March 23, 2014 – John 4:5-42
John 4:5-42
Un-Frozen at the Well
3rd Sunday in Lent – March 23, 2014
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
About halfway through Disney’s animated feature Frozen,
I did have a moment where I wondered what on earth I was doing
watching a film about . . . an eternal winter!
I mean, really!
Like we aren’t getting enough of an endless winter!
Frozen is a good film, though.
And I’m glad I went to see it the other day.
It tells the story of two sisters, daughters of the king and queen of Arendelle.
The elder sister Elsa has the gift of magically being able to create ice and snow,
but before she learns to control it she accidentally harms her sister and
brings an eternal winter upon the kingdom.
And so, because of the bad things she has done, she exiles herself,
builds herself an elaborate ice castle, and resides alone in her own kingdom of isolation.
She thinks she belongs there, alone.
Her younger sister Anna sets off on a long journey in search of Elsa.
Scaling a dangerous mountain and finally entering the ice castle,
Anna confronts her sister and tells her, “We can be close again like when we were kids.”
Elsa responds, “No we can’t!”
“You don’t have to be alone,” says Anna. “I will be right here.”
“I belong here alone,” says Elsa.
But Anna assures her, “You belong in Arendelle.”
Anna is set not only on saving her sister, but saving the kingdom.
Anna believes that Elsa has the power to stop the endless winter.
But Elsa doesn’t think she does.
In frustration, Elsa accidently sends ice into Anna’s heart, which slowly begins to kill her.
We learn that only an act of true love can ultimately save Anna.
Well, like Elsa, the Samaritan woman knows a thing or two about isolation.
She comes, you’ll notice, at the very hottest part of the day to do the heavy work of
retrieving water and carrying it back home.
The reason she does that is she knows no one else in their right mind would do that:
the implication is clear: she doesn’t want to run into anyone else.
We don’t know why she isolates herself, exactly.
But this is an isolated person, isolated even from her own people, like Elsa.
She’s been isolated even in her relationships with men:
five times she has either been widowed or abandoned, perhaps because of infertility.
And so she comes, alone, in the heat of the day, to draw water from the well.
It’s there that Jesus has gone to wait for something.
You’ll notice he’s gone there with no bucket; presumably he has not gone there for water.
He’s gone there to wait for something other than water.
He’s gone there to wait for a Samaritan: he’s gone there in search of a Samaritan.
And maybe not just any Samaritan: Jesus is smart: he’s waiting for a Samaritan who would
come to the well to draw water at the hottest part of the day.
What you need to know is that Jews and Samaritans hated each other.
They were divided from each other, isolated from each other.
They were feuding cousins, who worshipped in different places,
the Samaritans in the north on Mt. Gerizim, the Jews in the south in Jerusalem.
They didn’t share food together, they didn’t speak with one another,
and they certainly didn’t ask one another for cool cups of water.
But Jesus – Jesus is just not very good at following rules.
Jesus puts himself into a situation of division and hatred.
And into this situation, being Jesus, he initiates community and love.
He enters her kingdom of isolation, and begins a conversation that will end in community.
The waters he offers the woman are the waters of grace.
The waters had been available to every Jewish person he’d met in the Gospel up till now.
And now, in Samaria, he is offering it to Samaritans as well as to Jews.
God simply does not respect the divisions that human beings create.
God is no respecter of personal, religious, ethnic, or national isolation.
How can all this be? asks the woman, as Jesus takes her deeper into the mysteries of God.
Samaritans say they encounter the living God on Mt. Gerizim.
Jews say they encounter the living God in Jerusalem.
And it is then that Jesus announces to her that where he is present, there is the living God.
When the woman says, “I know Messiah is coming,” Jesus just looks at her and says, in Greek,
“I am,” which is the name of God in the Greek translation of the Old Testament.
In Jesus,
the living God is about to overcome the boundaries that isolate people from one another.
In John’s Gospel, this is about the power of self-giving love.
He gives himself as much to the Samaritans as he does to the Jews.
