In a previous post I noted how the term “Pharisee” has taken on new negative connotations in the centuries that followed the completion of the New Testament. The same holds true of the term “Samaritan”. Whereas “Pharisee” shifted from a positive connotation in the time of Jesus to a negative connotation in the 21st century, the term “Samaritan” shifted from a largely negative connotation (at least for Jesus’ audience) to a positive term in most of our modern usage. We think of a “good Samaritan” as someone who goes out of their way to help a stranger, sometimes forgetting that Jesus’ inclusion of the Samaritan in the parable was intended to be scandalous (Luke 10:25-37).
Because Samaritans were of a mixed Jewish and Gentile heritage, they were largely disowned by proper Jewish society. As a result the Samaritan people developed their own religious practices and systems, built off of the same foundation of traditional Judaism, but with slight alterations. Even without a grasp of the historical tension between these people groups, one can still feel an ethno-religious tension between Jews and Samaritans while reading the gospels. Although we do see Jesus ministering to Samaritans (Luke 17:11-19) we also see Samaritan villages outright rejecting Jesus and his message (Luke 9:51-56). In one heated exchange Jesus is referred to as a “demon possessed Samaritan” by his Jewish audience as a way to insult and discredit him (John 8:48). The idea that one could use “Samaritan” in the same breath as “demon” shows how little the Jewish contemporaries of Christ thought of the Samaritan people.
While Jesus makes it clear that his mission was primarily for Jews first, it is worth noting how often Jesus went out of his way to minister to Samaritans as well. It is also worth noting that, while Jews and Samaritans magnified their theological and ethnic differences, the first Christians would use the theological similarities between Jews and Samaritans to their advantage, making Samaria one of the first mission fields in which to proclaim the gospel (Matthew 28:16-20). Today’s passage, however, takes place during a time when Jewish and Samaritan tensions were still very high, and where most interactions between Jew and Samaritan would be seen as taboo. As we will see, Jesus does not see this tension as a conflict to be avoided, but rather as an opportunity to make his reconciling mission known.
Seeing Through The Taboo
5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.
7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
John 4:5-9, ESV
Jesus crossed more than a few cultural taboos in this passage. Firstly, it would not have been seen as appropriate for a Jewish rabbi to ask a favor from a strange woman that he did not know. Secondly, as John points out, it was not common for Jews to have any dealings with Samaritans, even in a matter as small as requesting a drink of water. Many scholars have also pointed out that “the sixth hour” (around noon-time) is a strange time for anyone to be drawing water. Women customarily went to draw water in the cool of the day, either in the early morning or late evening. This not only provided relief from the heat, but also served as a social event for women to gather and make friends with other women in the village. The fact that this woman went to draw water alone and during the heat of the day likely was a subtle indication that she was an outcast among outcasts.
Later in this account we get more information about why this woman felt shunned by her people. We are told that this Samaritan woman has had five husbands and is currently living with a man who is not her husband (v. 17). What can we conclude from this? It is possible that this reflects a pattern of moral failure on her part. Perhaps she has repeatedly been unfaithful to her spouses, jumping from one passion to another seeking a fulfillment that no man could give her? Or maybe this has little to do with her and more to do with the men in her life? It is possible that she was merely a victim, born into a society where men could divorce easily and women had little to no recourse or social safety net. Was she a woman who had been used and cast aside so often that now she couldn’t find a man willing to take her as a wife? We know that divorce in the Jewish-Samaritan culture could only be initiated by the husband, who had to state publicly that his wife was unclean, unlovable or incapable of fulfilling her wifely duties. For some reason that isn’t stated, five men had divorced this woman and now she was most likely living with her current partner simply to avoid begging and starvation. We are forced to draw our own conclusions, because the text simply does not give us more of a back story. All we can know for sure is that this woman has not succeeded in finding love and acceptance from her community, and as a result she lives a mostly solitary life. No doubt she came to the well to quench her physical thirst, not expecting for her deeper thirsts and longings to be fulfilled.
Notice that in spite of all of the many layers of division that separate this woman from Christ, it is Jesus who makes the first move. He sees that she has come to draw water, and being thirsty he asks for a drink. This woman was of lower status by just about every cultural measurement available at the time, but Jesus addresses her to ask her a favor. This conversation was going to be a life changing moment for the woman at the well, as well as for countless other Samaritans in her village, but it started with a simple request for a drink of water. For this to happen, Jesus had to make the choice to engage with the woman God had placed before him. He could have assumed that she didn’t want to talk to him, or that talking to her would be uncomfortable and awkward. He could have made dozens of assumptions about her, and about why a man like him shouldn’t talk to a woman like her, but he didn’t.
Where most people would look upon this woman as a problem, Jesus was able to see the person behind the problem. This is an important truth for Christ followers to embrace. Our tendency in many ways is to see those on the outside (and sometimes even those on the inside) as problems rather than people who are made in the image of God. Problems need to be fixed, but people need to be helped. It is hard to love those that you see primarily as obstacles, burdens, or as an issue that needs to be addressed. Jesus had a ministering heart, and so should all who seek to follow him.
