Nuala O’Faolin recently wrote a book whose title, Are you Somebody?, says it all.
She takes it from a question she was asked one day. In her account of her life, she attempts to
answer the question…maybe not the answer the person who asked the question was
looking for, but an answer nonetheless.
Are you somebody?
Isn’t that a question
that we are asked…and we ask ourselves…a thousand times a day. The question may be asked in terms of “are
you somebody important?” Or maybe the
person wants to know, “are you somebody I know…or I should know.” Perhaps underlying all of this is the
unspoken assumption, “are you somebody I should care about?”
Are you somebody?
How would you answer
that question about yourself? Are YOU
somebody? Perhaps it might depend on
what you meant by ‘somebody’. I mean,
aren’t we all somebody? We all have
our own personality, our own interests, our own quirks and our own habits. Maybe you might say, “well, I’m somebody to
some people” I have a family that loves me…and if they don’t love me they at
least acknowledge that I belong to them. But am I somebody important? Am I somebody valuable?
Well now we are getting into dangerous waters indeed.
Are you somebody?
Our Gospel lesson today
introduces us to somebody who might have been asking this very same question. In John 4, we meet this unnamed ‘Samaritan
Woman’ who epitomizes the question we have been asking. And even though we don’t get to know much
about this woman, we find out what it means to be somebody through her eyes.
It seems like an
ordinary day. Jesus has been out
preaching and he is thirsty and tired.
He sits by a well in a small town in Samaria while the disciples go off
and do…disciple things. As Jesus is
sitting there, this woman comes up to him.
This woman…this unnamed
woman coming at the well at noon. Not in
the morning, when everybody else would come to the well. At noon.
So she wouldn’t be noticed by other people. So she could avoid the other women in the town. So she could be alone. As she comes to the well, Jesus begins to
talk to her.
Are you somebody? Ok…not the question he asks. Rather he asks with the benign request for a
drink of water.
She responds, “How is it you a Jew, ask a drink of me, a
woman of Samaria?” (4:9). She
responds, “Are you somebody?” She is confused because it was a social
custom that Jews and Samaritans would be kept separate from each other.[1] Not only this, but this is a man asking something from a woman.
There is a high wall of social norms, laws and regulations that are
being overcome and it understandably makes the woman uncomfortable.
The best part of this
story comes with Jesus’ response to this.
If you knew the gift of God and
who it is that is saying to you, ‘give me a drink’… What a great statement. Essentially Jesus is saying “Well I actually
AM somebody…in fact I AM” but then goes on to bring the conversation back to
her again. “I could give you ‘living water’.”
The story then takes
another turn when Jesus tells her to go get her husband and come back to talk
to him.
Then comes the truth.
I have no husband.
Jesus replies, “You are right in saying that you have no
husband. In fact, you have had five husbands and the man you are living with
now is not your husband.”
Five husbands. That’s a lot.
But it is also the reason why the woman is out at noon by herself.
No matter what the
reasons are for having five husbands, the fact of the matter is that in a small
town like Sychar, having five husbands meant you were somebody. You were that woman ( you can feel free to fill
in what ‘that’ meant). You were that woman that five men couldn’t stand
so they left you. You were that woman who was cursed by God and had
her husbands die on her. You were that
woman that you couldn’t even make the current guy marry you.
You were somebody…but
you were really nobody. You were nobody that anybody wanted to be
around. You were nobody that anybody cared
about. You were nobody that anybody wanted to see.
You were alone in the world and you can imagine what
this felt like.
She might have felt that she had been cursed by
God. She might have felt unclean because
of her current circumstances. She
definitely felt alone.
Cursed.
Unclean. Alone.
The nature of her five (failed?) marriages doesn’t
really matter. What really matters is
how she felt. Ostracized by her community,
forsaken in love, abandoned by everyone and everything important. It is no wonder that when given the
opportunity to talk to Jesus, she talks about an old theological dispute. Something that’s not personal, not about her.
Something that’s safe.
Cursed.
Unclean. Alone.
I bet that we have all felt like this at some point in
our lives. One of the memories I have of
growing up was being called a “waste of air”.
But so many people have had to endure so much more.
I think of Anna, who grew up hated by her father only to
marry a man who cared even less for her.
I think of Dan who gave his life over to drugs at an
early age, kicked out by his family and lived his life on the streets.
I think of Mildred, the elderly woman that nobody wanted
to visit and nobody wanted to listen to her pain.
Cursed.
Unclean. Alone.
When we find ourselves like this. We may ask ourselves, “Am I somebody?” And the answer comes back in our heads and
nestles in our hearts, “I am nobody worth listening to, I am nobody worth being
with; I am nobody worthy loving.” “Am I
somebody?” “NO” the answer echoes in the
stillness of our rooms with only ourselves to hear it.
But when we consider this story, a different answer must
be given.
At its’ heart, this story is about the man who did pay
attention, who did listen, who did care.
At this point in John’s Gospel, the reader knows fully
well who Jesus is. In fact, we cannot
avoid this fact. John’s Gospel begins, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word
was With God and the Word was God”.
John makes it pretty clear that Jesus is the Word, that Jesus is
God. “All things that were created were created through him.” Jesus is God, He is the creator of the
universe, of all that was and is and will ever be.
Reimagine this story.
Here is a woman, a broken, lonely woman going to the well one day. Who does she meet? I AM. The Beginning and the End the Alpha and the
Omega, the CREATOR of the universe and all that is.
This God became flesh, became man, and sat at the well
with this woman. He took an interest in
her. He offered her ‘living water’,
everlasting life and life with hope. He
offered her a future where the God of the Universe loved her and took an
interest in her. In Her!
This may not seem like a lot…but it is EVERYTHING. It doesn’t matter what the other people in
town are saying. It doesn’t matter that
life hasn’t worked out according to plan.
It doesn’t matter that our hearts are broken (it does, but hear me out). What matters is that the GOD of the Universe,
the one who holds worlds in the palm of His hands, is uniquely interested in
YOU. He wants to hear from YOU. He wants to know what is going on in your
life. He wants to know your pain. He wants to know your joy, he wants to know
your life.
Are you somebody?
Yes, yes you are.
You are somebody of great importance to the great God of the
Universe. You are His beloved child.
You are somebody, and of slightly greater importance is
that He is somebody. He is God
Incarnate. He is the Christ. He is the one who offers you living water to
drink, both now and forevermore.
[1] Jewish people of Judea
(southern Israel) considered themselves to be ‘pureblood’ while the Jews of
Samaria (Northern Israel) were descendands from mixed races.
