I do so love reading this passage. Jesus chatting away with a woman, a Samaritan woman. That in itself is quite telling. We might think nothing of it ourselves. Jesus speaking with a woman, so what? But that would be looking through a lens from today. Put everything in context and we have one heck of a good story. Jesus is a profound social rebel. I'd bet it has to do with his Godly notion that all people are created equal, are due complete respect and should not be judged as we humans almost always do.
Let's break this apart a bit. First of all, woman were not in any way considered an equal in the ancients time. Woman were chattel. Woman were considered to be just a step up from a slave and in many cases were sold into marriage and used as much as slaves were. But the story reveals even more. This particular woman was a Samaritan. Jews did not consort with any Samaritans. Samaritans were the low end of the social and religious spectrum to Jews. This is why the story of the 'good Samaritan' holds such weight. But the story reveals even more about this woman. This woman is going to well at noon for water. That as you might guess is the worst time to do so. The hottest part of the day. Most woman or slaves would go early in the morning when the air is still cool. So our Samaritan woman is not welcome even with the other woman or slaves. She must be the lowest of the low. In fact, Jesus is able to go through a litany of her 'sins' and how she has been married so many times and was even at the that moment living in sin. Wow, Jesus has a live one. What does Jesus do? Cast her out? Condemn her? Tell her to repent? In fact it does not mention Jesus doing any of those things.
What we have is a loving, embracing Jesus and to the least expected person. Not only does Jesus carry on a conversation with this woman but he opens the truth of salvation to her. What can we possibly derive from such reckless social behaviour and interactions?
I feel bad for people who love to take snippets of Scripture out of context to condemn and demean people. This passage is quite clear about the level and depth f God's love and inclusiveness and this is but one example of so many. Jesus was a rebel of the highest order. He was not the military messiah that the Jews awaited but His power is no less profound or earth shattering. Jesus shakes the norms we try to live by. Jesus rocks the foundation of how we judge and treat people opening love to every single human being and without the judgment to pre-approval we so often seem to require.
I try to think of the people I seem to dislike the most. The people whom I have so graciously and righteously judged ( on God's behalf of course! ) and try to let it soak in that God loves that person at least as much as God loves me.
John 4:1-26
Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, ‘Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John’— although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— he left Judea and started back to Galilee. But he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and 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’. (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 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, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’ 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 your 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 worshipped 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 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. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and 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.’ The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am he,* the one who is speaking to you.’
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