March/April Plain Truth

The Woman at the Well

by Greg Albrecht

Today, we might expect to see her on a sleazy afternoon talk show, promoted by the program title "Women Who Have Had Five Husbands." But students of the Bible generally remember her by a less sensational title, "The Woman at the Well."

The story (John 4:1-42) begins with a stranger in town. He was traveling, and paused for rest and refreshment. He had a chance meeting with a woman at the local well. But the man was no ordinary man, and the womanwell, she had three strikes against her.

The first strike--she was a Samaritan. They had their own version of the first five books of the Old Testament and rejected the rest. Any Jew would have seen the Samaritan woman's religion as being seriously flawed. She was a heretic, religiously compromised.

The second strike? She was a woman. The culture to which Jesus came did not consider womento be equal with men. Late 20th-century values seriously impair our ability to understand the kind of world in which this Samaritan woman lived.

The third strike against the woman at the well was her personal morality. She was not only part of a despised religious group and a member of a devalued gender, she was a fallen woman. She was not even a respectable pagan woman. But the man Jesus came to her, crossing these boundaries to reach out and touch her life.

"So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water" (John 4:5-7).

Imagine how the scene must have appeared to the woman as she approached the well. A strange man was already sitting there. He looked like a foreigner, a traveler. And there was something different about him, different from other men. And the Samaritan woman had known many men.

Little did she know that the man she was approaching was the incarnate Son of God, who had voluntarily subjected himself to time and space, and was now in history, sitting by a well, physically tired from his journey.

As she approached the well, she was acutely aware that she, too, was different. She was coming to the well in the middle of the day. Other women didn't do that. She was going to the well by herself. Other women wouldn't do that. Women in Sychar would draw water in the company of other women early in the day, or in the early evening.

Aware of her vulnerabilities, she continued to approach the well and the stranger sitting there. She knew who she was. Her personal history of five former husbands as well as a current live-in lover had combined to make her a social outcast. She was not treated with respect and by now no longer expected it. But she was street smart enough to sizeup strange men. Was he safe? She needed water, but she still had to be concerned for her safety.

As the woman came to the well, and as Jesus lifted his head and looked at her, she realized that he was a Jew.

Questions must have flooded her mind: What is he doing here? Has he lost his faith? Doesn't he know all of the rules and conventions he is breaking?

"When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, 'Will you give me a drink?'" (John 4:7).

The message of the gospel is relevant. The gospel speaks to us about issues of racial conflict, adultery and gender discrimination. Jesus identified himself and his mission in terms of hunger and thirst. Je-sus asked the Samaritan woman known as a harlot for water.

For the woman, it was both a disarming as well as a natural introduction to Jesus. He didn't stare at her with a look of self-righteous condemnation. He didn't wave signs like "Repent or Perish" or "Turn or Burn" in her face. He didn't hand her a religious tract or pamphlet. He simply asked her to help him.

Of course, the fact that he would speak to a strange woman in public, and the fact that he, a Jew, would drink from her gentile water container was a shock.

"The Samaritan woman said to him, 'You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?' (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)" (John 4:9).

Jesus responded to the woman by raising the conversation to a higher plane.

"Jesus answered her, 'If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water'" (John 4:10).

The Samaritan woman assumed she was in a position to provide him with his needs. After all, she had a container for water. After all, she had experience providing other men's needs.

Jesus' answer hinted that he could provide her need. But the woman did not respond to Jesus' elevation of their conversation to a spiritual level. She merely observed that Jesus had nothing with which to draw water. (It was customary for travelers to have a leather bucket that was collapsible into other baggage. It could be taken out and formed into a shape that would hold water.)

"'Sir,' the woman said, 'you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?'" (John 4:11-12).

The Samaritan woman challenged the stranger who spoke of some mysterious living water. She wondered if this stranger thought himself to be greater, wiser and more significant than "our father Jacob" after whom the well was named.

The woman, in many respects representing all of us as broken, sinful human beings, struggled to understand the discussion about water and life, to contain Jesus in her material and physical world.

But Jesus is not someone we contain or capture. He comes to us, like he did the Samaritan woman, from outside time and space. He comes into our world with the offer of eternal life. Water that will satisfy our thirst for life. Jesus takes the fundamental human physical need of water and transfers it to our fundamental spiritual need. The Samaritan woman knew all about water. She came to the well every day. She, like all human beings, needed water to survive.

Jesus appealed to her deep longing for spiritual satisfaction.

"Jesus answered, 'Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life'" (John 4:13-14).

