Encounters with Jesus: Be Accepted! The Woman at the Well

He heals the brokenhearted
And binds up their wounds.

Psalm 147:3

This week we see another encounter with Jesus. We see what it is when someone has been bullied and put down by those she thought she could trust. Her pain runs deep, as deep as the well she draws water from when no one else is around. She was the rejected, about to meet the one who would deem her to be accepted.

So He came to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.  Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour. A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.”  For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. John 5:5-8

Jesus arrives at a town in Samaria, and just outside this town is a well. This well is not a place that everyone goes to draw water, because it’s not the center well in the middle of town where the cistern is located. This one sits outside the city walls, where those who use it are exposed to danger. It’s in Samaria, a place of mixed raced people who had been placed there as cast offs after the Babylonian exile. This city was also a city of refuge so the citizenry was made made up of people who had to seek refuge after committing crimes. This town was a place to be in and out of quickly, like that last chance gas station before the hundred mile trek through the desert. Jesus sent his disciples into town to get the food, quickly, while He waited by the well.  The Jews of Jesus’ time avoided this area because of the representation of the mixing of their bloodline with the heathens. Yet Jesus passed through this place, and came to this town, to this well. The well was dug by Jacob, but Jacob dug many wells, and then moved on in order to not fight with his brother’s men. Throw into the mix that it is the middle of the day, when no one draws water.

 Nothing about this situation says something good is about to happen, yet something good is about to happen.

            This is what we already know about the woman at the well just from what John has said if I may paraphrase; we have a woman, who is so scorned that she cannot even go to the public facilities to get water with the rest of the exiled from the society of the pariahs, in the ghetto, where the outsiders live. She’s been so bullied, so rejected, and hated by so many that she chooses to avoid everyone and do for herself when everyone else isn’t around. She expects to be alone, but there is someone there. She draws her water without a word.

            Jesus breaks the rules of her life and asks for a drink of water. In that time period it was a way of asking for hospitality to ask for a drink or to offer a drink at the city’s well, but not at such a well as this out of the way place. In our time it would the equivalent as saying, “Hey, let’s go hang out and maybe grab some coffee.” He wasn’t just asking for water, He was befriending her. I often wonder if that made her smile, or if it made her suspicious. It seems by her reply it made her suspicious.

Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.  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.” John 5:9-10

The woman points out their ethnic differences immediately, and how Jesus should be expressing his disdain for her. She should have several reason for not extending hospitality to him, but foremost in her mind is that she is a Samaritan, a mixed race, a cast off, and a woman, not a man. Yet Jesus asks her for hospitality. She must have recognized something in Him that made her realize He was good, not just good, but good to her. She talked to him and didn’t run away, or ignore him, which would have been her right. Instead she gives him an out. I think she gave him water.

            Then Jesus says that He could give her more than water, He could give her ‘living water’. She wondered at this statement. In such a place water was life. Sychar is hill country, in an arid land. Living water implied streams of running water that never dried up. This would have been very appealing to this woman, yet she didn’t instantly take Him up on His offer. She wanted to know what was in the fine print first. She tests him to see how he will answer.

 The woman said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water?  Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?” John 5:11-12

Her first point is what is his background and qualifications. She points out that she has the same bloodlines, at least by half, to be called a child of God. She’s stepping out here to point out to this Jew that she also is there by right. She’s immediately taking the Samaritan position of defense. It’s similar to what we do today in our defense of our ethnicity, no matter what it is, by claiming the wrongs suffered to our ancestors somehow justify our needing to be paid back now, but if we were to reverse the situation and have the demands placed on those our ancestors wrong exacted from us we’d be singing a different tune. The Samaritans were not ones to make this claim since they had mixed blood. They could not lay claim to the rights of the slave nor the master. They were both.

Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” John 5:13-14

Thirst is a powerful motivator to do anything. It’s not just the physical thirst that is difficult to handle, but emotional and spiritual thirst as well. This woman had more than a drink of water could satisfy. She had no choice but to draw water to quench the physical thirst, and as Jesus points out, she would and could come back to the well again and again to rid herself of that thirst. He also knew she didn’t want to because of how she’d come to the well. She’d come alone, when everyone else would be inside to escape the heat of the day, and drew water where no one else would know she was there. This was a woman who was ashamed of herself, who felt unworthy of the attention of others, because the attention she drew was negative. Jesus offers her the chance to never feel that way again. She hears that. What’s interesting is that he also promises the water will also fill others and give them life- life without end.

