John 4.5-29, 39-42
This week I binged the new Jude Law series on Netflix, Black Rabbit. Who needs cancer when Jason Bateman’s self-destructive, family-smashing gambling addiction can beset you with crippling anxiety? Despite its panic-producing themes of family dysfunction, patricide, and gambling addiction, I fell asleep on the sofa during the series finale. When I woke up after midnight, I noticed that according to the sovereign will of some odd algorithm Netflix had begun playing a show that was an absolute non sequitur to the dark, gritty crime thriller I had been viewing.
It was not even a new show. Perhaps it was in my queue. The show, Michael Bolton’s Big Sexy Valentine’s Day Special, premiered in February 2017. On Wednesday, around 1:30 in the morning, I watched all fifty-four minutes of it.
Likely, I am the last person to have watched Michael Bolton’s Big Sexy Valentine’s Day Special. But just in case you have not yet seen this incredible film, here is the premise Michael Bolton’s Big Sexy Valentine’s Day Special.
It begins with Christmas.
It turns out St. Nick’s little indentured servants have made too many toys this year. Supply outpaced demand. Santa’s stuck with more inventory than nice or naughty kids. To solve this overage emergency, like Leia to Obi-Wan, Santa turns to his only hope.
That’s right, Michael Bolton.
Even if you have not seen the film, you can guess what comes next in the story. You can anticipate what comes next because this is Michael Bolton. The man who combines the mullet confidence of Kenny G with a voice this is practically an audible erogenous zone. In the story, as soon as Santa calls upon the soul provider to lend the North Pole his emergency help, you know how the story will go.
Sure, the character Mike Bolton in the movie Office Space calls Michael Bolton “a no-talent ass clown” but we know that is not true. Michael Bolton’s thousand thread count bedroom voice has scored nine number one hits. His 1991 album, Time, Love, and Tenderness won a Grammy, as did his cover of Percy Sledge’s, “When a Man Loves a Woman.” I know firsthand from my experience as a teenage lifeguard in the 1990’s, nothing got my friends’ moms to flirt with shirtless-me faster than Michael Bolton’s single “Love is a Wonderful Thing” in rotation over the PA system.
Michael Bolton is like strawberries and champagne, raw oysters and bitter chocolate. He’s an aphrodisiac. But I digress.
My point is—
In Michael Bolton’s Big Sexy Valentine’s Day Special, as soon as Santa calls upon Michael Bolton, you know what to expect. You know Santa is going to call upon Michael Bolton to host a Valentine’s Day Special in primetime that will inspire couples all over the world to make sweet love and conceive seventy-five thousand new babies thereby solving Santa’s elf-induced extra inventory problem.
How cliched is that? No doubt, you have seen that story arc a million times before. As soon as St. Nick calls upon Michael Bolton, you know how the story will unfold. Because Michael Bolton’s bedroom baritone is so cliched, it is a storytelling convention.
It is a trope.
It is a type.
It is an archetype.
Admit it. We see stories Michael Bolton’s Big Sexy Valentine’s Day Special all the time. And so we know what comes next. It is like how in every romantic comedy, unless he’s in a coma, the actor Bill Pullman will get dumped by his fiancé for a stranger she meets on the Empire State Building. And maybe that only happens in Sleepless in Seattle, but you know that it feels like every romantic comedy you have ever seen. Just like how in every romantic comedy, at some point, a heartbroken girl will be comforted by her emotionally intelligent gay friend. It is a storytelling convention. It is never a dumb gay friend. It is never a gay friend who says always the absolute worst thing. It is always a sensitive, empathetic gay friend— every time. It is like how, in every disaster movie, there are politicians who ignore and even deny the dire warnings coming from the consensus of the scientific community, not that that would ever happen in real life.
It is a story type, a cliche, a convention.
Like opposites attract.
Like beauty is on the inside.
Like obviously the gawky middle school friend you did not appreciate as a teenager will grow up to be smoking hot.
See: 13 Going on 30 (secretly my favorite movie).
Stories like Michael Bolton’s Big Sexy Valentine’s Day Special— they all rely upon cliches, tropes, archetypes. Without scenery or spoken word, these storytelling conventions advance the plot. They hint and they foreshadow what is to come next. For instance, the first time Farm Boy Wesley says to Buttercup “As you wish,” you know how the story is going to end. And because you know how it will end, you know Wesley the Farm Boy is not dead. You know he is really the Dread Pirate Roberts. And you know that even when he is mostly dead, you know he is not going to die because that is not how true love stories go.
And when John tells you that Jesus meets a woman at a well, all the stories of scripture, all the Old Testament reruns, they all lead you to expect a wedding. And just as surely as you know how it is going to go as soon as Billy Crystal rides shares his way back to New York City with Meg Ryan, all the storytelling conventions of scripture tell you what to expect when John tells you that Jesus meets a woman at a well. In the Hebrew Scriptures, a well is never just a well. It’s the place where love stories and covenant stories begin.
