WOMEN AROUND JESUS
THE WOMAN AT THE WELL -JOHN 4
MAKING DO WITH OLD WATERPOTS
FILL YOUR WINESKINS WITH LIVING WATER
1. CONTEXT: BIAS
We all come to reading the scripture from our own point of view or context.
And this is usually biased. What's your context and bias?
I feel for this woman. I think she is misinterpreted.
2. CONTEXT: HISTORICAL
It helps to understand the background, so the conversation that ensues makes sense.
1. Samaritans and Jews had an historic racial problem.
The Assyrians captured Samaria in 722 BC and deported all the Israelites of substance and settled the land with foreigners. They intermarried with the surviving Israelites and adhered to some form of their ancient religion 2 K 17-18.
After the exile, Jews returning to their homeland, viewed the Samaritans not only as children of political rebels but as racial half breeds whose religion was tainted by various unacceptable elements.
About 400 BC the Samaritans erected a rival temple on MT Gerazim.
By the 1st C the Samaritans had developed their own religious heritage based on the Pentateuch and focused their worship not on Jerusalem and its temple, but on Mt Gerazim.
A Jew considered the Samaritans ritually unclean and would not go near them, talk to them or eat with them.
Jesus had to go through Samaria because it was the quickest way to do the three day walk from Judea to Galilee. Otherwise he would have had to cross the Jordan near Jericho, travel north up the east bank through large Gentile territory and cross back to the west bank near the Lake of Galilee.
Many who were adverse to Samaritans probably did this.
2. Historic Geography
Sychar, the Samaritan town at which Jesus arrived is near Mt Gerazim.
Jacob's well, lies about half a mile south of the modern village.
This is a sacred well!
It reminds us of a classic betrothal scene between Jacob and Rachel. Gen 29: 1-20.
The classic picture in Jewish literature is a man meets a woman at a well on a journey; she runs home to announce the stranger and the two are betrothed, generally over a meal!
Thus in John 4, we are set up for another betrothal scene for we are at the same well.
The well was both a dug out cistern and it is fed by an underground running spring, possibly a 100ft deep. You needed a bucket.
3. Socially, talking to a woman is problematical.
If you ate with a Samaritan you were ritually defiled.
But if it was a woman! Well!
Although Jewish teachers warned against talking much with women in general, they would have especially avoided Samaritan women, who, they declared, were unclean from birth. "the daughters of the Samaritans are menstruants from their cradle" and hence the vessels which they handle are unclean. (Dictionary of New Testament Background, (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press) 2000.)
And water was particularly regarded as sacred and cleansing.
Other ancient accounts show that even asking water of a woman could be interpreted as flirting with her- Jesus breaks all the rules of Jewish piety here.
THE PROCESS OF THIS CONVERSATION IS VERY INTRIGUING!
It's masterful. The conversation is happening on more than one level.
The woman was alone.
Usually the women came in groups but not when the sun was so fierce.
Why was she here alone at this time?
YOU already have some preconceived ideas about this woman in your mind!
Maybe the other women didn't like her. Did she have a reputation?
Was she only allowed to come on her own because she was isolated from others?
If this was a sacred well, what was she doing here at all?
He commands her. "Give me a drink!"
What's going on in her mind?
You can't talk to me, let alone ask me for a drink.
If a man spoke to a woman in public in that country, the woman would consider herself shamed, and either say nothing or run to the men in her family who would demand apologies from the offender.
She does neither.
Would an immoral woman dare to answer back?
Wouldn't she do his bidding?
Instead:
She answers back. "How come you a Jew are asking me for a drink???"
10 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."
It's an indirect allusion to who he is. If you knew who you were talking to you would have asked ME for living water! He is calling her to see him as her messiah.
11 The woman said to him, "Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?"
And she misinterprets him. Maybe deliberately.
But then she also seems extremely intelligent and sharp! On to it.
She has some strength to maintain this degree of conversation. Even some cynicism here.
She is conversant with her history as we shall see.
Jesus has another program. An ulterior motive.
Jesus tries the water analogy again.
13 Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 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."
LIVING WATER? What's that?
She interprets it on a literal level, missing the point.
15 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."
Maybe she equates living water with running water, and you're not going to get that unless you got a bucket to draw with cos the well is 100 ft deep.