The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.” John 5:15

Forgetting herself she asks him for a drink. She does more than ask, she demands. Yet when she demands her reason behind it is so her physical needs are met. How many times do we come to God demanding that our physical needs be met, and when they are met we leave Him there, at the well, without so much as a thank you to the one who met that need? We, in our arrogance, assume it is due us through our own efforts that our thirst has been quenched, forgetting and laying aside our prayer. Or, if we do admit that God has met our need, we move on as if we are somehow owed it because of how we prayed and fasted. It was the words we said, or the holiness of our hearts that forced God’s hand to act in the way we expected.

Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”  The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have well said, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly.” John 5:16-18

Jesus takes her to where she really thirsts. He demonstrates to her that he knows her pain. He knows the heartache she’s suffered at the hands of men. He knows she had been a new bride once, but those days were gone, and with it the loss of her innocence. She’d been used, abused, passed on, over, and around. In a town like the one she lived in there wasn’t a lot of Mr. Rights, but there was a lot of men who, like the one she was with, would take from a woman and give her some semblance of security in exchange for whatever she would provide for him, until he found something better. Jesus saw her deep thirst for real love and acceptance. 

The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet.  Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.” John 5:19-20

Her next test is a political question. It’s been an argument many people seem to think has something to do with faith. While your faith should have an effect on your politics, it doesn’t mean that Jesus has a political agenda. Morality should be dictated by faith, and thus we should all express our morality when we vote, talk, walk, and act in all that we do. However, we should also understand that man is fallen, so there is no perfect politician. That is probably not a divine revelation to any of us. So why this ruse? Because she’s once again checking to see if his offer is for real, or if He, like the men of her past, is just making the offer to pull it back when she begins to trust Him.

Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.  God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” John 5:21-24

The encounter with Jesus for this woman is at the decision moment. He calls to her, telling her to believe, because it doesn’t matter where she worships, only that she worships the Father. He explains to her she doesn’t know what it is that’s missing because she’s only got half the picture, partly because of her heritage, but also because she was reluctant to take the drink He was offering. Yet this encounter is interesting because in most of the encounters people had with Jesus they sought him out. For this woman he sought her out. He did the wooing of her heart. It was the seeking she had been looking for; this woman who had been so exiled was now being sought out by a God who wanted her to enter into a relationship with Him, a relationship that would be based on spiritual truth. She would be able to trust.

 The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When He comes, He will tell us all things.”⁶ Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.” John 5:25-26

The last point she makes is a direct profession of what she does believe. She believes that the Messiah, the one who will bring freedom and unite all the children of the lineage of Abraham together, without prejudice, is coming. She believes there will be a time when even she will be accepted, when she will qualify to stand before God as an equal heir with all the other children of Abraham. The Messiah will tell her how this is to happen. She’s reaching , hoping that she has just been told by this man before her that she is as he has said, able to worship God in spirit and in truth right where she is through faith. Jesus confirms He is the Messiah.

And at this point His disciples came, and they marveled that He talked with a woman; yet no one said, “What do You seek?” or, “Why are You talking with her?”  The woman then left her water pot, went her way into the city, and said to the men, “Come, see a Man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” Then they went out of the city and came to Him. John 5:27-30

The conversation isn’t interrupted because divine appointments are never interrupted. The woman had her need met. The disciples arrived and the Samaritan woman left, no longer thirsting! We know this because she left her water pot! She didn’t bother to take it back into the city. She rushed into the city a changed woman and went to the very people who had made her into the broken vessel who was not able to draw water at the city's cistern. She became an evangelist. Her testimony is recorded, “Come and see a Man who told me all that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” Her two pronged approach is very effective. First, she gives them that which cannot be argued, her own experience with Christ. No one can ever argue those things God has proven Himself through time and again in our lives. Secondly, she gives them the choice to decide for themselves, knowing that she cannot force anyone to believe. The result is revealed in verse 39 of this chapter. And many of the Samaritans of that city believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me all that I ever did.”

The discourse between the last verse of the encounter, and verse thirty-nine, between Jesus and the disciples talks about the harvest. Jesus says he has food they don’t know about, and that the fields are white and ripe for harvest. He has been fed by the joy of being acknowledged as Messiah by this woman, and she has become His harvester for her town. The woman who avoided people, now seeks them out to tell them about Jesus. He has taken the rejected and made her accepted.

We all carry the scars of rejection upon our souls, of painful memories of being marked unacceptable by someone at one time of our life. That creates a hole in our soul. It can only be filled by the One who knows what it is to be rejected by all of mankind, yet loves anyway. God loves us!  He gives us living water every day if we are willing to receive it.