Ahhh … small town country living! Where everybody knows everybody …and everybody knows everybody’s business, amen?
Sychar was your typical small country town where everybody knew everybody … and everybody knew everybody’s business. Sychar’s only claim to fame was that it was located a half mile from Jacob’s well. They were also located on the main road that led from Jerusalem to Galilee … so they were accustomed to seeing travelers passing through … some of them occasionally spending the night before they went on their way.
Okay … you’ve probably heard it mentioned many, many times that the Jewish travelers would walk miles out of their way not to be contaminated from touching Samaritan soil or land. There is strong evidence that this wasn’t the case. The road that passed near Sychar was indeed the most direct route. Traveling was dangerous and difficult in Jesus’ day. Highway men, wild animals, lack of food and shelter, and exposure to the elements made it wise to get where you were going in the fastest and most direct way possible, amen? Going around Samaria would take you seven days out of your way, and when you’re walking on foot, I don’t know about you but I think I could put aside any religious or cultural disputes or prejudices that I might have with the Samaritans for awhile, don’t you? The first-century Jewish historian Josephus wrote: “For rapid travel, it was essential to take that route by which Jerusalem may be reached in three days from Galilee” (Life of Josephus, p. 269; emphasis mine). In his book Antiquities, Josephus explained that it was “the custom of the Galileans, when they came to [Jerusalem] at the time of the festivals, to take their journeys through the country of the Samaritans” (Antiquities 20:118). As we know, thousands traveled to Jerusalem for the annual festivals from the surrounding regions and many, many people would have passed through Samaria rather than take a week to walk around it.
The rabbis understood the reality of this situation. The Toseta, which is the book of Jewish oral law, allowed Jewish herdsman to leave their cattle in the care of Samaritans and graze on Samaritan land as they were passing through the region (Avodah Zarah 3:1). The rabbis declared Samaria’s ritual immersion pools, dwellings, and paths to be ritually clean because these things were needed by the many Jewish pilgrims and travelers passing through Samaria on their way to Jerusalem (Tosefta Mikvaot 6:1; Jerusalem Talmud Avodah Zarah 5:4). They also declared food cooked by Samaritans as clean (Jerusalem Talmud Avodah Zarah 5:4) because there weren’t Burger Kings and Applebees or Quickie Marts around every corner. In fact, when Jesus and His disciples arrived at the well, what did Jesus do? He sent them into Sychar to get food (John 4:8).
Actually, this was not the only time that Jesus intentionally travelled through Samaria. In Luke 9:52-53, ironically, it was the Samaritans who told Jesus and His Disciples that they had to go around their city and Jesus’ Disciples asked His permission to rain down fire from Heaven on them but Jesus rebuked them (Luke 9:54-55). Jesus also healed 10 lepers as He was passing through Samaria (Luke 17:11-19). Later on, we hear of one of Jesus’ Disciples, Philip, evangelizing in the city of Samaria (Acts 8:5) as Jesus had commanded: “… you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). The leaders of the Christian community sent Peter and John to Samaria when they heard that the Samaritans had accepted the Word of God (Acts 8:14). Later they did the same thing with Paul and Barnabas (15:3).
From passages like this and evidence from various Jewish writers like Josephus, it is clear that the Jews traveled to and through Samaria all the time without too much concern about Jewish-Samaritan hatred, violence, or ritual impurity (Assemblies of God (USA) Official Web Site | Did Jews Travel Through Samaria in the Time of Jesus? (ag.org).
Keep in mind, however, that both sides made these accommodations out of necessity and survival. Aside from that, the Jews and the Samaritans didn’t just dislike each other … they openly hated and outright despised each other. One of the Samaritans’ favorite past-times was to taunt the Jews. They rejected the Jewish Testament except for the Pentateuch … the first five books of the Old Testament … Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The Samaritans claimed that their testament or holy book … called the Samaritan Pentateuch (www.the-samaritans.net) was older than the Jews’ … hence the original. They openly boasted that they kept the precepts of Yahweh better than the Jews themselves. Translation: that made them holier and gave them a better chance of getting in Heaven than the Jews (www.bible-history.com/samaritans).
The feeling was mutual, to say the least. Obviously, the Jews rejected the claim that the Samaritans’ Pentateuch was the original Old Testament. They publicly denounced the Samaritans as half-breeds and heretics … cursed them in their synagogues … and forbid them from serving as witnesses in Jewish courts. The Samaritans were not allowed to convert to Judaism … a fact that probably didn’t bother too many Samaritans, ya think? What probably did bother the Samaritans a great deal was the Jewish claim that the Samaritans were excluded from the afterlife. Translation: All Samaritans were going straight to … well, you get the picture. Fights would often break out between them and the Romans would have to come in and break them up … and we know how much the Romans loved doing that and how harsh they were when it came to putting down such disturbances.
