider spending time today—during our worship but also beyond, in your sleeping and in your waking, in your coming and going—you might want to spend time in deep prayer for victims of war, especially innocent women and children, for victims of family separation, for vulnerable women on the streets, and victims of sex trafficking.
We pray, and we follow the lead of the Samaritan woman and devalued women everywhere: we turn to Jesus. We watch him and listen to him, as the woman at the well does. We believe Jesus when he says that he is the source of living water. We watch his acts of inclusion and forgiveness, healing, righteous honesty with those in power, and we do likewise.
In his encounter with the Samaritan woman, Jesus cuts through all the complicated socio-religious-political dynamics between Jews and Samaritans, between women and men, by using three words—or the equivalent of three English words that make all the difference in most human experience, three words we all want to hear. He says I see you. There is a South African Zulu greeting, Sawubona, which means I see you but is far more than a simple hello. Sawubona says I see you here, I see your value, I see your dignity. Really seeing another, or really being seen, as I hope we all have experienced, can be transformative.
We respond to human suffering by seeing, truly seeing, the ones who suffer at the hands of the powerful. The Samaritan woman—nameless like so many women in history—has been passed from man to man; she is always someone else’s property. And yet...look at what happens to her after her encounter with Jesus: She finds her voice and her power. She is seen by him, and she becomes an evangelist. She tells everyone who will listen: “This guy told me everything I have ever done!” And she uses those powerful evangelical words: “Come and see.” The story reminds us that this is how communities form: simply by invitation and our own story.
In this seeing and believing, telling and inviting, may we learn from all the women, at all the wells. May we honor them and walk beside them in the footsteps of Jesus.
