The Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to John
Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 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.) 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.” \
The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?”
Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 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.” 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.”
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!”
The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.”
Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 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. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
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.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”
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?” Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him.
Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?”
Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 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. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. 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.” ( John 4:5-42 )
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My mother died when I was sixteen. I still remember her. She was someone with few wants. She wasn’t a great shopper. She had neither time nor money.
For the life of me I can’t remember her ever buying anything for herself. She must have, of course. But I only remember her buying clothing, shoes, and so on for her four children.
Sometimes, very rarely, she would say something like, “Trev, pop to the shop, for me love, I just fancy a drink of Dandelion and Burdock.”
Her hungers and thirsts were never too deep.
But she was a true believer.
And at peace with herself.
Some time ago, I read of a young woman who had cocaine and heroin habits. Needs. Hungers. Thirsts. For something to ease the pain of living.
This woman sold her body to raise money to try and satisfy those needs.
The last time she was seen alive was when she got into a car with two men who had driven by, waving fifty dollar bills.
A man was charged with her murder.
The woman who met Jesus at Jacob’s well was a woman with needs.
She had been married five times, and was living with her sixth partner. She had a need to be loved, and not even five husbands had been able to fill that need.
You might say she thirsted for real, unselfish, undemanding love. She had a thirst of the soul.
Human beings have always had such thirsts. Poets have written about them. Psalmists have sung about them.
They drive us, and sometimes we don’t even know they are doing it.
When Jesus talked about the living water, the water that quenches that thirst of the soul for ever, the Samaritan woman jestingly said , “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not thirst and so I will not have to come back here.”
Suddenly, Jesus brings her to her senses, “Go and call your husband and come back here.”
The woman stiffened as if a sudden pain had caught her. She recoiled as if from a sudden shock. She went pale, as one who has seen a sudden apparition, and she had – she had suddenly caught sight of herself.
She was, for perhaps the first time, compelled to face herself and to recognise what had driven her, how her needs had driven her into a looseness of life.
That’s what happens when we meet Jesus. He looks right into our hearts, and knows us. And we suddenly know ourselves. Meeting Jesus makes us honest about ourselves, perhaps for the first time.
And that realisation can bring us to God, and to want to make amends.
This woman wanted to make sacrifice to God to put things right. But she got caught up in where to make that sacrifice. The Samaritans believed that Mount Gerizim was the holy mountain, the Jews, Mount Zion.
Jesus told her the time was coming when people wouldn’t worry about where to worship. They would find God wherever they decided to seek him.
Her experience with Jesus began with being compelled to face herself and to see herself as she really was.
The same thing happened to Peter. After the episode when Jesus guided Peter to the right place to fish, Peter suddenly discovered something of the majesty of Jesus, and all he could say, was. ”Depart from me for I am a sinful man, Lord.”
In the face of such righteousness, Peter felt the depth of his own sin.
I think we just don’t realise our need for someone to say, “You are forgiven.”
We just don’t know.
We get used to living a certain way.
A little girl had been taken to church by her mother, to hear a famous preacher. When he had finished his sermon, the little girl whispered to her mom, “Mom, how does he know what goes on in our house?”
It isn’t just the knowing, it’s that when we meet Jesus we see things for what they.
It’s like getting new glasses.
The next thing the Samaritan woman did was to rush away to tell her neighbors about her experience, and to bring them to meet Jesus.
She hurried off into town leaving her water jar behind. You could be sure she was coming back.
When the people in the town heard what she had to say, they wanted to know him.
Then when they met Jesus, they told her, ‘We don’t have faith in Jesus just because of what you told us. We have heard him ourselves and we are certain he is the Saviour of the world.’
But she had led them to him, hadn’t she?
The word of God must be transmitted person to person. God’s message will never reach those who need to hear it, unless someone delivers it.
He has no hand but our hands
To do His work today.
He has no feet but our feet
To lead people in his way;
He has no voice but our voice
To tell people how he died;
He has no help but our help
To lead them to his side.
All it took was that one woman to tell of her experience to save a whole town.
The woman was a Samaritan, a people rejected by the Jews; as a woman, she was also regarded as a second class citizen. Men were not supposed to speak to women out on the street. Or women to men.
In fact there were some holy men, Pharisees, who wouldn’t even look at a woman. They were called ‘bruised, or bleeding’ Pharisees because of the way the would bump into walls when they closed their eyes every time a woman came into view.
This woman also had another strike against her. Having been married five times and living with a man, she was looked down upon by the other women. There was water in town, but she came to this well, a good way out of town. The other women wouldn’t have her near them .
Time and again, it seems, it isn’t the holy people who lead people to God, but the sinners, the rejects, those who have lost so much – and have found so much.
A Samaritan, a woman, and a fallen woman at that – in her gladness led the whole town to Jesus.
She had found the living water.
Others searched but didn’t find.
The emperor Qin Shi Huangdi, after whom China itself was named, and by whose grave just a few years ago, a terra cotta army of 7500 soldiers was discovered, thirsted for the water of immortality.
He sent repeated expeditions into the Eastern Sea to seek the elixir of life. One of these missions involved scores of oceangoing junks and a crew of 3,000 young men and women. They never returned.
The water of immortality was unavailable.[1]
We look everywhere except the right place.
But eternal life is easy to find, if you know how.
Just look for that person who has it all together. The person who has a sense of fulfillment in life. The person who seems to have some hidden strength that brings them through their trials.
The person who has found joy in Jesus.
They will point you to the place where that living water can be found.
They can’t help it.
It kind of bubbles up.
Some years ago, a group of prospectors set out from Bannock, Montana in search of gold. They went through many hardships, and several of them died en route. They were overtaken by Indians and robbed of their good horses, and warned to go home or they would be killed.
Defeated and discouraged, they made their way home. On one of their many stops along the way – the lame ponies they had been left with could not go far without resting – they tethered their mounts on the side of a creek.
One of the men casually picked up a little stone, and calling for a hammer, cracked it open. “ It looks like there may be gold here,” he said.
Two of them panned for gold the rest of the afternoon and managed to realise about twelve dollars worth of gold. That was a lot of money at the time.
The entire little company panned for gold the next day and realised fifty dollars – a small fortune. They said to one another, ‘We have struck it.’
They made their way back to Bannock and vowed not to breathe a word concerning the gold strike. They secretively set about equipping themselves with supplies for another prospecting trip, taking elaborate steps to hide what they were doing.
But when they set out, three hundred men followed them.
Who had told on them? No-one! Their beaming faces betrayed their secret.
If we love Jesus, whose face we have not seen, we should be unable to conceal that treasure from anyone. Our beaming face will betray our secret.
O come let us sing to the Lord;
Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
Let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise.
For the Lord is a great God, and a king above all gods.
Praise his wonderful name.
[1] P.303 Contact, by Carl Sagan,Simon and Schuster, New York,1985.