Vindication

What do you do when you become aware that people are spreading a story about you that you know to be untrue?

That’s the question I asked today, from the (alternative set of) readings for Holy Communion, Exodus 17:1-7 and John 4:5-42.

Moses has led his people out from the cruellest of slavery, but now they claim he brought them out to kill them with thirst, and are set to turn from an angry crowd to a lynch mob.

What do you do when people are spreading a story about you that you know to be untrue?

A woman of Sychar comes to draw water from the well at noon, deliberately avoiding the other women of her town. It turns out that she has had five husbands, and the man she now lives with will not take her as his wife. It is most unlikely that this is an immoral woman. Had she been found guilty of adultery, she may well have paid with her life. Even if spared, in a close-knit community it is much more likely that six men would visit a prostitute than marry ‘spoilt goods’. No, it is most likely that her experience has been Levirate marriage: the expectation – given for the protection of women – that the brother of a man who died childless marry his brother’s widow, if necessary through a line of brothers; and that the sixth brother was prepared to give her a degree of protection but not risk the fate of his brothers.

The word on the street concerning this woman was not, ‘Stay away from her, or she might steal your husband too’ - it was, ‘Stay away from her, or death might steal your husband too’.

What do you do when people are spreading a story about you that you know to be untrue?

Moses cries out to God. And God responds by drawing water from a rock. A miraculous sign; a two-fold symbol of divine stability and lively movement towards humanity. And a very public vindication of Moses as God’s servant.

The woman cries out to God. And God responds by sending Jesus to her, to fulfil her longing for cleansing, life-giving water; for living water. A very public vindication of a woman not cursed but cherished.

What do you do when people are spreading a story about you that you know to be untrue?

Moses and the woman of Sychar model a good response:

we cry out to God for vindication, and trust that we will encounter him – perhaps in a way that we could never have imagined.