From the Lectionary Friday/Saturday Feb. 26-27, 2021
John 4:1-26
Jesus and the Woman of Samaria
Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John” 2 —although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— 3 he left Judea and started back to Galilee. 4 But he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “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.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 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.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”
Let’s use our imagination to fill in some of the details of this story of the Samaritan woman at the well. The text doesn’t explicitly mention much about her life story, but some things are implied. We do know that she is a Samaritan, that she has had five husbands, and that she is currently living with another man who is not her husband. She is from the town of Sychar, located in Samaria, about thirty miles or so north of Jerusalem. It is a long walk from her home in Sychar to this well which we are told is Jacob’s well, probably about a mile, all uphill. She likely carried at least two water bags or buckets attached to a pole which she carried over her shoulders, that once filled were heavy, stretching her capacity to carry. She has chosen to come to the well in the hottest part of the day, the noon sun directly overhead. Her life must have been hard, and she was considered an outcast by her own people. Her reputation is sullied. Perhaps the other women from the town wouldn’t allow her to accompany them for fear of being somehow contaminated by her very presence. She had several things going against her. First, she was a woman, and in first-century Palestine women had no status. Second, she was a Samaritan, and was not only an enemy of the Jews, but considered by them to be unclean and to be avoided at all costs. Third, she was an outcast among her fellow Samaritans, who knew all about her five husbands and that she was now living with yet another man. So she strikes out on her daily journey to fill her bags with water once again, alone, in the heat of the day. Her thoughts as she climbs the hill to the well: “Day after day, will this ever end? I am alone and despised by so many. Is there anything more to life than this?” It is a dusty blue-skied hot day, the climb up the hill through a treeless field, the breeze blowing the dust from the hundreds-of-years-old path beneath her feet, the tall grasses bending in the field around her. She reaches the top of the hill, enters the beaten-down dusty ground around the well, and sits on the stone wall atop the well. It is a deep well, about 100 feet deep, and the rope she will need to attach to her bags is coiled on the ground. As she wipes her brow of sweat with the towel wrapped around her head, she notices someone sitting opposite the well from her. It is a Jew, also tired and hot, and thirsty. And he says to her, “Give me a drink.” Her mind begins racing. Who is this man, a Jew, asking me for a drink? What is he doing here in Samaria anyway? Doesn’t he know it is dangerous for him to be here? She has no idea who it is that sits across the well from her, only that he doesn’t belong here and should probably for his own sake leave. But Jesus knows all about her. Over the course of their conversation he reveals to her, despite her doubts, that he is not just an ordinary man wandering and apparently lost in Samaria. Within minutes she knows that she has encountered a different kind of person than one she had ever known, someone who offers her hope for a new life. How can this be? She is suddenly elated, excited beyond her wildest dreams, that there is a possibility for everything to be made new. A new beginning, a new start. Could this be the Messiah for whom they had been waiting to usher in a new world? Is this water about which he speaks really the water of new life? She says to the Jew, “I know that Messiah is coming. When he comes he will proclaim all things to us.” Jesus then tells her, for the first time revealing to anyone who he is, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” Leaving her bags of water behind, she runs down the hill to her town to tell others about this encounter, this man who has offered her the water of new life. “Come and see” she says, just as Philip had said to Nathanael days before. Jesus stayed with the Samaritans for two days, and “many more believed because of his word” (4.41).
This story provides so many avenues for reflection. One is how simple and yet powerful the direct encounter with God can be. Here it is in a conversation with a stranger who asks for a drink of water. Of course it was no ordinary stranger, but I think it is easy to miss the presence of Christ in our encounters with others, especially others we think are outsiders, in some way “different” from us. In his offer of living water, “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” to the Samaritan woman, Jesus is once again breaking down barriers so dominant in the culture of the people in the first century. Not only is she a woman, but also an outsider and enemy of the Jews. He is again challenging the status quo, showing that there are no privileged people or places in the Kingdom of God. His gift of life is for everyone, everywhere. I think this Kingdom of God or heaven about which Jesus talks is already here. It happens over and over again when we encounter Christ, and when we respond with love. Theologians call this “realized eschatology,” the end times breaking through into the present moment. Surely this is what happened to the Samaritan woman at the well.
Rev. Bob Donnell
Prayer For our Enemies (BCP p. 816)
O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth; deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty, and revenge; and in your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
