Don't Look! Be Seen!

Good morning, Church. Good to see you all of you here today. It's a late back Saturday at the Bautel household. We don't get too many of those, but every once in a while we do. So there's no need to get all dressed up. Fix your hair, which I worry about a lot you can tell. And put the once-and-old clothes, pillow around the house, and figure out what we're going to do. Later that day we'll probably decide that we need to go to Kroger to get some groceries. We don't want to run out of anything after all. So the question then becomes, do we get all cleaned up and ready to go before we run to the grocery store or do we just go? We probably won't get cleaned up we'll probably just get in the car and as we back out of the driveway Heather will inevitably ask to make the same statement she makes every time. God I hope we don't see anybody we know. Now we always do in fact after the 830 service this morning somebody coming to me goes, "Yeah, I saw you in Kroger yesterday." So there you go. Now I'm sure that the woman in the scripture reading that Pastor Rebecca just read to us was hoping the same thing. God, I hope I don't see anybody I know. Not because she wasn't looking her best that day, but because she was ashamed of what her life had become. And because of that, because of the shame, she felt the judgmental stares of everyone who ever looked at her no matter where she went. Think with me for a little while about what she saw when she went to the well that midday. There were no other women there at the well when she went to the well that midday. There were no other women there at the well when she was there. They usually gathered at the well early in the morning before the sun rose and the temperature got a little higher or they gathered later in the day after the sunset, cooler parts of the day. Women during that time went to the well every day to draw water for cooking and cleaning and other household chores. Most of the time they arrived as a group and as they gathered water they would talk. They would talk about their husbands, they would talk about their children, they would talk about the local gossip. I am sure they talked about women like the woman in our story for the day. That's why she was at the well at noon and not when the rest of them were there. She didn't want to see the other women and hear what they talked about her or see the way they looked at her when they saw her. But when she looked at the well that day, she didn't see any of them, so she was there at the right time for her plan. There she was in a hot midday sun ready to gather water hoping that she wouldn't see anyone. But she did and as she walked towards the well what she did see when she looked around was a man a Jewish man sitting there beside the well and as a Samaritan Jews didn't associate with Samaritans, and so she didn't want to see this guy. We read that Jesus had left Judea because of pressure from the Pharisees. They were getting jealous and angry, and so he heads to Galilee. And as he heads to Galilee, you have to go through Samaria to get from Judea to Galilee, but Samaria was a bad word for Jews. Jews hated Samaritans and most Samaritans hated Jews. But he asked to pass through Samaria to get to Galilee. And as he does, he gets tired from all the walking and the journeying and he sits down to rest beside a well where he can stop and maybe get a drink. That's when the woman saw him there. Maybe he would just ignore her, she thought. I mean, after all, he's the Jew. I'm a Samaritan. Jews don't talk to Samaritans. Now this animosity between these peoples to be traced back for generations. One of the divisions came down to what scriptures they read. Samaritans accepted only the Samaritan Pentateuch, which is the first five books of our Old Testament, whereas Jews read the entire Old Testament, the Tnach, the Torah, the prophets, and all the writings, and everything that we call the Old Testament today. We can place that division historically to the time right after King Solomon died when the nation of Israel was divided into two separate kingdoms. There was a political division over which king they chose to follow. There was a cultural division over where they lived and who they were allowed to marry. There was a religious division over who was the true followers of the way of God. Have you ever felt like that? Have you ever looked at someone that way? Another division took place where they went to see God. So deep this divide between the Samaritans and the Jews that Samaritans weren't allowed to worship at the temple in Jerusalem so they had to make their own. Jews worshiped at the temple on Mount Zion in Jerusalem while Samaritans worshiped on Mount Gerazim. Mount Gerizim is where Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac in the Old Testament and the Lord provided a way through that and it's located on what is now the West Bank. These people today are still right in the middle of all of these cultural kind of divides that are going on in that part of the world. And that's what this woman saw when she looked at the well that day. It wasn't enough for this man to act like he didn't want to talk to this woman, that men didn't talk to women, they weren't related to in that culture, and certainly they didn't talk to women like her. To the people around her, she probably seemed like an unlucky woman, a cursed woman, a divorced woman, an immoral woman. Excuse me. We get a few clues about this when we see that Jesus asked her a question about bringing her husband to the conversation. And Jesus reveals that she has had five husbands and the man she's with now isn't really her husband. Now maybe she'd been divorced many times and maybe her husband had died, or some combination of the two. We don't really get a lot of details in the scripture here. I am sure that the women who came to the well earlier that day, they would be glad to tell you all about it. But this man, she saw when she looked at the well that midday, wasn't a usual man. It was Jesus. And as