Abraham’s son, Isaac, he goes to a foreign land. And there at a well he meets a woman who is filling a jar.
Take a guess at what Isaac says to her.
“May I have some water from your jar?”
The woman at the well, Rebecca, replies to Isaac, “And I’ll draw some water for your camels too.”
Just like that— before you know it, they are getting married.
Their son, Jacob, he journeys east to a foreign land. In the middle of a field surrounded by sheep, he comes to a large stone well. And there, approaching the well, Jacob sees a shepherdess coming to water her sheep. Her name is Rachel. And this time, Jacob does not ask the woman for water. He goes directly to her father and asks to marry her.
And before you know it— well, actually, after laboring for her crook of a father for seven years— before you know it, they are getting married.
When Moses fled Pharaoh of Egypt, Moses travels to a foreign land. Once again Moses sits down— where— next to a well. Just then, reports the Book of Exodus, a priest of Midian arrives at the well with his seven daughters and their flock of sheep. A group of shepherds gather at the well too and they start to harass the priest’s daughters.
Just so, Moses steps in to defend them.
And quicker than you can say “You had me at hello” Moses is getting married to one of the priest’s daughters, Zipporah.
Ditto, the lovers in the Song of Songs.
And on and on across the scriptures.
It is a type scene, a cliche, a contrivance, a storytelling convention.
Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and all the rest— they all meet their prospective wives at wells in a foreign land.
Meeting a woman at a well in a foreign land: in the scriptures, it is like Diane Keaton in another Woody Allen movie. You have seen this story before. A man comes to a foreign land and there he finds a maiden at a well. He asks her for a drink. She obliges and more so. And then faster than Fay Dunaway falls for Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor, the maiden runs back to get her people to witness and bless their union.
This is how the story always goes.
You see what’s happening?
What Netflix and Michael Bolton do with romantic clichés, the Bible does with theological ones.
And so when John tells you that Jesus goes to a foreign land (Samaria), meets a woman at a well, and asks her for a drink, I you might as well cue up the jazz flute baby-making music because all the scenes of scripture have prepared you for what to expect next.
Meeting a woman at a well: it is as reliable a clue as when Jim first talks to Pam at the front desk of Dunder Mifflin. You know they are going to get married. And by the way— do not forget— the first miracle, the first sign, Jesus performs in the Gospel of John is in Cana where Jesus is a wedding guest. And how right before this passage in John chapter three, Jesus refers to himself— cryptically so— as the Bridegroom. Now he is in a foreign land at a well asking a woman for a drink of water.
So if this scene is as cliched as Michael Bolton’s sex appeal, if a man meeting a maiden at a well is as contrived a storytelling convention as the sensitive gay friend, if what John wants to queue up next are nuptials, then why does Jesus not follow the script? I mean, it is not hard. It is like swiping right on Tinder. In the scriptures, all you have to do is ask a girl at a well for a drink of water and someone is already practically shouting, “Mazel Tov!”
If this is what John has queued up for us, then why does Jesus go from asking for a drink of water to talking about living water? And why does this woman, who according to the storytelling convention is supposed to be a maiden, why does she instead seem to have more baggage than Princess Vivian in Pretty Woman?
The answer is in the number.
And the thing about storytelling conventions, every story uses more than one. In every comic book movie, it is not just that the superhero gets orphaned in front of his eyes as a kid. It is that you know you are going to find out later that the bad guy had something to do with his parents’ murder. The thing about storytelling conventions, every story uses more than one. In Michael Bolton’s Big Sexy Valentine’s Day Special, the story does not simply turn on Michael Bolton’s siren call sex appeal. That would be too simple of a story. The story would be nothing more than Michael Bolton helping Santa fill the world with more babies through his bedroom voice. That would be ridiculous. Even Michael Bolton’s Big Sexy Valentine’s Day Special requires another storytelling convention to advance the plot: a bad guy. In this case, the villain is the owner of a no-questions-asked money-back guarantee mattress company who vows to kill Michael Bolton after he is deluged with calls from customers wanting their money back. Michael Bolton has inspired them to reach such unprecedented heights of ecstasy they want their money back.
But this story isn’t only a romance trope—it’s also a numbers game. Because John, like any good storyteller, is playing with patterns. The thing about storytelling conventions, every story uses more than one.
Even the Gospel of John.
Here in chapter four, it is not just the meet cute at the well.
It is the numbers.
You need both conventions, the well and the numbers, to mine the meaning of this passage.
