Enough

John 4:5-42

So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’ Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’

Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’ The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’ The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am he, the one who is speaking to you.’

Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, ‘What do you want?’ or, ‘Why are you speaking with her?’ Then the woman left her water-jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, ‘Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?’ They left the city and were on their way to him.

Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, ‘Rabbi, eat something.’ But he said to them, ‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’ So the disciples said to one another, ‘Surely no one has brought him something to eat?’ Jesus said to them, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, “Four months more, then comes the harvest”? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, “One sows and another reaps.” I sent you to reap that for which you did not labour. Others have laboured, and you have entered into their labour.’

Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me everything I have ever done.’ So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there for two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Saviour of the world.’

In 2005, Kurt Vonnegut, author of Slaughterhouse 5 and dozens of other classics, wrote a poem inspired by a conversation he had had years before with his good friend and fellow-author Joseph Heller, author of the classic Catch-22. The two were had an extravagant party in the Hamptons, thrown by a billionaire hedge fund manager. Vonnegut asked Heller, “Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel Catch-22 has earned in its entire history? Heller responded, “I’ve got something he can never have.” Vonnegut asks “What on earth could that be?” Heller says, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”

Last week, we read about Jesus’ nighttime encounter with the powerful high priest Nicodemus, and we discussed the fact that Nicodemus just wasn’t quite getting what Jesus was telling him—he wasn’t satisfied with the explanations Jesus gave him, with what he would have to sacrifice to join Jesus’ movement, and so he went away, still intrigued, but unsatisfied and frustrated.

This week, we have a parallel story—the famous and beautiful story of the woman at the well. To begin with, this woman isn’t given a name. But in doing research for this sermon, I discovered that in the Eastern Orthodox church, she is venerated as a saint with the name Photine, which means “luminous one.” So for the remainder of this sermon, I’d like to borrow from the Eastern Orthodox tradition and give this remarkable woman the name she deserves, so from here on out, for this sermon, she’s Photine.

Now Photine was a Samaritan woman—and though the Samaritans and the Jews came from similar places and shared roots, throughout history (a long and complicated history that I won’t get into here), there had been tensions rising to the point where Samaritans and Jews didn’t ever dare to speak to each other in public, for any reason. And the Samaritans were a religious minority here. Although both the Samaritans and Jews lived under the oppressive Roman Empire, they just couldn’t find enough common ground to bury the hatchet. But here was Jesus, initiating a conversation with a lone Samaritan woman.

As usual, Jesus is breaking barriers, throwing away social norms, not caring at all what people will say or do if they see him sharing a conversation with Photine. And as I said, this scene very much parallels the conversation Jesus has with Nicodemus. Nicodemus came to Jesus in the middle of the night, afraid to be seen with him in public, afraid of what the consequences of sharing space with a rebel like Jesus would be. But here are Jesus and Photine, not only in public but in the bright light of the hot noon sun, broad daylight, talking together.

Aside from the dark of night vs. noonday sun contrast, we also have to take into account just how different Nicodemus’ and Photine’s lives and their places in society would have been. Remember, Nicodemus was a high priest, he was a part of a tribunal that pretty much took charge of all the decision making for the people in this predominantly Jewish city. But Photine was a woman, and she was a religious minority. Not only that, but as Jesus lets us know, she’s had or has five husbands. It’s very unclear about what this means. Most have just made the assumption that she’s been divorced, but it’s really never explained at all. And I don’t think it matters. What we can assume that she was an outcast of some sort. We can probably assume that outside of her immediate circle, her way of life probably wasn’t approved of. But Jesus doesn’t care. Upon first glance, it could seem like Jesus is trying to go for some kind of ‘gotchya’ moment by requesting Photine go grab her husband when we knows full-well she doesn’t have a husband, legally speaking, at least. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. He just uses his knowledge of something this woman probably doesn’t tell a lot of people to show her that he knows what’s up, and she takes that for what it is—she doesn’t seem to feel judged at all, there’s no more talk of any husbands, no talk of divorces, or harems, no mention of sin whatsoever. She just realizes that this man is at least a prophet, and it eventually leads her to believing that he is indeed the Messiah who people have been speaking about.

So Photine was a woman who, presumably, doesn’t have a lot to lose. Unlike someone with power, wealth, and status like Nicodemus. And that’s why I think her responses to Jesus’ strange and cryptic statements are so polar opposite Nicodemus.

When Jesus told Nicodemus that he had to be born again, born from above, Nicodemus shot back, “So you’re saying one can go back into their mothers womb?” He comes across as a little combative, though, as I said in my last sermon, I think he was just genuinely confused, he wasn’t thinking creatively or outside the box, he just was taking everything too literally, but more than that, he couldn’t imagine a world in which everyone, no matter what their background was or who they were born to, could have the same fulfilling and life-giving experience with Holy Spirit.