So you do the math!
She's not seeing from a spiritual point of view.
She flees to a superficial solution, but deep down is her heart is being convinced?
Is she thinking: Is there more to this man than meets the eye?
Nah, that's impossible. He's just a man!
Was her mind pulsing with the possibility and then its quick rejection?
No, no it's just not possible.
But there is something strangely different about this man.
What am I feeling?
Could he be the Messiah we are looking for?
She is astutely aware of religious things.
Give it to me!
She requests the gift even though she doesn't yet fully understand its implications!
But something in her heart is being drawn.
Then Jesus changes the subject:
Go call your husband, and come back.
Why did he change the subject?
Why did he say that when he knew she had no husband?
And he gets it wrong?? Deliberately? So she may clarify, lie, reject…
Remember she has stood her ground so far.
Jesus has an agenda. He is drawing her heart to the truth. But carefully.
17 The woman answered him, "I have no husband."
Jesus then reveals to her that he is a prophet for he knows the truth about her.
"You are right in saying, 'I have no husband'; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!"
Does this affirm something to her heart? She doesn't seem to shrink away from him as someone whose guilty secret has just been revealed might. She is still standing her ground, seeing him face to face and ashamed?
19 The woman said to him, "Sir, I see that you are a prophet.
What we don't know for certain, but have almost certainly judged her for, is that she was an immoral woman. That she has been through 5 divorces because she is sexually alluring or whatever, that she has been unfaithful and that now she does not have a faithful marriage because she is only living with the guy! We are projecting something onto her from our own social and cultural context.
This woman has been through 5 husbands. Yes. But quite possibly they have all died!
We do not know that she has been divorced. But she could have been divorced because:
Divorce was not uncommon, even among devout Jews, and the causes for its justification were a matter of lively rabbinic debate. One school insisted that it was possible only in cases of adultery, while another maintained that there might be a myriad of reasons, such as spinning in the street, talking with a stranger, a spoiled dinner, a dog bite that did not heal or finding another woman who was more attractive. (Dictionary of New Testament Background, (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press) 2000.)
The law was all on the side of the male, only a man could sue for divorce.
It is conceivable that all had died and she had been taken in by her brother-in -law to shelter her from immorality or unwelcome suitors, but he has not yet entered into marriage with her.
OT law Dt 25:5 required that a widows brother-in-law succeed her husband if she was childless, so as to guarantee an heir. Thus Boaz could not marry Ruth until Elimelech refused to do the part of a kinsman to her. Ruth 4.
Think about this too:
If a woman was not married, or lost a husband she was thought to be cursed of God.
If she lost a second husband, she would be considered doubly reproached.
But if she lost 3, 4 and 5, people began to regard her as being prepared for high service as a prophetess.
Prophetesses could speak to men in public.
Men and women would seek their counsel.
Sanford, John and Paula. The Elijah Task ( Victory House: Tulsa, 1977), 78
She was at the well alone, but when she went back to the village her testimony convinced them all to come running. If she was immoral, would they have listened at all!!
Is it just possible she was actually highly regarded in her village!
But let's also put this in context:
Though a literal betrothal is not happening here, the words and context point to a symbolic betrothal. Jesus is metaphorically the 7th man in her life, the perfect number in Judaism. The implicit meaning is that Jesus is the man which she has been waiting for and the One in whom she will find wholeness.
Remember the classic story of romantic encounters at wells. Boy meets girl, she goes running back to her family, they are betrothed and have a feast.
When she goes running back to the village, Jesus teaches his disciples about true food.
So all the elements of a classic betrothal are here in this story!
Put this also in the context of the wedding in John Ch 2 and the bridegroom in Ch 3.
What ever is the truth about this woman, this is the key point I think.
Jesus is her completion.
Jesus is the One she has been unconsciously searching for all her life.
She knows there is a Messiah to come and she is waiting.
She recognizes him no more as a sir, but as a prophet, a gifted person.
She now asks a theological question. A key question for Samaritans.
20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem."
This could seem a little out of context, but with our historical knowledge we know that it is a key to the heart of Samaritan identity.
So maybe it makes more sense if we now think of her as an astute woman, a teacher of spiritual things maybe, a prophetess even! Asking an extremely important question.
She still has doubts, some nagging questions which don't make sense to her.
