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 ancestors Leah, Rachel and Jacob, who gave us the well, and with their offspring and 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 God 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 God in spirit and truth, for God seeks such worshipers as these. God is spirit, and those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah –The Anointed One – is coming, and will proclaim all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am the Messiah.”
The disciples, returning at this point, were shocked to find Jesus having a private conversation with a woman. But no one dared to ask, “What do you want of him?” or “Why are you talking with her?” The woman then left her water jar and went off into the town. She said to the people, “Come and see someone who told me everything I have ever done! Could this be the Messiah?” At that, everyone set out from town to meet Jesus. Meanwhile, the disciples were urging Jesus, “Rabbi, eat something.” But Jesus told them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” At this, the disciples said to one another, “Do you think someone has brought him something to eat?” Jesus explained to them, “Doing the will of the One who sent me and bringing this work to completion is my food. Do you not have a saying, ‘Four months more and it will be harvest time’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields – they are ripe and ready for harvest! Reapers are already collecting their wages; they are gathering fruit for eternal life, and sower and reaper will rejoice together. So the saying is true: ‘One person sows; another reaps.’ I have sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the work, and you have come upon the fruits of their laborer.”
Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the strength 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.”
.
Reflection -- by Zelda Kennedy
Marcus Borg once wrote, “. . . to be on a journey is to be in movement. Moving from place to place, and there is change in such a life. A journey is a process that involves our whole being. It involves our feet as well as our minds and our heads. A journey involves following a path or way. To be on a journey is not to be involved in aimless wandering, though there may be times when it feels like that; people have gone on this journey before that we are called to, and there is a trail, a path, a way.”
The journey I want us to follow today is that of the “Woman of Samaria,” whose story is found only in the gospel of John. Please know that while this is a story about a woman, I believe this story reflects our journey in varying phases. It’s a story of a person who finds herself at a point in life where self-esteem is low, life is lonely and yet she finds ways to cope with her situation. It is a story of someone, who has a divine encounter that’s life changing. It is a story of someone given a choice to make a change that allows her to make a difference. I know that many of you have heard and read the story of Jesus and the Woman at the Well numerous times. Please take time to re-read it, again. Interestingly, each time I re-read this story, the more I realize what an incredible encounter it is.
Historically, in first century Palestine, where the woman of Samaria resided, the major racial division was between Jews and Gentiles. Jews resented Samaritans because in them was found a mixture of Jewish and Gentile blood. This mixture of the races in Samaria made the Samaritans so repulsive to the pureblood Jews of Judea and Galilee that it was freely acknowledged "Jews had no dealings with Samaritans" (John 4:9; 8:48), and despised Samaritans so much that they would not set foot in Samaria. Therefore, instead of taking the direct route through Samaria when traveling, Jews went out of their way to travel along the east bank of the Jordan River. Thank God, it was not so with Jesus! "He needed to go through Samaria" (John 4:4). Why? In second Thessalonians the writer states that this Samaritan woman was chosen for Christ’s salvation (2 Thessalonians 2:13), and while the males of her time considered this nameless woman of Samaria a possession, Jesus reminded her how very precious she was by his mere acknowledgement of her humanity. He didn’t have to know her name. He knew her heart.
He essentially tells her that she is worthy of receiving the best God has to offer – even with questionable morals. (John clearly states that she had been married to five different men, and was now living with another man outside the bounds of holy matrimony (John 4:16-18)). During her day this was considered scandalous behavior. This was probably the reason why she came to draw water from the public well "about the sixth hour" (John 4:6), which was high noon, according to the Jewish computation of time. The more respectable women drew water in the cooler hours of the morning or the evening. I also believe our nameless woman of Samaria came to the well during the hottest hour of the day because she had low self-esteem. She didn’t believe she was somebody. Her actions and behavior demonstrated she felt like nobody – truly unworthy – unworthy of receiving and giving joy; unworthy of being satisfactorily single; unworthy of being, while feeling trapped and outside of the norms of society and living on the margins.
This remarkable story of divine encounter shows us the power of being given an opportunity to choose. Someone once wrote, “The most basic choice we have in life is whether to expand or contract, whether to bring our creative and expressive energies out into the world in positive or negative ways.” No matter what our circumstances, we have the power to choose our directions for our journey. Jesus gave the woman of Samaria a choice. And what did she do? She took her choice and ran with it! She was not satisfied with receiving and keeping her gift from Jesus to herself. No, she went out and shared it with others.
How many of us can see ourselves in the woman at the well?During this Lenten season, I want to challenge you to accept this time as a gift, like receiving a long, cool drink of refreshing water. A gift that allows you to take care of self, so that you may eventually shift your focus to others, while you continue to revisit, rediscover, realign and reignite your purpose in life.
No comments:
Post a Comment