23. The Woman at the Well

When Jesus learned the Pharisees had heard he was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself didn’t baptize, but his disciples), he left Judea, passing through Samaria on his way to Galilee. He came to Sychar, a city of Samaria near the land Jacob had given to his son, Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down by it. In the middle of the day, a woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus, whose disciples had gone into the city to buy food, said to her, “Give me a drink.” 

The woman replied, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” (Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)

Jesus said, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who said, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

The woman said, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father, Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself, as did his children, and his livestock?”

Jesus answered her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water I give will never thirst again; but the water that I give will become a well of water springing up to eternal life.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I don’t get thirsty, and have to keep coming all the way here.”

Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband to come here.”

The woman answered, “I have no husband.”

Jesus said to her, “You said well, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands; and the one you now have is not your husband. You have spoken truly.”

The woman said to him, “I see you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say Jerusalem is the place for people to worship.”

Jesus said to her, “Believe me, the hour comes, when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, will you worship the Father. You worship what you don’t know. We worship what we know; for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming and already here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such to be his worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah comes, he who is called Christ. When he has come, he will declare to us all things.”

Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who speaks to you.” At this, his disciples came. They marveled that he was speaking with a woman; yet no one said, “What are you looking for?” or, “Why do you speak with her?” So the woman left her water pot, and went away into the city, and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”

Reflections

The disastrous marital history of the woman was probably not much of a secret: only a social outcast would go to the well for water in the hottest part of the day. Nevertheless, the woman was amazed that Jesus knew much more than she imagined. How much of your life is secret? Is it scary to think that God knows all, or amazing to think that God still loves you?

Prayer: Let me never forget, Lord, there are no secrets I can hide from you.