March 19, 2017 – John 4:5-42
John 4:5-42
Moana – Lent at the Movies 3
Third Sunday in Lent – March 19, 2017
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
In Disney’s recent animated feature Moana, the title character is a young Polynesian girl.
She is the daughter of the tribal chief of their island.
As a young girl, she has a mysterious interaction with the ocean as she is playing on the beach.
Moana has a special relationship with the water – to her it is alive.
And the living water chooses her for a very special task in a scene where the water
splashes over her and seems to baptize her – and then she is given a green stone.
As she grows up, and with the help of her grandmother,
Moana comes to see what she has been chosen for.
Her island, we learn, is dying – the coconut crops are failing and the fish stocks disappearing.
Something has to be done – someone has to return the magical green stone known as
the Heart of Te Fiti back to the goddess of life,
so that she can share her life with the world again and
Moana’s people will be saved.
To do this, she will have to embark on a long journey and enlist the help of the demigod Maui,
who was responsible for stealing the Heart of Te Fiti in the first place,
so that he can show her the way to Te Fiti.
Moana has been chosen by the living water for a task.
Now the thing is: in order to do all this she has to cross many barriers and break some taboos.
The most notable taboo is not venturing on the water beyond the reef.
As her father says, “No one goes beyond the reef.”
Moana’s people were once a sea-faring people – but they have become stagnant and comfortable.
Conventional wisdom has it that “We will all be fine as long as we stay on our safe island.”
But her people need saving, and Moana knows that in order to save them,
she will have to cross some boundaries, break some taboos, take some risks –
and leave the safety of what she knows as home.
She knows she will have to go beyond the reef to bring healing to her community.
Moana has an important role to play in the safety and well-being of her people –
and in this film, for once, it is this that defines her, and not a male love interest,
of which there is none.
She was chosen by the living water for a task – and that is what defines her character.
Moana shares many similarities with the Samaritan woman at the well this morning.
But let’s get into this story a bit first.
Jesus is travelling through Samaria – John tells us he “must” venture through Samaria.
But really to get where he’s going, if you look at a map: he doesn’t.
As I’ve said many times, Jesus needs a new travel agent!
Yes: he needs to go there – but the necessity isn’t geographical, it’s missional.
God wants him to go there.
Why there?
What you need to know is that Samaritans and Jews hated each other.
They were feuding cousins.
The Samaritans were descendants of the long-lost ten northern tribes of Israel that were
mostly wiped out when they were overrun by the Assyrians almost 900 years before.
The ones that remained had intermarried with the surrounding non-Jewish peoples and
so were considered suspect by the Jews.
They worshipped God in different places: the Samaritans in the north at Mt. Gerizim,
the Jews in the south at 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!
They were divided and isolated from each other as people,
even though they shared scriptures and presumably worshipped the same God,
the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
And there were rules in place that governed their interactions:
don’t talk together, don’t eat together, don’t share cool cups of water together.
But Jesus, as I’ve said many times, is not very good at following rules – in the Gospels he is
constantly crossing boundaries he shouldn’t and overcoming societal taboos.
Jesus is just not that great at following the rules.
And – here’s the thing – neither is the Samaritan woman.
Jesus, we know, is here to bring healing.
And he is tired and thirsty and he goes to the well.
And he goes without a bucket and that forces him to engage with a local.
At the water well, from this point on,
healing begins and then radiates outward from this unlikely pair.
This woman he encounters is no chieftain’s daughter.
She is an outcast among her own people – it’s why she goes at noon,
at the greatest heat of the day, when no one else in their right mind would go for water:
so she doesn’t have to encounter anyone.
Now she is certainly not a prostitute, or even wanton, despite what many have said.
Yes: she has been married five times,
but that means she has likely either been widowed five times,
or that she has been divorced five times,
in which case it is probably for failing to provide children to her husbands.
Either way it is tragic – and now she is reduced to living with a man not her husband.
Either way she becomes the subject of gossip and an object of ridicule.
Jesus has some healing to bring her from his heart of love.
