The Woman at the Well Encounters Love

The Samaritan Woman encounters love . . . John 4.1-4

She went to the well thirsty, and left satisfied,

she went to the well empty inside and left filled,

she went to the well friendless and lonely, and left knowing true love,

she went to the well, believing in some small way, the Messiah would come one day, 

  and left, having met him;

she went to the well, a woman scorned and rejected, and skipped away,

  a woman loved by Jesus.

You have to really read the whole passage—printed in the previous Morning Briefing—to get the picture of the Woman who went to the Well.  But even then, you do not fully appreciate the story John recounts unless you understand the cultural and historical biases of the day, and just why John said Jesus ‘had to travel through Samaria’, as though it were the only route—when it was not.  This story shows the rich impact Jesus made on people.

       --‘Seems once folks met Jesus they were never the same.

       --‘Seems once folks meet Jesus they are never the same.

So, Jesus leaves the Judean countryside to return to Galilee, and chooses to go through Samaria, because he knows he has a divine appointment waiting there.  Jesus breaks the social and religious code, as a Jewish rabbi traveling into Samaritan territory, and then, horror of horrors, as a Jew speaking to a Samaritan, and God forbid, a woman!  Let’s take a look at the biases attached to this setting—

Do you know the reason the Jews and Samaritans hated each other?  Well, it had been centuries in the making, dating back 700 B.C., when the Samaritans’ ancestors, the Assyrians invaded the Northern Kingdom of Israel and carried its residents into captivity.  When a few Israelites escaped and returned home, the Assyrian king sent some of his men to guard the former Israelite territory from future revolts.  Over the years that followed, there was intermarriage between Israelites and Assyrians - called Samaritans.  Even the religion was ‘half-breed’, so to speak, a mixture of Assyrian superstition and gods, with Jewish truths and traditions.  The Jews hated the Samaritans, and resentfully, the Samaritans hated the Jews¹. 

As for speaking to a woman . . . well, Jesus was unaffected by social mores—actually, he violated them in every single encounter he had with women recorded in the gospels².  Jesus was a revolutionary with regard to his treatment of women!  You must be aware that in the first century, at every synagogue service, Jewish men prayed, “Blessed art thou, O Lord, who has not made me a woman.”  Women sat in a separate section, were not counted in quorums, and were rarely taught the Torah.  In social life, few women would talk to men outside of their families, and a woman was to have no close contact with any man but her spouse.³  ‘And for rabbis?  They were forbidden to speak to women in public.

So here we have Rabbi Jesus actually addressing a Samaritan woman, [radical!]   “Give Me a drink.”  Instantly, she sums up the situation in the form of a question, “How is it that You, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?”  Jesus responds with, “If you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would ask Him, and He would give you living water.”  Just as he had done with Nicodemus, Jesus goes right to the woman’s greatest need – it is not water to quench her physical thirst, but rather ‘living water’ to quench her spiritual thirst. 

Jesus knows that this woman (I wish I knew her name), has never known spiritual truth . . . never been satisfied in her soul . . .  and so he explains that his living water will make it so she will never thirst again, and will produce in her eternal life!  He’s got her now.  You can almost hear her urgent demand, ‘tell me how to get it!’ 

But first … Jesus must get her to see her sin, and clear it up.  “Go call your husband,” He tells her, “and come back here.”  Utt-oh.  He knows.  Yes, he does.  Jesus helps her deal with her sin, so he can satisfy her thirst for living water, at the same time revealing to her that, without her telling him a thing, he knows she is an adulterer.  He knows all about her, and loves her anyway. 

She goes to the well for water . . .                                                                Jesus sets her free, and gives her living water. 

Christine

PastorWoman.com