“And upon this came his disciples, and marvelled that he talked with the woman: yet no man said, What seekest thou? Why talkest thou with her? The woman then left her waterpot, and went her way into the city, and saith to the men, Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ? Then they went out of the city, and came unto him. In the mean while his disciples prayed him, saying, Master, eat. But he said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of. Therefore said the disciples one to another, Hath any man brought him ought to eat? Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work. Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour: other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours. And many of the Samaritans of that city believed on him for the saying of the woman, which testified, He told me all that ever I did. So when the Samaritans were come unto him, they besought him that he would tarry with them: and he abode there two days. And many more believed because of his own word; And said unto the woman, Now we believe, not because of thy saying: for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.” John 4:25-42
We continue our exploration of the Fourth Gospel and we have come upon a watershed in our study. I want to suggest to you that we have now hit upon the driving theme of the Gospel, and indeed the driving theme of our life together, which theme is the Nuptial Mysteries betwixt Christ and his Church.
I realized something this week about the Wedding of Cana that I did not point out when we first looked at that narrative and that is that the miracle-sign of our Lord turning the water into wine was the first hint that he was the Bridegroom. Recall that when the master-of-ceremonies tasted the water that had been turned into wine he called the bridegroom and said, “Thou hast kept the best wine till now.” The reason he addressed the bridegroom is because it was the bridegroom’s responsibility to provide the wine. But we know that it was Jesus who provided the wine and so right there in chapter 2, with his first miracle, we have our Lord taking the role of the Bridegroom. Once you see that, you realize that John Baptist’s inspired insight into his role as the Friend of the Bridegroom was not pulled out of thin air, but rather it was born from Jesus’ life-story that swiftly unfolded from the time he walked away from the Baptist taking some of his disciples with him. One more thing, it was one of you who first mentioned this to me several weeks back, but it did not sink in right then. That is important. There is no such thing as instant insight, instant enlightenment for any of us. If it took several thousands of years for the Promise made to Abraham to become manifested in the birth of Jesus, I submit to you that we ought not to become discouraged because it takes us a little time to grasp what is going on here. Give it some time. And also realize that it is not a mere individual achievement: it was one of you who first raised the question to me. And that is another point I wish to make: our best work of understanding and appropriating Jesus’ narrative is literally a collaboration.
Now I have said that we have reached a watershed in our study of John and this is it. I submit to you that this Gospel is the narrative of Sacrament of Love between Christ and his Bride; it is the narrative of the Nuptial Union between Christ and his Bride. The Nuptial Union, realized between a husband and wife, was once held to be high and holy, truly good and beautiful, as well as symbolic, emblematic of creation’s destiny of wholeness and joy with the Creator. But today it is reduced to the literalism of mechanics, mere biology, and finally it is reduced to entertainment. But the failures, the mediocrities and the wickedness of our age does not bend the mind of God Almighty. And frankly the failures, the mediocrities, and the wickedness of our age will not change anything. No, it will not. This world will go on just as predictably bland, tasteless, boring, and tedious in its literalism and aping empiricism as it ever has and God will permit it go on like that until he will not permit it any longer and then it will vanish like a foul odor passing into oblivion as the windows are thrown open to the fresh air of the Kingdom of God. So I intend that we focus upon our destiny that is revealed to us in the Nuptial Mysteries of the Life of Christ in the Fourth Gospel. And that brings us back to our text for today.
First of all, everything that occurs in this conversation between the Woman of Samaria and our Lord Jesus Christ ought to be read and understood as a conversation between the Bridegroom and his Bride. And again it is the setting of the narrative that brings this out, opens up the mystical meaning for us.
“And upon this came his disciples, and marvelled that he talked with the woman: yet no man said, What seekest thou? or, Why talkest thou with her?”
The word that is used here to describe the collective experience of Jesus’ disciples upon their return from the city only to discover him in conversation with the Woman of Samaria is translated “marvelled.” It is the Greek word “thaumazo,” which is built on the same root as the word “wonder,” “to be amazed,” or “to be astonished.” It is also the root “thauma” which is a noun that means “a wonder,” and I suggest to you that it was not only the conversation but the setting that caused them to marvel. The image of a man and a woman at a well is Old Testament —Biblical as is the symbolism of water. Genesis chapter 24 records that Abraham’s servant finds a wife, Rebekah, for his only son Isaac, by a well of water. And he even asked her for a drink of water. Genesis chapter 29 records that Jacob met his wife Rachel when she came to draw water from a well. And Exodus chapter 2 records that when Moses fled from the Pharaoh he met his wife at a well when she had come to water her father’s flock. In each case the bridegroom or his surrogate journeys into a foreign land where he meets his bride at a well of water. Isaac, the Son of the Promise, Jacob, the son of Isaac, and Moses, the Prophet/Law-Giver — each one found his Bride by a well. How appropriate it is that the Mystical Bridegroom should find his Bride by a well of water.
