LECTIONARY DISCUSSION GROUP

Week of Sunday, February 24, 2008, Third Sunday in Lent, Year A

Exodus 17:1-7

From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. The people quarreled with Moses, and said, "Give us water to drink." Moses said to them, "Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?" But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, "Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?" So Moses cried out to the Lord, "What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me." The Lord said to Moses, "Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink." Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, "Is the Lord among us or not?"

Romans 5:1-11

Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person-- though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

John 4:5-42

Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, `Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." The woman said to him, "Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?" Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water."

Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come back." The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, `I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!" The woman said to him, "Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem." Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming" (who is called Christ). "When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us." Jesus said to her, "I am he, the one who is speaking to you."

Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, "What do you want?" or, "Why are you speaking with her?" Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, "Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?" They left the city and were on their way to him.

Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, "Rabbi, eat something." But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you do not know about." So the disciples said to one another, "Surely no one has brought him something to eat?" Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, `Four months more, then comes the harvest'? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, `One sows and another reaps.' I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor."

Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I have ever done." So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world."

THEOLOGICAL TIDBITS:

- Exodus, and especially the Time in the Wilderness, is a metaphor for multiple things. First, it is a metaphor for the history of God and his people. In this particular passage, the people begin faithful, but then fall away in doubt. Finally, Moses, through the power of God, brings forth water. This parallels, broadly, the history of the nation of Israel.
- However, the Time in the Wilderness metaphor can also symbolize youthful innocence, or the falling away from it. On the one hand is innocence, as expressed in this passage:

I remember the devotion of your youth
Your love as a bride
How you followed me in the wilderness,
In a land not sown.
Israel was holy to the Lord,
The first fruits of his harvest.
All who ate of it were held guilty;
Disaster came upon them,
Says the Lord.
Jer. 2:2-3

Thus, when they asked for water and tested the Lord, they were testing the Lord, and falling away for the first time; thus it parallels the story of Adam.
- Alternatively, the time in the desert can be a metaphor for where sins are purged. The water purges the sin, just as it does with Jesus. Moreover, the desert is where the “scapegoat” was drive every year to take away the sins of Israel, away from Israel and its God.

- Paul here gives an incredibly terse and murky description of salvation that needs some serious unpacking.
- First, he talks about suffering and endurance. Suffering, endurance, character, and hope were constant companions to early Christians. He emphasizes that this is as it should be; that in some sense, the suffering is brought on by the Holy Spirit in order to improve us.
- However, he then moves into a discussion of Jesus’s role in reconciling us to God. He first emphasizes that Jesus’s death is remarkable, because he died not for good people, or for some brave principle, like Socrates; he died to save the scum of the earth: the losers and the screwups. Paul then wants to emphasize that we are the losers and the screwups, like the Israelites in the desert.
- A final point is worth making. Jesus actually reconciles us to God. There is a theory of justification called “forensic justification,” which refers to the older sense of “forensic,” having to do with debating and justice. This is a juristic theory, that focuses on our guilt before God as in a court of law. In this theory, we’re still fallen and still judged, but Jesus hides us, and through his death gives us a pardon, as it were. But this misconceives the fundamental relationship between us and the Trinity. We are more like a family, and Jesus, in this metaphor, is like a good mother, reconciling a contrite child to the father who has his belt out. But through the love of both Jesus and the Father, the Holy Spirit comes to us and shows us how to be contrite and to be actually, not just forensically, reconciled and loved by God the Father, like a child to an angry father. This, however, means that we need to accept the fundamental unfairness of Christianity. As the stories of the dishonest servant, the prodigal son and Joseph from the Old Testament show us, not everything is fair in God, just like in a family.

- I love this passage from John. It’s long, and you have to understand a few background facts first.
- First, this forms a counterpoint to the story of Nicodemus that we read last week. Nicodemus is a powerful and wealthy Pharisee, who has a name; the woman here is unnamed, a Samaritan and poor, or she wouldn’t be drawing her own water. Moreover, if she were not some type of outcast or lowly servant, she wouldn’t be drawing the water at noontime, when it was, as now, extremely hot in Samaria. Yet, Jesus draws on some of the same metaphors, by talking about water—in an oblique reference to the passage from Exodus this week—and talking about how it can well up in you forever, giving endurance, character and hope, making reference to the passage from Romans.
- Second, the woman clearly has some standing in the community in some way. Perhaps she is a gossip, but everyone hears her and believes her and follows her back to Jesus, just as Peter followed Andrew back.
- Third, men were not supposed to speak to women, and Jews were not supposed to talk to Samaritans.
- Fourth, there was an institution in ancient Israel—still practiced under certain Muslim countries—that a couple could form a marriage contract for a period of time.
- Our eyes immediately read this alongside the “one flesh” language in Ephesians 5:31 and assume that this woman is a tramp. Although the statement that her man now is not her husband suggests this as an interpretation, it is not the sole interpretation, or even particularly apposite. The woman likely had had a series of temporary marriages, and may have been a mistress. In this narrative, this story isn’t about not being a tramp, because she really isn’t one, because she’s part of an institution that is culturally accepted.
- What this does all point towards is God’s ability to break through barriers. This woman has for years sold herself short, by not getting herself a man who will marry her and treat her the way she should be treated, rather than as a semi-chattel. But God also makes her into a person of standing in the community—not a lowly woman whose only power is gossip.
- Finally, Jesus emphasizes that through the growth given through faith, the Samaritans are coming to God; the crop is growing ripe to be harvested for God.

QUESTIONS:

1. In this contemplative Lenten season, we might as well talk about sexual morality. When have you sold yourself short in love? Do you see anything the passages this week have to tell you about God and love that is important?

2. Endurance is another theme you see here. Our society strives not to be seen as cruel, but, as Hannah Arendt pointed out, evil is banal and comes by half-measures. How do you endure the small things in everyday life that can get in the way of your endurance toward hope and faith?