Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him. Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. (John 4:28-41)
Nobody walks away from an encounter with Jesus the same as they were before. In his presence, we are changed. We are made more fully alive.
Everybody in this short passage, which concludes the story that many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, discovers that to be true, each in their own way. The woman who met Jesus at the well, the disciples of Jesus who re-enter the story here, and the townspeople who come to hear about Jesus through the woman and her report, they are all changed by having been in the presence of Jesus.
There are signs of that change everywhere. For one, in one of the most poignant details of this whole chapter, the woman who had first come to the well in order to draw her water for the day, leaves her jar behind so that she can go and tell everybody in town about the stranger she has met and how he somehow knew her whole life story and didn't bail out on her on account of its messiness. Her whole reason for coming to the well (and possibly her intended plans of coming at high noon to avoid the busier times at sunrise or sunset, when it would have been cooler) had been turned inside out. It's not that she would never need to get real water for cooking or washing anymore, and it's not that she hadn't been trying to avoid people earlier. But being in Jesus' presence has made her more alive, and all she can do is tell as many people as possible about the man who offered her genuine love and infinite life as a free gift. That now supersedes the original to-do list of fetching water and running errands. She can't help but tell other people about Jesus, so that they can meet him, too--and be changed. The water jar, left behind at the well, is a telltale sign that Jesus has done something to transform her.
But she's not the only person to walk away from this scene changed by the encounter. When Jesus' disciples catch up with him after having bought some food in town, they are startled to find him talking with <gasp!> not just a woman, but a Samaritan woman at that! And not only is Jesus not embarrassed in the least to be speaking with her, but when she goes off to tell her neighbors about Jesus, Jesus tells the disciples that she is preparing the ground for them to do their own work in reaching other people with the message of Jesus. Like harvesters who can only do their job because someone else has done the hard work of planting and tending the crop earlier in the season, the disciples will join in the work she has already done. In other words, the disciples will depend on the impromptu ministry and message of this unnamed woman, and any success they have will turn out to have been dependent on her first sharing the word about Jesus. (Let this put to bed any notion that Jesus does not endorse or call women into ministry. Not only is this woman the first to spread the news about Jesus in the story, but the disciples can only join in the work she has already begun! Just like at Easter, when the first witnesses to the empty tomb are women and the rest of the disciples have be brought on board secondarily to realizing that Christ is risen.) So the disciples, who walked into the scene certain that they knew the pecking order of who's who in terms of status with God, now discover that not only is this woman they looked down on actually included by Jesus, she stands shoulder to shoulder to them in terms of being used by Jesus for kingdom work. The disciples find their perspective is changed--and, of course, not for the last time in the gospels, either! They can no longer see themselves as the gatekeepers who control access to Jesus--this scene reminds them (and us!) that they never were! Not only did Jesus welcome the Samaritan woman into relationship and ministry with him, but she now has gone off and invited others, without even seeking the permission of those twelve disciples! Jesus, of course, doesn't need anybody else's permission to welcome people into relationship with him, nor to commission people to be his messengers. The disciples should have remembered that, since of course, he had first called them to be his disciples even though they were looked down on by some of the Respectable Religious Types. But this moment compelled them to see it was true when Jesus chose to welcome and work through somebody else, too. Maybe this moment helped those disciples to hold their tongues the next time the Spirit led someone else to join in Christ's work who was not on their pre-approved list.
And of course, last of all in this scene, there are all the other people in the Samaritan village who are drawn to Jesus because of the unnamed woman's witness to them. They would have grown up with the same kinds of ingrained assumptions of prejudice about Judeans that the woman mentioned earlier in her exchange with Jesus, and they might not have wanted anything to do with a rabbi from Galilee who was born in a Judean town like Bethlehem. (There is, after all, a story in Luke's gospel about a whole town of Samaritans who won't welcome Jesus precisely because he is intent on passing through to Jerusalem--and Jesus has to stop his disciples from trying to call down fire from heaven in judgment on them!) But by the end of this story, the woman's witness has led the townspeople to go and listen to Jesus, and from there, they welcome him into their town for several more days! Their old ethnic and racial prejudices are broken open, and they come to know Jesus and realize that he really is the One they have been waiting for.
Old boundaries are pulled down. Old bigotries are dismantled. And old assumptions about who God can--and cannot--work through are overcome, all from being in the presence of Jesus and his transforming ways. Nobody is ever the same after being with Jesus. And neither will we be.
Lord Jesus, transform us by being in your presence on this day.
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