
Woman at the Well, from The Chosen, Series 1, Episode 8
Every now and then someone points out something they have discovered which is filling them with joy and opening their eyes to things they’ve not seen before. And I’m grateful to Carly for sharing her enthusiasm and passion for a series about Jesus, which you can find online. It’s called ‘The Chosen’, just search for that and it will come up. It aims to tell the story of Jesus’ life and ministry, to provide a multi-season, episode-based portrayal of Jesus that can be “binge watched” like box sets on streaming services like iPlayer or Netflix. I suppose it’s the ultimate version of ‘The Crown’.
As the series go through, Jesus is shown meeting different people and the writers imagine the scenes around what happens. It’s a bit like the film adaptation of a favourite book and I’m still deciding if it is entry level or assumes you know a bit about the story. I suppose you get different things out of it depending on what you know already about the story. There was a trend in the 19th and 20th centuries, which went under the broad heading of the Quest for the Historical Jesus. This was an attempt to make a deep dive into the stories in the gospels and see what could be pieced together about the real man and what he did. What is memory and what is later embellishment or theological commentary? ‘The Chosen’ is akin to a contemporary version of that search, trying to imagine what Jesus did and it draws on scholarship about life at the time. It stands in a long line of dramatic portrayals on the big screen like ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ or Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion of the Christ’, musicals like ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ and even animations like ‘Miracle Maker’ (which had Rowan Williams behind it).
One episode of ‘The Chosen’ has Jesus arriving at Sychar, a Samaritan town, at the heat of the day. This was our gospel reading this morning (John 4:5-42). It’s the little details that we often miss that tell the heart of the story, which the creators of this TV show have picked up on. It is noon, the hottest moment of the day. The women, whose job it was to fetch the water, would do this at a much cooler moment, earlier in the morning. Only those who they didn’t want with them for some reason go at a later time. And that’s the key the to this woman’s story. She is judged by everyone, blamed and shamed for well, who knows what has happened to her with different relationships. And remember, as I saw pointed out recently, marriage has for most of Christian history been a contract between two men exchanging property, rather than a loving consensual relationship. So her back story could well have a lot in it.
The makers of the film have spotted how Jesus manages to have deep and honest conversations with people, ones that honour them. He doesn’t belittle or look for fault, certainly not on this occasion. It’s only those who greet him with hostility and suspicion, who attack, that he rounds on and points out their hypocrisy. He has a way of taking the complexity and messiness of life and seeing deeper into a person who is struggling with all sorts of pressures and conflicts. And this encounter at a well in the heat of midday is no different.
There are comedic moments. She tells him he has no bucket, so where is he going to get his living water. And she brings the reality of her life by saying if he gives her living water she won’t have to keep getting it from a well outside the village and lug it back the half mile to her house. It’s a reminder what happens when spiritualised language meets the every day concerns that can so occupy and overwhelm. In other-words, that’s fine for you but meanwhile I have to get the water. Not for the first time, Jesus encounters someone prepared to have a feisty conversation with him – honest and real.
It’s a strange moment that Jesus chooses this woman to be the one to whom he reveals who he is. And it says something profound about how he identifies people. Those whom he chooses are not the obvious candidates. Look at the named disciples. Her response mirrors the male disciples who left their nets or tax booths or whatever their trade was to follow Jesus. She leaves her water jar, the reason for going to the well, because she has found something more life-giving, sustaining, thirst quenching. Jesus finds the people who respond in their hearts – honest and real – and that is the key criteria he uses for whom he chooses.
In John’s gospel it is often the women who catch on first to what is really going on. Mary, Jesus’ mother, forces his hand at the wedding at Cana and prompts him to perform the first great sign in that gospel, turning the water into wine. Here, the story of Nicodemus precedes, which we heard last week, and his encounter ends in uncertainty as to what he will do. He does pop up later insisting on a fair trial and then in receiving the lifeless body from the cross, so something worked away in him that meant one encounter was only the start. The woman at the well is different. She responds straight away and leaps off to tell her village all about him. It gives her the bravery to tell those who may well have been hostile to her, a bravery the Apostles didn’t find until Pentecost, and Nicodemus until the cross.
Jesus does a further thing. He drinks from a Samaritan vessel. This is something good Jewish people didn’t do. The enmity between the two parts of Israel was such that even their drinking vessels were seen as tainted. This, Jesus blows open, by the simple act of asking for a drink. He is breaking boundaries, between Samaritan and Jew, male and female, chosen people and rejected people. In short he demonstrates that there are no boundaries to grace.
The woman becomes a witness to Jesus, just like the male disciples. She goes to tell anyone who will listen and even if they won’t, all about Jesus. This woman is so fired by her encounter, by the liberation of being honoured and set free from the shaming eyes that so oppress her, that she runs off with renewed vigour. She is a model of what it means to be a disciple of the Christ. And early in the morning, on Easter day, another woman, who had been oppressed by a mental distress, is the first to encounter the risen Christ. And likewise she is so fired by that encounter that she runs to tell the others. Her name is Mary Magdalene.
These women give a model of what it means to be a church, of the job facing each of us. To go, tell, be filled with the joy and hope of believing that we can’t keep silent. Grace knows no bounds, honours the shamed, blesses those others would curse and sets us all free to follow with joy and hope. I recommend looking up ‘The Chosen’ – binge watch if that’s your thing. But however you are marking Lent, may it continue to be for you a journey where a deeper encounter with Christ is honest and real, life-giving and life-renewing.
Sermon for Lent 3, Newport Cathedral, Sunday 12th March 2023