Love Beyond Limits & Living Water

​Living Water & Love-Beyond-Limits  (John 4:5–42 & Matthew 5:38–48)

Today the lectionary takes us to one of the most loved stories of John’s Gospel, the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:5–42).

As we enter the story, Jesus is tired. It is midday. He sits beside Jacob’s well in Samaria. Already the story is charged.  Jews and Samaritans did not get along. They disagreed about worship.
They distrusted one another. The history between them was a long and painful one.

And then something unexpected happens. A woman comes alone, to draw water at noon, a strange time, perhaps suggesting she is isolated or excluded from her own community. And Jesus does the unthinkable. He not only speaks to her, but he asks her for a drink.  For Jews and Samaritans, this would have been a jaw-dropping moment. 

The boundaries and divisions in this encounter are large and thick: 

- Jewish vs Samaritan
-Male vs Female
-Religious insider vs Religious outsider
-Respected  Rabbi/Teacher vs Morally compromised and compliciated woman

And yet Jesus crosses these boundaries calmly and without hesitation as though what he was doing was perfectly normal and perfectly acceptable. 

In the encounter between them, He speaks of “living water” in response to her inner thirst for love and meaning. He speaks of living a life of worship “in spirit and in truth,” not bound by a building or place in response to her question about Jews and Samaritans having different places of worship. 
He reveals knowledge of her past without any sense of condemnation. He remains engaged in conversation with her even when the disciples urge him otherwise.

And in response the woman becomes a witness to her own village, bringing them out of the town to see Jesus. And by the end of the story, these Samaritan outsiders confess: “Truly, this is the Saviour of the world.”

We’ll come back to John 4. But now we turn the words from Matthew 5:38–48 where we hear Jesus saying: 

“You have heard… An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth…
But I say to you… 
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
“Turn the other cheek”
“Be perfect or whole, as your heavenly Father is perfect or whole, who makes his sun shine on the righteous and the unrighteous alike, who sends his rain on the just and the unjust. 

Again, as we saw last week in Matthew 5:21-37 we hear the repeated pattern:“You have heard that it was said… but I say to you…”

Firstly: “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” This teaching was not in fact meant to be barbaric. It was merciful. It was meant to limit revenge, to limit retaliation. It prevented escalation. It prevented doing more harm to another than they had done to you. Retaliate yes, was the old teaching, but no more than was done to you. 

But Jesus says:  “Do not resist an evildoer. If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” And then:  “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

These verses have often been misunderstood. They are not instructions for passivity. They are not commands to remain in abusive situations. They are invitations into a radically different way of being human.

Matthew’s Jesus is not abolishing justice. He is transforming the logic of retaliation. The old pattern said: harm must be answered with harm. But Jesus introduces a new pattern: harm can be turned around and transformed by love, wisdom and courage.

Last week we saw that anger fractures communion long before violence erupts. Now Jesus shows what it looks like when anger no longer governs us. To turn the other cheek is not to pretend evil is good. It is to refuse to let evil dictate who you become. 

And part of Jesus concluding challenge in Matthew 5:38-48 is that it is incomplete and insufficient to love only those who love us in return… for even sinners and tax-collectors love those who love them in return.  But disciples of Jesus are called to a love that is not transactional or limited. 

And then Jesus gives the reason: “So that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”

This is an important Matthean perspective. For Matthew, discipleship is not about following laws and rules but about about growing more and more  to resemble the nature of the One Jesus calls Abba. 

At the end of this section we hear these words:  “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

“Perfect” as I said last week is a poor translation of the Greek word ‘Teleio” which actually means something closer to being whole, complete, mature.

And what is the Father like? “He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” Matthew’s Jesus tells us that God’s generosity is indiscriminate.  God’s love is not reactive. Gods love is not determined by the worthiness or the recipient. And according to Jesus in Mathews Gospel, our love for others is meant to resemble God’s love for us and all humanity. 

And as we turn back to Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan women at the well we see these teachings of Jesus being lived out by Jesus in John 4.  What if the story in John 4 is not only about spiritual thirst and living water. What if it is also about boundary breaking love lived out and embodied by Jesus? 

The old pattern in the ancient world was simple: injury for injury, tribe for tribe, loyalty to insiders and suspicion towards outsiders. Even without violence, there were the invisible lines. Jews did not even share eating or drinking vessels with Samaritans. They did not linger in conversation. 

Yet Jesus does not abide by these invisible lines of hostility and enmity taught to him by the culture of his day. Instead he initiates relationship across the lines of hostility.  He asks for water from someone who represents the “other.” He allows himself to be vulnerable.

In John 4, Jesus does not wait for hostility from the woman or the Samaritan townsfolk — he pre-empts it with openness.  His is a pre-emptive strike, not of violence or aggression but of openness and friendship

And so the boundary breaking love which Jesus teaches in Matthew 5 in the Sermon on the Mount
is quietly acted out by Jesus beside the well. 

From a Jewish perspective, Samaritans were religiously compromised, historically suspect. They were the enemies and religious heretics. Yet Jesus does not approach this woman as an enemy to defeat in theological debate.

He listens. He engages. He speaks truth - but without humiliation or condemnation. When he names her past, but not to shame her.  He sees her fully and still treats her with dignity and respect despite her past. This is love beyond transaction or reciprocity.  He is not loving someone who already belongs. He is loving someone across divide.

He is reflecting the love of the Father “who sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”
In John 4, Jesus is completely aligned with the heart of the Divine.  There is no trace of tribal superiority. No defensive identity. No narrowing of compassion. When the disciples return they are bewildered that he is speaking to her. But Jesus’s wholeness allows him to remain steady. His identity is not threatened by crossing boundaries.

And that wholeness in Jesus becomes contagious. The woman leaves her water jar and becomes a bearer of living water to her community.  The village that might once have been considered “enemy territory” becomes a place of ‘harvest’.

And the story ends with the townsfolk saying of Jesus: “Surely this is the Saviour of the World.”  
Saviour of the world... Augustus Caesar had once used that title to refer to himself.  With all his military might, he was exalted as the benefactor and bringer of peace to the world. But in this passage it is not Caesar who is proclaimed as the Saviour of the World, it is Jesus. They see in Jesus something remarkable, a wisdom, a presence, an inner strength and composure, a love that has the power to heal the brokenness and divisions of this world.  And so in this simple story in John’s Gospel we see a widening of the horizon beyond tribe and human made boundaries. We see the kind of love that can save and heal the world. 

And what about us?  Who are the Samaritans in our own lives?  Who are the people we instinctively keep at arm’s length?  Whose story do we assume we already understand without truly listening to them? Who are those we consider ‘other’. 

John 4 shows us that enemy-love does not always look dramatic.  Sometimes it looks like sitting beside a well and asking for a drink of water.