Woman at the Well

The world around us is more divisive.

How many of us agree with this statement?

As people no matter what kind of belief we start with we will inevitably run into divisive and controversial places in which we may have no answer.

I was in a library during my university degree for Social Work. It came how somehow that I was a Christian.

A friend of mine who I had known for nearly a year she looked at me dead in the face saying

“You must hate gay people then”

This person had known me for over a year, seen me interact with many people, and had reduced me to a stereotype in her mind.

I wish I had an elegant response but the reality of people’s view of us is that we as people will type cast and place on top of each other views we hold.

In John 4:7-30 Jesus has a conversation who has every reason to be suspicious, hostile, and divisive towards him.

We will focus our time on John 4:7-30 and later working our way through it.

A lot of our divisiveness along with how we keep people away can be understood with identity.

Re-Imagining Migration an immigration and refugee nonprofit uses a tool called

Ecology of Identity.

Identity and how we self-identify is a huge subject in our world. This tool works on four layers which is the same way we will work through our passage today. Working from the core out

- Individual Identity – this is the most intimate and personal of how we self-identify

- Relationships Identity – Who, where, and how we interact with family, friends, work, and community

- Community / Country – Larger identities of how we interact with the wider world, media, etc

- Stereotypes / Generalizations – this is the broadest and how we think about the world and stereotypes broadly in categories. It is the most impersonal

These tools are not identifiers but show 1) How a person sees themselves 2) How we are seen by others

While Biblical writers weren’t thinking of this tool in their writing, the way Jesus moves through his conversation with the Samaritan woman moves from the large stereotypes to a personal relationship.

He moves from the outermost to the innermost by working how she would fill in the blank of Jesus is

We are working through a Sermon Series of Jesus is _______

This woman is in the 1st century of a place called Samaria. For her Jesus goes through a series of fill in the blanks for her.

For her, Jesus is a Jewish man who fits a stereotype and a hostile one which is our outermost circle

As the conversation moves Jesus is a Stranger who has some identity but begins to become a person

Third, Jesus is a Prophet – he has moved to a relationship and an important one of power but still impersonal and distant

Finally, Jesus becomes Christ the Messiah – a core of identity for this woman and a way she begins to live life.

The way Jesus moves through identity is much like Ecology of Identity by moving from the most outer to the core.

Ecology of Identity

We desperately look for methods of how to engage the culture and people around us who are increasingly hostile.

Jesus encounters a stereotype defined is a widely held fixed and usually oversimplified images or ideas of people.

We as people may or may not be aware of what we hold or how we hold it but realistically we all hold them to some degree.

Whether it’s fair or not, true or false, a lot of our cultural divides start here.

It’s as simple as “Those people said…” “That culture is against…” “Oh that’s typical of them”

Stereotypes start our v.7 and 9

7 There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus *said to her, “Give Me a drink.” 9 Therefore the Samaritan woman said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)

Both the biblical readers and the woman share stereotypes of what they see this all as.

To the woman of Samaria, Jesus is a Jew, a stereotype people who hold a holier than thou kind of attitude. Those who are wrong in religious and practical ways.

There was great hatred between the two groups.

In Harry Potter, a character named Severus is cut off from his family and on a family tree his birth mother literally burned out his name from the wall. This is the relationship between the Jewish people and the Samaritan people.

To the Jewish people Samaritans were a cult wrongly worshipping, who once sold their people into slavery, untrustworthy, scum of the earth, inferior, Samaritans were known was highway robbers and murderers to Jewish people they were segregated geographically, politically, and religiously.

Place on top of this you have Jesus seen as a Jewish Rabbi, a male, talking to a woman, a Samaritan. A divide both by political power and gender divide. Most men won’t talk to women even in modern middle eastern cultures, this is around 2000 years ago.

Most Jewish rabbis would rather go thirsty then accept a cup from an unclean Samaritan.

To make matters worse, this woman is coming in midday which is not when you draw water in the desert. She is alienated from her culture by things not yet revealed her divide is deep.

All these hostilities appear as

Jesus says “Give me a drink”

Jesus is abandoning all forms of social, political, gender norms, and religious customs asking this from a truly real human place of being thirsty.

Jesus is using a real need of thirst to meet something deeper of a need for this woman.

Most people like to help. Most people don’t like to ask for help.

Jesus begins an awkward conversation by placing himself at her mercy. He asks her for help, a lot of our conversations start with us being the know it all, the holier than thou, or the answer person.

Jesus reverses that start by placing himself as the one who could be helped.

This shocks the woman, “how can you accept a drink from me”

A way to think about how this conversation starts “How can you, a horrible enemy, accept from me, an enemy that you people despise”

The feeling is mutual both groups of men and woman and Jew and Samaritan are deeply guilty of sin and hatred upon each other.

