Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”
“I have no husband,” she replied.
Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”
Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” They came out of the town and made their way toward him.
Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”
But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”
Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”
“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”
Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers.
They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”
John 4:1-42
This passage is fascinating on many levels. On the surface, it also seems strange. After all, Jesus ends up talking to a Samaritan woman, which in itself is outside the norm. And while she knew and seemed to respect her religious tradition, her life certainly didn’t line up with that, having had five husbands, and the man she was then living with, not being her husband.
It’s interesting how in their conversation which turned into so much more than Jesus’s genuine request for a drink of water from the well, as one should expect when entering into a conversation with Jesus, she really had no clue at what Jesus was getting at. Thinking somehow that the “living water” he was telling her about might make it unnecessary for her to quench any physical thirst. He presses on, their conversation moving into religious matters, where the Samaritans worshiped (Mount Gerizim) as opposed to where the Jews worshiped (the temple in Jerusalem). Jesus said the Jews unlike the Samaritans knew who they worshiped, because salvation was from the Jews. Jesus then said that in the future, and even in the present then, that would be neither here nor there. That the Father seeks worshipers who worship him in the Spirit and in truth. And then she mentions that when Messiah comes, he would explain to them everything. Jesus tells us that he, the one she is speaking to, is the Messiah.
She runs off, even leaving her water jar behind as a witness to her townsfolk. That he had told her that she has had five husbands, the man living with her now, not being her husband. That he had even acknowledged that he is the Messiah. And she exclaims, “Could this be the Messiah?”
Many Samaritans end up believing her both because of her word, and also because of Jesus’s own words after they sought him out.
Such a rich passage. Jesus’s passion, as told to his disciples, that his food was to do the will of him who sent him, and to finish his work. And that the harvest was right in front of them, and ready for the picking.
This passage picked me up when I needed it. Such events told, along with the words accompanying it, lift one up into a different plane, so to speak. Certainly encouraging us, but more than that, helping us to hear or sense from God the direction we’re to take. Even as we aspire to be the worshipers the Father seeks. In and through Jesus.
Jesus community 