Woman at the Well

Bible Text

The New Revised Standard Version Jesus and the Woman of Samaria

So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9 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.)b 10 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.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 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.” 15 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.”

16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but youc say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 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.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I am he,d the one who is speaking to you.”

27 Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” 28 Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 29 “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah,e can he?” 30 They left the city and were on their way to him.

31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. 36 The reaper is already receivingf wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”

39 Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

Introduction: The Meet Cute

I’ve been to a lot of church services in my lifetime. Alot.

Like thousands.

And I’m going to ask you to consider something I’ve never been asked to consider in church before.

Are you ready?

I want us to consider the meet cute.

Even though the meet cute is a term and concept that’s been around since at least the 40’s. I think I first heard of it about tens years ago.

And once I did it was like I’ve always known what it is.

It describes a type of scene that is a staple of romantic comedies and some sitcoms.

A meet cute is a scene in which the two people who will form a future romantic couple meet for the first time, often under unusual, humorous, or cute circumstances.

The couple has to meet. And in order for you to root for them that meeting has to be cute.

Sometimes the meet cute can be at the end of the movie or television show.

The television show How I Met Your Mother was a nine-year show about Ted Mosby’s quest to find the titular mother. Although there were flash forwards, we didn’t see their meet cute until one of the final scenes of the series.

In Sleepless in Seattle, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan don’t meet on the top of the Empire State Building until the very end of the movie but we’ve spent enough time with them and there is just enough romance and electricity that we’re rooting for them.

Usually though, they’re in the beginning:

In Roman Holiday Gregory Peck finds Audrey Hepburn sleeping on a park bench in Rome.

In Notting Hill, Julia Roberts stumbles into Hugh Grant’s bookstore and later they literally run into each other.

Our kids will sometimes as Lindsay and I met. We tell them the condensed version:

We don’t really remember when we met. We were in each other’s greater orbit for a couple of years. She even dated my roommate for awhile. We worked at the INN University Ministries for a summer. Later that fall we started hanging out in groups and enjoyed it enough to start hanging out together.

I think they’re kind of disappointed because they’re already trained to expect the meet cute and two people knowing each other for three years without even a hint of anything romantic happening doesn’t make for a great movie.

Transition: Thesis

Why this lengthy reflection on the meet cutie?

It’s to remind us that in film and literature there are tropes. There are tropes that are so ingrained in how we read books or watch shows that we don’t even know it’s happening. Because we just know what a meet cute it tells us to understand what happens next.

In our passage today John leverages our built in expectations of what should happen to reveal Jesus not only as the Messiah to and from the Jews but the one who brings eternal life for all people.

Pray

Why the Meet Cute?

The setting of the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well is simple enough.

Jesus had been in the region of Jerusalem/Judea and has heading back north to Galilee and passed through Samaria.

It was the natural geographic route but there have been historic tensions between Jews and Samaritans. It wasn’t uncommon for Samaritans to attack pilgrims traveling between the two regions so many would choose and different route to avoid the region all together.

The history of the Samaritans is deep. For our purposes, they’re a group of people who believed they were the true descendents of Israel and the true keepers of the Torah: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

At the time their chief religious site was Mt Gerizim and they believed the Jerusalem temple and the Jewish priesthood was illegitimate. In short they were religious and ethnic rivals.

But for our purpose, Jesus’ journey into a foreign land meets a certain type: the Jewish meet cute.

It recalls three famous meet cute’s in Jewish history:

Meet Cute #1: Isaac and Rebekah (Genesis 24:1-27)

Abraham was getting old in years and he wanted his son Isaac to find a wife. So Abraham sends his servant to a foreign land to find a wife.

The servant travels and arrives at his destination and he goes to a well. There is Rebekah who gets him some water. The servant then tells her to go back to her Father so he can arrange a marriage.

Meet Cute #2: Jacob and Rachel (Genesis 29:1-12)

Not to be out done, Isaac and Rebekah’s son Jacob gets a meet cute of his own.

After some shady dealings with his brother, Jacob goes away for awhile.

He travels a long distance and what does he find: a well.

And who shows up but Rachel. Jacob is instantly smitten. In a feat of macho bravado and strength, he rolls away the stone for the well and then off Rachel goes to tell her father.

Meet Cute #3: Moses and Zipporah (Exodus 2:15-21)

Here we find Moses fleeing Pharaoh and traveling a long distance to Midian. What happens?

He comes to a well and all the daughters of the priest of Midian come to draw water.

What happens next? They go back to their father and tell them about Moses. The priest then arranges for Moses and zipporah to be married.

Back to the Meet Cute

In all three stories you get a hero of the Jewish faith traveling a distance to a foreign land, meeting a foreign woman at the well, and a marriage resulting.

Sometimes the man pulls the water. Sometimes its the woman.

So here we have Jesus who is being set up as a hero of the faith traveling a distance to a foreign land only to arrive at a well and meet a mysterious woman.