Now … I started out by telling you that the Jews traveled frequently and pretty freely throughout Samaria and that would seem to detract from the impact of Jesus being at the well. “Historically,” says Dr. Wave Nunnally, author and professor of early Judaism (http://news.ag.org), “most interpreters have understood this passage [from the Gospel of John] as an example of Jesus’ foreknowledge” … that Jesus’ encounter at the well was not an accident or chance encounter. “Although this seems a logical conclusion in light of Jewish animosity and concerns about ritual purity,” says Professor Nunnally, “the ancient literary evidence leads us to the exact opposite conclusion: Jews regularly traveled in and through Samaria” (http://news.ag.org). While I agree with Professor Nunnally, that God’s people deserve to know the truth (http://news.ag.org), I also believe that it really doesn’t detract from the significance of Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well … either for the woman or for us.
The title of my Lenten series is “I Met Him When …”. My goal is to get a more personal view of Jesus through the eyes of some of the people that He met and touched during His ministry and on His way to face His fate and change our eternal fate on the cross.
The town of Sychar, today called ‘Askar, is located a half mile north of Jacob’s Well. The meaning of the word “sychar” is confusing … which seems appropriate for the conversation that is about to take place there between the woman and Jesus. One meaning is “end” … which could be significant in that their conversation represented an end to the woman’s and the townspeople’s confusion. The word “sychar” also means “wage.” The “wages” of this woman’s sin was to be harshly judged by her neighbors so that she had to get her water from the well during the hottest part of the day to avoid the looks and whispers of the town gossips. “Sychar” also means “drunk” … as in “intoxicated.” The Jews preferred that interpretation, calling Sychar the “Town of Liars and Drunks.” Theologically, Jesus wanted her and the townspeople to stop drinking from the wrong well and start drinking from His well … the Well of Living Water.
You all know the story. We talked about it briefly last week. Jesus and His Disciples come to the famous Well of Jacob. Jesus sends the Disciples to the nearby “Town of Liars and Drunkards” to get food and supplies. While He waits for them, a woman from town shows up. It’s not surprising to see strangers sitting by the well waiting for a drink of water. After all, Jacob’s Well was on the main route between Jerusalem and Galilee and travelers often had to wait for a local to come by and draw water out of the well for them or their animals because they usually had no bucket or jar with them.
Still, the woman hesitated when she saw Jesus sitting there. Maybe she could sense that there was something … well … different about this Jewish man sitting by the well. It wasn’t the fact that He was a Jew. She had given water to plenty of Jews passing through. No … there was something about HIM that was different and it made her nervous and suspicious. When He asks her for a drink of water, she tries to throw Him off balance by pointing out that He’s a Jew. “How is it that you, a Jew, asks a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (John 4:9). It’s a loaded question. Is she interested in finding out why a Jewish man would ask a Samaritan woman for help getting some water to drink? Or was it an instinctual reaction? Maybe it wasn’t the fact that Jesus was a Jew or a man that bothered her but the fact that she had been branded a “sinful” woman by her own townspeople and wasn’t used to anyone talking to her civilly or asking her for anything. Most people probably knew or figured out why she was coming to the well alone in the middle of the day. Her whole reason for coming out in the middle of the day was based on the hope that she wouldn’t run into anyone. If we look at the text, it doesn’t really give any explanation as to why she happened to be coming to the well at that particular time. Maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe she had just run out of water and happened to be at the well at the same time that Jesus was there. Maybe it was coincidence or maybe it was preordained … we don’t know. As I said, the text doesn’t tell us. It just says that a Samaritan woman happened to appear at the well around the same time that Jesus was there.
I once heard a pastor on the radio call her a “skid row prostitute drug abuser.” What? Where in the world did he get that from? Because she had to go to the well in the middle of the day? Because she had been married five times? Because she was shacking up with some man she was not married to? Really? A “shady lady” … maybe … but a “skid row prostitute drug abuser”? It seems like he’s assuming an awful lot, amen?
Imagine that you’re hearing this passage for the first time. Up until verse 16, we know nothing of this woman … and that’s the point. We are like the Disciples who come back from buying food. They see Jesus … their rabbi … their teacher … their holy master … talking to a woman … a Samaritan woman at that … and they are shocked. Other than that, they, like us, know nothing about this woman’s moral or spiritual background or history … but Jesus does … and that is John’s point in recording and sharing this inspiring encounter with us.
