Saint Mark's Church

The woman said to Jesus, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep.” (Jn. 4:11)


There is much to distract us in the story that we hear today of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well.  There is the implication of ethnic tension here; the issue the scarcity of water; the possibility of lurid details of the woman’s personal life; the ethics of marriage; the disciples’ tendency to miss the point; questions about the role of the Messiah; and other aspects of this encounter that would yield interesting results were we to dwell on them.  That is to say that this is the type of biblical story that could easily lead to a long, boring sermon.  I hope it will not – and I bet you do too!

As I have been reading and re-reading the story this week, I’ve begun to think that the crux of the story – and the aspect that connects it to our own lives – is to be found in the woman’s reaction to Jesus when she says to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep.”  Or, to use a different translation, “Sir you have no bucket, and the well is deep.”

“Sir you have no bucket…”

I say that this is what connects the story to our own lives because of all the details of this episode, this is the one that does not require us to learn anything new.  You might need me to explain to you something of the background of the relationship  between Jews and Samaritans.  We could spend time delving into the issue of water scarcity in biblical lands and biblical times, and in our own.  We could do a study of the ethics of marriage, etc.  And from all these inquiries we would undoubtedly learn something useful that would shed light on the meaning of this passage.

But when we listen to what the woman says to Jesus, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep,” we don’t need to do complicated analysis in order to understand what she is getting at.  How are you, Jesus, going to give me water, when you have no bucket?  Why do you expect me to think that you have anything for me when you are standing there without the proper gear?  What would make me think that you have anything for me, when anyone can see that you don’t even have a bucket to draw water from the well?!

You have no bucket, and the well is deep.

This story takes place in an ancient context but it poses a very modern question to Jesus.  Because in our world it often looks as though Jesus is standing at the well with no bucket.

We want to believe that he is the Prince of Peace.  But war rages around us, our cities are locked in cycles of violence, and we all know households where crucifixes hang on the walls but peace is far from home.  It would appear that the well of peace is deep, but Jesus has no bucket.

We want to believe that Jesus is the Judge eternal who brings justice into the world.  But we know that justice is not evenly distributed to rich and poor, or to the weak and powerful, and that in many corners of the world might still makes right.  The well of justice is deep, but where is Jesus’ bucket?

We want to believe that Jesus is the Great Physician who heals all our infirmities.  But the more medically sophisticated we become the more frustrated we are by the cancer that comes so swiftly and so decisively, by the Alzheimer’s that settles in so slowly but surely, by the Parkinson’s that takes over so viciously, by the virus that lurks so silently but menacingly.  We have hoped that the well of healing would be deep, but how can Jesus show us since he has no bucket?

We want to believe that in Jesus we meet the Son of the God of love.  But all around us we see failures where we thought love was planted: in broken marriages, estranged families, lost friendships, and unrequited romances.  We want to believe that the well of love is deep, but even if it is, where is Jesus’ bucket?

We want to believe that Jesus conquers death with the hope of life everlasting.  But don’t we still lose the ones we love to the grave?  Isn’t our grief still real?  Don’t we still know the pain of loss and still fear the uncertainty of death?  The well of hope, if it exists, might be deep, but we cannot be sure that Jesus has a bucket.

And so we can be tempted to say, as skeptics and non-believers would, Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep.

Perhaps questions like these ran through the Samaritan woman’s mind as she stood there talking with Jesus.  If so, something happened to overcome her questioning.  Something mysterious and even mystical happened in this exchange between the woman and Jesus.  Notice that John tells us that when the disciples came “they marveled that he was talking with a woman, but none said, ‘What do you wish?’ or, ‘Why are you talking with her?’”  Something kept the disciples silent, preventing them from interrupting whatever it was they witnessed.  Something was happening there that prevented the disciples from making their predictable objections.  It was not just a conversation taking place between the woman and Jesus; some mysterious and mystical exchange transpired that so transformed the moment that the woman set down her water jar and left it behind.

