Jesus and the Woman of Samaria
Fan Pu, China
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Jesus and the Woman of Samaria |
Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
A Samaritan woman came to draw water,
and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”
The Samaritan woman said to him,
“How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”
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.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep.
Where do you get that living water?
Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well?”
Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,
but those who drink of the water that I will give them, will never be thirsty.
The water that I will give will become in them
a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water,
so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Jesus said to her, “ Go, call you husband, and come back.”
The woman answered him, “I have no husband.”
Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’;
for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.
What you have said is true!”
The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet.
Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain,
but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.”
Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me,
the hour is coming when you will worship God
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.
But the hour is coming and is now here,
when the true worshipers will worship God in spirit and in truth.
God is spirit, and those who worship God must worship in spirit and in truth.”
The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming.
When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.”
Jesus said to her, “I am the one.”
I knew this man was different. He broke all the rules. But I’m getting ahead of myself already. Let me start at the beginning. It was a beastly hot day, hotter than you know where and dry as a bone. I had traveled to the well of Jacob, as I usually do, for water. There are closer wells but I was not, shall we say, the most popular woman in Sychar. I was everyone’s excuse for gossip, if you know what I mean. I had a tough life, not that I am making excuses, mind you. Anyway, there I was, almost to the well when I saw this fellow just sitting there. He looked exhausted and dusty. I don’t know how long he had been resting there. It could have been quite a while. Obviously he was hoping someone would come along and help him get a drink from the well. I never did find out why he went to that well in particular. He had to have traveled well out of his way to get there.
This was, you should know, a famous well and that may have been the reason for his visit. This was the well that stood on Jacob’s land, the land Jacob bought so long ago. Jacob left the land to Joseph, on his deathbed the story goes, and the well is still there today. And it’s still called the well of Jacob. It’s a very old, very deep well, so there’s no way you’re going to get water from that well unless you have a bucket and a rope. Most people carry a water bucket made of goatskin with them when they are off on a journey. Jesus had nothing with him but a powerful thirst. I found out later that a group of his friends were traveling with him and, wouldn’t you know it, they had the bucket. But they were in town. Nice guys, huh? Left Jesus out wandering on his own without a bucket. It would not be the last time they abandoned him, by the way.
But who am I to throw stones? I came with enough of my own problems and failures. Forgive me – I’m rambling. It happens all the time. There he was, sitting at the well when I came along. I just assumed he would not be asking me for help. To begin with, it was clear that he was a Jew and I am, as you know, a Samaritan. So right there you’ve got oil and water. Samaritans and Jews did not mix back then. Why? Call it ancient history. I’m sure you have seen how brutal people can be to one another because of feuds that started generations ago. Well, this is that sort of thing.
Long ago, thousands of years to you, the Assyrians invaded this part of Israel and, after awhile, one thing led to another - sort of like my life. The people of this part of Israel started to intermarry with the Assyrians - to put it politely - and before you could say “Nebuchadnezzar”, the rest of the Jews were saying that we were no longer Jews, no longer pure enough, and you can probably guess the rest. So hundreds of years later, the Jews still hated the Samaritans and the Samaritans still hated the Jews and that’s just the way it was. Imagine my surprise, then, when this obviously Jewish person was not only in our territory sitting by our well but dared to ask me for a drink out of my bucket!
John, the gospel-writer, says Jesus had to go through Samaria but the plain fact is many travelers went all they way around Samaria all the time just so they wouldn’t come into contact with the likes of us. On top of that whole mess, it was a shocking thing for a man to talk to a woman in public. And to add some spice to the mayhem, I had a rather, shall we say, notorious reputation. For Jesus to be speaking to me at all was a scandal any way you look at it. Against the odds, he asked me for a drink and so, not being the least bit shy, I asked him, “How is it that you who are a Jew ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?”
What can I say? I was curious. That’s just the kind of person I am – naturally curious - some would say too curious for my own good. I’m also the kind of person who does not want to miss anything. Believe me, I didn’t miss much! So I wanted to make the most of my unexpected meeting with this intriguing stranger. He did not answer my question, by the way. Instead, he said a very strange thing. He said, “If you knew the gift of God I am offering you, and if you knew who is speaking to you, and if you knew who was saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” And I’m thinking, “Yeah, yeah, if I only knew.” And I’m also thinking, “I know what kind of living water you’ve been drinking!”