Numbers in the scriptures always convey meaning. Jesus dies at the sixth hour. Jesus calls not eleven disciples but a dozen to correspond to the twelve tribes of Israel. Joshua marched around Jericho seven times on the seventh day. Likewise, the menorah has seven candlesticks. And God completed creation and rested on the seventh day.
In the scriptures, numbers always convey meaning. It is a storytelling convention. And in the scriptures, the number seven always connotes completeness, perfection, fulfillment. And if the number seven conveys completeness, the number six is seven’s ugly opposite, a blemish. The number six is a painful reminder of coming up short, of imperfection, of incompleteness.
Therefore, when John tells you this woman has had five husbands and she is now living with one more, a six, and now she is meeting a seventh suitor at a well, he is not simply telling you that she has baggage. He is giving you a clue that the tension in this story is between incompleteness and completeness.
The numbers are the other storytelling convention.
And the most important number to know in this story is not even explicit in the passage. John just expects you to know it. The number three.
Three.
Three is the number of husbands the Jewish law permitted a woman.
Three— that’s it.
Not five.
Not six-ish.
Three.
And yes, it is true that Samaritans were not Jews, but you can tell from her conversation with Jesus that the Pentateuch is also their scripture. They shared the same Bible. They followed the Torah too, albeit a redacted version. She is only allowed under the law three husbands.
Just so, why does John tells us that she has had five— six-ish— husbands?
This is where this hackneyed courtship scene from the scriptures becomes like a Jane Austen movie, where everything turns on language and wordplay and misunderstanding. The word husband in Hebrew, baal, means literally, Lord. It is the same word Hebrew uses for a pagan deity. This Samaritan woman has had five balim and now a sort of sixth. That is, she has had five gods, five deities, five idols, and now a sort of sixth.
So often preachers want to make this passage a story about Jesus crossing boundaries, gender and ethnic, to show hospitality to this unclean outsider. Or they want to make it about Jesus showing grace to this woman with a salacious past. “She came to well a whore,” I read one preacher insist, “And she left the well a saint.”
Ick.
Such interpretations present problems. On the one hand, Jesus is in Samaria, the Samaritan is not in Judea. If anyone here is crossing ethnic and gender boundaries— even generational hostilities— to show hospitality to an outsider, it is the woman. Jesus is the outsider. But before we misread this woman, notice something extraordinary about her courage.
Speaking of her hospitality to him, notice the feature that recurs across so many of Christ’s miracles. Again and again in the Gospels, from the Canaanite mother to the hemorrhaging woman, foreign and unclean women, felt completely at ease in the presence of Jesus. As Amber Benson writes: “Why were the women around Jesus so audacious? They felt safe. Men think they need to be strong, but Jesus was a stronghold—a refuge in the war the world waged against women. When women feel safe, they become fearless. Fearless women dare to hope, ask, and reach for more.”
And that kind of safety does not come from sentimentality; it comes from who Jesus is.
According to Robert Jenson, the doctrine of the Trinity teaches us why so many feel so safe with Jesus. Because Jesus’ humanity was perfectly attuned to the Father’s will, Jesus— unlike us— was never at the mercy of moods. He felt— he feels— everything fully and simultaneously, without confusion or separation or division. His anger and grief never split his heart as it can ours. He is never divided from himself. Everything in his tone, bearing, and countenance—everything he stirred in those around him—flowed from the holy gladness, the eternal joy at the core of his being.
The woman at the well feels safe with this Jewish outsider, but it is not her sordid relationship resume she feels safe to share with him. This passage may be about grace. And no doubt this woman is a sinner, but the balim they are discussing are not husbands.
They are idols.
It is right there in the scriptures. The Book of Kings describes the Assyrian invasion of Israel seven hundred years before Christmas and how the Assyrians brought with them to Samaria from five different Assyrian cities their five different gods. Their five different idols. Their five different balim, husbands.
The woman at the well— her baggage is different than Princess Vivian in Pretty Woman. She has not broken the sixth commandment. She has broken the first. She is not an adulteress; she is an idolater.
But then who this six-ish husband with whom she is now taken?
This is where the Gospel of John is like a western or a war movie. You have to know the geography to follow the story. John expects you to know that near the Samaritan town of Sychar, Herod the Great had turned the capital city of Samaria into a Roman city and named it after Caesar. And Herod filled the city with thousands of Roman colonists, settlers with whom the Samaritans did not intermarry as they had with the Assyrians.
Thus when Jesus says to her, “And the one you have now is not your husband,” he is not looking into her heart. What Jesus knows about her is what every Jew knew about her and her people.
You see, it is another storytelling convention. This woman, she is a stand-in, a symbol. She represents all of her people. It is a different kind of wedding scene because they are not talking about her checkered past. They are talking about her people worshiping five false gods. And now they are under the thumb of Caesar, who required his subjects to worship him as a god, as a Baal.
