The Woman at the Well
John 4:5-42
Do you sometimes wonder how to live your life? How we should actually live, day by day, in a way that pleases God?
And then all our fears and worries and so on get in the way anyway?
This story gives us some answers. It’s about a woman. She is fearful, troubled and uncertain.
She is fearful… and then is rescued by the saviour of the world
She is troubled… and is filled with living water
She is uncertain… and she ends up knowing the truth. ‘Know’ is the word that is used.
Jesus has been walking through Samaria. That is where the Samaritans live. Samaritans and Jews did not speak to each other, and Jews thought they were much better than Samaritans.
Jesus is tired after walking half a day, and sits down by a well. A Samaritan woman comes to the well to get water. He asks her for a drink. She is astonished that he speaks to her. She is not only a Samaritan, but a woman, and a respected Jewish man would not speak to a Samaritan woman.
He steps over the boundaries between her and him and simply asks her for a drink.
That is how Jesus reaches each one of us. He steps over the boundary between him and us, and very simply asks us to connect with him.
We can be like that, with our friends and neighbours, and with people that no-one else talks to. We can simply step over the boundary, and connect with them. Perhaps especially now, in the current uncertainty, with people who we haven’t connected with before.
In passing, notice that even though he’s tired and thirsty, Jesus doesn’t say ‘when I’ve had a drink, I’ll screw up my courage and see if I can have a chat with that person’. He is just being, even in his tiredness, staying close to God through the Holy Spirit. That leads to him talking to the woman, which was not the obvious thing to do in that context, and it’s such a life-changing encounter for her that we’re still reading about it 2,000 years later.
So we can be just as useful to God when we’re tired, or thirsty, or weak. We don’t need to be on top form. Just be, with God, and he’ll lead us into life-changing encounters at any point in the day, or at any point in our lives. We need to relax, in a sense, and let ourselves be with him.
He and the woman get into a conversation and he offers her living water. What is living water? It is what gives us life, eternal life. Most Christians will know what it feels like, at least at times, to have this sense of God’s unstoppable force welling up inside us, giving us hope and freshness and vitality. It’s a gift from God.
I imagine that living water is a bit like a beautiful, powerful river gushing down from a mountain. That’s what the full Christian life is like – life in all its fullness, as it says in John 10. Compared with still water, from a well, which is good, but nowhere near as exciting or fulfilling.
The woman thinks it sounds great. “Sir, give me this water...” She has a real longing for the deep-down fulfilment that she senses Jesus is offering.
You’d think Jesus would give her this living water straight away, but he doesn’t. Instead he changes the subject and asks her to call her husband. But she doesn’t have a husband. She’s had several marriages and all of them have broken down. She’s probably hurting massively. Jesus knows it all already – just as he knows all our pasts. He is gentle and compassionate with her. And he is just as gentle and compassionate with each of us.
Jesus needed to put his finger on one of her big hurts, one of her big regrets. It’s as if he is saying, “I know all about it. You’re safe with me.” We all need to be honest with him about our past and our regrets, so that he can heal us. He doesn’t condemn: he forgives. Being forgiven is one of the most healing things.
And who knows: in that culture it was men who divorced women, so perhaps she was the completely innocent party all the way through and it’s more about her being hurt and bruised, than anything else.
In any event she feels safe enough to continue the conversation. Do look at it later if you get a moment: basically she asks him how to pray to God. She’s genuinely interested. Jesus tells her that real worship is not about turning up to a particular place, but worshipping God ‘in spirit and in truth’. Real, deep-down bonding with God, between our spirit and his. Not based on some imaginary made-up religion, but based on truth. In spirit and in truth.
It’s all a bit deep for her… after all she’d only come to fetch water from the well. Instead of ordinary water she’s getting living water, and it’s pretty intense, so she says, “I know that Messiah [which means God’s anointed one] is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” Perhaps she thinks she’s ending the conversation gracefully and politely.
And Jesus replies – I’m the Messiah.
I imagine her jaw hit the floor. You can almost hear the silence as she takes this in.
Some of us here have had a similar experience: the penny has dropped, suddenly or slowly, and we’ve realised who Jesus is for the first time. Or perhaps we’ve only dimly realised it, but it still feels like a revelation. Because it is a revelation.
Fortunately for her, while she’s lost for words there’s a distraction, because just then the disciples return – they’d gone into town to buy food. Now it’s their turn to be surprised, to find Jesus talking with a woman. And they’re lost for words. For a moment everyone’s silent.
She recovers, and leaves her water jar there as she goes back into town and says to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” (Christ means the same as Messiah.) And they come out of the town, and meet him, and many of them believe in him because of what the woman says. They invite him to stay with them, and he says yes. He stays for two days, and because of everything they hear from him many more became believers.
The best evangelists are often the people who have just come to faith for the first time. They go straight off to tell people, and people come flocking. People who invite others to the Alpha course are often the ones who’ve just got to know Jesus, through Alpha or in some other way.
So now we have what seems to be the first community of Christians (apart from the disciples) and they’re from a group that nobody even speaks to. Think of someone you know who no-one really speaks to, or a group that many people look down on. It’s like Jesus going to those people and telling them the wonderful good news, before he tells anybody else. Jesus told the woman that he was the Messiah, and I don’t think he had told even the disciples that yet. The woman came first.
He was sending the most powerful signal that we’re all equal. We’re getting used to that idea these days, but then it was completely revolutionary. Still, we probably all have further to go in thinking of every human being as fully equal, to be profoundly respected. Let’s do that, with everyone we meet – somewhere else in the Bible we’re told to consider others better than ourselves.
What can we hang onto, as we go into a new week?
We can step over the boundary, and connect with that person whom no-one really talks to.
We can ask Jesus for living water, to make our lives wonderfully fulfilling.
We can be honest with him about our past and our regrets, so that he can heal us.
And we can recognise him for who he is, the Messiah or anointed one. After his two days staying with the Samaritans, they said, “we know that this man really is the Saviour of the world.”
Prayer
Lord, in these uncertain times, like the woman at the start of the story if we’re:
… feeling fearful… help us to realise that we can be rescued by the saviour of the world
… feeling troubled… please fill us with living water
If we are uncertain… help us to know the truth.
And help us to be great and natural evangelists, like her, bringing joy and faith to many people.
Amen