Monday
Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into town to buy food.)
The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?”
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. . . .”
Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth.”
The woman said, “I know that Messiah (called Christ) is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.”
Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?’. . . .
Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony. “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers.
They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”
(John 4:4-14, 21-27, 39-41, NIV)
In addition to the hatred that Jews had for tax collectors, the racial animosity between Jews and Samaritans was tense and highly explosive. Religious hatred, which was based on differing beliefs — such as the true location of Mount Zion — in combination with a history of military and political conflicts, divided these two groups. Tension was so high that Samaritans refused to offer lodging to Jews from Galilee on their way to Jerusalem. Many Jews, in turn, refused to travel through Samaria and would walk many miles out of their way to cross over to the east side of the Jordan River and then travel south to approach Jerusalem. Jesus experienced this racial hatred himself when traveling through Samaria but refused to send down “judgment” on an unfriendly Samaritan village as his angry disciples requested (Luke 9:51-56).
This background of hatred between Jews and Samaritans, plus the fact that women had a low social standing in the society of Jesus’ day, makes the incident recorded in today’s verses an extraordinary event. By engaging a Samaritan woman in conversation, Jesus openly violates two major social taboos of his day. By asking for a drink in that culture, the hearer was bound to honor the request. Yet Jesus knew that accepting a drink from her, which she was required to give him, would make him ceremonially unclean in the eyes of Jews. She was a woman and a Samaritan, yet Jesus offers her the gift of “living water.”
The gospel of peace is offered to all who will accept it. Jesus does not limit his message to certain racial groups. The gospel of peace is explicitly offered to people who were hated by the Jews. As with the tax collectors, the promised Messiah is acting out what had been prophesied and what he preached. The grace of God includes reconciliation between racial groups and the hope of a Kingdom where God’s love will bring harmony between people of every race. The unfaithful Samaritan woman was chosen by Jesus to be the vehicle for bringing many of her neighbors into the Kingdom. This is an act of peacemaking that challenged the social and religious structures of Jesus’ day right down to their very foundations.
Prayer
Father, your love knows no bounds and we praise you for that reality. We worship you as the Creator who offers the gift of your salvation to all people. Thank you for your Son who loved the Samaritan woman and offered her eternal life. Help us to experience the ways in which your gospel can overcome the prejudices of our day. Amen.