And this why the woman at the well calls Jesus a prophet.
Prophets do not look into sinners’ hearts for their secrets.
Prophets call out the idolatry of the people.
And this explains why their conversation so quickly turns from the subject of husbands to the matter of worship. If they are talking about flesh and blood beaus, then it sounds like she changes the subject on Jesus. But if they are talking about husbands as in balim— gods— then worship is the next logical topic. Because the Samaritans believed the presence of the true God was found atop Mount Gerizim and the Jews believed Yahweh was enthroned in the Temple in Jerusalem. They are talking about God, the presence of God, where God is to be found in spirit and truth.
Not the five false gods that cannot nourish, cannot quench but can only give stale water as though out of a cracked cistern. Not Caesar, who presumed to be a god and humiliated his subjects and forced them to tote water like slaves. But the true and living God who can give light and life like an ever flowing stream.
Like living water.
And this why this seventh suitor, this Mr. Perfect who embodies Michael Bolton’s first chart-topping hit, “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You,” this would-be husband who promises to complete her like Renee does for Jerry Maguire, he turns to her at the well.
Jesus turns to her at the well, and he says to her the very same thing God said to Moses at the Burning Bush. He says the words that split the sea and set the bush ablaze. The same words that thundered to Moses. ‘Ego eimi,’ he says. ‘I AM.’ And for a moment, heaven and earth meet at the well.”
Exactly what God said when he first revealed his name to his people, what God first said when he vowed to be there for all.
“I AM,” Jesus says to her.
“Before Abraham was, I AM,” Jesus says later in the Gospel.
And now what he had said to her cryptically at the beginning of their encounter snaps into place. “I am both the gift of God,” he had told her, “And I am the Bestower of the gift.” That is, God. The true and living God is a wearied and parched man at a well without a bucket.
Suddenly, at once, she drops her bucket.
She drops her bucket, the symbol of how her previous five husbands have left her parched and wanting because they are not real. She drops her bucket, the symbol of her sixth husband’s subjugation and abuse. She drops her bucket. And then she continues the storytelling convention by running off to fetch her people to witness and bless a union.
Except no one fetches the chuppa.
No one shouts, “Mazel Tov!”
No one kills the fatted calf and kicks on the Michael Bolton music.
John continues the storytelling convention of the wedding at the well. She runs off to fetch her people to witness and bless a union, just like all the women of the scriptures before her have done.
“Come and see,” she says.
But then there is no wedding. There is no marriage and no exchange of vows. It is as John chooses right here to use another storytelling convention, a cliffhanger.
A season-ending ambiguity.
To be continued.
Because— remember— it is a convention. This woman is simply a stand-in, a symbol. She represents her people. She symbolizes all people.
Including you.
The union is supposed to be with you.
You.
You are the one.
Because of you, he can’t keep his mind on nothing else. He’d trade everything— power and divinity, his life— for the good he finds in you. Sure, you’re bad. Sure, you’re a sinner. But his love for you is such, you can’t see it. I doubt he’d ever turn his back on his best friend. But to him, you can deny him, betray him, run away from him. You can mock him, spit upon him, hang him out to dry on a cross. But to him, you can do no wrong. He’d give up everything for you, empty himself, put on flesh, take the form of a slave, sleep out in the rain. He’d give you everything he’s got, even his life. He’d come back from the grave just to hold on to your precious love.
And yes, I’m just stealing lines “When a Man Loves a Woman” right now, but the point could not be more serious. Only this Lover lays down his life for his Bride. Only this Groom keeps his promise even through the grave.
Of all the other callers in the world, of all the idols and barren deities vying for your love and affection and attention, he is the seventh suitor. He is the Annie Hall to your Alvy Singer. He is your Mr. Darcy. He is the Tracy to your Hepburn.
Like the woman says, he knows everything you have ever done. Indeed he knows everything you have left undone. He knows the secrets of your heart better than you know them yourself. And still, he comes to you— not at a well but in word and water and wine and bread— and he says to you, “You complete me.”
In other words, God is the perfect man for you!
Even more than Bogart is not Bogart without Bacall, Jesus is not Jesus without you. That just is the Easter gospel! Here at Jacob’s Well, there is no chuppa, no DJ, no “Mazel Tov!” There is no exchange of vows. The storytelling convention stops when she runs to fetch her family and friends because now John wants you to say, “I do.”
So come to the table.
He’s waiting at the altar for you.
Loaf and cup are how he gives himself to you.
Hands and lips are how you give yourself to him.
This is the exchange of vows.
So come to the table.
Come and see.
Come and taste.
As Harry says to Sally on New Year’s Eve, “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of the life to start as soon as possible.”
