At Holy Hamsters, our service for babies, toddlers and pre-schoolers on Thursday morning, we suggested at this point in the service that we should all walk reverently down the aisle, singing, “This is the way we walk in Church”, to look at the illustration in the stained glass of the second window from the back in the North aisle.
The window depicts the story we have just heard, of Jesus’ meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well.
As this is not Holy Hamsters, most of us already know how to walk calmly and reverently in church and there are rather a lot of us, I shan’t suggest we go and look at the window now, but I do commend it to you for a quick glance on your way out of church.
Jesus is sitting calmly at the well, talking to the woman, who is leaning towards him, her eyes fixed on his face, clearly riveted by what he is saying to her.
This being a Victorian illustration, both Jesus and the Samaritan woman are unfeasibly blond, but the artist has clearly captured something of Jesus’ charisma, and of the woman’s intense interest, her surprise and emotion that he should be talking to her at all and her conviction that he is speaking the truth.
In the background, we can see the shadowy shapes of the disciples coming back from the town, their faces expressing confusion, doubt and horror at what Jesus is doing.
After all, in this story, Jesus is breaking all kinds of social and religious taboos.
Jews did not speak to Samaritans unless they had to.
They did not readily share their eating and drinking utensils with them for reasons of ritual purity – hence the woman’s comment that Jesus did not have a bucket, although she had a water-jug in her own hand.
Men did not converse with women, and certainly not about significant questions of religion.
And a man would never engage a woman in conversation when they were alone – as we see still in stricter Islamic societies to this day – both to protect himself from temptation and to preserve her reputation.
Finally, a good religious Jew would not be seen speaking to a woman of ill repute, and we can conclude from the fact that the Samaritan woman had come to the well alone, and not with a social group of respectable matrons, that her relationship history was well known and she had been, at least to some extent, ostracised by her own community.
Yet Jesus not only speaks to her, but treats her questions with respect, and appears to be telling her that his coming heralds a time when the ritual questions which have separated Jews and Samaritans for many centuries will no longer seem of importance, as God seeks those who worship him “in spirit and in truth.”
Someone said to me this week that she liked this story because, in contrast with many of the more allegorical, parabolic and sometimes obscure sayings of Jesus later in the Gospel of John, here he is speaking with a directness and clarity which make his message absolutely clear.
With this in mind, perhaps the thing which most touches me about the stained glass window at the back of church, is the text which has been chosen from this lengthy story to accompany the image.
The words, “I that speak unto thee am He,” do indeed demonstrate the straightforward clarity of Jesus’ message to the woman – perhaps even more so than the modern translation in our Gospel book, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”
Jesus is telling the Samaritan woman openly that he IS the promised Messiah, the one who, in her words, “will proclaim all things to us.”
And clearly his words go so deep into her being that she is able to go back into the town and convince others to come and hear him.
As we know from the story of the Resurrection, women’s reports were not taken terribly seriously, and presumably those of woman with bad reputations even less so, so the fact that we are told, “Many Samaritans from that city believed in Jesus because of the women’s testimony,” reveals the force and conviction with which she spoke about her experience.
What touches me in the use of the words, “I that speak unto thee am He” in a memorial window dedicated to a couple who both died in their mid-forties, is the impression that those mourning them shared in the absolute trust and conviction that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, who brought his message of salvation to everyone who approached him, regardless of what they might have done in their lives.
So this story, and our window which illustrates it, seem to me to emphasise the way in which an encounter with Jesus can be reflected in the other person so that they too can shine with conviction.
Those of us who are part of a Lent group this year have been discussing this week, the question of how our trust and faith in Christ can be shown forth in our lives, to the extent that others are attracted and convinced by it.
Against all the odds, the Samaritan woman was so enthused and transformed by her encounter with Jesus that she was able to convince her presumably highly sceptical neighbours to come and hear him.
When we come to church on Sundays, when we recall Jesus in the sacrament, when we reflect on our faith, are we, too, enthused and transformed by what we experience?
Can we go out and draw others to God, simply by the way we live, and our tangible conviction in what we believe?
We might feel that it was all right for the woman who actually had the chance to converse with Jesus in the flesh, and that sometimes the institutional church doesn’t feel the easiest place to find the same excitement and conviction.
It can be easy to feel distracted and confused by practical details of worship, or by arguments within the wider church about doctrine, tradition or worship style, but today’s Gospel also reminds us that this is not, ultimately, what matters.
Jesus explains to the Samaritan woman that his coming should put an end to debate about whether God should be worshipped on this mountain or that, and that true worshippers will simply worship God together in spirit and in truth.
Perhaps this is an indication that we should not allow human disagreements and doubts to stand in the way of our whole-hearted, joyful worship of God himself, who sent his Messiah to equip us, inspire us and to be reflected in our Christian lives, attracting and convincing those whom we meet.
As the Samaritans conclude, “We know that this is truly the Saviour of the world.”
Amen.