I wonder if what happened was something like what Saint Paul is talking about when he says that “God’s love has been poured into our hearts.”  Was there a moment, as the woman stood there assessing Jesus, ready to dismiss him because, after all, he had no bucket, and the well was deep, was there a moment that something happened to her and she realized that God’s love was being poured into her heart?  Is it possible that the Holy Spirit – as yet unrecognizable to the disciples – carried a measure of love from Jesus’ loving heart and poured it into hers?  Was it the unmistakable power of that exchange that kept the disciples silent?  Was it the overwhelming flood of God’s love, poured into her heart, that transformed all the woman’s expectations and caused her to set down her water jar and leave it behind as though she had no more need of it?

God’s love has been poured into our hearts.

During Lent we stand before God to acknowledge, among other things, that we so often stand before Jesus with a skeptical stance, as though we want to say to him, Sir you have no bucket, and every well we can think of, every well we encounter, every well that might have something we need in it is deep!  What good do you do us if you have no bucket?  

Is this any different from the stance of our earlier generations who murmured against Moses (which was really murmuring against God) and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst?”    What could they possibly have thought as Moses stood there in front of the rock at Masseh?  Moses, you’ve got no bucket!  And we’re pretty sure you’ve got no sense left if you expect us to believe that you are going to get water from that old rock!

And do we find it any easier to believe that God is pouring his love into our hearts?

Tradition has it that it was for his failure of faith that God would bring water from the rock that Moses was prevented from crossing the Jordan and entering into the Promised Land.  At the end of his life, Moses was allowed to see the land to which he had been traveling for forty years in the desert, but not allowed to go over.

Jesus knows that you and I have been traveling too, sometimes across arid, lonely, painful ground.  He knows of our anguish for peace and justice and healing and love and hope.  He knows that we are afraid to place our trust in him, because the well is deep, and where is his bucket?

But Jesus does not want us to get so close to God’s promise and still miss out on it.  He doesn’t want to leave us stuck on the wrong side of the Jordan.

And so he calls us, day by day and week by week; and he calls many others who have not yet heard or responded to that call.  He calls us to make room in our hearts for the love of God that the Holy Spirit is pouring into them.  He calls you and me to come apart with him and pray.  He calls us to spend at least a moment of communion with him.  He call us to notice, when we draw close to him in prayer, in communion, that instant when no one dares speak because of that mysterious and mystical exchange when we hold out our water jars to him.  We are only hoping that he might fill them with some water.  We are only holding them out, hoping for the measure of peace we came for, the measure of justice we came for, the measure of healing, love, or hope we came for…

… and so often we have little expectation that we will receive what we have hoped for.  But see how the disciples have stopped in their tracks.  See how silent it is.  See how something more than what we had hoped for passes from him to us.  See how God’s love has already been poured into our hearts.  See how ready we are to set our jars down and leave them behind, because it was you and me that needed to be filled – not our jars.

And see how, when we let ourselves get near enough to him - to this great Rock of ages - we are filled to overflowing with that love, by which all other gifts flow in a fount of every blessing.  And we thought that Jesus didn’t even have a bucket!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
24 February 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

In his excellent book that the whole city is now meant to be reading, Dave Eggers tells a creation story that comes from the Dinka tribes of the southern Sudan:

“When God created the earth, he made… the first [men]… tall and strong, and he made their women beautiful, more beautiful than any of the creatures of the land….

“… and when God was done and the [men and women] were standing on the earth waiting for instruction, God asked the man, ‘Now that you are here, on the most sacred and fertile land I have, I can give you one more thing.  I can give you this creature, which is called the cow….

“… God showed the man… the cattle, and the cattle were magnificent.  They were in every way exactly what the [man and woman] would want… [they] would bring them milk and  meat and prosperity of every kind.  But God was not finished….

“You can either have these cattle, as my gift to you, or you can have the What.

“… the first man lifted his head to God and asked what this was, this What.  ‘What is the What?’ the first man asked.  And God said to the man, ‘I cannot tell you.  Still, you have to choose.  You have to choose between the cattle and the What.”

