MORE HOPE

One Woman's Journey

One of the best ways to show this in the life of Jesus is to look at what happens after the words given above. For the people of the first century, who were accustomed to the Hebrew Scriptures, a story of Jesus meeting a woman at a well would have great interest.

• Read John 4: 7-9. A Jew would become ceremonially unclean if he used a drinking vessel of a Samaritan…so for a Samaritan, and a woman at that, to be asked by a JEW if he could use her drinking vessel…WOW – that’s huge. Jews held that all Samaritans were “unclean.”
  
• This has radical implications. We’ve been talking about Jesus hanging out, spending time with people in the mainstream of life. This is it! He’s not in the temple, near the temple, with temple people. Just him and a woman. A Jew and a Samaritan. God and a sinner.
  
• And she really is a sinner! There’s a reason she was at the well at high noon – because she didn’t want anyone else to see her! Her past was not something to be proud of, and thus she went at the off-time to prevent major ridicule from the local women.

Jesus’ question: “Will you give me a drink?” was actually a really big question. Her response is candid: “How can you, a Jew, request a drink from me, a Samaritan, and a woman at that?”

• Jesus was setting aside powerful social conventions and ignoring centuries of hostility between Jews and Samaritans. Jews do not associate with Samaritans. They both claimed the distinction of being the people of God. The Samaritans believed that their land, and especially Mount Gerizim, was particularly holy and set apart for God. They held on to the traditions of their forefathers, especially the places that God appeared in the past. That’s why Jacob in the Old Testament was an important figure. His land, his well, which he had dug so long ago, was seen as special.

Go to verse 10. Jesus changes everything in these next verses. This woman doesn’t know who Jesus is quite yet.

• By the way, we are not told that Jesus received a drink. Though thirsty, he passed that up so he could reach out to this Samaritan woman.
  
• And so they have this dialogue…Jesus sounds a little like a smart aleck in verse 10 and she basically accuses him of arrogance in 11 and 12. But let’s cut to the chase – the woman just wanted some water!

Did you know that water was a precious commodity in those days?

That’s why this is significant. Water matters, and specifically, still water in a well is like an abyss, like the horrible underground.

• But Jesus is not talking about still water from a well. He’s not talking about the abyss. He desires to give her, and give you, water that “will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
  
• This expression, allomenou (trying saying that 3 times!) is a verb in the Greek meaning “to spring up” or “to leap.” Jesus is not talking about the abyss. He’s talking about a life that springs up, that leaps, that jumps, that is vigorous.
  
• She can get water anytime. But now she can receive something MORE.