The woman once again responded to the spiritual offer for eternal life with a physical answer.

"The woman said to him, 'Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water'" (John 4:15).

Aren't we all like this woman in so many ways? We often respond to the gospel in physical ways. Our concern and focus is on our own needs. We want Jesus to save us, and then we want him to go away. We want Jesus to make life easier for us. We want the gospel to take care of our physical needs. We don't really want to take up our cross and follow him. We simply want the gospel if it is convenient.

We often decide that it is far more important to recast the gospel into human terms than it is to accept it on the terms it is offered. We want the gospel to heal all of our physical hurts and pains. And we are easy marks for those who will, in Jesus' name, tell us that physical healing is guaranteed if we will just jump through a few legalistic hoops.

We want a gospel that will make us wealthy, and we naively give money to someone who tells us that if we do so, "in faith," God will absolutely double or triple our "return on our investment."

Sometimes we even think that if we simply come to the same spiritual well we have always attended, and that our parents went to, then we will please God. We delude ourselves by thinking that we were born into a churchgoing family and are therefore automatically Christian. But Christianity is not a country club.

We delude ourselves into thinking that the mere act of going to the well means we are doing the right things. So, we take stands about peripheral concerns and congratulate ourselves on standing firm about whether someone drinks wine or grape juice for communion. Or we feel superior about the type of music we use in worshipor if we use any music at all. Or what we eat, and when we eat it. Or what day(s) we dedicate to worship.

We might be going to a well, but are we drinking of the living water? Is preserving our own religious or church traditions more important than responding to our Savior?

It is inconvenient when Jesus meets us at the well, isn't it? We are simply going about our business, and suddenly there he is. Meeting us, asking us for water, engaging us in dialogue, and then elevating the discussion to the spiritual. To the living water. To the eternal life we can have through him.

Jesus stepped directly into the life of the Samaritan woman with a call and a challenge. He invaded her life. Jesus knew that if this woman was going to be transformed, she needed to be brought face-to-face with her sin. It wasn't enough for her to simply think the living water was convenient and would make her life easier.

"He told her, 'Go, call your husband and come back'" (John 4:16).

Jesus confronted the woman with the most personal, private and intimate part of her life. Jesus actually asked the woman to do something she could not do. She could not call her husband because she did not have a husband. She had had five husbands, and the man she was living with was not her husband.

Jesus knew his request was impossible, but he knew his demand would bring her to the reality she needed to face.

For the Samaritan woman to come to Jesus as Lord, she had to do more than see him as a good idea that would save her time and energy. Jesus is not an option that makes our lives easier. We must be convicted of the absolute necessity of Jesus. If we are to be followers of Jesus, we must know him as Savior.

We must come to know him because we know the weight of our sin. We need him because we cannot be saved from our sin any other way.

Jesus touched the most vulnerable place in the Samaritan woman's life. To her credit, the woman did not tell Jesus that his request was none of his business. To her credit, she did not lie.

"'I have no husband,' she replied" (John 4:17).

It was a gutsy reply. Intimate disclosure and personal confession to a total stranger.

She didn't want to talk about husbands. She would rather have talked about water, or history, or the origin of Jacob's well. Or maybe the news, or the weather.

But Jesus did not allow her to escape into triviality or into some academic topic. And at the same time, he was gentle and compassionate with her as she confronted the truth of her sin.

No doubt her head was down as she faced the ugly reality of her life. She was broken, sinful and lost. She needed more than water from the well. She needed the man by the well, who alone could give her living water, salvation and the forgiveness she so desperately needed.

After her confession, Jesus told her the rest of the truth about her life. He told her what no other stranger would know.

"Jesus said to her, 'You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.'

"'Sir,' the woman said, 'I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem'" (John 4:17-20).

Perhaps she thought she could change the subject. Desperate to run away from the reality of Jesus, she may have been trying to draw Jesus into an argument about the differences in the views of Jews and Samaritans.

Jesus responded by telling her that such physical issues could not be compared with the reality of God, and how humans must seek and worship him (verses 21-26). The Samaritan woman finally acknowledged that she knew the Messiah was coming and that he would explain everything about knowing God. If the woman was trying to change the subject, Jesus did not fall for her gambit.

Finally, he identified himself to her as the Messiah. In John's Gospel, Jesus had not shared that with anyone up to that point in his life. The first person he told this to was this Samaritan woman.

The woman began to tell everyone she knew about the stranger by the well.

"Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?" (John 4:29).

