"Samantha"
Notes
Transcript
Key Thought: Through our BELIEF in Jesus, we find BELONGING to God and God’s Family.
ENGAGE
ILLUSTRATION
Hatfield and McCoy Feud and Forbidden Romance
The Hatfield and McCoy feud is local legend around here. The Encyclopedia Britannica reports that the two Appalachian families who drew national attention in the 1880’s and 1890’s.
The Hatfields were lead by William Anderson (Devil Anse) Hatfield and the McCoys by Randolph McCoy. Each of them had at least 13 children, and the McCoys have been reported as having up to 16.
They lived on opposite sides of the Tug Fork River - the McCoys in Pike County Kentucky and the Hatfields in Logan/Mingo county in West Virginia.
The Feud went all the way back to a stolen pig in 1878, with the first major bloodshed in 1882, and reached its worst in 1888.
It is said to have settled down by the second decade of the 20th century.
In 1880, there was supposedly a brief love affair between Johnson Hatfield and Rose Anna McCoy- but it was eventually broken up by the McCoys.
TENSION
We can all imagine how life would have been being Rose Anna McCoy, a young lady just trying to find her place in the world, trying to find love.
Living during this time in this area, having so much hatred for another group of people, over some simple thing as a stolen pig.
But I’m sure that you can each think of something that you have against someone else, maybe even a whole family or group of people.
Today we are going to look at a something like a feud in the Bible, where a woman gets caught up in the middle and gets pulled by her people, and the other people.
TRUTH
When Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard he was making and baptizing more disciples than John (though Jesus himself was not baptizing, but his disciples were), he left Judea and went again to Galilee. He had to travel through Samaria; so he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar near the property that Jacob had given his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, worn out from his journey, sat down at the well. It was about noon.
We start today just shortly after Jesus left Nicodemus, or Nick and his night time meeting.
The concern from the religious authorities is shifting from John the Baptists as “the biggest threat to the religious leaders”, to now Jesus is gaining more followers and becoming a bigger threat, so he leaves Judea and heads to Galilee.
The text says that Jesus HAD to go to Samaria. Well.. .He really didn't. He had a couple of options.
He could go along the 40 miles, about a 4 days walk) from the southern region of Palestine:
along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea
or along the Jordan River Valley.
or he could go straight through the area known as Samaria, home of the Samaritans.
Now the normal Jesus traveler, would have walked to Tokyo before they would have walked to Samaria.
Good Jewish people just did not go to Samaria.
Much like the Hatfields and McCoys, there was a clear division between the two groups of people.
Their bad blood went back to just after the Exile, when Ezra took most of the Jews back to Jerusalem, but a portion of them stayed and intermarried with the inhabitants of the local areas, including their former captors, the Babylonians.
This formed the basis of the feud, two distinct people groups. But then the feud ramped up when the Jews rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem, but the Samaritans built their own temple to God on mount Gerizim, in Samaria.
The Jews refused to have anything to do with the Samaritans, because the Jews felt that the Samaritans were impure, because of their intermingling both physically and spiritually with non-Jews.
So even though this feud was going on, Jesus says that he HAD to go to Samaria.
Why did he HAVE to go to Samaria? Because of John 3:16.
John 3:16 (CSB)
16 For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
Jesus had a divine appointment waiting for him in Samaria, and he was bringing his newly recruited disciples with him to learn about the rest of the world.
A woman of Samaria came to draw water.
“Give me a drink,” Jesus said to her, because his disciples had gone into town to buy food.
“How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” she asked him. For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.
Jesus answered, “If you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would ask him, and he would give you living water.”
“Sir,” said the woman, “you don’t even have a bucket, and the well is deep. So where do you get this ‘living water’? You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and livestock.”
Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again. But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up in him for eternal life.”
“Sir,” the woman said to him, “give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and come here to draw water.”
It is broad daylight, as compared to Nick, where it was under the cover of darkness.
Jesus speaks to an individual who had absolutely everything going against her as far as religion and society.
She was a woman, She was a Samaritan. Jesus, being a devout Jewish male, had no reason at all to talk to her.
Jews would not even touch the same cup as a Samaritan, let alone drink out of the Samaritan's cup, but here is Jesus, asking her for a drink.
Jesus uses the opportunity to engage the woman, who I have named Samantha, in a religious conversation.
Much like how Jesus brought Nick’s biggest need to him, Jesus is here bringing her biggest issue to the forefront right off.
He brings up salvation by comparing it to the activity that she is currently doing, getting water from the well.
She is at the well at an odd time. The heat of the day. Most scholars believe this is not usual practice for women of this area.
They would normally go get water first thing in the morning and later in the cool of the evening, not in the midday sun.
Unless they were hiding.
Just like Nick came to Jesus at night to avoid the other Jewish leaders, Samantha is coming to the well at noon to avoid all the other women, because she is an outsider. She doesn't belong.
Jesus goes on to talk about the gift of God and how she should be asking him for a drink.
Much like Nick, she doesn’t catch on right away, but she sees a way to save some work, so she is interested enough to keep talking with this Jewish man.
Jesus then steps things up a bit.
“Go call your husband,” he told her, “and come back here.”
“I don’t have a husband,” she answered.
“You have correctly said, ‘I don’t have a husband,’ ” Jesus said. “For you’ve had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”
“Sir,” the woman replied, “I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.”
Jesus told her, “Believe me, woman, an hour 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, because salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth. Yes, the Father wants such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and in truth.”
The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
Jesus told her, “I, the one speaking to you, am he.”
Perhaps Jesus wanted to make things a little less awkward for her, being a Samaritan woman talking to a Jewish man, having her husband there would make things more “appropriate”.
But perhaps Jesus is just getting to the root of why she feels that she doesn't belong.