All of the traditional suppositions that we grew up with are based on the fact that she had five husbands and was currently living with someone out-of-wedlock. From that, people have heaped all kinds of shame on her … but let me offer up another possibility as to why she would have been married five times and why she would have possibly wanted to avoid the judgment and condemnation of her neighbors. You see … divorce was easy for a man in Jesus day. It was impossible for a woman. Let me repeat that. Divorce was easy for a man in Jesus’ day. It was impossible for a woman. If a man divorced a woman, he still owned his property. He still could ply his trade and earn a living. Divorce for woman in those day was usually a death sentence. Often their families wouldn’t take them back out of shame and the woman had no property or trade by which she could earn a living or support herself. There were some, like Lydia in the Book of Acts, who were fortunate enough to have a skill or a trade … but they were the exception. For the majority of women whose husbands died or divorced them, their choices were very limited … go back to their family … if their family will take them back … find another man, beg, starve to death, or become, as that one preacher put it, a “prostitute.”
So … if this woman at the well had had five husbands, who was divorcing whom? She didn’t divorce five husbands. Five husbands divorced her. And the number one reason for divorce in Jesus’ day was … not adultery … we learned about what happens to adulterers in Jesus’ day in Chapter 6. No … the number one reason for divorce in Jesus’ day … drum roll, please! … CHILDLESSNESS!
That’s right! The number one reason for divorce in Jesus’ day was barrenness, infertility, childlessness. The failure on the part of a woman to produce children … especially male children … was grounds for divorce or public shame. The fact that the woman at the well had been married five times and hadn’t produced any children … male or female … was proof in her neighbors’ eyes and in the eyes of the world that she lived in at that time that something was wrong with her and that God was punishing her for some sin.
Before we get on our modern or post-modern high horses here, we have to understand the time and world that this was written in. Life was hard and often short. Having children was a matter of survival. Children could work around the house, in the fields, or in the shop and learn the family trade so that they could take care of their parents when they got too old to work themselves. Children also meant that the family name and the family bloodline would continue on into the future … which is why having children was seen as a sign of God’s blessing. Deuteronomy 7:13-14, for example, says that when God blesses you He will “increase your number” and “bless the fruit of your womb.”
Childlessness, on the other hand, was seen as a curse from God. Listen to the grief and suffering that the Prophet Samuel’s mother, Hannah, had to endure because she was barren. “Because the Lord had closed Hannah’s womb,” says the Bible, “her rival kept provoking her in order to irritate her. This went on year after year. Whenever Hannah went up to the House of the LORD, her rival provoked her until she wept and could not eat” (1st Samuel 1:2-3). Similar things happened to Sarah and Elizabeth.
Having children was so important … and the shame and curse of not having children was so unbearable … that a woman wealthy enough to own a maid-servant could give her maid to her husband and claim any resulting children as her own. Childless women without maid-servants were likely to find themselves divorced … a terrifying and often fatal event for a woman who lived in a culture where her primary value was as a wife and mother.
In a small town like Sychar, everyone knew that this woman had been married five times and had no children. What man in Sychar was going to want to marry a woman that everyone in town knew was cursed by God and couldn’t produce children or heirs? So she does what she has to do to survive.
Gee … I can’t imagine why a barren woman in 1st century Palestine would want to avoid the accusing and condescending stares and whispers of the other women at the well or the townspeople in the market place or the street, can you? I don’t know what would be worse … the glaring distain or the look of pity in everyone’s eyes. It must have been torture for her to have to listen to all the mothers talk about their children. “Little Joshua’s eating solid food now.” “Ever since Esther said her first word she hasn’t stopped talking.” “Jonathan has learned how to control a team of plow oxen.” “Did you hear? The Cohen boy is going to marry the butcher’s daughter … mazal tov!”
My word! If anybody knows what it’s like to live in a small town with a reputation … justified or not … it would be you all … can I get an amen? You don’t have to be a whore or a shank or a drug addict in order for people in a small town to gossip about you, do you? You could be the guy who fumbled the ball at the five-yard line that lost the home team the district championship 40 years ago and they’ll still call you “Fumbles” behind your back. Or maybe it’s your son or daughter who has the drug problem. We all know some poor girl in high school who had a reputation that was untrue and unsubstantiated. That’s all it takes for you to dread walking into Hardee’s or Food Lion, am I right?