The woman has no idea who Jesus is, why he is asking her anything, and the little she does know of him are stepped in stereotypes, hatred, and disgust.

For all she knows this man is hitting on her, knowing she’s isolated from her town.

For us as believers, the reality is many of our culture, fair or unfair, have projected views on top of us and we likewise have done the same.

A writer said in her blog “The Christian church must hate woman”

Woman and the church, have a complicated and not simplistic history but the stereotype generally is that woman is reduced, seen as objects of lust more than people, ignored, and less than by being a part of the church.

A lot of men and churches have made decisions to keep woman at arm’s length because of their own sin temptations, or stereotypes of emotions or feelings or add a stereotype that reduces an individual to a generalization. Or projecting roles of what a gender should or shouldn’t do in work.

Cut out of decision making and serious theological conversations.

This shouldn’t be and I wish it wasn’t, but I can say many women I know have had these experiences.

Jesus has a different response he both draws her into a conversation as an individual person, values her as a woman, and has a highly theology spiritual type conversation.

In fact, this is Jesus’ longest dialogue in scripture with a single person.

Jesus has a very different approach to women

If we have had or know of these devalued and exploited relationships, we want to see how Jesus answers and works through this

10 Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”

Jesus treats this woman seriously, having an in-depth theological discussion with her and saw her as an individual not a group relationship of stereotype.

Jesus takes her seriously and draws her into a true conversation by pushing her to ask “Who is He”, what is the gift of God, and “what is the living water”

Jesus looks past the material divides and focuses on what He can give her which is a spiritual unity.

Jesus begins to drop understanding of spiritual realities to move past her material cultural divides. He uses interest in greater places to move her interest towards a next level of conversation.

Intrigue is a powerful motivator.

In evangelism and sharing the gospel, we spend a lot of time thinking about why or how someone isn’t interested in Jesus and Christian answers.

It’s because we are looking to answer questions. Most people aren’t looking for “what’s the answer” but rather “why should I care or bother with you and your God?”

Jesus used intrigue and curiosity with this woman.

He drew her into something deeper by intriguing her thoughts and making her ask more.

The first layer of our circle is broken through.

Jesus takes on a new title in this woman’s mind and how she sees him.

11 She said to Him, “[Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that living water? 12 You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle?”

Jesus is no longer a stereotype to her, He is “Sir” a stranger, still impersonal and still not anyone special. But different.

In our conversations with people instead of recognizing where a person is we forget the person has no idea who we are truly.

Jesus is a Stranger, he’s just a guy. He isn’t some great rabbi, prophet, messiah, or leader.

This Jesus man is claiming something about living water when he has nothing to pull from the well.

This isn’t a faucet at a sink, this is a well that could be move 100 feet deep. Pulley systems buckets are all necessary.

Not only that he’s claiming he’s greater than the founding fathers of Israel and Samaria.

She’s also still hostile, but now she can be targeted hostile.

The jab of Jacob who isn’t her founder. Jacob is one of the founders of Israel who she hates.

Samaritans said Joseph, is the founder of Samaria.

She is resentful, disregarding him, and in national pride and self-respect.

We can get stuck here as well by instead of focusing on Jesus, we focus on our national or individual pride.

This woman was proud to be a Samaritan and took national pride in that.

A common phrase I’ve heard “If I was in India would I just be a Hindu therefore your religion has no bearing here”

This woman is essentially saying the same “I’m in Samaria so I’m a Samaritan, you a Jewish stranger have no right to speak to me”

I was in a coffee shop with a friend and no matter how I talked I eventually found myself being compared to people who were loudly non-Christian who were more moral than me.

Argument went this way “Ghandi and Buddha were good people and how can you say you deserve heaven, and they didn’t”

A Bishop Ryle said it this way “Dead teachers have always more authority than living ones”

People use dead or historical people as a defense of why we can’t have a voice. These imaginary teachers, even good ones, are always better, more morale, and superior to us in all ways.

These aren’t arguments. They are defensive strategies.

They are ways to stop the conversation, disarm Jesus, and remove him from important.

Jesus doesn’t fall for the traps he pushes farther

13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”

In this area Jesus makes a simple argument, the waters of Jacob will not satisfy.

The waters of dead teachers, other religions, comparison of individuals, and imaginary scenarios will not satisfy.

A lot of the time what holds someone back from accepting Jesus is not the life they are living but the life they imagine living.

Jesus didn’t focus to much on if this woman was Samaritan or Jewish, he valued her as a person who was from Samaria and still invited her in.

The living water is that which comes from eternal life.

Jesus at any point could have condemned her, he never does. He asks her to help him with his thirst and reveals that she has a thirst for eternal life.

Waters that Jesus alone can give, life is water in desert culture, and the same is true in spiritual.

