A great story has interesting characters, a good plot, and makes you think.  That’s the sort of story we find in John 4.  It helps us understand who Jesus is, as we watch his interaction with an unlikely person, a Samaritan woman.

¹ Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— ² although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. ³ So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.

          Jesus does not want to cause more conflict with the Jewish leaders, so he decides to get out of town.  He wants to return to Gallilee. 

    ⁴ Now he had to go through Samaria.

          Palestine in Jesus’ day was as much a place of conflict as it is today.  Jesus, as you know, was a Jew.  In this story, he is leaving Judea, in the southern part of Palestine, and he is going to the area of Galilee, farther north.  Both of these regions were largely populated by Jews.  But in between them was Samaria.

          The Samaritans were relatives of the Jews, and the Jews despised the Samaritans.  This was an old feud.  Some 750 years before Christ, the hated Assyrians had invaded Israel and deported the people.  But they didn’t take everyone.  Some of the poorest people were left behind—apparently not worth taking into captivity.

          In time, those poor Jews intermarried, and they became known as Samaritans.  The Samaritans retained some of their Jewish beliefs, but they didn’t do things quite right.  So the true Jews despised them.  Jews considered Samaritans unclean.  Not only would they not eat or drink together; they would not eat something a Samaritan had touched.         

          Some Jews would not even allow themselves to touch the shadow of a Samaritan, for fear of becoming unclean.

          Verse four says Jesus had to go through Samarian.  The fact is, he did not actually have to go through Samaria.  Many Jews would take the longer route around Samaria in order to avoid being among those unclean people, the Samaritans.

          So no one knows exactly why Jesus “had” to go through Samaria, but that is what it says. 

          Have you ever lived near a neighborhood that you considered an unsafe place to be because of the people who live there?  Have you ever decided to take the long way around it to get to your destination?  Jesus, on this day, had to go through Samaria.

          ⁵ So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶ Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

          This part of Samaria had once been the place where Jacob and Joseph, two of the patriarchs of the Jewish faith, had lived.  Racial and ethnic tensions are always heightened by the addition of religion.

    ⁷ When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" ⁸ (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

    ⁹ 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.)

          It is hard for us to understand just how outrageous Jesus’ behavior is here.  To begin with, Jesus is hanging out in the wrong neighborhood.  Then, he has the audacity to speak to this stranger and ask her for something.  And not only is she a stranger and a Samaritan, but she is a woman.  Jewish men simply would never have spoken to her.

          Jesus is sitting by the well and he asks this stranger—this Samaritan woman—to give him a drink of water.  She is shocked.  She knows that Jews consider Samaritans unclean.  That’s why she responds the way she does.

          Then, Jesus answers in the strangest way.

    ¹⁰ 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."

    ¹¹ "Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? ¹² Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?"

          This woman is sharp-witted in her reply.  She reminds Jesus, this unknown Jew, that this is Jacob’s well.  The Jews trace their heritage to Abraham, who was the father of Isaac, who was the father of Jacob.  This well, deep in the center of Samaritan territory, is part of their Jewish heritage.  But as she is reminding him, it is also part of the heritage of the Samaritans, who also trace their ancestry, however muddled, back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

    ¹³ Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but those who drink 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."

    ¹⁵ 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."

          It’s hard to tell at this point whether the woman is really taking Jesus’ offer of water quite as literally as it seems at first.  I think she’s used to using her quick wit and sharp tongue.  Jesus has mentioned eternal life.  I don’t think this woman is dumb at all.  I think she is sparring with Jesus when she says, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."

          Maybe that’s why Jesus changes the subject.

    ¹⁶ He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back."

    ¹⁷ "I have no husband," she replied.

    Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. ¹⁸ 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."

          Now, most people would be speechless at this point.  Jesus knows things he has no way of knowing about her.  But rather than admitting it, the woman changes the subject.  She decides to talk about religion.

    ¹⁹ "Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."

          And Jesus is once again a step ahead of her.

    ²¹ "Woman," Jesus replied, "believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²² You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³ 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. ²⁴ God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth."