Of course the man can see what an excellent gift the cattle are.  He can imagine the health and happiness to be had in its milk and its meat, he can see that it is a peaceable animal and a great blessing from God and so the first man chooses the cattle, and leaves the What well enough alone.  But throughout time the memory of the mystery persists.  What other gift might God have had in store?  Something better, more wonderful, more frightening, more excellent than the cattle?  Or is the What a second prize, of clearly lesser value than a cow?  What is the What?

Thus God guides the human heart in imagining the beginning of all things: a garden planted in the east of Eden, a man, and a woman formed from a rib, rivers flowing, a tree of Life, and a tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil.  And somehow, choices to be made, even in paradise.  To accept God’s obvious blessing or to go with what’s behind Door #2, since, after all the fruit of the tree looks to be good for food, and it was a delight to the eyes?  

Our own creation story is universal in its outlook but in many ways it hews pretty closely to the African one.  And as Adam and Eve stand naked before the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, there is a sense in which they are being faced with the same kind of choice: accept God’s obvious blessing, or risk it all and find out what is the What?

There is missing, in the African story, a crucial character, slithering and sliming along: the subtle serpent is absent from this tale.  Had he been there, we can only assume that he would have bargained with the first Dinka man and the first Dinka women, convincing them that the What was worth looking into, pointing out ways that they might keep their cattle and still get the What. He could sell snake oil to a snake!  But he has no role in this story... not in those early days of story-telling.

But in Sudan the story continues, jumping forward to our own times: a chronicle of the horrific slaughter of men and women all across southern Sudan.  An exodus of Lost Boys (and others) walking across the desert into Ethiopia.  A decade of childhood spent in a refugee camp.  And finally deliverance to the promised land of these United States where the main character of the book finds himself beaten, robbed, and left sitting in an Emergency Room for hours since he has no insurance.  Perhaps the serpent, subtle as ever, has been there all along.

And the memory of the mystery persists.  What is the What?  What is that secret that God once withheld?  Was it right to choose the cattle – which had seemed such an obvious blessing?  Or would the What have been a better choice that could have delivered the people from this awful fate?

What is the What?  It is such an odd question!  We can let it take us into our own story, too.  What is it that leads us so quickly from paradise to murder?  It wasn’t the cows, surely!  It wasn’t Abel’s goats that so incited Cain!  What is the What?  

What is it that has organized this great nation of ours into the aisles of a discount super-store?  What is it that puts guns in the hands of children and then recruits them for warfare?  Is it some twisted version of a gift that once was given by God?  Is it the backwash from the rivers that flowed through Eden?  How did this garden get so polluted?  What is the What?  

Is it some Holy Grail that has inspired men perversely to fight to the death across a holy land?  Is it the power of the tree of Life, rolled up into a belt, strapped around a young girl’s midsection, and then detonated in a public square?  What is the What?

What gift did we decline?  Or is it that we have never stopped pursuing its mystery?  What fruit could we have eaten that brought things to this?  What parasite has burrowed into the human being that has made the street corners of Camden so awful and so bloody?  What is the What?

Or is the What the deceptive power that courses through corporations and congresses as they spend ever more money on weapons and less on anything else?  Or is the What light sweet crude oil – that sounds so scrumptious, but grips us with all the determined and corrupting power of a heroin addiction?  What is the What?

Perhaps our own story is not so different from the story of those tall, dark Dinka from Sudan.  Perhaps we, too, have been possessed by the memory of the mystery of what might have been (what is the What?)  How delightfully naive it must have been to see the hopes of the future possessed by a cow!  How delightfully simple it would have been to stay away from just one tree!  But that was long ago and now we are modern, sophisticated, busy people!  Give us the What – whatever it may be!  For at last we must know what we might have had - What is the What?!

