One day, a pastor, whom I have come to know through his writing of several wonderful books (Max Lucado: “He Still Moves Stones”)  stopped at a small, and very old cemetery and wandered among the gravestones.  He had driven by this cemetery often on his way to work, but on this day, he felt compelled to walk through its stately oak trees and crumbling headstones, reading the names and epitaphs of countless persons who had lived and died many years ago.   

Maybe some of you, like I, have done that.  When I go back to my hometown in Red Lake Falls, MN, I sometimes stop at the gravesites of my mother and father.  I then roam around the cemetery seeing the names and markers of so many people I have known over my years of growing and living in that community.  I remember the patriarchs and matriarchs that shaped our community by their presence and leadership.  but  I also notice things I may not have known, a marker for a child or a baby lost at birth.  I see a name for someone in a family that I had not known or remembered, perhaps because they weren’t around, or died in a war.  I wonder about their lives…and their deaths.  What STORIES shaped their existence on this earth?  Cemeteries are fascinating places aren’t they?  They remind us that OUR STORIES MATTER…AND THAT WE NEED ONE ANOTHER IN OUR LIVES TO REALLY LIVE.

What my friend, pastor Max was doing that day was to open his heart to the stories of real people that had lived and died.  He came upon one headstone that read: RUTH LACEY.  Born 1807. Died 1877.  Seventy years was a long time to live in those days.  He tried to imagine what she must have seen over those many years living though the challenges of the 18th century.  Another was for an 18 year old who died in 1883.  His headstone bore these words: “Sleep sweetly tired young pilgrim.”   Max wondered what had so wearied this young man.  What brought his early death just as life should have been unfolding for him?  Max continued to walk among the stones and noticed a small marker that simply said:  “Baby Boldt.  Born and died Dec 10, 1910.”   How that mother must have wept, he thought.  

On and one he walked…imagining the stories that shaped each life noted above a silent grave.  AND THEN HE SAW IT… It was the stone that marked the burial site of a woman by the name of GRACE LLEWELLEN SMITH.  No date of birth was listed, no date of death.  Just the name of her two husbands, and this epitaph:  

“Sleeps, but rests not.  Loved, but was loved not. 

Tried to please, but pleased not. Died as she lived - alone”

What words of Futility.  Max stared at the marker and wondered about this poor woman named Grace.  Did she write those words…or just live them?  Was she bitter…or was she broken?  Was she beautiful, or plain and discarded?  He found himself speaking out loud:  “What broke your heart Mrs Smith?  How did your story end this way Grace?”

And as he continued his walk back to his car, Max pondered the mystery of what makes some lives so fruitful while others become so painfully futile?  How many people die in loneliness and disappointment, trying to please…trying to love and be loved…yet find themselves alone?  Doubting that this world needs them, or that anyone really cares?

Imagine how Grace’s story might have changed had someone intervened with a love powerful enough to break whatever cycle of UN-GRACE this poor woman had known?

That’s why the story we hear for today in our gospel text is so significant.  It’s a story about a woman whose life is being lived in futility, and UNLESS someone cares enough to intervene, a life destined to end in futility.  Her thirst is powerful, for she is dying for a love that will honor her just as she is, not as she should be.  She thirsts to be restored with dignity and given hope within the community that shapes her life.  

She is the Samaritan woman.  Her story tells us that she  knows the sting of racism, for Jews looked down upon Samaritans as they did swine.  Samaritans lived their lives on the fringes as second class citizens…rejected by those who claimed a Jewish purity as the “chosen” ones of God.  She was like the very poor and homeless among us…like our many ethnic immigrants in our midst today, trying to carve out a safe community in which to live their traditions and build the story of their lives.

She also knew the sting of sexism and ultimate rejection.. A woman in her day had legitimacy and protection ONLY if she was married to an honorable man in a good family…and she gave her husband many sons.  This woman, we discover, has had five different husbands…five rejections, and the current man she is living with won’t marry her.  She carries so much shame that she cannot come to the well for water in the morning with the other women of her village, she must come at high noon, the hottest time of day when no one will assault her.   As she fills her jar with water from Jacob’s well, her inner thoughts must have echoed those of the sharp condemning tongues she had heard so often from others in her village.  “Have you heard the latest?  She has been rejected by FIVE husbands, and the man she is now with spits upon her!  They say she will sleep with any man who will give her shelter!  Shame!  Shame!”

A life headed for futility…AND THEN…AN INTERVENTION!  “Give me a drink!”  Jesus says to her.  Now this might not sound like a big deal to us, but in Jesus day, this is paramount to a scandal.  JESUS, a Jewish man, a rabbi  known to teach in the temple…is alone with this woman.  The disciples, we are told, have gone into the city for food.  No wonder she looks at Jesus with suspicion.  She is much too streetwise to think that all he wanted was a drink!  “Since when does a Jew like you speak to a Samaritan woman like me?” 

Yet, something about Jesus intrigued her.  Maybe it was the way he looked at her with love rather than lust.  Or, the way his words had an edge of respect rather than indifference.  Whatever it was, she wanted to know what he REALLY had on his mind, and she was partly correct.  He was interested in more than water…he was interested in her story…and her heart.

And so they talked.  This Samaritan woman was the very FIRST WOMAN in all the Gospel stories to have a real theological discussion with Jesus.  He told her about a spring of water that would quench not only her thirst, but the retching loneliness of her soul.  Oh, how she wanted such relief!  Oh how she longed for her story to have purpose and meaning, rather than futility.  “Sir, give me this water,” she asked, “so that I don’t need to come to this well anymore!”

I’ve often wondered why Jesus didn’t give her living water right then and there.  Why did he have to bring up the shame of her five husbands?  Well….maybe because HER STORY IS IMPORTANT!  Her cob-webbed door of sin needed to be blown wide open, yet Jesus’ eyes didn’t carry the mockery and rejection she had always received before.  There was no criticism…no anger…no “look what a mess of your life” lectures.  It wasn’t a perfect life Jesus was seeking…but an HONEST one THIRSTY to be set free to love and be loved.

The woman is amazed!  This guy must be a prophet…he must know GOD!  And so she asks another question that reveals the thirsty state of her soul:  “Where IS GOD?  Your people say God is in Jerusalem…my people say God is on this mountain… BUT I don’t know where God is….do you?”

Jesus’ eyes must have watered with tears of joy as he looked upon this lonely, thirsty woman…searching for God…reaching for hope…and whose heart was opening to that tiny seed of faith that could be fanned alive by the power of the Holy Spirit.  And so he told THIS woman…this unworthy…unlikely…ostrocized by her community woman a PRECIOUS SECRET.   “I am the Messiah!  I have come to change everything!  No longer will you be bound by human judgments and rules, for God intends that his children worship Him in spirit and truth.  I am the one who has come to give you the water of Grace…water which springs up onto eternal life…and can NEVER be taken away by futility or shame.”

And guess what?  This woman…This Samaritan Woman…leaves her water jar right there in the hot sun and runs back to the city where she shares her STORY with the very community that has despised and rejected her. The very people she sought to avoid at all costs.  SHE BECOMES THE VERY FIRST EVANGELIST!   Imagine that!

“Come and See this wonderful prophet who knows every terrible thing about me…my story…and yet, he loves me.  Could he be the Messiah?”

Her thirst was quenched with transforming love and her testimony spilled forth like gushing water.  Her community just HAD to come and see for themselves.  And they came…and they too believed…invited Jesus to stay among them… and were transformed by His Living Water.  

You see, HER STORY MATTERS!  All our stories matter!  YOUR STORY MATTERS MY FRIENDS.  AND we NEED ONE ANOTHER to bring the living water of grace and dignity for each and every soul that thirsts for the Living God.   Jesus says, “Look around you…the fields are ripe for the harvest.  Go and tell them the good news that God HAS come…and futility is no more!”  

Let us leave our own futilities buried in our earthen water jars…and find a way each and every day to share our story…”Come and See….see the one who knows all my woes and sins, and yet, He loves me anyway! Could this be the one YOU are thirst for too?”

Amen.