As this Samaritan woman walks up to Jacob’s Well, she has no idea how her life is about to change. “How is it that you … a Jew … ask a drink of me … a woman of Samaria?” (John 4:9). But Jesus was not just man or a Jew or a rabbi, was He? “If you knew the gift of God” (v. 10). Stop right there and let that sink in for a moment. [Short pause.] “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water” (v. 10). “Sir,” she asks, “how can you do that when you have no bucket, and the well is so deep? Where do you get that living water?” (v. 11).
If only she knew who was asking her for a drink of water indeed. As she correctly pointed out, Jacob’s Well was very deep and you needed a long rope and bucket to draw water from it. But Jesus wasn’t offering her living water from Jacob’s Well, was He? Jesus was offering her living water for her heart … her soul … and He didn’t need a rope or a bucket to draw out what her heart and soul needed most.
You see, Jacob’s well was a hole that Jacob dug into the ground to reach water. Once he reached water, you had to throw a bucket or jar down into the hole to get what you needed to survive. Jesus, on the other hand, is an artesian well. When you tap into an underground river, the pressure of the flowing underground water causes the water to gush out of the well … all the time. You don’t have to throw a bucket or jug down into a hole. Because the water from an artesian well is constantly flowing and moving, it is always cool, clear, clean, and refreshing … which is why water that is constantly moving like this is called “living water.”
To be able to drill down to the core of this woman’s heart where His Spirit already lives, Jesus has to first remove the bedrock of shame and guilt that has been placed over her heart. He has to drill past her pain and humiliation of not being able to bear children … past the fear that she might really be cursed by God … past the denigration of having to live with a man she may or may not love just to survive in a cold, cruel world that had turned its back on her … past the haunting memories of accusing eyes and judgmental whispers behind her back that they didn’t think she heard … or didn’t care that she heard. Jesus has to drill past all the scar tissue that had built-up around her heart from all the rejection that she had experienced. He has to drill past the layers of doubt and fear and suspicion that she had accumulated over the years. He has to break through all the callouses and walls that she had built-up to protect herself.
And He does it perfectly! He knew exactly right where to drill. He knew the exact spot to dig. “Go,” says Jesus, “call your husband, and come back” (John 4:16). What? Hold on a minute here! Who said anything about a husband? Certainly not the woman. Until now they had been talking about wells and water. Where did this come from? The last thing that she’s going to talk to a stranger about is her deepest shame, amen? And yet, from out of the blue, Jesus reaches out and touches her heart and goes straight to the source of her pain and suffering. “Does it hurt … here?” Jesus asks. Oh yeah … it sure does! But what does this have to do with wells and water? Everything!
When Jesus asks her to go and get her husband, I can just feel the pain in her heart, can’t you? I can hear the sorrow and regret in her voice as she cries out: “I have no husband!” I can relate to her confusion when this stranger lays her shame bare. “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!” (John 4:17-18).
“What you have said is true,” says Jesus. “I can’t help you unless you first get honest with me. I already knew that you had had five husbands. I already knew that the man who you are currently living with is not your husband. And I already know what that is doing to you. I know that it has been tearing you apart all these years. I know that you think that God doesn’t love you … but my sweet, dear, precious child … nothing could be further from the truth … which is why I am here offering you the cool, clear, refreshing, forgiving, restorative love of the living God.”
You see, in order for her to feel love again … in order for her to feel joy again … in order for her to feel hope and peace and security again … she must first let go of her past. She must stop condemning herself. She must come to see that God is not condemning her … that God doesn’t see her or judge her in the same way that her kinsmen or the villagers do. Freedom from all her pain and suffering will come when she no longer thirsts for the acceptance of the world. Freedom from all the stares and whispers and accusations will come when she looks to the LORD and not to the world to satisfy the deepest longings of her heart. Freedom … true freedom … will come when she no longer cares about what the neighbors think and only cares about what the LORD thinks.
God is standing right there in front her … not staring at her with glaring, accusing eyes like her neighbors but with love in His eyes. When He speaks, there is hope in His voice, not humiliation. There is no shame, no condemnation, no need for her to put up a front or protect herself. And when she asked Him for “living water,” He didn’t make her earn it … He didn’t make her pay for it … He didn’t taunt her, saying that it was only for a deserving, righteous few but not for her. He didn’t make her grovel or beg. He simply, lovingly, opened her eyes to the truth that was standing right there in front of her … at the place of her greatest shame … the place where the women judged her … the place where they traded looks and talked about her behind her back … the place where they made her feel unwelcomed and unloved. He met her at the well and turned it into a place of great joy and peace and hope. He turned a place of shame into a place of freedom … a place where she was given new life… a place where she no longer needed the approval of the village women because she now knew the living love and approval of the only One … with a capital “O” … who truly mattered … Jesus Christ, her Lord and Savior! Every time that she went to Jacob’s Well after that to get regular water, she would remember what had happened there that day when a stranger … a Jew … a rabbi … the Messiah … asked her for a drink of water and tapped into the spring of living water in her heart and soul.