If the truth is that our story is intertwined with the Africans’ story, then let us let the story take us to the desert – since it is the desert that the Lost Boys of Sudan had to cross.  But let us let our story take us to a different desert, where Jesus has gone, and where after forty days of fasting he encounters that slithering, slimy, subtle tempter.  And it turns out that the devil has been harboring the memory of the mystery all these ages.  He’s packaged it differently for Jesus.

Wouldn’t you like some bread, he asks.  Wouldn’t you like to let me help you out?  No?

Wouldn’t you like to show me just how powerful you are?  Flex your muscles?  Won’t you take my suggestion?  No?

Wouldn’t you like to add to your power?  Wouldn’t you like to rule men’s hearts with an iron fist?  No?

The devil’s temptations suggest the contours of that old mystery.  Wouldn’t Jesus like to have the What – the alternative to God’s obvious blessing?  Wouldn’t Jesus like to have it all?  What is the What?

Somehow fortified by his fasting, Jesus, who now seems to know himself more fully, also knows the folly of these false choices.  He knows, of course, about the garden and the tree.  He knows about the Dinka and the cattle.  And he knows about the What.  Jesus knows about the false choice between God’s obvious blessing and whatever it is that’s behind Door # 2, or down Aisle 12, or in the firing chamber of a gun, or gushing up from an oil well, or strapped around a suicide bomber’s waist.  Jesus knows that there was never really any good choice to be made, that accepting God’s obvious blessing is blessing enough for any people.

So Jesus goes into the desert like a new first man to confront the memory of the mystery of this ancient, nagging question – what might have been?  And when we see Jesus confront this tempting question, do we finally see it for what it is: something like a curse on our lips?

Even though that first Dinka man chose wisely, his children, or their children, would find themselves in the exact same boat as the children of Adam and Eve.  That persistent question always haunting them, unable to simply be grateful for the cows, the question hung in the air: What is the What?

So Jesus goes into the desert to become a new first man who will take the question from our lips.  Because a story like that – or a story like the folly of Eve and Adam – is a story that we are bound to go on repeating over and over until we find a new story to replace it.  This seems to be the way we are made.

Which is why today the Sudan has become a place of un-imaginable bloodshed and misery.  Far from the most sacred and beautiful land that God could give, Sudan and its people have been raped and slaughtered in their hundreds of thousands over the last ten years or more.  Africans are unwilling or unable to put a stop to this.  The Chinese are unwilling, the Europeans are unwilling.  And although we Americans will read about it and preach about the carnage that has befallen Darfur and other parts of Sudan, we have shown precious little willingness to do much about it.

We are all too willing, it would seem, to live with the What – with whatever the alternative to God’s obvious blessing is.  We are all too willing to be beguiled by smooth-talking serpents who tell us we don’t have to have it God’s way, we’ll do perfectly well on our own.  And we have not yet convinced ourselves that it is time to let this new first man take over our lives, our history.

Which is why, as Lent begins, the Church drags us into the desert with Jesus to overhear his confrontation with that old serpent.

“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”

“You shall not tempt the Lord your God.”

“Be gone, Satan!  For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’”

And there is no What anymore.  When Jesus comes out of the desert he begins his ministry of healing and teaching and preaching and feeding.  He holds no false bargain up to those who would hear him and follow him.  He leaves no lingering question in the air.  He only starts to call out, “Follow me, follow me!”  And soon we learn that to follow him is no easy task.  It might be easier to wonder about what God is hiding behind another door, what secret answer he may hold to an ancient question.

But there is no question.  There is only the Cross to go to with this new first man, who will take every ancient tragedy there with him to be crucified with him – and every modern tragedy as well.

And there is no What anymore – no alternative to God’s obvious blessing in this new man, who has given us a new story to tell, and who has beaten that slithering, subtle serpent at his own game.

Forty days and forty nights he is giving us to think about that old story, or to repeat the old question in our heads over and over: What is the What, what is the What?

Forty days and forty nights to leave these things in the desert, where, with the serpent, they will finally shrivel and die.  

Forty days and forty nights to discover this new first man, who the devil is forced to leave, and to whom angels come, to bring him to us, if we will have him.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
10 February 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia