John 4.5-42 Jesus and the woman at the well

John 4.5-42

 

So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 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.) 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.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 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.” 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.” Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 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. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 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.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”  Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him. Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labour. Others have laboured, and you have entered into their labour.” Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Saviour of the world.”

We’re jumping about in Jesus’ timeline quite a bit in the lectionary readings. At the services on Wednesday we saw Jesus towards the end of his ministry as recorded by Matthew and this morning we’re back at the start of his ministry as recorded by John.

At this stage in John’s account, Jesus has already upset the religious authorities by turning over the tables of the money changers in the Temple and causing uproar and a near riot. He’d had a secret visit from the Pharisee, Nicodemus who, it turns out was close to discipleship himself and Jesus has been out and about in Judea, teaching and baptising – and we’re only in chapter 4.

So, we join Jesus this morning as he sets of from Judea to return to Galilee, and we’re told this was because the religious authorities were getting very agitated about his success with the ordinary people. To get back to Galilee, though, Jesus had to pass through Samaria, an area where the people followed a form of semi-Jewish religion that made them unacceptable to the Jews of Judea and Galilee who despised them and looked down on them.

Jesus and his friends had arrived, tired and hungry at a small village: the disciples had gone off to buy food, leaving Jesus on his own by a well, footsore and weary, and it’s here that Jesus meets a local woman, coming to the well with her water jar to collect the household’s water.

A typical and unremarkable event in itself.

Jesus, without the means to draw water for himself, asks the woman to give him a drink and this request stuns her. Here’s a Jewish man, not only talking to an unaccompanied woman, socially unacceptable itself, but a Samaritan woman at that, and asking her for help. 

Presumably having drunk his fill, Jesus strikes up a conversation with the woman, turning the conversation to the spiritual as he talks about living water, which of course meant nothing to her until Jesus explained that the living water he would give would come gushing up to eternal life. The water she’d been drinking only satisfies the thirst temporarily. The water Jesus was offering would never leave her thirsty again.

It’s possible that the point of this story is blunted a bit because we take access to water for granted don’t we? But just think for a moment about all the ways you use water in a day. Showering or bathing, cooking, dishwashers and washing machines, garden watering, car washing, numerous cups of tea or coffee, and so on. We take it for granted but our lives would be very different without the easy access we have. Can you imagine for a moment having to get all the water you need for the day from one trip to a well? If we think of it in those terms, the story has greater impact.

So we have Jesus and the woman deep in conversation. This says something about the person of Jesus. At the Lent group, we’ve touched on the cynicism people have when we talk about matters of faith and salvation. Put yourself in the position of this woman for a moment. You’re alone with a stranger who starts to talk to you about God. What’s your reaction?

Jesus, though has charisma: he speaks with authority but in an engaging way that leaves the woman at ease and wanting to know more. She’s clearly weighed him up and decided that he’s not just some random nutter with a religious obsession – and those people existed than as now – and she wants to know more.

She asks for the water Jesus speaks of and in the conversation that follows, he peels back the layers of her life, moving into the secret places of her personal history. What follows is quite a theological discussion about the differences and similarities between the Jewish and Samaritan understandings of salvation but there was common ground: a belief in the coming Messiah and Jesus leaves her in no doubt. I who speak to you am he.  

When the woman left Jesus, she went into the town, leaving behind her water jar in her enthusiasm to spread the news, and told anyone who would listen, Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done. Can he be the Messiah?

So where does that leave us? We’ve heard the story, and probably not for the first time. What’s John’s message to those who hear about this event?

Well, to a greater or lesser extent, this woman represents each of us here. John knew this from his own experience: he’d had an encounter with Jesus which had changed him and here he’s holding up a mirror to us. And what do we see? We see ourselves in the Samaritan woman. We too live lives where we hold our own secrets tightly hidden from other: those things which cause us shame, and one day we encounter Jesus and we realise that he knows us and regardless, he still loves us. God looks into our souls, sees our dark side, divines our secrets, knows our guilt, discerns our motivations ….. and loves us anyway.

The next step’s up to us, of course. If we open ourselves to that encounter Jesus offers us the living water of salvation and we come to realise that the wells we’ve been drinking from only satisfy for a while, whether the well we’ve been drinking from is the bottle or the needle, a desire to be popular, to have the esteem and respect of those around us, an ambition for promotion, the acquisition of more and more stuff, transient relationships, and so on. They leave us empty and are ultimately unsatisfactory and yet we still yearn. Here Jesus tells us that we’re yearning for the living water - whether we recognise it or not.

This woman wasn’t actively looking for the Messiah, she was just getting on with her life. But when she wasn’t especially looking for it, Jesus offered her the living water that would gush up to eternal life and I think there must be a message there for our witness to others in word and deed: we all know people who are just getting on with life, who aren’t particularly looking for a Messiah, but who are drinking from wells that are ultimately unsatisfying. You know who they are in your lives as well as I know who they are in mine.

What are we going to do about it?

In the latter part of this story, Jesus moves on from discussing water and turns instead to food: I have food to eat that you do not know about he tells the disciples and, of course, this confuses them. Surely no one has brought him something to eat? they ask. But Jesus’ next focus is on the fields that are ripe for harvesting, not in an agricultural sense but in a mission sense.

So I return to the earlier question, what are we to do about it? And here again the Samaritan woman offers us a model: she talked to her family, her friends and neighbours and we’re told many Samaritans from the city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.

We have a testimony, each one of us. It may not be dramatic or exciting like the one you heard from John a couple of weeks ago but we have a testimony nevertheless. Who says it has to be dramatic or exciting for others to listen and be touched by the Holy Spirit.

When did you last share that testimony?