And this self-giving contains within itself the ability to overcome isolation,
as if Jesus says to her: you don’t have to be alone – I am right here.
Everyone knows that Jesus loves his disciples.
But here he is, shockingly, conveying the same love to a Samaritan woman, expressing
the same non-judgmental knowledge of her pain and loss that he will show to others.
In this brief encounter, Jesus sees her in all her vulnerability and difficulty and
expresses that to her: his intimate knowledge of her rejection, loss, and impermanence.
And suddenly, she is not so isolated anymore.
Suddenly, she has found a way out of her kingdom of isolation.
Suddenly she runs to her own people – the people she has up to this time avoided! – and
announces to them: Come and see! Come and see!
And they do, and for two days, Jesus creates community from division,
creates neighbours from enemies.
For two days, with Jesus at their centre, Jews and Samaritans pray together and worship together
as an undivided community.
And so the winter of division ends for a time and emerges into a summer of love.
All it took was an act of true love on the part of Jesus,
a love expressed in overcoming the fear of otherness,
a love expressed in not judging,
a love expressed in being willing to suspend social conventions,
a love expressed in getting to know a person who may be different from you but
who surely shares the common human experiences of pain and hurt.
That is what true love looks like, and when Jesus dies on the cross,
we will see that true love expressed in its highest form,
as Jesus dies for the true love of a world that hates him,
as Jesus dies for the true love of Jews, as well as Samaritans,
as Jesus dies for the true love of me, of you,
and of the person sitting right next to you.
The act of true love that can save Anna is, in the end, an act of her own.
As Elsa is about to be killed by an enemy of Arendelle, Anna, just as she is about to be
frozen solid in death, inserts herself between Elsa and her attacker,
and takes the sword blow meant for Elsa –
the sword shatters as it strikes her icy form, and Elsa is saved.
That act of true love, though, begins to thaw Anna and leads to her own resurrection.
And that act of true love thaws not only her own frozen heart, but Elsa’s too.
For it is then that Elsa realizes that it is love that can end the eternal winter of snow and isolation.
And with this realization, she drives away the ice and snow.
Summer returns.
And Elsa returns to her people, and reconciles with her sister.
It is love that takes the winter and makes it summer.
It is love that is willing to make the long hard journey up the mountain for the sake of the other
that takes the winter and makes it summer.
It is love that is willing to enter into the other’s pain that takes the winter and makes it summer.
It is love that is willing to take the long journey from a perfect heaven to an imperfect earth and
love it anyway with a perfect heavenly love that takes the winter and makes it summer.
It is love that is willing to die for love of the other – even one’s enemies – that
takes the winter and makes it summer.
It is love that is willing to go out of its way that takes the winter and makes it summer:
It is that kind of love that saves the world.
When John tells us that Jesus had to journey through Samaria on his way from Judea to Galilee,
the necessity is not geographical.
Look at any map: Jesus actually had to go out of his way to make this particular journey:
as I’ve often said, Jesus needs a new travel agent!
The necessity for this trip is not geographical: it is theological.
On this particular journey, Jesus travels from a past of division and hatred into
the future that God intends of community and love.
And the journey continues.
At First Lutheran Church we too are on a journey from a past of former isolation into
a future of community.
At our book study a couple of weeks ago, a long-time member was asked by a new member
what was different about our congregation from 40 years ago.
“We’re less isolated now,” came the response.
So with the Samaritan woman, let us run and announce that we worship one here who comes and
finds us, comes to know us in all our pain and difficulty and isolation,
and who invites us into a new future of friendship and community and love.
The one whose true love turns winter into summer.
The one who comes to us, addresses us by name in the middle of whatever we are doing,
and commandeers our lives for the future God intends, as God continues through us
a journey and a mission that began long ago at a conversation by a well,
a mission to love, bless, heal and restore this whole world and every person in it,
a mission to thaw frozen hearts with the warm waters of grace,
and unite them in loving service to one another.
So together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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