[Propertalk] Sermon Tidbits, John 4, March 27 - Part 4

Sun Mar 27 01:01:17 EDT 2011

Verses 37-39: See also 12:23-24. The woman is the first missionary.

http://montreal.anglican.org/comments/archive/alnt3l.shtml

Chris Haslam
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As always in John its central character is God and God's gift of life through the invitation to live in the holy space of love, the true worship in the Spirit, which is also the living space of the Father and the Son. That love, embodied, cuts across racial and cultural prejudice, affirms women, engages and loves sinners. In a man's world a woman is the supreme example, exercising ministry, but doing so with the fragility and hesitancy and perhaps inadequacy which happens when ordinary human beings engage in ministry. That is also cutting across a prejudice of perfectionism with which we plague ourselves.

http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/MtLent3.htm

William Loader
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Contrary to popular perceptions, neither the text nor Jesus seems to indicate that she was an immoral person.

http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/john4x5.htm

Brian Stoffregen
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Okay, so how do you end a sermon when you've opened it up this way? I don't think you have to "end" it - in fact, the hope is that people will keep talking about this passage as they leave. But to draw things to a close, you might share how you'd answer one or two of the questions you've just asked. You might talk about the promise that God in Jesus also sees us - our challenges, problems, doubts, fears - with compassion and frees us to leave our jar behind. You might proclaim that the Jesus who is willing to break all boundaries to share living water with this woman - who, interestingly, becomes the first evangelist, leading others to meet Jesus through her testimony - continues to break boundaries in order to reach us.

http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=464

David Lose
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Jesus continues to use symbolism as he likens the approaching Samaritans to fields ripe for harvest, and invites the disciples to work with him in this harvest. He offers the Samaritan woman and the other villagers living water. The Samaritans respond positively, and ultimately use a title found nowhere else in the Gospels to describe the earthly Jesus: "Savior of the world." 

http://www.goodpreacher.com/shareit/readreviews.php?cat=28

Michael R. Cosby
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Our Samaritan woman is not the only first-century secret keeper. Everybody Jesus meets in the Gospel of John has a secret they think he doesn't already know. 

http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/The-Secrets-We-Keep-Alyce-McKenzie-3-21-2011.html

Alyce McKenzie, 2011
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Robert Alter, in The Art of Biblical Narrative talked about Hebrew "type-scenes" in which stock characters would act a certain way every time. In the Hebrew stories, it sometimes happens that when a man meets a woman at a well, they get married. So, if you didn't know who Jesus was, to Hebrew ears, this was a possible outcome, and was a great way of telling a story.

http://thehardestquestion.org/yeara/lent3gospel/

Unvirtuous Abbey
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Bruce Malina (Page 99.) comments on these Verses 7 to 15:

  Note that Jesus is willing to share a drinking vessel with the woman, a serious polluting act by Pharisee standards, given the fact that he is a stranger sharing a utensil with a Samaritan woman. Yet she is willing to share with him. He, in turn, treats her like family, and now she begins to reciprocate.

  The point is important because it signals that the space Jesus and the woman occupy is being transformed from "public" space, where their actions would have been considered deviant, to "private" space, where they are not. 

  Interpersonally, the woman is becoming part of the group of disciples forming around Jesus, hence, no longer a woman with whom he should not speak.

  http://www.amazon.com/Social-Science-Commentary-Synoptic-Gospels-Malina/dp/0800634918/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1

http://www.holytextures.com/2011/02/john-4-5-42-year-a-lent-3-sermon.html

David Ewart
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These peoples are the woman's "five husbands."  The one she is currently with, who is "not her husband," is Rome.  Herod the (so-called) Great had ruled the region on Rome's behalf from 37 BC to 4 BC.  During Herod tenure, about 6000 foreigners had been relocated into Samaria, but they were not allowed to intermarry with the local population.
Moreover, at Herod's death, rule of Samaria passed to his son, Herod Archelaus who ruled from 4 BC to AD 6.  Archelaus proved a disappointment to the Romans and they replaced him with the Roman, Quirinius, following AD 6.  Following 6 AD, then, Samaria was under the direct rule of Rome.  

The passage is not about the woman's sexual life.  Nor it is about her marital history.  In all of the four  gospels, Jesus never expresses even a scintilla of interest in anyone's sex life, except to stick up for so-called "sexual offenders" when they are criticized or derided by others. 

Jesus compliments the woman because, as he said himself, "What you have spoken is true."  She has no husband.  Samaria has had relations with five peoples, and is currently occupied by another who wants nothing to do with her.  

Jesus redefines the woman and Samaria.  She is not an outcast, half-breed, heretic--she is a truthteller!  

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...the Samaritans move out from being bound by their historical and national self-definitions which separated them from others.  They move into the "light" of the "savior of the world" who dissolves and transcends these boundaries and "gathers together" all people.   

http://www.progressiveinvolvement.com/progressive_involvement/2011/03/lectionary-blogging-john-4-5-42.html

John Petty, 2011
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These questions will help you discern the level of your thirst and inspire you to discover ways to find refreshment from God's abundant living water.
  1.. What's the state of your refreshment today? Are you thirsty or satisfied? Or somewhere in between?
  2.. What are you thirsty for? What things quench your thirsts?
  3.. Where have you found living water in the past?
  4.. Toward what wellspring is God drawing you?
  5.. What tools (or practices) do you need to draw living water?
http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Quench-Your-Thirst-Bruce-Epperly-03-24-2011.html

Bruce Epperly
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In the scorching midday sun at Jacob's well it was a "High Noon" confrontation with as much drama as the 1952 Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly classic.  Unlike the movie, this vignette of Jesus' life is not a violent confrontation between good and evil, it is rather a conflict of exclusivist, sexist and racist cultures, that is every bit as engaging as Carl Foreman's screen play.
The theme song from "High Noon" , "Do Not Forsake Me O My Darling" could well have been the anthem of the Samaritan woman whom Jesus discerned had been married five times before.  She had loved and lost enough to have earned a reputation which made the women of the village shun her from their communal water drawing circle at dawn and dusk, when the day was cool.  Only mad dogs and shunned Samaritans go out in the midday sun.

http://thelisteninghermit.wordpress.com/2011/03/24/high-noon-at-jacobs-well/

Peter Woods, 2011
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This text suggests in a number of ways that it is not about what we know but who we know.  It is about having an encounter, experiencing the light of Jesus' truth and love shining on our past and our future, and then having the courage and the wherewithal to drop anything that isn't that and go share what we know (not what someone else knows, just what we know) as witnesses to his abundant grace gushing up to eternal life in us. 

http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=3/27/2011

Meda Stamper, 2011
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A reversal of expectations is implicit in this story. Normally, if a Samaritan village found
out about this conversation, there would have been a battle. They would have either
driven Jesus and his disciples away or they would have attacked them. What happens in
this new relationship between Jesus and the Samaritans is a transformation of their
political and religious history from conflict and alienation to reconciliation and peace.

http://www.gotell.org/pdf/commentary/John/Jn04_05-42_commentary.pdf

Thomas E. Boomershine
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