The Woman At The Well.

27th March, 2011 John 4:5-42.
In our Gospel lesson today, Jesus decides to leave Jerusalem
to return to Galilee, to his own home.
To get from Jerusalem in the south to Galilee in the north, Jews had to do one of two things.
They either had to go right through the heart of Samaria,
which they didn’t want to do
- the Jews in Samaria had married outside the Jewish faith,
and so they regarded them as a land of apostates ––
If they didn’t travel through Samaria - they had to go the long way around.

Jesus decided to go right through the heart of Samaria.
Let me amend that.
The Bible says that Jesus "HAD TO go through Samaria" (4:4).
The Greek word that we translate "had to" is dei –– a word that the Bible often uses to suggest that God required it.
In other words, Jesus went through Samaria because God called him to do that.
He went through Samaria for a purpose.
He went through Samaria on a mission.

In Samaria, Jesus met a person who was an alien or an outsider on three counts:

• First, she was a Samaritan.
Jews didn't think much of Samaritans.

• Second, she was a woman.
In that patriarchal society, men didn't think much of women.

• Third, she was a woman of questionable character ––
living with a man who was not her husband ––
the fifth man she had lived with.
It is scary isn’t it? – that Jesus knows us so intimately.
In that small town, where everyone knew everyone else's business,
this woman was an alien/an outsider even to the other women.

But Jesus didn't treat her as an alien/an outsider.
Most Jewish men would avoid speaking to any Samaritan ––
and men didn't speak to any woman in public ––
but Jesus approached this woman at the village well and said, "Give me a drink."
The woman was surprised.
She had come to the well at noon to avoid other women,
most of the women came early in the morning to get water.
This woman understood that she was an outsider,
so she isolated herself by coming to the well at noon.
Now this man/Jesus –– this Jewish man ––
was violating all the social norms by initiating a conversation.
"Give me a drink" was all that he had said,
but it was just not done.
So she responded:

"How is it that you, a Jew,
ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" (v. 9).
By the way, you know that she was a very large woman,
She was a woman OF SOME AREA (joke!)
The narrator adds this note: "Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans."

But Jesus responded:

"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" (v. 10).

"Living water."
What did Jesus mean when he said that he would give this woman "living water"?

Jews sometimes used that phrase, "living water" to mean "running water"
the kind of water that you would find in a river or a creek.
That's how this woman chose to interpret what Jesus said.
She asked Jesus where he planned to get this living water/running water?
Did he think he was greater than the patriarch Jacob, who had dug this well?
But Jesus responded:
"Everyone who drinks of this water"
(meaning the water from Jacob's well)
"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" (vv. 13-14).
That seems mysterious, but it need not have.
Anyone who knew the Hebrew Scriptures––
and that would include both the Jews and the Samaritans ––
would know that God had referred to himself as "the fountain of living water."
• God had chastised the Jewish people, because they had forsaken "the fountain of living water,
and dug out cisterns for themselves,
cracked cisterns that can hold no water" (Jeremiah 2:13).
In other words, they had abandoned God,
who was a fountain of living water, for the dry cisterns of idolatry.
• They would remember the Psalmist saying that God "leads me beside still waters" (Psalm 23).

When Jesus promised "a spring of water gushing up to eternal life,"
What did they understand by it?
more than just thinking that we drink to satisfy our physical thirst.
They would have understood him to mean that he could satisfy their spiritual thirst ––
a thirst that goes to the root of our being.

That's what this woman needed ––
"a spring of water gushing up to eternal life" ––
a spring of water to satisfy her spiritual thirst ––
a spring of water to moisten the hard crust of her life ––
a spring of water to cleanse her ––
a spring of water to make her whole.

Don’t we all need that?
a "spring of water gushing up to eternal life."
A lot of people live dry old "Desert lives."
They just wander around in their desert lives
without any sense of where the water is ––
the source that makes things green.
And so their lives are sparse, arid,
and empty of any spiritual nourishment.

Does that sound familiar?
Do you know anyone like that?
Do you know someone who is living a dry old “Desert life” ––
• someone who has no idea where to turn to find the water,
that surges up to eternal life,
• someone who has no idea where to find the water that makes things green and nourished?
Do you know anyone who is living a parched and ruined life?
I know people like that.
We live in a suburb – a city – a state – a country – a world full of people like that.
I would like to be able to think that there is no-one here living a parched/dry/desert life,
But I am sure that there is,
Come and drink – come and drink.
Thankfully there is that “spring of water gushing up to eternal life”
That is what Jesus offers us.


This is what Jesus came promising the woman "a spring of water gushing up to eternal life."
He gained her confidence,
ironically, by revealing that he knew the sordid details of her life.
Then he offered her this "spring of water gushing up to eternal life"?
He offered water to cleanse her ––
to refresh her ––
to make her whole.

The most astonishing thing happened then.
This woman who avoided her neighbors went to them and told them about Jesus.
She said, "Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!
“Could he be the Messiah?"
And they came to see Jesus.

Now here's the really astonishing thing.
Those people ended up putting their trust in Jesus ––
those Samaritans ––
those people who were outsiders ––
they put their trust in Jesus.

But that wasn't the really astonishing thing.
The really astonishing thing was that they put their trust in Jesus BECAUSE OF THE WOMAN'S TESTIMONY!
Unbelievable!
This woman who had lived the life that she had
suddenly becomes the one who brings these Samaritans together
for spiritual renewal.
In that moment, she was transformed ––
no longer needed to hide ––
no longer needed to maintain her cloak of invisibility.
She, who had been so isolated, became part of her community once again.
Her restoration had begun.
The spring of water that Jesus had promised was,
gushing up within her to a new life.
This is a great example for us of CHRIST, TRANSFORMING LIVES.
That is what He does


You have heard of Malcolm Muggeridge?
He was, in some ways, like that woman at the well.
He wasn’t poor or an outcast like her,
but he did feel a deep and profound emptiness.
As a young man, he wrote to his father:

"I want God to play tunes through me.
He plays, but I, the reed, am out of tune."

Looking for something to believe in,
he flirted with Communism.
He went to Moscow, but was disillusioned by what he saw there.

When he was in his 40s, he wrote in his diary,
"Christianity, to me, is like a hopeless love affair.
It is infinitely dear and infinitely unattainable.
I...look at it constantly with sick longing."

But then, a decade later, he became a Christian.
He couldn't explain exactly what had happened,
but his life changed.
He couldn't produce a dramatic conversion story.
The only explanation for what happened to him was that,
Jesus put in him "a spring of water gushing up to eternal life."

As your priest let me finish by asking this question.
Is there something missing in your life?
Is there some shortfall –– some disappointment – a blankspot?
If so, you might find that you need to give yourself fully to Christ.
Give Him your heart,
Give Him your heart this morning,
so that he might implant in you a spring of life gushing up to eternal life.
When that happens, you will find the parts that were missing ––
and they will form a harmonious whole in your life,
and be like a symphony, beautifully in tune.

Amen.