The meeting of Jesus and the Samaritan woman reminds me of the beginning of that old movie Grease, when the heroes of that drama, Danny and Sandy, are free of the social structures and limitations of their usual worlds and they fall in love. And then all the drama that follows is because the social norms, the do’s and don’ts of American high school, come crashing in and hijinks ensue.

When Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well, he didn’t have his disciples around. She’s at the well at an unusual time of day so the rest of the village women weren’t there. There weren’t other people to enforce the usual norms or ask Jesus why he was doing what he was doing, as the disciples and others commonly did. It was just these two people.

Now, they obviously didn’t fall in love and run away together. Jesus didn’t become husband number 6.  There’s nothing remotely romantic about this scene other than the fact that this relationship was against the rules. Jewish people and Samaritan people were not to talk to one another. Unrelated men and women were not to be alone together. This was even more shocking, because Jesus was a rabbi.

Neither did Danny Zuko have any business being just a normal boy who fell in love with just a normal girl. This was breaking the rules when you’re the leader of the T-Birds with a reputation to uphold.

Well, sometimes God’s love and action in the world requires us to break our own dumb rules of what is right and what is wrong.

That’s an incredibly easy thing to say, but not so easy to do. Especially since we often aren’t terribly aware of it when our rules are dumb. If we knew it, we wouldn ’t cling to these rules, ideas, and judgements that we have. Poor Danny Zuko was clearly painfully insecure and needed the exterior validation of his friends, who were also all painfully insecure. They were just trying to find their way in the world. Same was true with Sandy and all the Pink Ladies. We all want to know that we belong. We want to be liked. We want to do the right thing, be good, and be seen as worthy members of our groups.

Now, if Jesus was concerned about being good in the context of his society, he would in no way have been alone with this woman, much less would he have talked with her or even cared about the state of her soul or her life situation. But he did care and was not concerned about the rules telling him he should not care.

The “shoulds” loom about Jesus and this woman. She should not have been at the well alone at noon. That wasn’t the normal thing. Jesus should not have talked with her or asked her for water. She should not have responded or challenged him. He should not have “presumed” to be greater than Jacob. He should not have been offering her the living water of God to a Samaritan or a woman living in sin. Who was she to be worthy of such a gift?! He should not have been speaking as if the temple were not the only worthy place to worship God. The woman should not have been presuming that Christ, the Messiah, would include the Samaritans. How bold! Jesus should not have been naming himself as the Messiah, much less alluding to being one with God, the great I AM.

So many things that should not happen happened in this story! So, when the disciples come back, can you imagine the scene? They know enough to keep their mouths shut, but they see what’s happening. It’s not unlike when Danny and Sandy first get reunited at their high school and Danny is first all excited like a normal boy would be. The crack in Danny’s façade comes shining through for a moment and his friends all see the little softie he is.

Now, Danny Zuko is not Jesus or even a mature person, so his façade comes crashing back into place when he remembers that his “disciples” are witness to this interaction and his un-cool soul. The hair combing and strutting gets real dramatic for a moment. Danny gets way into following the rules and the rest of the musical is about how the true love of Danny and Sandy is going to survive the social “shoulds” of their world and as fun as the music is, the relationship advice is dubious at best.

Jesus doesn’t bother with his cultural “shoulds” because our cultural rules largely function to define who is in and who is out. We can really like these rules because when we follow them, we “know” we belong. The problem isn’t just that our rules automatically exclude people (which Jesus wasn’t down with). What also happens is that we need validation again and again that we do indeed belong. If we can be outside of grace and inclusion, then we will always worry about when and how we will fall out of grace.

Jesus is not down with this at all. We are included, we belong, we are loved, and we are forgiven. Jesus is not like Danny Zuko and the disciples are not the T-Birds. It’s a different relationship than our usual way of doing things.

At the well, this faithful, excited, and wildly effective evangelistic woman knows that Jesus is Christ for her because he saw to the depths of her reality, saw all the reasons why they should not be in relationship, and he offered her living water, grace without end, belonging without fear of loss without hesitation.

When we are sated, when our needs are met with this Living Water, when we are grounded in Christ, we too can let go of the limits of human ideas of who is in and who is out. We don’t have to hate who we are told to hate, for example.

A friend of mine in the Bay Area is a devout Muslim and a dedicated family man. He is a wonderful human being. Just a few days ago, he and his children had their lives threatened on their way home from his children’s school. He has felt compelled to hire security to escort his children because people are taking the rhetoric of Muslim hatred and distrust seriously enough to threaten his children.

Perhaps the friendship between Omeed and myself would seem to some folks around us as wrong, as breaking rules that seriously should not be broken. Perhaps your love or care for someone in your life also breaks the human rules around you. And perhaps this is exactly what Jesus would have us do. Perhaps this is exactly the kind of commitment we are asked to make.

More may be asked of us in the days ahead. It’s not complicated for me to be friends with Omeed, my Muslim friend. But there are folks who I struggle more to be friends with and for whom I might struggle to have compassion. Jesus’ disciples were sure uncomfortable with this situation at the well and they wanted to ask the woman, “What do you want?” They wanted to ask Jesus, “Why are you speaking to her?”  

These guys were Jesus’ T-Birds, right? They wanted to keep him safe, keep him in the gang with them in ways that they understood so they would know how they fit. But as Jesus’ disciples now, we are supposed to see their small-mindedness in this gospel story and know that we are to follow Jesus by trampling all over these rules that keep us separate and afraid for the sake of a false sense of belonging.

God is bigger than that. The great I AM does not care about our little rules of who is in and who is out and why. What matters is love and humility, honoring the sacred identity of each human as a beloved child of God. No more, no less.

I truly hope that Sandy and Danny, in their imaginary futures after the movie ends, found God’s grace and true belonging in their lives. That would have taken a miracle or two, no? When we find God’s living waters, the grace of God, we can extend that grace beyond ourselves, beyond normal boundaries, beyond what our culture might be telling us is right and proper. We don’t need to listen when we are told who to hate, who to mock, who to exclude, who to diminish or attempt to control. This humility, this meekness of heart is not weakness. It is the power of God that opens up our world as the Kingdom of God for us and for all people.

May God guide us always, every day to open our hearts, lay down our rules, and follow.

AMEN