The Woman at the Well

It was a dry, hot day, not unlike a lot of other days in Israel. Jesus and his disciples were on the dusty road to Jerusalem from Galilee, a road that took them smack dab through the foreign territory of Samaria. Well, not foreign, really; the Samaritans were sort of like the Jews. Maybe that’s what made them so maddening. They claimed the same ancestors, but they insisted on worshipping somewhere other than Jerusalem. They just had a mongrel religion as far as the Jews were concerned. Yet the road went through Samaria, so the disciples made the best of it.

On this especially hot day they left Jesus at a well while they went to find food – although they knew they’d be hard-pressed to find anything kosher in this place. While they were away, a Samaritan woman came to the well to get water. She noticed Jesus sitting there and gave him a wide berth. She’d had her fill of Jews. In fact, she’d had her fill of men, but back then women didn’t have anything unless they were attached to a man.

Suddenly this Jewish man talked to her. “Give me a drink,” he said. She almost dropped her jar in astonishment. “Why are you asking me?” she replied. “You Jews always think that we Samaritan women are dirt.” But the man wasn’t offended. He simply said, “If you knew God and knew me, you could have gotten living water.” That confused her even more. She thought that “living water” meant “running water,” and he didn’t even have a bucket. So she pointed that out.

As she studied him, she began to realize that there was something unusual about this man. He seemed deeper than the well, deeper than life itself, like the stories about their ancestor Jacob her grandmother had told her when she was a child. He talked about never being thirsty, of having a spring of water inside gushing up to eternal life. She started to imagine what that would be like. She felt the coolness of the spring, being filled with water on a hot day, sitting in the shade, not always being in need…

“Bring your husband,” he said. Oh. So he didn’t think she was worth much by herself after all. “I have no husband,” she said. And added under her breath, I’m not about to do that again. The man quietly said, “That’s true.” Then he proceeded to tell her whole life story with five husbands and the latest live-in boyfriend. But he did it without any judgment at all. It was like he knew her better than she knew herself. She was always telling herself what a stupid person she was for letting men ruin her life, and here was this Jewish man accepting her for who she was, knowing everything she’d ever done.

He must be some sort of prophet, she thought. If so, then he can help sort out some of this Jew/Samaritan stuff about where to worship. Yet when she asked him whether Jerusalem or Samaria is the place to be, he said neither. “God is spirit,” he said, “and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

As he talked, another of her grandmother’s stories arose from memory. “I know that Messiah is coming,” she said. “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” And the man replied, “I am, the one speaking to you.” Now she really did drop her jar. Just then the man’s disciples arrived. She hardly saw them glare at her as she rushed home to her village to tell everyone. “Come see this man who told me everything I’ve ever done! He isn’t the Messiah, is he?”

The whole village trooped out in confused excitement. Even the three ex-husbands who were still living went, figuring they’d better check out this fellow who seemed to know everything. He seemed so different from all of the Jews they’d ever met that they invited him to stick around for a couple of days. By the end of that time they knew why the woman had been so excited. They were excited, too. They knew that he wasn’t giving his living water to just Jews or Samaritans; he offered it to the whole world.

And the woman? She kept going to Jacob’s well to draw water. But it never mattered any more when she was hot or thirsty or hungry. She could remember how cool and filled she had felt in the presence of that man at the well. And best of all, her boyfriend was a changed person after those two days. Maybe, she thought, just maybe, men aren’t that bad after all.