John 4:5-26
She was tired. She was tired of knowing that if she walked into a room full of people laughing and chatting, it would go eerily and suddenly quiet the moment she walked through the door. She was tired of hearing people whisper as she walked by, and knowing exactly what they were talking about.
Sychar was a small town, and in small towns word travels fast. The grapevine had been full of juicy gossip about her on many occasions. But after 5 failed marriages it became more the rule than the exception. But the latest piece of news was like blood thrown to the piranhas. She was living with a man that wasn’t her husband. She knew it was wrong, but she also knew that none of these people who loved to talk about her had ever cared to ask her why. Why, was she living this way? Was it because she was so lonely, or because she had no means us supporting herself, so this was her only option? Was it because of the complications and scars (emotional and physical) of so many failed relationships that she found the idea of marriage difficult? Silence.
Sychar wasn’t known for much besides being the home of Jacob’s Well. It certainly wasn’t known for being a place where people are given second chances. In this case even that wouldn’t have helped, she needed 5 or 6 or 7.
So John tells us she goes to the well, but she goes at high noon and by herself. Unusual. Most of the time the women would meet at the well together to chat and have some social time. In ancient days messengers would go to the well to share news because it was the nerve-center of communication. The women would also go in the cooler morning and evening hours, to avoid the oppressive Palestinian sun.
It must have been that over time, she realized that the blazing heat from the sun at its highest point was more bearable than the blazing stares, the knowing looks, and the shaming silence from the other women. So she developed a routine which kept her from seeing anyone else. But this day was different. She wouldn’t be alone, there was a weary and dusty man sitting next to the well.
She wasn’t used to people talking to her, so it must have been surprising to hear this man say to her even something as simple as, “Give me a drink.” But that was only the beginning of the shock! “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” she said. It was a legitimate question. For centuries the Jews had held nothing but contempt for the Samaritans. The Jews thought of them as ethnic half-breeds, and since they only viewed the first 5 books of the Old Testament as Holy, they looked down upon as Spiritual half-breeds as well. Jews went to great lengths to avoid Samaritans. When travelling, pious Jews would rather add a day’s journey to their trip by walking on the borders of Samaria rather than defile themselves by walking through the midst of such “unclean” people. In fact, the only place you would find Jews and Samaritans living together was in a Leper’s Colony as we find in Luke 17. Pushed out to the margins of each of their respective societies, they would band together only in these extremes.
So it was like a bombshell, “Give me a drink.” But Jesus answers her honest questions with some truth about himself. 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.” Living water? Him giving ME a drink? “What’s going on here?” she thought to herself, “And who does this guy think he is?”
“Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Jesus is greater than Jacob, and Jesus makes this woman an offer of something significant, of value, of eternal importance: “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
He wasn’t talking about mere water, or the well, he was talking about something so much more. This woman who had been offered contempt, and shame, and judgment was being offered the living water of God’s grace. She was being given the fullness of Christ’s entire purpose and mission in this world. But she didn’t quite understand yet, how could she. But she does respond, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.” It was an exhilarating moment for her. But in the next instant, I’m sure she felt it would all unravel, as her past once again intruded on any hope she might have for the future.
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband and come here.” It must have felt like a punch in the gut, this man with so much to offer her, asking her to do something she was incapable of doing. The Law always feels that way. So often God asks people to do that which they cannot. Jesus tells the Lawyer who asks how to inherit eternal life, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your strength and with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself.” “Do this and you will live,” Jesus says in Luke 10. And the man knew, that just like the 10 Commandments, this was a command he would not keep.
Jesus says to the rich man who feels he has done so well being holy on his own, “You still lack one thing, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me.” (Luke 18) The man became very sad because he couldn’t do it. And so the call is the same for the woman, “Go call your husband.” The point would be the same for her as for the rich man, “What is impossible with men is possible with God.” All she says is, “I have no husband.”
Then Jesus does something so troubling to her, he goes to that place she wished so badly to keep hidden. She knew that the line, “I have no husband” didn’t tell the whole story. Now Jesus tells he that he knows it too. “You are right in saying ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”
She stands there, and in one stroke Jesus dismantles anything she could have hidden behind, or any half-truths she could have gotten away with telling, he just exposes her sin. He cuts to the bone. The question that we can’t avoid as we see Jesus address this woman’s deepest sins, and shame, and failings – What would he have said to you? He’d have plenty to talk about, wouldn’t He. I sometimes wonder why this woman doesn’t just run away. She has the perfect “out.” She could simply say she needed to go get her husband and just not come back. Jesus’ disciples would come back and they would all move on, and on one would ever know what had happened. But she doesn’t go. She stays. In fact, she confesses her sin, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.”
With this statement, we see that this sinful Samaritan woman, even in her ignorance about Jesus, knows something very important. That He is full of mercy, that He is full of grace. She knows that from the second he saw her, he knew all about her sinful past, and her shameful present, but he didn’t run away. Just the opposite, he talked to her, he asked for a drink, he offered her living water. And as she confesses who she is, a sinner, one who has not lived up God’s commands. Jesus confesses to her who he is. “The woman said to him, ‘I know that the Messiah is coming (he who is called the Christ). When he comes, he will teach us all things.’ Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he’”
This is the Christ and his mission. He didn’t come to run away from sinners. He didn’t come to join in the shunning and the scoffing and whispering. He didn’t come to do that which is already being done. He came to do that which no one else can do, or is willing to do. He came to save the world. He came to save sinners. He came to be with those who have no business hoping to be part of God’s kingdom and offer them the Living Water of eternal life.
He came to this woman in the hour of her greatest need. And he has come to us in ours. We read in Romans, For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. “For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Some of the most powerful words sinners like that woman, like you, like me could ever hear. And yet this is exactly what Christ wants us to hear. This is what he tells us from the cross, from the empty tomb. That he isn’t running away from us, that he isn’t shunning us, that he didn’t come to break us.
Just the opposite, he came to be broken, to be shunned, to be killed in order to give us life. This is who Jesus is. In your darkest moments. When you are afraid of God, when you are afraid to open your mouth to confess the death and sin in your soul, when you have convinced yourself to abandon hope, and that God could never forgive you. Remember this woman at the well. Remember who you are talking to. Remember what God wants you to remember in moments like these. That, “God shows his love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” AMEN