Many have called the Samaritan woman the first evangelist, because her testimony, according to John, brought many people to believe in Jesus Christ. And we don't even know her name. Her testimony sweeps across the centuries and has meaning for us today.

Jesus met the woman at the well, crossing all racial, gender and cultural barriers. And he is still here today, crossing all denominational and faith boundaries. He breaks all of our rules, and he speaks to us with details that make us think he has known us all of our lives.

Start looking for a man at the well of your life, a man who can bring you water to satisfy all of your deepest needs. 

The Thirst for Security Once again our well was dry. I thought we'd lose everything. Fragile petaled faces edging the garden walkway peered up at me. Creeping thyme sagged across the cracked soil. Lettuce simmered under a blazing sun. Standing on the dry, rolling California foothills surveying my hillside garden, I remembered 1993 news photos of residents along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers sandbagging levees. I tried to visualize their swamped farmlands. I also thought about southeastern Texas--homes, filled with a lifetime of sentimental collectibles, standing roof-deep in the surging current. Families losing everything they owned. Businesses and relationships devastated. I couldn't imagine too much water. But I imagined the fear. I knew insecurity. Five years ago we moved to the country--no piped-in city water here. Once at 3 a.m., while my husband slept, I stumbled out of bed, thirsty, groping in the dark for the faucet. The dry spigot sputtered and spit air into my empty glass. This time we'd overpumped our 460-foot-deep household well. Pacing our usage temporarily solved the problem--only one wash load a day, closed faucets while brushing teeth, 20-gallon containers stockpiled downstairs. After the winter's heavy rains, I'd relaxed. The news media reported California's seven-year drought was over. In the spring, I dreamed of plump tomatoes toasting in the sunshine, pole beans spiraling up wooden stakes, and zucchini vines sprawling across the soil. Confident, I planted the garden. But just when I felt secure, the irrigation well failed to keep up with the demand. A 4,200-gallon storage tank stood empty on the hilltop--no security in case of fire, no water for the garden, no backup supply for the house. That sizzling summer day I thought about too much water and too little, about the right amount of water essential for survival, about this precious fluid covering 71 percent of the earth and constituting 80 percent of my body. I focused on my need for a "well-watered garden" in a "sun-scorched land" and on my need for the "living water," Jesus, who quenches my thirst for security. Searching for Security Just as I can't count on a consistent water source for country living, I am discovering I can't count on nourishing my thirsting heart from a consistent worldly source either. · I thought about the times I drew from the well of my self-sufficiency. Eventually, my bucket came up empty. "I" no longer had strength to meet life's demands. Like the cistern underneath my parents' porch in Indiana, when the predicted rain doesn't fall or the cistern breaks and cannot hold water, I'm drained. ·I thought about the times I turned on the faucet of escape and drank in diversion: work, entertainment, recreation, hobbies, travel, shopping. My waking hours buzzed with busyness. But in quiet moments, when the world slept, I heard the spitting and sputtering of emptiness. In emptiness "my soul thirstsin a dry and weary land." · I thought about the times I stuffed houses and hope chests with prized possessions. Holding on tightly to things reminded me of chasing soap bubbles as a child. Floating on the wind, they eluded my grasp. When I stretched my arm high enough and finally caught one, it burst. Above life's whirling uncertainty, I hear a whisper, "Come, all you who are thirsty, come." Seeking the Source ·I thought about my need for a regular quiet time. I trusted in that water tank to irrigate my garden. It was empty because the well couldn't keep up with the demand during a drought. I also experience drought in my spiritual life. A sporadic gargling of Bible reading doesn't replace consistent fellowship with God. Daily I need to send my roots deep into his Word. · I thought about my reaction to irritating people and frustrating circumstances. A $5,000 filtration system takes out iron bacteria and softens our household well water. Filtering removes the odor and reduces hardness. The Holy Spirit reveals my hardened attitudes, drains off stagnant indifference to those around me, makes me usable. I need the Holy Spirit flowing through my life to clean out debris, clarify my perspective and purify my heart · I thought about times of security when I can rely on many resources, and about times of insecurity when I trust only one. Like an underground stream replenishes a well, Christ's life feeds into mine. When insecurity grabs my attention and I come to that place where the Lord is all I have, do I realize he's all I really need? Sometimes I can't escape the unexpected--a death or divorce, an illness or financial reversal, a job layoff or a fire, a hurricane, earthquake, flood or a drought. That's why I need Jesus, the "living water," to revive my spirit and quench my thirst for security. ­by Launa L. Herrmann Launa Herrmann is a freelance writer living in Castro Valley, California.

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