    ²⁵ The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."

    ²⁶ Then Jesus declared, "I, the one speaking to you—I am he."

 ²⁷ 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?"

          In other words, the disciples are completely stunned that Jesus is having this conversation with a woman, and a Samaritan woman at that, and probably not the most upstanding Samaritan in the neighborhood at that.  But the disciples have been following Jesus for a while now, and they are true believers.  They understand something of who he is.  They know not to challenge his behavior, even when it seems way out of line.

          So picture this:  the disciples have come back and they’re sort of standing around speechless, observing the situation.  And the woman has just figured out that Jesus is incredibly special—in fact, it is dawning on her that he truly is the Messiah. 

          She had said to Jesus, "I know that Messiah is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."

              And Jesus had answered, "I, the one speaking to you—I am he."  And as the disciples stand there staring, the light dawns on this woman.  This woman who is the wrong kind of person altogether.  She was born a Samaritan—of the race most hated by the Jews.  Yet her scrap of faith is rooted in the Jewish religion.  She is a woman in a culture that doesn’t value women very highly.  She has had five husbands, and now she is living with a sixth man. 

          She’s just not the right kind of woman.  Somehow, I think her quick wit and her sharp tongue may have gotten her into some of her trouble.  In Palestine of her day, women were quite powerless.  The fact that she has had five husbands probably is not entirely her fault.  Husbands had all the power, and the law was on the man’s side when it came to issues of divorce.  A husband needed only the tiniest excuse to divorce his wife—for the wife, there was no power at all.  And once she had been divorced, what choice did she have, but to look for another man to support her?  Her choices in her world were pretty limited.  And each time she had found another man who would marry her, it seemed to end in disaster.  She was damaged goods.  The kind of woman who men used and discarded.  This time, after five husbands, she is just living with someone who is willing to have her.  Some speculate that the reason she is even at this well, which was on the outskirts of town, and in the middle of the afternoon at that, was that she was shunned by the more respectable women of her town.  This is quite likely.  She was not highly regarded by anyone.

          And then she met Jesus.  

          A man who was different in every way.  He treated her with respect from the beginning, in spite of the fact that by every measure of their culture, she was by far his inferior.

          She had said to Jesus, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."   And now she realizes that this is exactly what Jesus has just done.  He has explained everything to her, beginning with who she is.  The Messiah has come!  To her!

          So she takes off, without even bringing her water jar with her.  Obviously she has come to the well in order to get water, but that water is no longer important, because she has encountered living water.

    ²⁸ Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, ²⁹ "Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?"

And the people responded.  They listened to her!  ³⁰ They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

    ³¹ Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something."

          Leave it to the disciples to turn a holy moment into the mundane.  Now, the disciples were trying to be helpful.  They think Jesus must be hungry.

          But somehow they have missed what is happening here.  Or they are so dumbfounded that they simply don’t know what to do.  Jesus has just gone into the center of Samaritan territory and revealed himself to a woman who is the lowest of the low, and she has recognized him for who he is.

          So Jesus answers them with another puzzle.  Jesus asked the woman for water, and then he offered her living water.  Now, the disciples want to offer him food, but he tells them he has food they do not understand.

    ³² But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about."

    ³³ Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone have brought him food?"

    ³⁴ "My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. ³⁵ 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. ³⁶ Even now those who reap draw their wages, even now they harvest the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together^{. 37} Thus the saying 'One sows and another reaps' is true. ³⁸ 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."

 ³⁹ Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I ever did." ⁴⁰ So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. ⁴¹ And because of his words many more became believers.

    ⁴² 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."

Prayer:

Thank you Jesus, that you chose not to come to the wealthy, the good, and the well-born.  Instead, you came to save all of us, regardless of our backgrounds; regardless of our lifestyle.  Remind us, if we ever start to think that we deserve your love, that there is nothing worthy in us.  Our standing in your kingdom does not depend on our goodness or our worthiness, but on your grace.  Thank you that you are the bread of life; the giver of living water.  Amen