Messiah Meets A Woman

by Amy Rasmussen (copyright, 2008)
*Sermon given at George Fox Seminary (November 20, 2008).

John 4: 4-26

The woman didn’t mind coming to the well in the middle of the day. It mattered little that the sun burned like a hot coal in the sky. Other women came at the end of day when it was cooler. She figured that coming in the middle of the day was better than the stares and whispers of the pious women when she waited a turn to lower her bucket into the deep waters of Jacob’s well. Not even a cool pot of water in the middle of the desert was worth their silence and condescending eyes.

As the Samaritan woman approached the well, she thought of her ancestor Jacob seeing Rebecca for the first time. She liked to imagine his giddy stare as he watched Rebecca lower and raise her bucket of water. She liked to think that a man could love a woman so much that he would want her to be bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.

Mount Gerizim rose in the distance. Approaching the well, she noticed a Jewish man resting. Thoughts stirred in her mind: Why was a Jewish man traveling through Samaria when other Jews traveled around it? Why was he lingering at the well when everybody knew that only morally reprehensible women drew water in the middle of the day? Tentatively she approached the stone mouth of the well. She suspended the pot over the dark hole, and pretended not to notice the man watching as she extended the rope from one hand through the other.

“Give me a drink,” the man said.

She caught her breath and looked up. Beads of sweat ran down his face and neck. Astounded, she wondered why a Jewish man was speaking to her. Surely he knew the rule—that Jews do not share things, including water pots, with Samaritans. The woman shifted from one foot to the other due to the weight of the bucket and her own discomfort.

“How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” She braced herself for his answer, and wondered what he would want after she gave him a drink.

The Samaritan woman who Jesus met at the well was thirsty. We know this because she carried an empty water pot one mile from the village of Sychar to Jacob’s well. We also know this because she went for water during the hottest time of day, when social outcasts avoided confrontations with pious women who drew water during the cooler late afternoon. We know the Samaritan woman was thirsty because Jesus said to 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.” (v. 10) Jesus pointed at a thirst that Jacob’s well could never satisfy. Intrigued, the woman wondered where Jesus would get that living water, especially when he had no bucket and the well was deep. Was it possible the man standing before her was greater than her ancestor Jacob who had built the well?

When Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman he acted unconventionally. A Jew who addressed a Samaritan might as well have exposed himself to a communicable disease. Jews considered Samaritans to be hopelessly unclean. For one, Samaritans did not pay homage to all the Jewish writings. They only followed the Pentateuch, the first five books that Moses wrote. Samaritans also worshiped at Mt. Gerizim instead of the temple in Jerusalem. Generally, Jews and Samaritans did not get along. And Jews did not share things, including water pots, with Samaritans.

When Jesus asked the woman at the well for a drink he invited religious contamination. Pious Jewish men were not to speak with women outside their families. Carrying on a religious conversation with a woman was tantamount to trampling Yahweh’s Word in the dirt! Most outrageously, Jesus addressed the outcast Samaritan woman after his colleagues went on an errand in town. Such behavior in first century Palestine communicated a sexual advance.

The woman responded enthusiastically to Jesus’ offer of a spring of water gushing up to eternal life. “Sir, give me this water so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” (v. 15) She grasped the possibility of no longer having to thirst.

“Go call your husband,” Jesus said, “and come back.”

Painful memories had to have called attention to her soul’s thirst as the woman admitted to having no husband. (v. 16-17). Gently, Jesus pointed out that she’d had five husbands, and the one she was living with was not her husband.

“What you have said is true!” The woman responded, shocked.

The apostle John does not give many details about the Samaritan woman. The culture of her day, however, can tell us some things. The surrounding community would have tolerated two, or maybe three, divorces. Five marriages amounted to a disaster! Mosaic Law prohibited cohabitation. In this case, the woman was committing adultery against her former husband. By Jewish and Samaritan standards, we know this woman’s life was outrageously immoral. Yet, in fairness, we have to wonder–Was there more to her story? What happened in her previous five marriages?

A law in the Pentateuch allowed a husband to divorce his wife for “some uncleanness.” The term was ambiguous and sometimes misapplied. Rabbinical literature (not part of the Old Testament) also considered burnt food to be grounds for divorce. Was it possible the Samaritan woman might not have been a first century Martha Stewart? Was it possible that she had, on certain occasions, burned too many pieces of bacon?!