Sure, he asks her for a cup of water, but it turns out he is the one with water to give.
He has life to give, he has healing to give – and he gives it to her.
He gives it by listening without judgment – unlike the disciples,
who judge her at the first opportunity.
He gives her the water of love and healing by acknowledging her existence,
having compassion on her plight, and conversing with her as an equal.
He grants her the dignity of being an equal conversation partner.
And then he grants her the greatest privilege of all: he reveals himself to her:
he reveals to her who he truly is.
It is the very first time in John’s Gospel he reveals his true identity to anyone.
He doesn’t reveal it first to the local prince or the religious leaders,
he doesn’t reveal it first to the disciples or even fellow Jews:
he reveals it first to this shamed outsider woman,
revealing the extent of God’s love for all people:
When the conversation turns to the subject of Messiah,
God’s agent who will make all things right, Jesus says to her:
I am he. The one who is speaking with you.
As commentator David Lyle notes this week in the Christian Century, from this moment,
her life changes.
She is claimed by Jesus as a person with dignity and worth.
She was an outsider, but not anymore.
She was alone, but not anymore.
Messiah has not only come – Messiah has come for her.
She has been chosen by the living water.
And like Moana, she has been chosen by the living water for a task.
From this moment, not just the Samaritan woman’s life, but the whole story changes.
From this moment, all the old barriers are broken down.
From this moment, taboos are broken.
And from this moment, healing begins where there once was division.
The first barrier, between Jewish man and Samaritan woman was broken.
Now the woman, eager to share the news of who she has encountered,
breaks another barrier, another taboo – she goes to her own people,
the ones who talk about her,
the ones she wanted to avoid by going to the well at the hottest part of the day.
and she speaks with them and announces the good news to them,
making her the first apostle or witness to who Jesus is in John’s Gospel.
And then another barrier is broken when all the Samaritan people come to speak with Jesus.
And finally, the story ends on a very unexpected note, when the Samaritans all invite Jesus and
his disciples to stay with them for two days and teach them and eat with them.
On so many levels, where once there was division now there is unity.
Where once there were enemies, now there are neighbours.
Where once there was discord, now there is healing.
This is why Jesus had to come to Samaria – the necessity was not geographical, it was missional.
From Jesus, the living water, healing ripples out like waves on water.
And it began with a single encounter, with Jesus choosing the Samaritan woman at the well to be
the recipient of his healing, life-giving water.
They both have to cross some boundaries and break some taboos in order for that to happen.
And she is commissioned by the living water to be an agent in his healing agenda.
In the end, we might ask, why her?
I would say she was just the first person to show up.
She could have refused, she could have said no, she could have walked away – but she didn’t.
At a certain point in the film, Moana says to Maui, I have no idea why the ocean chose me [when I was a little girl]. But my island is dying. . . . And I want to help.
The Samaritan woman could have said the same words – and maybe each of us here could.
Many – not all of us – were baptized as children.
As children, the Living Water, the Ocean of Love, chose us, each of us.
Because, like the Samaritan woman, and like Moana, each of us have something to give,
each of us can contribute to the healing of divisions that plague our world.
Each of us can, like the Samaritan Woman and Moana, share the life that has been given us.
Each of us, like them, can help God save our communities, and combat death with life.
Each us, like them, can be defined by the noble task we have been given in baptism: to serve all people, and work for justice and peace and healing in all the earth.
Like them, it might mean getting out of our comfort zone, and like them it might mean
overcoming taboos and breaking down some barriers,
whether those barriers are internal or external, psychological or societal –
but whatever boundary needs to be crossed, we can be confident that Jesus is already there, because he is the Boundary-crosser and the Way-finder, and he will find a way.
This morning he crosses the boundary again, comes to us in word, water, and wine.
He chose the Samaritan woman long ago, and this morning he chooses you.
This morning, he is the one speaking to you, from a Heart of Love.
So let’s continue to venture beyond our safe little islands, heading out beyond the reef together.
And with the Moana and the Woman at the Well, and with all the saints of every time and place,
let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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