Notice also that John points out how Jesus was wearied from his journey. He was fatigued and physically exhausted. It was the heat of the day and he was undoubtedly thirsty. The request for a drink of water was not just a conversation starter, but a genuine request for a physical need to be met. There is no easier time for us to pass on a ministry opportunity than when we find ourselves physically, mentally, emotionally, or even spiritually exhausted. This is especially true if the opportunity seems like it is going to involve a “problem” person. We can all fill in the blank with the type of person we might consider a problem. Perhaps it is the neon haired gen-z teen who constantly uses social justice terms you have never heard of, or maybe it’s that crotchety old man who says hurtful things and shares bigoted conspiracy theories online. Maybe the taboos that make you pause are racial, political, class based, or even religious? Whatever the divide may be, it would give you pause if you felt the Holy Spirit nudging you to engage with this person or to extend a kind act of service or friendship too them. If we are going to be faithful Christ followers, we must be willing to go to all peoples, even those that challenge our comfort or our cultural norms.
Lest we forget, we are are all someone else’s problem person. Each and every one of us, to some extent, were like this Samaritan woman in the eyes of God. Utterly unworthy, and yet the Lord looked on us with compassion and love.
“None is righteous, no, not one;
Romans 3:10, ESV
no one understands;
no one seeks for God.”
“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”
Romans 3:23, ESV
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6:23, ESV
“but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
Romans 5:8-11, ESV
Many of us may still be more like this Samaritan woman than we care to admit. Maybe we came here spiritually thirsty, hoping to find something that would satisfy our souls. Maybe we carry a secret sin that we pray will never come to light, or maybe our sins are widely known and we come here with a feeling of shame and guilt, hoping to slip in and slip out unnoticed. Regardless, I feel confident that God has a message of hope and grace for each one of us.
Coming back to our passage, we see that Jesus begins the conversation in the most natural way possible. They are both at a well, he is thirsty, she is drawing water, and so he asks her for a drink. The Samaritan woman, who probably expected to be ignored or overlooked, is taken aback by Jesus’ request. She points out the absurdity of the situation, maybe assuming that Jesus didn’t know where he was or what he was doing. “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” Jesus answers the woman’s inquiry in a very interesting way.
An Invitation To Life
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 nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
John 4:10-15, ESV
Notice that Jesus doesn’t answer her a question, instead he playfully offers her a riddle. “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” (v 10). Jesus essentially leads her to ask two questions; first, “who is this man speaking to me?” and second, “what is the gift of God (the living water)?” Just as Nicodemus the Pharisee initially mistook Christ’s teachings of a new birth to mean a physical rebirth (John 3:4), so too did this Samaritan woman mistakenly think that the “living water” was a literal body of water from which one could drink. Unwittingly she made the very point that Jesus was trying to make. The things of this world cannot satisfy our souls, and apart from Christ we will always thirst again.
The Gospel of Luke contains a shocking parable that reiterates this point. In Luke 16:19-31 we are told of an unnamed rich man who seeks his satisfaction in the pleasures of life as well as a poor and sickly man name Lazarus who endured a painful existence while he lived. When both men died, the rich man found himself in Hades, a place of torment, whereas Lazarus was comforted by angels at Abraham’s side. The rich man who sought satisfaction in worldly things was left to beg for a drop of water to cool his tongue (Luke 16:24) while Lazarus had received the peace and comfort that results from the Lord’s favor. In both this parable and in Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well, water is used to symbolize the divine satisfaction that only comes to the burdened soul that places their faith in Christ alone. Jesus declares that “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”” (v. 13b-14b), which leads the Samaritan woman to say “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water” (v. 15b).
At this point it is worth noting a few things that have been absent from this conversation. While the Samaritan woman at the well drew attention to their differences, Jesus drew attention to their commonality – they were both thirsty. Notice also that Jesus hasn’t yet addressed the real issue in the woman’s life, her many divorces and her cohabitation with a man who was not her husband. No, up to this point the conversation has been all about God’s good gift, the living water that eternally satisfies. Many evangelists begin with conviction of sin and then try to move towards the gospel of grace, but Jesus flips the script here. Jesus begins by taking a common need, human thirst, and using it as a springboard to talk about the goodness of God.
I feel that the reason many of us are reluctant witnesses is that we have internalized the idea that we must always start our conversations with condemnation. Christ was not afraid to condemn when condemnation was necessary, but in this situation he could tell that this Samaritan woman had felt enough condemnation in her life. What she needed was hope, and reassurance of God’s goodness and grace. She needed to know that God’s gift of eternal life and eternal satisfaction was available even to her. Our witness of Christ is not primarily a call to condemnation and guilt, but rather an invitation from death to life.