This is something akin to watching a movie where two beautiful people literally bump into each other on the top of the Empire State Building. Your expectations would be set.

But just as quickly as our expectations are set, cracks start to emerge:

The women calls attention to the fact that Jews and Samaritans don’t associate. (But maybe this isn’t a crack. It didn’t stop the plucky independent book store owner Meg Ryan from falling in love with the mean giant retail book seller Tom Hanks in You’ve Got Mail).

She alludes to the fact that it’s uncommon for men and women to even talk.

And then Jesus seems to be talking about something more than normal water.

He asks for a drink of water but tells her that if she knew who he was, she’d be asking him for water. And talks about a type of water that will never leave you thirsty again.

Intrigued. She asks for this living water.

A Word about Women

And here’s where our story breaks definitively with the great meet cutes of the Old Testament.

You might remember the patter of those meet cutes: there’s a meeting of a woman at the well and then they all go back to their Dad’s where a marriage proposal is worked out.

That’s not even remotely what happens here:

Instead Jesus says: Go to your husband.

When she says she has no husband, he says he believes her. In fact she’s had five and her current man isn’t her husband.

The text does not say she’s been divorced five times, just that she’s had five husbands.

There are many possible reasons for the woman’s marital history. We shouldn’t assume anything bad about this woman.

Perhaps the woman, like Tamar in Genesis 38, is trapped in the custom of levirate marriage and the last male in the family line has refused to marry her.

Significantly, the reasons for the woman’s marital history intrigue commentators but do not seem to concern Jesus. Nor does Jesus pass moral judgment on the woman because of her marital history and status. To pass any judgment on her is to imprint our own views on to her.

Avoidance, Misunderstanding, or Theological Partner?

Maybe this is just me but I think there’s a uniquely human phenomenon where we change the subject when things you get uncomfortable.

Maybe there is a conversation topic that you don’t like. It’s awkward and uncomfortable but you don’t want to call out the fact that it’s awkward and uncomfortable so you dance around the issue. Maybe someone brings up politics at a dinner. You know this is going to be contentious so after some awkward silence you try to redirect the conversation “your question reminds me of an article I read recently about XYZ, have you read anything new lately”

Or maybe there’s some uncomfortable truths about yourself and you don’t want to face them. It’s hard hearing hard things about yourself. No one likes being corrected. So you ignore. You change topics. You do anything but face the uncomfortable words.

I don’t know about you but if someone I’ve never met told me ANYTHING about my past. I’d be freaked out. It would be uncomfortable.

I’d do one of two things: attack it head-on, “how did you know that?” or Avoid it all together.

The woman took the later. She recognizes Jesus as someone significant and enters into a debate. Well, maybe not a debate, but enters into conversation as a theological partner.

So she asks him a question that was front and center of Jewish/Samaritan debate: “where’s the proper place to worship God?”

And Jesus does something surprising.

As a Jew, we’d fully expect him to say “Jerusalem and here’s why.”

But he says “neither”.

Worship isn’t about a place. It’s about worshipping in Spirit and in Truth.

God isn’t about sectarian borders. God is universal. God is for all.

And then Jesus makes it even more clear how this happens.

When she responds that the Messiah will make this clear, Jesus affirms that he is that Messiah.

To worship God in Spirit and in truth is to worship through Jesus.

Her eyes are opened and she returns home not to arrange a marriage but as a missionary inviting others to meet this Jesus.

A Call to Spirit and Truth/Eternal Life

Throughout this encounter there’s a through line of Jesus subverting real and subconscious barriers and moving beyond them to reveal something deeper.

There was the barrier of an expectation for a meet cute.

There was the barrier of hostility between people groups.

There was the barrier of hostility between the sexes.

There was the barrier of one’s past.

There was the barrier of theological points.

The story looks like a classic meet cute where the Jewish patriarch meets his wife but subverts our expectations and instead reveals Jesus as the Messiah of God.

The story assumes hostility and suspicion between Jews and Samaritans but ends a mission effort on behalf of Jesus.

The story begins with bias toward separating the spheres of women and men and invite us to consider this women as a legitimate theological partner and opening up new possibilities for male/female relationships.

The story subverts our expecations of what true worship it looks like. It upends Jewish and Samaritan debates on where true worship happens to reveal the universality of Jesus as the living water for all people and invitation to worship together in Spirit and Truth.

We all have barriers.

There are walls we build for ourselves. There are stories we tell ourselves for why it’s too hard or it won’t work.

The well is just too deep. I’m the wrong gender. I’m not allowed to do this. This is too hard. This is too uncomfortable. This doesn’t meet my expectations.

This is an invitation to move beyond the barriers.

Or rather God is moving the barriers for us.

God is moving into our space.

It can be uncomfortable.

Barriers can make us feel safe. They feel normal.

And in a sense Jesus normalizes these barriers. He doesn’t pass judgment on them but moves between them to an invitation to a water that will never leave us thirsty. It’s an invitation to a type of life marked with joy and a deeper satisfaction.