The way to deal with your sins is not to ignore them or to hide from them. The way to be free from your sins is to face them. After Jesus confronts her, she goes back to the village and tells them what happened at the well. “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!” (John 4:29).
Let’s pause here for a moment to look at her reaction. She doesn’t slump back into town with her head down, her heart heavy, her shame clinging to her like a wet blanket. She is free. She is shouting it to the world! “This man told me everything that I had ever done! You know … everything that I tried to keep a secret from you all … everything that I did that you knew about and judged me for anyways. Those things no longer have power over me … and neither do you!”
Jesus talking to the woman was scandalous, to say the least. If anyone from the village had seen them talking by the well without a chaperone, well … they would have been tarred and feathered with gossip and unfounded accusations. The Disciples were besides themselves and couldn’t believe their eyes when they got back to the well from their shopping trip. All they knew was what they saw … Jesus talking to a woman alone … a Samaritan woman … and they lost their minds. Imagine if they knew her past and what the village people were saying about her. They were speechless … literally apoplectic … that their rabbi, their leader would break the rules and bring shame on Himself and on them as His followers and disciples. But that’s the point, isn’t it?
We never see Jesus shy away from controversy or scandal, do we? Why? Because He doesn’t care about those things … and neither should the Disciples … and neither should we, amen? Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that there will come a time when we will ALL worship Him together … and the things that seemed so important at the time … like which book is the oldest or which mountain is the right mountain … which day of the week is the right day of the week to worship God … will no longer matter. What will matter will be Him … period!
Jesus told her that there will come a time when we won’t just worship Him on this mountain or that mountain because we will “worship the Father in Spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these” (John 4:23) … like a lonely, forsaken Samaritan woman coming to get water out of a well in the middle of the day in the middle of nowhere. He told her that there will come a time when we will not argue about which day is the right day to worship Him because we will worship Him every day. “But the hour is come,” He tells her, “and now is here, when the true worshipers” … whether they are Jewish or Samaritan or Greek … whether they are man or woman … free or slave … “will worship the Father in Spirit and truth” (John 4:23). “I know the Messiah is coming (who is called Christ) and when He comes,” the Samaritan woman confesses, “He will proclaim all things to us” (v. 25). “I am He,” Jesus tells her, “the one who is speaking to you” (v. 26).
Jesus saw a need by the well … and the Apostle John saw a moment to teach us something about God’s love and Jesus’ mission. Jesus came to die for the Samaritan woman’s sins. He came to die for the sins of all the Samaritans. He came to die for the sins of the Jews. He came to die for the sins of the Greeks. He came to die for the sins of the Romans. He came to die for the sins of the French, the Germans, the Muslims, the atheists. He came to die for the sins of the gays, the straights, the transexuals. He came to die for the sins of men and women. He came to die for the sins of the Blacks, the Whites, the Asians, the Hispanics. He came to die for the sins of you and me. I know that you know this. The real question is … do you believe it and accept it as true, amen?
The Samaritan woman knew nothing about Jesus but Jesus knew everything about her. And yet He, who was without sin, was willing to give up His life for her as a sacrifice for her sins. And Jesus, who knows my many, many sins died for me too. And He did the same for all of you, amen?
“How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria” (John 4:9). The distinctions that the woman made were man-made distinctions. Thank God, literally, that Jesus came not just for the righteous but for the outcast, the marginalized, to let us know that no one is outside the limits of His love. We are all His children.
Why do you think she went back into town and told them about Jesus? What love had she for those who had mistreated her? What obligation did she have to share the Good News with people who had treated her so poorly? She went back because there were people in Sychar … the “Town of Liars and Drunkards” … who needed to hear what she heard … to experience what she experienced … to receive what she received … living water that now flowed from her heart like a river.
They needed to hear from Jesus that it’s not this mountain or than mountain that matters. It’s not this day or that day of the week that we worship that matters. We need to hear and to know … just as they needed to hear and to know … that the Messiah came for all His children … not just Israel. We need to know just as they needed to know … as the woman at the well now knows … that God doesn’t cast you aside because you don’t measure up to the world’s standards. He stayed in the “Town of Liars and Drunkards” for two days … fellowshipping with them … eating with them … teaching them … ministering to them. He showed God’s love to one of His lost sheep beside a well in Samaria and then He showed His love for all of His lost sheep on the cross, amen?
Let us pray:
