The God Who Sees Me

Back when I was living in Florida, I used to wake up every morning before sunrise and go for a walk.  I loved walking in the dark, in the silence, under the stars.  I loved the way the moon seemed to follow me as I walked.  I loved how God seemed to fill all the empty spaces, the spaces that normally get filled during the day with noise and clamor, with things that seem to assault our senses, rather than God and His presence which seem to fill our senses.

For those of you wondering if me walking in the dark was safe, I can say that mostly I walked laps around my gated condo complex.  It was a well-lit parking lot.  And on the occasions when I ventured out to the street beyond the condo, I took a large flashlight with me.  The scariest things I ran into were usually giant raccoons and fence-walking possums.

And the worst I was ever hurt was the time I stepped into a sewer grate in a particularly dark and unlit portion of the parking lot.

Some mornings, I started my walk later, closer to sunrise and usually made my way out to the supersized sidewalks, large enough to accommodate golf carts, by the street.  I loved watching the sunrise.  I loved watching the green herons and the great blue herons catching breakfast by the ponds and canals.  But venturing out closer to sunrise meant encountering more people on my walk.

And in my neighborhood, it was expected that you would say “good morning” to every single person you saw, though if you happened to lap back and come across them twice, it was okay to simply smile or wave the second time around, but you had to acknowledge everyone.

And, as an introvert who enjoys her morning silent meditation walks, I admit to turning around, or crossing the street just to avoid having to interact with someone.

I want you to keep my story in the back of your mind as we begin to explore today’s reading from John 4:1-26.  Jesus and his disciples are headed to Galilee and have stopped in the Samaritan town of Sychar.  Jesus is tired, we are told and decides to sit and rest at Jacob’s Well, while the disciples head out to find food.  It is around noon.

A short time later, a Samaritan woman approaches the well and here is where it gets interesting.  Though we are given so much context about Jesus and why he is at the well, the real question is why is the Samaritan woman there.

It’s noon.  It’s the hottest part of the day.  Why is she fetching water at that moment and not earlier in the day when it’s cooler?

Biblical scholars—of which I am NOT one—seem to agree that the woman has come to the well later in the day specifically to avoid people.  Having been married five times and currently living with a man who is not her husband, she has a reputation and is most likely tired of the looks and the whispers and the micro aggressions that count as bullying in Jesus’s time.

She’s coming to the well at noon with the hope that no one will be there.

And that part I can relate to.

And so maybe I’m projecting a little when I imagine her catching sight of the well and seeing that someone is there.  And not just any someone—a man, and not just any man but a Jewish man.

Perhaps for a second, she thinks about turning around, about coming back later, but she needs the water and so she takes a deep breath, straightens her back, squares her shoulders and heads to the well, hoping to get her water without incident.

Little does she know her life is about to change forever.

It is quite right that the man at the well is no ordinary man.  Jesus shows that immediately, when he dispenses with all small talk.  No hello.  No “Boy it’s hot, isn’t it?”  Instead, he asks—no not even asks—it’s not worded as a question.  He says to her, “Give me a drink.”

But the Samaritan woman is no push-over.  To have lived the life she has lived, she has had to be very tough and so she says to Jesus, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”

He says, “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."

Jesus’s response is such that she should have had goosebumps popping out on her skin even though it was the hottest part of an already hot day.

Instead, it’s clear that she is only half listening, perhaps anxious to be on her way.  She practically scoffs at his answer of living water.

“You don’t even have a bucket,” she says to him, “and the well is deep.”

Jesus explains further.  “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.”

Now she is starting to pay attention but still not quite getting it.  She asks him for the water so she can stop coming to the well.

And then Jesus, like any good teacher who knows it’s time to try something else, asks her about her husband, even though, as he later reveals, he knows she has no husband currently.

And this is what opens the Samaritan woman’s eyes.  Much like Hagar who in Genesis 16:13, on the run from Abram and Sarai, encounters God and names Him “the God who sees me,” the Samaritan woman encounters the same God, leaving behind her water pitcher and running back into the city to announce in verse 29, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!”

She has been seen.

She has encountered God, there at the well named for Abraham’s grandson Jacob.

She left her home that day, hoping to be left alone, and instead she found God.

Back when I was taking my early morning, still-dark, walks, I was paradoxically wanting to be alone and yet also wanting to experience God’s presence.

And as I think back on it, I can’t think of a single morning, when I didn’t feel God’s presence.

God was everywhere and in between.  He was in the chorus of frogs singing through the wet morning air from the shadows in the wetlands.  He was in the blazing arc of the rockets that split the black sky before dawn.

And when I stood there and looked up at that endless sky, I knew, without a doubt that I was seen.

Amen.