The biggest challenge we having to accepting living waters is we return to our old habits instead of asking Jesus, we ask our happiness, success, satisfaction, clarity, or family to help us feel loved.

This woman realizes she has a need, but she doesn’t yet see Jesus

15 The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw.”

She thinks physically, for a lot of us when we first came to Christ and for those who are still searching for Christ without knowing. We look to God as our vending machine and first aid kit.

Jesus who grants our wishes like a genie, ends our suffering, fixes our h arriages, gets us out of debt, helps our emotions, finds us spouses, makes us excited with songs, or quench our thirst.

Jesus isn’t looking to give us a still pool, he’s a gushing spring of life eternal an abundant life not on no pain but upon him but something holds us back like it held her back

16 He *said to her, “Go, call your husband and come here.” 17 The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus *said to her, “You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly.”

Out of nowhere Jesus makes a request of husband

But this reveals something deeper for her, it reveals her sin. It reveals that this woman who is disconnected from her culture who she still has pride in, who is disenfranchised with men, who is hurting, and her hidden secrets are now revealed to a stranger who knew all along.

“I have no husband”

The shortest phrase she utters. Jesus found something deep, sensitive, and revealing.

Jesus revealed her divided from the culture and her brief answer reveals that she is stunned.

She feels the effects of a sudden turn of sin revealed.

When I was first become a Christian, the moment of my sin laid before God was horrifying and frightening.

It felt like a fist has grabbed your heart and it’s a horrible moment. To see your sin in front of you and the effect of your sin is hard.

To truly confess and be known. All our masks, our barriers, our smoke, is blown away. Not only blown away but paraded in front of us.

Jesus revealed her sin, but He didn’t revel in it. Big difference.

We live in a culture that loves to revel in sin, revealing it is only half the fun.

Superhero movies have said it a few ways “What people love more than a hero, is to see a hero fail”

News, social media, churches, self-indulgent pride, revel in sin being revealed. If you don’t believe me, spend some time in YouTube or Facebook comments. Sin revealed, reveled, and celebrated is obvious.

Jesus does none of this, nor should we, don’t celebrate someone’s fall from good graces. Jews and Samaritans would have loved nothing more than to see the other fall and fail.

Jesus treats her sin of multiple partners, in a culture where only men could initiate divorce, he treats it frankly but not harshly.

He works to restore her, even in her next move.

The woman is now seeing Jesus as more but its still not enough.

Jesus is v.19 / Prophet = v.19 – 24

19 The woman *said to Him, “[Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet.

Jesus is now somebody important to her, he’s an important individual, he knows her, and she knows he knows a lot.

But maybe her next question is a smokescreen, an attempt to move Jesus away from her sin. That Icey grip of guilt that has grabbed her to something safe.

A controversial subject.

20 Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.”

She attempts to disguise herself by finding a difficult highly controversial conversation.

This woman is intelligent, she uses her knowledge of things to attempt to deflect Jesus the prophet away from her.

This woman uses something of a ‘red herring’ a distracting conversation

She knows he is important, a prophet. It’s impressive and intelligent.

It’s an opportunity to pick the brain of a prophet so why not use it.

We won’t spend long here but it comes down to this: Where can you worship God?

Samaritans only believe in first few books of OT so the answer is Mt Gerizim because Moses said so. Jewish believe in more of the Bible, so they have Jerusalem the temple.

Who wins? David vs Moses

Who is the GOAT – Greatest of All-Time in sports? Good luck finding an answer.

Imagine during a conversation with someone, they revealed a major thing, and this is the effect of the question

“How come Christians hate gay people?”

“If God is so loving how come sin is real?”

“What’s your opinion of racism in America?”

“Trump or Biden?”

These aren’t the real questions, and we can spend hours, years, and books upon books answering them.

A person who is vulnerable will do anything to move out of that quickly.

While we need to be respectful of where people are at, we can easily be distracted by white rabbits to go chase or we create our own.

How’s your marriage? Well work is so crazy right now; the boss was caught embezzling funds to his nephew. Let me tell you how the police got involved.

We are all tempted to either hide ourselves or chase the smoke, but Jesus does neither.

Because his focus is on truly loving her.

21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.

Jesus ignores the places of worship by revealing that worship is not about where they worship. All these little fathers of Israel, Jacob, Abraham, Joseph, none of them matter because there is the heavenly father to be worshipped.

He doesn’t shy away from the truth knowing he has authority to preach.

22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. 24 God is [e]spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Those who are guided by their own opinion will find nothing but errors who are not founded in God’s word and his commands.

The Samaritans held different wrong beliefs; Jesus didn’t pretend they agreed. He knows he can speak with authority, so he does.

But he earned that right, our perceived authority over someone is not earned authority.

He moves her to the Word of God, that true knowledge comes from the OT scriptures not just the few books she knows.

Salvation from the Jews is not a reference to the Jewish faith, but to the fact that salvation will come from the Jewish people. That salvation is himself and true worshipers are those who worship God in Spirit.

Worship is not when, where you worship but how you worship. With a founding of being in the truth of God’s word brought together by authority of Jesus and fellowship of church.

People worship all the time, but they also hold untrue things about Jesus and God.

David Foster Wallace (Atheist) "Here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship [...] is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.”

David Wallace never put his faith in Jesus before committing suicide, he recognized worship but couldn’t realize the truth of worship is not an act but a person.

Jesus is always the center of worship, and it is by the Spirit of God, the human spirit, and the true spirit.

True worship is done in agreement with His Word and what is true, in both spirit, mind, and body.

True spirit is that our spiritual self is awakened to who Jesus is, that He is God, fully God and fully human who also got thirsty.

To be truly awakened to who Jesus is, is not an intellect thing, it is a God thing.

Many intelligent people have been convinced of Jesus and God, but they are not awake.

This woman is one who wakes eventually

Jesus is the living water, the Christ.

25 The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us.”

The Samaritans didn’t have all the Scripture, but they had enough to recognize in Deut 18 that a Messiah would come who would reveal all things.

Even in the partial knowledge of Scripture she had enough to realize the truth of her longing to be saved.

Every person on earth has a longing to know God. There are millions of people reached and unreached people who long for God like this woman.

Partial knowledge of truth but realizing they need more

I’m half Japanese so the Japanese people have always been heavy on my heart. In context Japan has had Christianity since 1549BC, more than 500 years. Longer than all of America’s history. Yet, only 1.5 % of the population of Japan is Christian, and of that number even less are evangelical since that includes any form of Christianity.

The woman, like many people have been okay leaving that longing for God unanswered. To not find the living waters of life.

Jesus doesn’t let her stay there, and nor should we as a church in either evangelism, or missions.

26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.”

Jesus has spent most of his ministry not letting others reveal who he is as Christ.

To a Samaritan, to a disconnected woman, who is deep in her sin, an excluded person, who is told by a culture she is an object not a person.

He reveals the most important thing about himself.

Jesus used a phrase with her “I am He”

While this translation is correct that Jesus is revealing himself, to a woman He just revealed He is God.

He voluntarily reveals to her that openly He is the Messiah and equal of God.

This term of “I am’ we will dive deeper in as he reveals this same phrase to another group of people. With a very different reaction but a quote by Rebecca McLaughlin.

“Jesus’s valuing of women is unmistakable. In a culture in which women were devalued and often exploited, it underscores their equal status before God and his desire for a personal relationship with them” – Rebecca McLaughlin

Jesus welcomes her into a personal relationship with Him as her Messiah and Savior.

In v.27 Jesus’ followers have returned, and they aren’t shocked at him talking to a Samaritan but a woman.

They fell into the patterns of where this woman started of stereotypes and generalizations of divide.

This acts as a caution, we as followers don’t see things as Jesus does.

We can carry and create our divisions and assumptions, being a Jesus follower doesn’t make us immune from old habits of division but look what happens to this woman.

28 So the woman left her waterpot,

She left her waterpot, the only reason she came to the well. Her priorities changed and instead of looking for relief in physical water she now found relief in the living water.

All her old ways of division of men and woman, Samaritan and Jew, water vs thirst, her sin and her pain, all of this she threw away because she wanted to share about Jesus.

People come to Jesus and sometimes in our own maturity we look at the church, people, and Jesus as “What can I get from this place?”

What relationships can I have? What preference do I deserve? What people do I like sitting by? What program is fitting me? What can I get?

She switches completely to “What can I give to God?” What pot can I throw away? What question can I abandon? Who can I find?

This woman who was likely alienated, mocked as the bad girl, and isolated she

“went into the city and *said to the men,

Men who dismissed, divided, used, and assumed things about her. Who she likely hid from now she is boldly walking up to them, even though they hold all the same stereotypes and expectations of her and she says.

29 “Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?” 30 They went out of the city, and were coming to Him

She boldly went up to people and did the same thing Jesus did to her.

She intrigued and dropped questions of revealing Christ.

In a single moment, she was a better disciple than all the disciples

The disciples came back with bread, this woman returned with people.

Come and see this Jew who became a Stranger who became a Prophet who became Christ God.

Come and see the person who heals divides of controversy, things that seem to matter now like where we worship but reveals so much more important.

Come and see this Jesus who reveals my sin but doesn’t revel in it, who forces me to reveal it and still loves me in it.

Come and see this Jesus, Come and See BE Free that we aren’t people turned off by hostility and anger because we find our living water and fountain of life.

Come and See this Jesus who saw a woman at the well who nobody saw.