But there was something about the way he said, “Living Water.” Living water. Living water meant running water as opposed to well water that just sits there, but the way he said it, I had an inkling he meant more. So I said, “Sir, you have no bucket to draw water with and the well is deep. Where do you get this living water?” I probably should have left it at that, but being a proud Samaritan, I asked him, “Are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us the well?” I just wanted him to know that, no matter what anyone else thinks, we Samaritans know who our ancestors are. I wanted him to know that our roots are the same, his and mine.
None of this seemed to matter to him, however. I suppose I should have guessed as much. After all, if my background had mattered one mite to him he would not have been talking to me in the first place. He ignored my question, pointed down the well, and said, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give, will never be thirsty. But the water that I give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
Now, I am a simple woman with simple thoughts but I understood what he was getting at – only I did not believe him at first. A woman like me learns not to trust anyone. So I said, just to humor him, mind you, “Give me this water so that I will never be thirsty again and will not have to walk to the well day after day.” But the way he looked at me with such compassion, I realized he meant every word and that he was not talking about everyday water, but something more, something that quenches that inner thirst.
I tell you, this man talked about spirituality as freely as a farmer speaks of the patterns of rain or a seamstress chatters about the colors of fabric. Living water. He was speaking of my soul, your soul. He was speaking of that thirst every human being feels, the thirst for meaning in your life, the thirst for God, for the living God we hear about in the Psalms and the prophets. We are, I’ve discovered, never safe from that deep longing God has placed in each one of our souls.
What happened next was not what I expected at all. Here we are having a serious discussion and I think I’m getting through to him on this Samaritan-Jew issue and I know he’s getting through to me with this living water thing. Then, out of the blue, he tells me to go and get my husband and come back to the well. Now, I have done many things that were not very good but I have always been honest to a fault. So I told him straight out that I had no husband. But, get this! He already knew that - that and more! I don’t embarrass easily but I was taken aback by this. I could tell he was a prophet or something like a prophet and I said so. But then, since he was so interested in religious matters, I threw in a dig of my own. I challenged the ridiculous notion that true worship only takes place in Jerusalem.
This was another huge example of how I cannot seem to keep my big mouth shut and I was sorry almost as soon as the words spilled from my lips. Many men would have walked off in a huff or reprimanded me for speaking out of turn - it would not have been the first time. But he didn’t. In fact, he said something that made sense to me right away and I wonder why nobody ever said this before. He said it doesn’t matter where you worship. What matters, he said, is that you worship God in spirit and in truth. In other words, the place is not as important as what’s inside you. Talk about a great idea!
Since he refused to take offense at my words and actually took my concern seriously, I told him what I believe. “I know,” I said, “that the Messiah is coming and that when the Messiah comes, all things will be proclaimed.” Jesus said, quite calmly I might add, “I am the one.” Well, I believed him. Just like that, I, who have trouble trusting anyone, trusted this stranger with my life. I knew, in my heart of hearts, that he was speaking the truth. And, believe me, that was a lot more refreshing than any common drink of water.
Just then his friends came along and I guess they were not as accepting as he was because they were astonished – and I mean shocked - to find him talking with me. I hated to leave, but it seemed like a good time to bow out, so I filled my water jar, mounted it on my head proudly, and headed back to the village. All the way home, I thought about our conversation – what I said to him and what he said to me. Jesus may have been the first person in my whole life to see me as I am and, amazingly, to take me seriously, me – a Samaritan and a woman.
I wanted the whole world to hear what happened. I couldn’t help myself. I have learned that God can take even your worst qualities, such as, for instance, a big mouth, and put them to work for good purposes. After that day at the well, many Samaritans went to see Jesus and many of my people put their trust in him. They asked him to stay and he did - for two days. Then he left for Galilee. But we did not forget him. I never forgot him.
What else can I say? I can tell you to pay attention to that thirst Jesus was talking about. I can tell you that life can be very messy but it’s never too late to start over again. I can tell you that God judges who you are not on the basis of where you’re from or who your ancestors are or where you worship or how “pure” your family line is, but strictly on what is in that soul of yours. And I can tell you what I felt that day. I felt, maybe for the first time, that God truly loves me – that there was a reason for my life. That is why I could not keep my big mouth shut. That is why I told my neighbors to go see Jesus. And that is why I suggest you do the same. Lower your bucket into the gospel. Go get yourself some of that living water. It’s good stuff.
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You are welcome to use these narratives for worship or study but please give the author, Sarah M. Foulger, credit for the writing - and consider making a contribution to Seasons of Change, a non-profit mental health agency in Edgecomb, Maine. Send contributions of any amount to Seasons of Change/ P.O. Box 277/Edgecomb, Maine 04556.
Sarah M. Foulger may be contacted at: sarahfoulger@gmail.com