But when Jesus says to Photine, “…those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” Photine, like Nicodemus, takes this a little too literally—her response is, “…give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” So she doesn’t fully understand the figurative language Jesus is using, but unlike Nicodemus, she immediately trusts in Jesus, and she immediately wants what Jesus is talking about. She doesn’t scoff at him, she doesn’t challenge him in some snarky way, she believes in him and wants that Living Water.

And I don’t think it’s just because Jesus was this amazing charismatic messiah. I think it was because for someone like Photine, having enough so that you’ll never want again is the dream. Having enough means that you no longer have to worry about where your next meal or your next drink of water comes from. But Nicodemus had more than enough—so imagining a world in which that might change was unfathomable.

Now, between the conversation at the well and the end of the passage in which Photine goes to preach and evangelize about her experience with Jesus, there’s this interlude with the disciples—they’re pleading with Jesus that he should really eat something, but Jesus says something similar to what he says to Photine about the living water—“I have food that you do not know about… My food is to do the will of [God]…to complete his work.” Jesus, in typical fashion for the gospel of John, is all about metaphors here. He’s talking the about different ways we can be satiated and fulfilled; he’s saying that we have to look beyond our worldly needs and wants. Jesus wants us to learn to how to be satisfied and fulfilled in different ways, in ways not measured by what we consume. Jesus needs us to be satisfied with having enough.

There was a study that was done about a decade ago by an economist that claimed that happiness plateaued when and individual got to the point of making about $75,000 a year. At that point, you’d be financially stable, you’d have enough, and any more money than they wouldn’t add any more happiness. But just last year, there was a new study out of the University of Pennsylvania that shows that things have changed. In this new study, it showed that as salary increased, so did happiness. And that did not stop at $75,000. It just kept going. There was no plateau. The more you make, the more you want. The more you have, the more power, stability, and control you acquire. And no one wants to give that up.[i]

And sadly, this makes perfect sense to me. We live in a world that values things and status above all else, I've talked about this so many times before, because it just keeps coming up, and it’s the opposite of the type of world Jesus was came to bring. And I’m not immune to this feeling of wanting more, I promise you. I’m a chronically online millennial, I’m bombarded with ads, and I often fall prey to consumerism, even overconsumption. You’ve probably seen me with my trusty giant water bottle here—I love this thing, it keeps ice all day, it’s the best. Well, I was in Target the other day and I saw the exact same cup in a variety of bright, lovely colors. And I almost bought one. Why? Why would I need another of something that works just fine? I’m proud to say I stopped myself, but listen, I’m not even touching on the amount of baby products I see advertised to me these days—and how expensive these gadgets are, things that say they’ll improve my life, but things I’ll only use for a year or less.

I think since that happiness-plateau study from 10 years ago, things have changed. We want more, more, more. I mean, all over social media, especially on Instagram and TikTok, there is an entire ecosystem of influencers—people whose actual job it is to convince you to buy things, to convince you that if you get this product, your life will be better.

And the more money and power we have, the more stuff we can acquire. And we live in a world in which tech changes so fast, and products can be improved on immediately, and that product we were convinced to by last month is probably already out of date now. So we live in a world where you can never have enough—a world where we can never be satisfied because there will always be something better to buy, always be something to spend money to give us that brief serotonin boost before we’re onto the next thing.

And that’s the thing— it’s a fleeting happiness. It’s not real. There’s no real thought or intention behind it, there’s no real satisfaction that comes from it, it’s empty. And I think we can see from the way Photine and Nicodemus react to what Jesus tells them about what it takes to be truly happy, about what it takes to be truly satisfied, that those who have more to lose, those who can’t imagine a world without their things, without some of their power will have a tougher time adjusting to the perfect world Jesus is working for.

There’s freedom in being satisfied with having enough. There’s freedom in no longer being tied to worldly power or possessions. Photine is so moved by her conversation with Jesus that she forgets her thirst altogether, she leaves her water jar to go spread the news about Jesus and the type of world he’s trying to bring—a just world for all, an earth as it is in heaven.

So in thinking about intention this Lent, I hope we can be intentional about our practice as consumers in a broken world that promotes overconsumption. Let’s work on not giving into buying what we don’t need, to being tempted by bright colors or shiny new objects. Instead, Let us be satisfied by the Living Water. Let us be satisfied with the feeling that comes from doing God’s work in the world. Let us be fed and sated by working together for an earth as it is in heaven. And let us be blessed with the knowledge that we do indeed have enough; and not only that—let’s work for a world in which every single person on this earth has enough, and nothing more. Amen.

[i] https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/money-matters-to-happiness-perhaps-more-than-previously-thought