Jesus gently leads her to the truth - not that many preachers assume that she is a very sinful woman who has went through husbands like toilet paper, but rather, Jesus never condemns her, or even mentions sin. He simply points out that she has been hurt.
She has either been divorced 5 times, or has had 5 husbands pass away, and most likely she is now living with a man to survive.
As she finally speaks the truth, She sees Jesus as something more than a random Jewish man with bad manners, asking her for a drink.
She now sees a prophet, someone who speaks the truth of God, so she takes the opportunity to ask him one of the most urgent questions she has, because this question is at the heart of the feud that is going on with her people and the Jews.
She wants to know which of the two temples is the true temple where God meets his people in worship.
The answer she gets is not what she is expecting.
Jesus tells her basically that she is asking the wrong question, and that the questions is invalid, because in a short time, all the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth, not showing up to a certain place and giving sacrifices.
At the close of this section, Jesus again shows her a glimpse into who he really is. He tells her that He is the messiah that she and the other Samaritans are looking for, the same one the Jews also wait for.
She has seen him move from a Jewish man, to a prophet, and now she is Face to Face with the Messiah she has been waiting for.
Just then his disciples arrived, and they were amazed that he was talking with a woman. Yet no one said, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
Then the woman left her water jar, went into town, and told the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” They left the town and made their way to him.
In the meantime the disciples kept urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.”
But he said, “I have food to eat that you don’t know about.”
The disciples said to one another, “Could someone have brought him something to eat?”
“My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work,” Jesus told them. “Don’t you say, ‘There are still four more months, and then comes the harvest’? Listen to what I’m telling you: Open your eyes and look at the fields, because they are ready for harvest. The reaper is already receiving pay and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that the sower and reaper can rejoice together. For in this case the saying is true: ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap what you didn’t labor for; others have labored, and you have benefited from their labor.”
Now many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of what the woman said when she testified, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. Many more believed because of what he said. And they told the woman, “We no longer believe because of what you said, since we have heard for ourselves and know that this really is the Savior of the world.”
You can imagine that when the Disciples show up to find Jesus talking to Samantha, it was much like when the McCoys found out that Johnson Hatfield and Rose Anna McCoy were in love and secretly meeting. This was scandalous to them!
Jesus had just shown them “the world” that God so loved.
He showed them that Samantha was in fact a child created by God and did in fact belong to God.
We see here that Samantha is so anxious and has such an encounter with Jesus, that she leaves her water jar and runs back to town, telling everyone what he had told her.
She left the jar, she left the reason she was there in the first place, to spread the word that the Messiah had come, and I can imagine as shes running away, the disciples all watch her leave and as soon as shes out of sign, they all shrug and turn to Jesus and insist he eat something. It is almost as if she was an inconvenience to them, and they were glad she left.
Jesus quickly redirects them to the fact that he has shown them how to share the gospel to all the world.
They of course didn't get it, but Samantha did. She because the premier evangelist to the Samaritans.
Samantha and the other Samaritans have now seen this Jewish man, this prophet, the Messiah, in his absolute truest role — the savior of the world, the WHOLE world.
APPLICATION
The heart of the gospel is belonging.
Both belonging to God, and belonging to God’s family.
Belonging includes with it, the concept of reconciliation- where we are brought back onto good terms with God and our new family members through our relationship with Christ.
Through meeting Jesus, Samantha is brought back into the community. The other Samaritans come to faith in Jesus through her.
She now has a place to belong in the community of believers.
Not only is Samantha brought into the community, but the WHOLE Samaritan community is reconciled with the Jews through Jesus.
The feud has been ended at the reconciliation of the Samaritans to Jesus.
INSPIRATION/ REFLECTION
Paul wrote about how the gospel brings those of us who are unworthy back into right relationship with the Father in Romans 5:6-11
For while we were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For rarely will someone die for a just person—though for a good person perhaps someone might even dare to die. But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. How much more then, since we have now been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from wrath. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, then how much more, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. And not only that, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received this reconciliation.
Samantha had been so wrapped up in her past - her communities past as half-breeds in ancestry and in worship, but also who she identified as - a woman who could not be loved.
But because of the compassion that Jesus had for her, and the fact that he HAD to go to Samaria to meet her, she is now reconciled with both God and with the community.
Matthew writes about Jesus’ words on evangelism and the purpose of the gospel of Christ, reconciliation to the Father and his family.
When he saw the crowds, he felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dejected, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is abundant, but the workers are few. Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest.”
Jesus HAD to take his disciples into Samaria.
He HAD to show them what the WORLD consisted of.
He HAD to show them what compassion for the outsiders was.
He HAD to show them that it was now their job to spread the gospel.
NEXT STEPS
We see a progression in this passage.
Samantha goes from seeing Jesus as just a Jewish man, to seeing him as a prophet.
She then sees him as the Messiah and finally as the Savior.
She then goes and tells everyone she knows about Jesus.
This is a progression that all believers should follow.
When you realize who Jesus really is, we are able to worship the Father in Spirit and truth because the Holy Spirit is inside us. Giving us the power we need to spread the gospel.
As Jesus said in Acts 1:8:
8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Jesus has given us the power and the responsibility to bring about reconciliation of every human on earth to the Father and to the family of God through belief in Jesus Christ.
It is our job to carry this to the world, allowing each individual the chance to come Face to Face with Jesus and the belonging that comes with believing in him.
Lets Pray.
Heavenly Father - each of us has felt like we didn't belong. Like we were outsiders.
But Jesus, you spoke to each one of us. You asked us to talk with you, and eventually we saw you for who you are, the Savior of the World.
Lord it is our job to spread this good news all over the world.
Father, help us to help others come to know the reconciliation and belonging that is found in believing in you for our salvation.
In Jesus Name we pray, and all the God’s people said:
Amen.