A former husband might have found an excuse to divorce his wife for a younger, more fertile wife. According to community law, if a man built a convincing enough case against a woman, he could keep her dowry and cast her into the streets. And without a dowry, or an official divorce certificate, a woman could not remarry. Abuses were possible because of loopholes in the system. As a result, the Samaritan woman might very well have chosen to cohabitate with a man instead of living without protection on the streets. It is possible, also, that one or more of the woman’s husbands had died. We don’t know the full story of how the Samaritan woman fell into disgrace. What we do know is that she had a painful, promiscuous past that resulted in a ruined reputation and status as a second-class citizen.

In John 4, verse 13, Jesus tells the Samaritan woman, “everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I give them will never be thirsty. The water that I give them will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Jesus built upon the woman’s understanding of physical water—that it has life giving properties. The woman knew that humans and animals do not last long in the desert without water. She understood her need for water on scorching hot days when she felt thirsty. Jesus clearly wanted the woman to realize her need and to do something about it. “But those who drink of the water I give them,” Jesus told her, “will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” Here Jesus addressed the human need for spiritual water. He wanted the woman to realize her thirst in the desert of disappointment, shame, anger, loneliness and pain. More than that he wanted her to drink from the spring of living water welling up to eternal life.

The Samaritan woman felt her soul’s thirst when she reflected upon her life. The man standing before her was obviously some kind of prophet. How else would he understand so much about her life when others misunderstood? “Sir, I see you are a prophet,” she said, “Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is Jerusalem.” (v. 19-20) The woman may have felt flustered that Jesus knew so much about her. Or she may have wanted to know what Jesus thought about the true place of God’s temple.

Jesus responded, “Woman, believe me, a time 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.” (v. 21-22) Jesus clarified that salvation would arrive through the lineage of the Jews. And although the Samaritans had some grasp of God’s truth, they did not fully comprehend it.

Most surprising, perhaps, is Jesus’ statement that the woman would worship neither on Mt. Gerizim, nor in Jerusalem. Here the apostle John marks a shift in the New Testament: Being a worshiper in spirit and truth involves something different than making pilgrimages to Jerusalem or Mt. Gerizim. The woman had to have wondered, “So where do we go? Where is a true worshipper to go?”

Jesus went on: “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in 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.” (v. 24) Jesus told the woman that God is spirit, and God longs to commune with human spirits. He wanted her to know that true worship takes place through a relationship with the Father. He wanted the woman to understand that she was a temple.

A light flashed through her mind: “I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” (v. 25)

“I am he,” Jesus answered, “the one who is speaking to you.” (v. 26)

The Samaritan woman set her water pot on the ground, stunned. It mattered little that Jesus’ colleagues were returning from town, carrying sacks of grain, fish and fruit. She hardly noticed their surprise at the sight of their leader talking to a Samaritan woman. For an instant, she expected someone to reprimand her for violating the unspoken divide between Jews and Samaritans, men and women, the pious and the not-so-pious… But their eyes did not condemn her. Turning, she left her water jar and started toward Sychar. As she moved across the hot sand, her mind raced. Could the man by the well really be Messiah? Did Yahweh really want a temple somewhere besides Jerusalem or Mt. Gerizim? If so, then were her legs carrying a temple?! Arriving in town, she proclaimed to everyone: “Come see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?!” And they hurried behind her to Jacob’s well to meet Messiah.
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If the Samaritan woman lived today, she could be the divorced woman who slips into the back of the church late, and leaves early, because she is ashamed of leaving her former unfaithful husband. The Samaritan woman could be a single mother, who works the graveyard shift at Rite Aid because a restraining order was not enough to convince her former husband to change. She could be the middle-aged woman whose husband left her for someone with a tighter figure and less gray hair. She could be the lonely twenty-something woman who gives her boyfriends what they want because she is desperate for love.

We all face deserts of disappointment, shame, anger, loneliness and pain. Externally we may or may not show it. Socially we may or may not pay a price. Others may not know the twists and turns that have led us to difficulties and fallen conditions. But the One who met the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, the One who knew her so well, is the same One offering to satisfy our every thirst. God promises to provide a spring of living water, welling up to eternal life.

“If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his spirit that dwells in you.” (Rom. 8:11)

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