The 3rd Sunday in Lent 2023. John 4:5-42
Today’s passage of a conversation between the Samaritan woman at the well can be seen, I think, as the flip side to last week’s passage which related the conversation Jesus had at night with Nicodemus.
Nicodemus represents the perfect Jew – a Pharisee and a member of the Jewish ruling council, yet he comes in darkness and returns to darkness. The woman at the well represents the perfect non-Jew – a Samaritan, yet she sees and proclaims Jesus in the light.
The encounter begins as Jesus comes to rest about midday by Jacob’s well outside Sychar, also known for much of the Old Testament as Shechem, a major Samaritan city. The Jewish people considered their northern counterparts apostates from true faith. The Samaritans were the remnant of the ten northern tribes (the lost tribes of Israel) who were taken into captivity by Assyria and never returned.
By Jesus’ time, Samaritans held a Torah-centred faith (the first 5 books of the bible), only the Law. The messiah to them would be a new Moses. The Jewish people believed in a wider scriptural tradition that included not just the Law (first 5 books), but the prophets, history and wisdom literature – the whole Old Testament as we know it. They centred worship in Jerusalem, and looked for a messiah-king in the line of David.
Although sharing the same founding history, they shared nothing else and there was great enmity between them. In this environment, Jesus takes a break alone as the disciples go for food. He meets a Samaritan woman who comes to the well for her daily job of drawing water.
The scene is set for an encounter through which Jesus fully shatters Jewish social and religious convention and incorporates a woman (!) who is also Samaritan (!) into his ministry. John in this passage teaches that Jesus also fulfills Samaritan messianic expectations and reconciles this long-standing division. Just as Jesus reconciles the Jew-Gentile division.
Surprisingly, Jesus initiates dialogue: “Give me a drink” (v.7). The very fact of asking for water from one with whom his people deny any relationship or sense of family, is a rejection by Jesus of the Jewish position of separation from the Samaritans. Before she has even said anything, Jesus has accepted her.
The woman adopts a defensive Samaritan position, based on that same long-standing divisions (v.9). Standing before a spring-fed well of running water (v.6), Jesus responds in his metaphorical way with God’s gift of living water. The woman’s response could indicate naive misunderstanding, but seems to go further. She points out his lack of bucket and the well’s depth, and seems to perhaps mock the “living water,” but then asks how he compares to Jacob “our ancestor” and giver of the well.
But I don’t think she was mocking; I think she was quite serious, who is Jesus relative to their shared history? Jesus responds by challenging her to think in a different way about his gift of living water that becomes a spring “gushing up to eternal life” (vv.13-14). Now it’s her turn to demand, “Sir, give me this water ...”
Jesus changes tack and redirects the dialogue with a new command, “Go, call your husband ...” (v.16), but the language remains that of relationship. She admits she has no husband and Jesus affirms her truth after describing a lengthy marital history that is doubtless unhappy (v.17-18).
Hosea, prophet to the northern kingdom, used the imagery of broken marriage to illustrate the north’s relationship with God and its breach of that covenant. Thus, Jesus also implicates the current brokenness of the Samaritans’ relationship. The woman gets this and sees Jesus is a prophet. This, for the Samaritan, shifts the discussion to who Jesus actually is.
Any thought of mockery is gone as she opens to what Jesus has to give (vv.19-20), allowing Jesus to teach that all worship acceptable to God will soon be only in spirit and truth. There is no other way to know God.
Jesus is truth and comprehended by the gift of the Holy Spirit alone. In reply, she speaks specifically of the Messiah and Jesus responds with his first explicit admission in this gospel of this title and self-identification with God the Father of both Jews and Samaritans. “I AM HE, the one who is speaking to you.” (v.26).
The “I am” of verse 26 is the “I AM” of the sacred name of God revealed to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:14) and fulfills the promise of verse 10. Jesus presents himself as the fulfillment of covenant, worship, and messianic expectations of both Jews and Samaritans.
Although she makes no verbal acceptance of Jesus’ revelation, she does, like many disciples before her, leave earthly responsibilities where they lay and run to share her experience. She also becomes an apostle to the village revealing the news of the one coming (vv.28-30).
Before this Samaritan encounter ends, we eavesdrop on a conversation between Jesus and his disciples. They pass the woman on her way and are astonished that Jesus has been talking to her, but say nothing (v.27). Their focus is on Jesus eating some lunch.
Jesus replies that his food is to do the will of the one who sent him, and in this case, it is to incorporate the Samaritans into relationship through the apostleship of this woman. Their labour will come later as they embark upon their own ministries in his name, doing the same thing as Jesus did at the well. This will be their bread and butter too, their food.
Jesus’ time in Samaria closes with villagers believing in Jesus first upon the woman’s witness, then because of Jesus’ own word. Remember that the reason John wrote this gospel is so that all the world will know that Jesus is the messiah, the Son of God, and Lord of all the earth.
Time and again we see the witness of an individual, in this case the Samaritan woman at the well, lead to a whole group believing in Christ. Jesus stays in the village for two days. The people are first drawn to listen to Jesus by her witness, then converted by Christ himself.
After Jesus had left, they say to the woman “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Saviour of the world” (v.42)
This is the key. We know that salvation belongs to God alone. But we, just like the woman at the well, tell people about Jesus mainly by what we do and how we react to other people. But our words, too, need to be seasoned with salt.
Jesus will then take charge. Just like the woman at the well; we tell exactly what Jesus has done. By simply doing that, we create a space for the Holy Spirit to bring about new life in Christ, to the glory of our Father. Amen.