“And upon this came his disciples, and marvelled that he talked with the woman: yet no man said, What seekest thou? or, Why talkest thou with her?”
I submit to you that it is not merely that Jesus was talking with a woman but that he was talking to this woman in this setting. Jesus’ chosen band is made up of Jews, sons of the Torah, children of Abraham according to the flesh and the icon of the man they believed to be the Messiah obviously engaged in a spirited conversation with a woman, any woman, by a well of water would have been a marvel indeed. Of course the disciples are only human like the rest of us and like the rest of us it takes time for the distilled reality of thousands of years of God’s Promise to sink in and begin to make sense and so keep in mind that this text was written by the Evangelist after the Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord and after Pentecost and it is highly likely that it took some time for them to grasp the meaning of our Lord’s life-story even though they were seeing it open up before their eyes.
Like just about everyone else in this Gospel, the disciples misunderstood what Jesus was saying and doing. Look at what happened next:
“The woman then left her waterpot, and went her way into the city, and saith to the men, Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?”
After the disciples returned and were apparently caught off guard by what they saw: Jesus and the Woman at the Well. She, on the other hand, hardly noticing the disciples, was so moved by Jesus as to dash back into the city. The Evangelist even notes the detail that she left her waterpot behind. The disciples were baffled, but the spell of the material world, the spell of the empirical, for her was broken. She was very much like Nicodemus at first — Nicodemus said one cannot reenter his mother’s womb and be born a second time and the Samaritan Woman said that she wanted the living water Jesus promised so she will never have to come to this well again. After the spell of the empirical, of utilitarianism is broken and she runs off to tell her fellow Samaritans about the Messiah, while the disciples try to get Jesus to eat something.
“In the mean while his disciples prayed him, saying, Master, eat. But he said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of. Therefore said the disciples one to another, Hath any man brought him ought to eat? Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.”
The disciples, apparently ignoring that Jesus is invigorated & refreshed, tried to get him to eat some of the food they had brought back, but he said to them that he had food they did not know about. Where did he get the food, they wondered? Did someone else bring him food? Did the Woman bring him food? You see, once again, how the default of their whole life is the empirical, the utilitarian. But Jesus’ nourishment, his life, is to finish the work the Father had sent him to finish and by that he meant (though only he knew this) the Cross. He is the true Husband, the true and only Knight in Shinning Armor who had entered into the dark and tangled forest of our fallen world to rescue his Bride from the dragon, that old serpent who would take her life, who would take all life and all creation and render it to nothingness if he could. But he cannot. He will not. His doom is done.
One last point today: Strangely we have to take note of the fact that not everyone in the Fourth Gospel jumps to the materialistic, empirical conclusions about Jesus’ words and actions. At this point in the Gospel Jesus engaged two women in highly charged conversations. The other Woman, was his Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary. And there is a big difference between Mary and the other people in the Gospel: Mary apparently did not need to be delivered from our very human attachment to the literal, material level of things, because she had already been delivered and she knew her Son. Such is made clear at the wedding in Cana when she turned to the servants and said, “Whatever he saith unto you, do it.” At that event she is more the Initiator of his grace than the recipient. After all, she had already received his grace to the fullest at the Annunciation. When the Angel appeared to her and declare, “Hail thou full of grace; blessed art thou among women.” And he told her that she would conceive the Holy One of Israel and after verifying his truthfulness she responded: “Let it be unto me according to thy word,” she received the grace of God. Mary discerns truth rather than jumping to materialist, empirical conclusions the Bible says:
“But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.” Luke 2:19
John the Baptist is closer to our Lady than he is of any of the others people in the Gospel. He has already, like Mary, received the grace of Christ in a special, very focused, very personal and individual way, and thus he too stands aloof, not unfriendly or remote, not inhuman, but neither a recipient in the same manner as other people in the Gospels. It is not that the Baptist and our Lady were not given the very grace we all need for cleansing from original sin and actual sins, but rather their particular missions were singular, once and for all, never to be repeated missions which required a special infusion of God’s heavenly grace and heavenly virtues for the launching of Jesus’ mission to the world. There is a sense in which the Baptist was representative of the Old Testament and the Blessed Virgin Mary was representative of the New Testament. And there is a sense in which they were both in the Old and both of them were laboring to bring forth the New. And now here we are: the Old has passed away because Mary, the Mother of God, the Rose Tree of Old Israel has broken into blossom.
“The woman then left her waterpot, and went her way into the city, and saith… is not this the Christ?”