This Lent we’ve been given two opposite characters, and can compare how Jesus responded to each of them. Last week John introduced us to Nicodemus and this week he introduces us to a woman from Samaria. It would be hard to imagine two more dissimilar people.

Nicodemus was a Jew. He was an older man – an affluent, educated and influential man. By the most scrupulous of Jewish religious and social standards, he was the epitome of respectability. If they’d had such things in those days, Nicodemus’ name would have been inscribed in the social register, Who’s Who, the clergy directory, and Fortune 500. He had enough money to be able to serve, without pay on the most prestigious council of his day. He had enough education and wisdom to join in making decisions that everyone else had to live by. He was so faithful, religious and upstanding – so unimpeachable of lifestyle and character – that he was, by virtue of his thoughts, words, and actions the very standard against which others were measured. Nicodemus was impeccable.

The woman from Samaria was quite a different sort of person altogether. As a woman in that culture she wasn’t even on the same footing as a man, let alone a man like Nicodemus. Worse than that she was Samaritan. To upright Jews Samaritans were worse than other Gentiles. You see Samaria was a region stuck right in the middle of Palestine – mid-way between the earlier Jewish Kingdoms of Israel, in the North (in Jesus time called, Galilee) and Judah, in the South (called Judea). During conquests by Eastern Empires several hundred years earlier Samaritans followed the course of least resistance. They were syncretistic. They accepted the social and moral, even some of the religious customs of neighboring tribes and invaders alike. They even intermarried with non-Jews. In short, Jews considered them to be absolute scum – half-breeds and heretics – beneath contempt. It made it worse that they were somewhat Jewish.

Upright Jews so despised Samaritans and so feared being infected by their uncleanness, that they wouldn’t even set foot in Samaria – for fear that they might encounter one. If Jews traveled from Judea to Galilee, or vice versa, they’d cross to the other side of the Jordan River just to avoid them. If Rhode Island were Galilee, New York were Judea, and Connecticut were Samaria, and you were a devout Jew, you’d have to drive to the Mass. Turnpike across to New York state and then down the far side of the Hudson River to get New York City – just to avoid those detestable people of Connecticut. The woman in John’s story was a Samaritan.

But she was even worse than that. Notice that this Samaritan woman came to the well at Sychar to draw water at high noon. In all fairness, she might simply have run out, but many observe that the customary times to draw water from the public well in that climate would have been at the beginning and end of the day – when it would be cooler and women could help each other to hoist their heavy buckets from the well or chat with each other. Might this particular Samaritan woman have wanted to avoid others by coming to the well at midday? It may have been that she was unacceptable even to other Samaritan women – notorious in her own right – a woman of ill repute even among Samaritans. After all as we discover with the ensuing story she’d had 5 husbands and was living with some guy at the time. She’d gone through men like my Lab goes through dog bones.

Notice Jesus’ response to those two persons.

The highly esteemed Nicodemus didn’t seem to impress Him much. In fact, Jesus advised him that he needed to be spiritually reborn – to start all over with God under the power of God’s Spirit. Nicodemus’ religiosity, his theological education, his scrupulous morality, and his socio-economic standing didn’t seem to cut any ice with Jesus. Jesus didn’t care about moral pedigree or religious resume. He was far more interested in people’s personal relationship with God and their willingness to be receptive to God’s Spirit.

Likewise, the uncleanness of this Samaritan woman didn’t seem to put Jesus off much. Jesus didn’t allow Himself to be influenced by the prejudices of His time. A respectable Jew wouldn’t have entered Samaria to begin with. A respectable Jew wouldn’t have sat down and touched a Samaritan well for fear of picking up Samaritan couties. A respectable Jew wouldn’t have initiated a conversation with any unfamiliar woman, let alone a Samaritan, and certainly wouldn’t have taken a drink from her water jar. But Jesus wasn’t a respectable Jew. He didn’t care a bit about the religious niceties. Jesus cared about people and about God. He looked at every encounter as a God-given opportunity to engage each person He met -- to introduce him or her to God in such a way that God’s Spirit might touch their lives to draw them closer to God and move them on in becoming more of what God wanted them to be. And so Jesus didn’t see people outwardly at all, but inwardly. He met them as they were – where they were – and pinpointed the salient facts of their lives that stood between them and God – to give them the choice to go deeper with God.

Sometimes, you know, people look for God in all the wrong places, or, you might say that people make all sorts of substitutes for God. Nicodemus – given his circumstances in life and the choices he’d made – looked for God in Jewish religiosity. Apparently he substituted the rules, regulations and religious customs for God. They were the defining characteristics of his life. On the other hand, this Samaritan woman – given her circumstances in life and the choices she made – looked for God in love or sex or in whatever relations with various men seemed to offer, perhaps the material security they provided. Apparently she substituted some combination of those for God, because they were the defining characteristics of her life. All of us can look for God in the wrong places and can make the things that are most important to us into God.

As I mentioned last week we then can find ourselves using various defense mechanisms to keep God distant. Nicodemus specialized in religious and intellectual defense mechanisms to distance God in his conversation with Jesus.

This woman employed defense mechanisms too. We all do. As any spiritual director would say, "It’s not whether we’re resisting God, but how we’re resisting God." If you follow the passage about Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman you’ll spot hers. Jesus asks her for a drink, and the first defense she employs is reverse discrimination. God gives her an opportunity to help someone, and she throws Jewish prejudice back in His face. Then she employs a dose of empiricism and a dash of sarcasm. Jesus tells her he could give her living water – a metaphor for the Holy Spirit – and she points out that He doesn’t have the right equipment, asking if Jesus thinks He’s greater than Jacob. Then, still thinking concretely, she asks Jesus to give her the water He has so that she won’t have to work so hard heaving water jars around. We can limit God’s possibilities in our lives by looking only at the concrete obstacles to God’s work or only looking to meet our own concrete needs. Then Jesus confronts the salient blockage to God’s Spirit in her life – men, her substitute God – saying you’ve had 5 husbands and are living with a guy now. She beautifully employs that ever-popular (Change the subject) theological defense. "Sir," she says, "I perceive that you’re a prophet. Tell me, do you think it’s better to worship in Jerusalem or here."

In these stories both characters are given the same opportunity to make a new start with God. Jesus doesn’t hold the external facts of our lives or our past history against us. No one is so good, like Nicodemus, to be without the need for God’s Spirit to enliven our relationship with God. And no one is so bad, like the Samaritan woman, to be without the chance for it. In fact, bad people and good – such popular classifications in our present culture – are irrelevant to God insofar as to offer us the need and opportunity for new beginnings in Christ. New beginnings with God always involve inviting God’s Spirit to fill and lead us. Then when something within us stands in the way, Christ always points it out. We often try to evade that discomfort with various defenses, but God is awfully persistent – Christ always sticks with us and says, "Receive the Spirit. And, by the way, what about this?" Then He points out some fact of our lives – some substitute for God -- that stands in the way. That’s when we have the choice to resist by some defense mechanism or to receive. And so I wonder what barrier there might be within you that stands in the way of the Spirit? When Christ says, "What about this?" What is it for you and, uh, what are going to do about it?