Who are the Samaritans in the scheme of things? Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you as a Jew say we ought to worship in Jerusalem.
Which is right?
She needed fresh revelation
He now moves in to convict her heart of the TRUTH.
21 Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 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. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."
Worship is about more than a place. Neither Gerazim or Jerusalem.
It's about a relationship with the Father on a deeply spiritual level.
True worshippers are not confined by place or what they know, but by the truth and in the Spirit.
Samaritans worshipped what they did not really know. Their worship was not characterized by truth and knowledge, though their piety often surpassed the Jews. Think of the Good Samaritan!
Apart from anything else the Jews atleast knew who they worshipped.
The Jews are the vehicle of that revelation, the historical matrix out of which that revelation emerges.
But their privileged position is in the process of dissolution and true worship will only take place in and through Jesus who is the true temple.
John 2: 19-22
25 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."
Here her language has moved a step closer. From sir, to a prophet, to Messiah or Christ.
Could this be he?
What presence is flooding over me?
My heart is strangely burning within.
What an encounter…
26 Jesus said to her, "I am he, the one who is speaking to you."
Pious Jews avoided the use of this phrase. Superstitiously they believed that whoever spoke his name would be struck dead.
Reminds me of Harry Potter, where Voldemort is the one who must not be named.
But he is more than a messiah, than a prophet or even what the Jews were expecting.
He is the Son of God and this he reveals in the statement:
I am He, the one who is speaking to you.
This is the clearest revelation that Jesus gives of his identity as not just a messiah, but THE One, the I AM, this is the highest point of Christology.
Jesus declares of himself the Holy Name of God. This is what got him crucified in the end, because he dared to call himself God, which to the religious Jews was an outrageously blasphemous claim.
AND this revelation was given to a woman. To a Samaritan!
To one who possibly has a dubious background.
What did it do to her?
28 Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 29 "Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?" 30 They left the city and were on their way to him.
She was utterly convinced.
So much so
She leaves her waterpot.
Water is sacred. Water containers are associated with the sacredness of life.
You just don't leave them behind.
What did it symbolize?
She no longer needed this symbol.
She had found true living water.
She had found the Messiah!!!
She would put her trust in Him rather than a waterpot.
This was a real relationship, not just a religious symbol of it.
True spirituality was not to be found in the forms of either Samaritan or Jewish worship, but in the person she has just met.
It is quite biblical. James and John left their boat and their father and followed Jesus.
Elisha took his oxen, slew them, burned his plough and had a barbeque. There was no going back. The blind man left his cloak behind. All were symbols of the past ways of being and making do.
She was transformed, she left behind her waterpot and raced off to tell the others.
Come and see! Could he be the Messiah??
They all rush out to see for themselves and are convinced not only by her testimony but what they experience also. Jesus stays with them 2 days. The Gk word for staying implies a permanent relationship between Jesus and the Samaritans. They needed fresh revelation and were willing to receive it.
THE CONVERSATION
The process of this gives a wonderful picture of the way Jesus loves this woman. How he reveals himself to her without overwhelming her with himself. How this respects her dignity. This conversation is a masterful encounter of listening and counseling, inspired by revelations. It takes her from the only truth she knows and is making do with, to a spiritual awakening which transforms her and her whole belief system.
Jesus awakened this woman in several stages to the climactic revelation of His true nature.
He showed her he knew her and did not reject her on the basis of traditional convention.
Jesus did not rape the woman's process of understanding.
He enters her world.
He used what was familiar to her and perceived where she was in her spiritual faith.
He led her gently by metaphor, allowing her to gradually glimpse the astounding truth about who he was.
The analogy opened a deeper level, bypassing the mind to her heart.
He called something out of her, her thirst for the truth.
The woman's need was deep, just as the well was deep.
He affirmed for her who she was, and enabled her to come into a fuller understanding.
His revelation of her life opens her spiritual eyes. Jesus is gentle. He is also truthful.
She wants to respond, but cannot quite believe what her heart and intuition are telling her.
He never intimidates her. He never forces the truth on her.
He allows her to recognize him for herself. When the truth is confirmed in her mind and heart, a deep transformation from within takes place that issues with immediate response, she leaves her past behind and like a true disciple, brings others to the place to find true food and water.