we've been discovering throughout Lent, throughout our sermon series, those who have these encounters with Jesus are seen. Sure, he saw the shame and all the things that she was trying to hide from everyone else, but Jesus also saw something more. He saw someone of value. He saw someone with something to offer. That's why I asked her for something to drink. She said, "Please don't look at me. "I'm a Samaritan. "You are a Jew. "I'm a man. "I'm a woman. "You are a man. "You're not supposed to talk to me." Well, Jesus says to her, "I'm not like most people, you know. "And if you really saw me for who I am, "then you would be asking me for a drink of water, for living water, water that will spring up in you and you won't be thirsty anymore." Wow, she thought. If I had that water, if I had that kind of water, I wouldn't have to come to this well every day. I could just stay at home and no one would ever have to see me. Sir, give me this water. What she saw in water was a basic need, something that did quench your thirst, a daily task, something that could solve her problems. I think we all have wells that we run to from time to time or all the time. Some people drink from the well of perfectionism. Some from the well of approval. Others from wells like control or isolation or busyness or even addiction. We keep coming back to these things over and over again, thinking that this time when we drink, it's going to actually quench our thirst. But the truth that Jesus reveals in this story is that the wells of this world will always leave us thirsty again. The rest of what Jesus says about that water that he offers is that it will be a spring of water that will well up into you into eternal life. What Jesus sees is living water, water that will well up in the soul, transforming you from the inside out, not just a necessity for cooking and cleaning and other household chores, but a source of life. That is really life, eternal life. That is really life, eternal life. It's very interesting to me that after her encounter with Jesus at the well that day, the woman leaves and she leaves her water jar there sitting at the well. I think it remained as a kind of a symbol of what she understood her life had become. She had stood empty at the end of that day, and she had been there the day before to fill it. She had been there that day, trying to fill it, she would come back again. I'm sure to fill it, it was like a life story of never ending thirst. Are you thirsty? Have you found yourself at the well? Do you keep going back to the same ones over and over again? Hopefully that, thinking hopefully that this time it will provide what you need, or maybe you go to a different well all the time searching and searching that maybe if I find this thing that it's going to satisfy and quench my thirst. I would think that for a certain time, evidently from the story we find out about her life, that this woman thought that love would be the answer for that. And so she tried and tried and tried and tried again, but on every occasion she discovered that something was missing, that she was still thirsty. And so she's left looking for something that will not let her down. And so what we find when we read this story is that if we're thirsty, if we're thirsty for something that water simply won't satisfy, then we're gonna have to go to Jesus for the living water that he says will quench our thirst and we won't thirst anymore. After this encounter, she says to Jesus, "I can see you're a prophet, so tell me this. My answers say you have to go up on this mountain to see God, to worship God. And your ancestors say we have to go to Jerusalem to this temple to worship God. Which one is it? And Jesus says, "Woman, I tell you the truth, the time is coming when you will neither worship the Father on this mountain or over there in Jerusalem. Yet a time is coming and is now here when you will worship the Father in spirit and in truth for that is the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. Jesus says it's not about how high you climb and which mountain you climb, it's not about where you go and what church you go to, it's about me. If you're looking, you don't have to go looking for God. The Father seeks worshipers. God seeks you. You are seen by God right where you are. You're seen by God regardless of what others have to say about you, regardless of how ashamed you might feel about life and how your life just turned out. And the woman at the well shows us that in fact that we are seen by God, even though we try hard at times to be unseen. Man, I hope I don't see anybody I know. Throughout this whole time, she has been with Jesus. Nowhere in the story does it tell us that she actually gave Jesus that drink of water. But with how she leaves the well that day, we are certain that she drank from the water that Jesus offered. For her thirst was quenched by that living water. After the encounter with Jesus, we're told that the woman goes back to the town where she came from, back to the people that she had tried hard not to see and to be seen by, telling them all about this Jesus who had really seen her, who knew everything about her and saw her for what she was more than all of that. They came out of the town and they made their way towards Jesus. The last verses we read today tell us that once the people have this encounter with Jesus, they ask Him to stay and He stays for a couple of days. And then after that encounter with Jesus, they go to the woman and they say, "Wow, we believe now, not because of the words that you've said, because we have seen for ourselves that He is the Christ, the Messiah. We have seen for ourselves." See, we gather in this place for times like this, the hope is not that you believe just because of the words that people like me say, but that you will gather for an encounter with Jesus and that you might know that you are seen, that as you see him, that you might know that he sees you right where you are. Being seen by Jesus makes all the difference in the world. Thanks be to God.