“Just When You Thought it Was Safe to Get a Drink of Water”

“Come, see a man who told me everything I’ve ever done. Could this be the Messiah?” [John 4:29, New International Version]

Once each decade, Oberammergau, a town in Germany’s Bavarian Alps, offers up its famous Passion Play, held in its Passion Play Theater. Since 1634, the town has put on the the drama depicting the suffering, death, and resurrection of our Lord. This year, 2020, the play will be in production daily from May 16 through October 4. A few years ago, a close friend, knowing that for a number of years I had traveled to the Frankfurt Book Fair in early October, asked me if I’d ever been to the play. He sighed and added, “Oh, I long to go; I really think I could find God there.”

Some years ago, the daughter of a good friend had been given the thankless task of providing a local church with a Wednesday night program at its “Fellowship Evening.” She had just returned from a mission trip and gave an insightful, and thankfully, short talk about her experiences during the 10-day sojourn. She then opened the program for questions from the church audience. One well-meaning gentlemen raised his hand quickly and said, “I’ve always thought that during a mission trip such as yours, you’d likely have a true encounter with God. Was that your experience?

I almost applauded when the young woman said, “Well, it was actually an earlier encounter with God that made me want to go.”

Encountering God: many of us have been taught that if one wants to encounter Yahweh, then one must go about it with diligence and great care. One must study dutifully, read the Bible (in several translations, of course), perhaps attend some spiritual formation sessions, pray unceasingly, listen carefully for the points being made in this week’s sermon, even shun the dangers of the coronavirus and board a plane to Oberammergau — you know what I mean.

My own experience, however, and the experiences shared with me by not a few friends, is just the opposite. That is to say that one more typically encounters God when one is going about one’s ordinary activities, when one is doing those mundane, but necessary, chores of life. Perhaps it is because our guard is down at those times, but it seems that most often we don’t so much find God, as God finds us.

Take this week’s Gospel reading appointed by the Lectionary, John 4:5-42. It’s one of my favorites: the chance encounter between Jesus and the woman at the well. It’s a rather long “pericope” — that’s a fancy word to remind myself that I still remember something from Divinity School. Its length is odd in and of itself. When one considers Jesus’ special context at that moment, one might wonder why the text devotes so many “verses” to a woman — a Samaritan woman at that?

You see, Jewish men like Jesus weren’t supposed to speak to women they didn’t know, particularly if they were traveling through Samaria. Samaritans — be they men or women — were looked down upon. They were shunned. Devout Jews thought that the Samaritans had shunned the true faith and had become too accommodating toward the Roman officials. Some Samaritans served as tax collectors or had other unsavory occupations. And women, well Samaritan women were women — do I need to paint a picture?

Yet, while Jesus doesn’t seem ever to have met her, He knows all about her. He engages in a playful conversation with her. He asks for a drink and she asks how it is that he, a Jew, even deigns to speak to her. After all, any cup that she might hand Him could be rendered unclean by the mere act that she, a Samaritan, had touched it. But Jesus speaks of “living water,” a phrase that makes her chuckle — “How is he to get living water when he has no bucket? And then he tells 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 give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life [John 4:13-14].

Well, most of us know the rest of the story. He tells her about her many marriages. He relates to her how the man she currently lives with is not her husband. In what we number as verse 26, He even relates to her that He is the Christ. Her response? She breaks some denominations’ rules by running to her people and proclaiming to others the Gospel message causing, as verse 39 tells us, many Samaritans to become believers. How dare a woman preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ!

As she walked to the well that day, I’ll bet the Samaritan woman wasn’t particularly interested in theology. I’ll wager she hadn’t carefully planned her day to allow for a momentary encounter with the Deity at high noon. From all we can see in the story, she wasn’t on her way to, nor had she just come from, a lunchtime prayer meeting at her place of worship (she’s a Samaritan, so that’s another story). Because of her shame, she likely was there in the middle of day — the hot time of the day — in order to encounter as few a number of people as possible. She was doing the sort of daily chore women did — in some countries still do — she was getting a bucket of water. And in that ordinary moment, on an ordinary day, doing what was quite ordinary, she was approached by Christ.

You see, here’s where YOU and I need to be careful. We’ve been not so subtly trained to think that God can be encountered only after diligence, after careful preparation, indeed, perhaps only after a trip to the Holy Land, to Oberammergau, or while on some church mission trip. Too many of us have been trained that one’s encounters with God can be controlled, played out on our terms, when we’re ready for the encounter, when we’re properly prepared.

And this story comes along and upsets that apple cart. If this story is true, and in our hearts, of course, we know that it is, we are startled to discover that God doesn’t limit God’s activity to those sorts of events and localities that depend upon our plans and our timing. In fact, often — indeed, most of the time — when someone encounters God, it isn’t because of his or her own initiative; it’s because of the initiative of God.

Please be careful, my friends. God is uncontrollable, unpredictable, even wild. God may find you just when you thought it was safe to get a drink of water.