KCL Chapel
Autumn term Sermon Series
John 4:5-29
19th October 2016
THE SAMARITAN WOMAN
Come and see a man who told me
everything I have ever done...
This is not normally something that in our culture we would be particularly keen to announce
to all and sundry. You do not have to have the doubtful motives of a candidate for the American
presidency to wish for some things in your past life to be forgotten or secret. I still remember
the awkward moment when I was in full flow in a youth group session, mentioning in passing
on the way to making no doubt a profound theological point about how I was caught shoplifting
aged 10. Two of my sons were in the group – my street cred rose markedly as their jaws
dropped, which mine also did a week later when my parents visited for the weekend. They
repeated the story to them over Sunday lunch assuming they knew – they didn’t. Over 30 years
of withheld confession was dragged out of me.
I was interested to read in his autobiography that Tony Blair considered one of his biggest
mistakes in government to have been to strengthen the Freedom of Information Act in the
direction of disclosure and transparency. Regardless of other, rather bigger mistakes that many
would consider in his premiership, it is the case the all of us need space to make and learn from
mistakes, to think out loud before having a firm opinion, rather than having each moment or
statement in life fossilised forever as an exact representation of who we always are.
We present our present self to one another, and draw from our previous selves those qualities
that continue to be true or useful.
Come and see a man who told me
everything I have ever done...
I have been drawn to this verse as I have contemplated this reading for you today. I could have
considered the gender and cultural dynamic in this story – a defensive Samaritan woman
surprised by the attention of a Jewish rabbi. I could have explored her distraction with the
theme of water in their conversation, and how Jesus takes even the things we might use to stop
him getting to close to actually draw near to us. I could have spoken about how she deflects
him into a discussion about worship, keeping at arm’s length through the correctness of religion
the one who is showing her the kind of relationship she perhaps has never encountered before.
Yet she herself sums up her encounter with Jesus with these words.
Come and see a man who told me
everything I have ever done...
These sound like words not of accusation or worry, but of acceptance & wonder.
I can recall hearing more than one preacher when I was younger using a similar idea to illustrate
the mercy of God. Imagine that on the wall was suddenly projected a scrolling list of the
moments in your life you would most want to forget. The mistakes, the hurts, the deliberately
unkind or accidentally thoughtless words or actions which occur when the less noble side of
yourself wins out. What the New Testament unashamedly calls the acts of the sinful nature.
Imagine they are there in full view for everyone to read, see, tell others about to revel in.
Imagine the shame, the embarrassment...well, these days there might be no need for
imagination when there's Facebook.
But the preacher's idea is for us to imagine the relief if all that content could be suddenly erased,
forgotten, wiped clean. The completeness of the mercy of God.
Come and see a man who told me
everything I have ever done...
Here we have a woman from local village who is onto her sixth man. It's no surprise she is
collecting water in the middle of the day, rather than in the cool of the start of the day along
with all her neighbours. How many respectable women of the village would want to have been
associated with her. Which ones had had their own marriages ruined by their own husband's
dalliances with her. It is reasonable to propose that her life in the village was lonely and
isolated.
Here is a woman whose sins, whose shame would not have been a secret but well-known in
her community. In her encounter with Jesus, their conversation leads towards a point which
was only news to a stranger. So why did it have such an impact upon her?
My hunch is that it is not so much what he said but the way he said it. Of course we have no
tone of voice in the text. But at no stage in his conversation with the woman does Jesus speak
in an accusing way.
Later in the gospel account, we see that her testimony leads the whole village to come out to
meet Jesus, and as a consequence many others believed in Jesus too. Maybe they came out in
genuine curiosity, maybe they came out because they wondered what other salacious gossip
this travelling preacher might have unearthed. He told her everything she had ever done?
Whatever the motivation, there was something compelling about Jesus, who had been able to
effect such deep change in this woman's life, moving her from a place of defensiveness, to a
place of transparency, where through disclosure, the truth set her free.
Jesus loves the you you would like to forget. He loves the you you would like to stop being.
He doesn’t love you IF you change. He doesn’t love you BECAUSE he doesn’t know. He
does know, and he longs to help you. If the grave itself could not keep captive the love of God
in Jesus, then if we allow our poor, wounded and hopeful hearts to be captivated by this same
love, who knows what transformations Jesus might work in us.
What a miracle occurred that lunchtime by the well. A woman restored in her community after
years of ruining relationships. This lunchtime, let’s renew our hope in what is possible around
us, and within us.
Amen.
The Revd Canon Steve Benoy,
Director of Ordinands & Vocations Team Leader, Diocese of Peterborough