Don’t Trip Over Molehills
16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 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 now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 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 is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
John 4:16-24, ESV
As we already addressed, the first real moment of tension in this account resulted from Jesus asking this Samaritan woman for a drink of water. In doing this, Jesus was stepping over racial and religious taboos that would have gotten him condemned by his contemporaries. The next real moment of tension occurs when Jesus tells the woman to “Go, call your husband, and come here” (v 16). In this moment Jesus knowingly draws attention to the elephant in the room. So far we have seen how Jesus made the first move, he didn’t wait for the lost to come to him. We saw how he found common ground and used that as an opportunity to talk about God’s goodness. Here we see another important truth, that as Christians we have to be the ones who initiate the often uncomfortable conversation of repentance.
Here we learn what Jesus, in his divinity, knew all along. This woman’s great shame is that she has been divorced five times and that her current man is not her husband. She tries to circumnavigate this shameful truth with a lie of omission “I have no husband.” When Jesus reveals that he knows the truth, she tells Jesus that he must be a prophet to know something like that, being a stranger in the land. However, in the same breath she tries to change the subject by asking a theological question; “our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship” (v 20). Her tactic is nothing new. In fact, I have seen people use very similar tactics to avoid addressing uncomfortable truths.
There may be some of us today who do this without even realizing it. Some of us have much more interest in obscure biblical or theological knowledge than we do with practical matters of faith and practice. There is a reason why a sermon series that promises to uncover the secrets of the book of Revelation draws a crowd much quicker than a sermon on prayer, generosity, or witnessing. We like truths that don’t call us to change more than truths that convict us and make us better. We like head knowledge that doesn’t ask us to do hard things more than heart knowledge that compels us to act.
Lost people also know how to use this tactic well. They may try to dodge questions with other questions. “How do you know your religion is the right religion?” or “How do you explain X or Y?” These aren’t always bad questions, and there is almost always a good answer to be found, but notice what is happening here. They are asking questions to take the spotlight off of themselves and to get the attention away from their need to respond to the reality of sin and salvation.
Jesus doesn’t take the bait. He tells the Samaritan woman, “the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 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 is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (v 22-24). Just as he had done countless times with the Pharisees, Jesus saw past the question and addressed the heart of the matter. As Christ followers we can do the same. Instead of wasting time tripping over theological molehills, we can always bring things back to the heart of the matter – the gospel of Christ. After-all, if we have not been made right with God by placing our faith in Christ then all our theological squabbling is just hot air leaving our mouths.
Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that, while the Jews and Samaritans argue over the right location to worship, God is actively doing a work that will unite believers to God in Spirit, so that they can worship God in all times and places. Jews and Samaritans may argue over bloodlines, but the salvation that is coming first to the Jews will soon cross over all lines of division. True worshipers of all races and nationalities will be united as a people who worship God in spirit and truth. As Jesus declared, “this hour is coming, and is now here.”
From Shame To Sharing!
25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
27 Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” 28 So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” 30 They went out of the town and were coming to him.
31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. 36 Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
39 Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 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 indeed the Savior of the world.”
John 4:25-42, ESV
Still not fully grasping the good news or the identity of the one whom is speaking too, the Samaritan woman makes the offhanded remark “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things” (v 25), to which Jesus responds “I who speak to you am he” (v 26). It is at this moment when the disciples return from their errand to find Jesus and this Samaritan woman conversing by a well in the heat of the day. The woman then leaves her water jar, the whole reason she went to the well in the first place, and begins to spread the word about this mysterious man she met at the well.
Notice that the woman who was an outcast among outcasts was the one who got the privilege of spreading the good news about the Messiah to her people. The woman who went to the well in the heat of the day to avoid her neighbors was now going out of her way to tell everyone about the Messiah. As Samaritans begin to emerge from the town, the disciples seem more preoccupied with the food they had gone out to buy. The disciples encourage Jesus to eat, and while he was no doubt hungry, Jesus tells them that the greater task at hand is to do the will of God by ministering to the Samaritans. They seem not to grasp what Jesus is telling them. Perhaps they shared their culture’s prejudices and had followed Christ into Samaria expecting to find an unreceptive an hardhearted people, instead of the ripe field ready for harvest. They certainly would not have guessed that the strange woman they found Jesus speaking too would lead dozens, if not hundreds, to faith in Christ by her simple testimony. While exact numbers are unknown, we are told that “many more believed because of his word” (v 41) and came to “know that he is indeed the Savior of the world” (v 42). Such a wonderful conclusion.
What might we, as Christ followers, take away from this account? For starters we can model our Lord and Savior’s example. Christ did not allow cultural prejudices, taboos, or discomfort to hinder him in ministering to those that God placed in his path. He was was friendly and used what they shared in common, a thirst for water, to speak about God’s goodness. He didn’t tip-toe around sin, but instead he brought this woman face to face with her the reality of her needs and offered her the only thing that would satisfy. Who do we know who needs to have an encounter like this with Christ? Who do we need to tell about the Messiah who knows everything about us, and loves us still? Who needs to hear about the God who so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whomever believes in Him would not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16)?
But what if we realize that it is we who need this living water? Perhaps we are the one who comes thirsty, hoping to find something that will satisfy our hearts. Maybe we came, expecting nothing special, but somehow we feel that we have had an encounter with the Savior, and we want to go deeper and further with Him. If that is you, then I would love nothing more than to begin a faith conversation with you.
May God Bless.
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