a woman finds jesus at the well - john 4

A WOMAN FINDS JESUS AT THE WELL
(John 4)

She was tired. Really tired. She had done nothing but scrabble all of her life, it seemed. She also knew she was getting near the end of her beauty, too. It was getting harder and harder to attract a man.

She needed a man, too. She couldn’t own property herself and her house was in a trust that had to be administered by a man or she was out in the cold.

The one she had now was already becoming unsatisfied with her. She knew he was probably running around on her. But, after all, they weren’t married. There was not really anything to make him stay.

Not that being married would have done any good to her. The first five husbands all left her. She really wasn’t quite sure why. She was good looking, she cooked well, she kept a good house. But she also had lousy choice in men. All of them, everyone, was the wrong person for her.

She supposed that part of it was her name. Rahab. Who would name a child after a prostitute in the Scriptures? Her mother was not always the smartest person in the world, either. You could just ask Rahab’s sisters, Delilah and Jezebel. Of all the names her mother could have chosen, those were the worst. Her mother was not the sharpest stick in the woodpile.

Of course, her sister Delilah was doing alright. She had picked a good man and had a family in nearby Sebaste. She didn’t see her sister much. They just didn’t have anything in common and, truth be told, her sister was embarrassed by her. They never had really gotten along. Her sister always wanted something better.

Jezebel had died in childbirth when she was just 16. She had gotten pregnant and the baby was breech. They had a lot in common as children. She missed Jezebel.

She had made a life of sorts here in Sychar. She had thought at times of leaving Samaria completely, maybe moving to Jerusalem or Ceasarea. But she had no idea what she would do there. All she did here was menial labor: cleaning, a little sewing, anything dirty a woman could do. She barely made ends meet. And Hosea (what a name, especially considering what kind of woman she was) didn’t do much but drink at the tavern with his friends and gamble her money away.

Except for the fact that she would be by herself, she wouldn’t really mind him being gone. He came home every evening, sometimes in time for supper, more often not, usually half drunk. He’d grab her and spend a few minutes in bed then he’d go to sleep. No real talking or visiting or anything.

Add to that the fact that the man who was put in charge of her property by her fifth husband before he died, took his fee by visiting her during the day when Hosea was gone. It was so degrading.

She was so lonely.

None of the women in town really liked her. Of course, how could they? She was a “fallen woman.” Or at least that is what some of them called her. she had been married five times, and had lived with a succession of men in between. Now she was living with Hosea. And things were not going well. One thing you could not say about her life: she was not blessed.

She began to cook and realized she hadn’t gotten the water for today. She looked at the sun and realized it was about noon. That was the time of day when she went to the well for her water. She would rather go in the morning when it was cool, but she had to endure the contemptuous comments and looks of the other women. They never were loud or anything, but she knew.

It had been that way since she was young.

Her problem was that she was so beautiful when she was young. She always had the eyes of the young men and a lot of the other women resented that. She did so well that she got married for the first time when she was just 14. Too young, really, but the young man was so insistent. She thought she had made a good catch, but, as it turned out, he got in trouble with the law and left, divorcing her before he did.

The second husband was at the age of 17, the third at 21, the fourth at 22 and the fifth died when she was 29.

For a while, it looked as if that third marriage was going to be good and long. But, like all the rest, it turned. He found someone younger and prettier.

It was a sad blessing of sorts that she had never had children.

She had lived around with men for the past several years, but here she was at 35. Her looks were going, she was getting tired, she had developed a bad foot that hurt her if she walked very far or stood very long.

She had even tried prostitution. She figured it wasn’t so different that being married all those times, but it was scary. You never knew what the men would do to you, or how they might hurt you. She had a scar on her cheek from one man who liked to hit her while they were having sex.

And, of course, she couldn’t go to the authorities about it. As far as they were concerned, she was a non-person. As long as she kept a low profile, she was okay.

Now it was time to go to the well and get the water. She looked over at the well area and saw a bunch of men, but it seemed that they were leaving. That made it easier. She could just go get the water and come home and cook.

She balanced the pot on her head and walked over to the well. It was a ways outside of town. Every time she went, she would think of Jacob working so hard for Rachel. Of course, he got tricked into marrying her sister, Leah, too. She identified with Leah, unloved and alone, used for one purpose, and then left alone the rest of the time.

She got almost there when she saw a man sitting by himself on the edge of the well. Her first impulse was to go back home, but she had to have the water. It wasn’t like anyone brought it into the house for you.

She held her head up and tried to appear normal. What would it be like just to walk through a crowd like a normal person? Hello, how are you, nice day, how are the children, yada, yada.

But she came to the well and tried to look like she was in a hurry.

As she was bringing the bucket up out of the well to pour it into her jar, the man spoke to her.

It startled her. Except for Hosea, no man had spoken to her since she gave up prostitution. And then they rarely spoke. Just grabbed and made stupid noises and left, throwing some money on her dresser.

But this man spoke. He said, May I have a drink of water?

She stopped and looked at him. He wasn’t a bad looking man, a little younger than she. And he was Jewish. She could tell by the prayer shawl he wore around his shoulders. Besides, Jewish men had a look about them. Usually she would say arrogant. But he didn’t look arrogant. Very self-confident, yes, but not proud like so many of them did.

She thought about batting her eyelashes at him and being a little coquettish, but then she stopped. There was something different about him.

He sat there waiting for her to answer. What could she do? She was lower class, sure, but she wasn’t ever impolite. As ignorant of names as her mother was, she always taught her daughters to be polite, especially to strangers.

But her curiosity got the better of her. She had to ask. Why are you, a Jewish man, talking to me, a Samaritan woman?

Men didn’t usually talk to strange women, especially Jewish men, and for sure especially not a Samaritan woman. They were so priggish.

But he talked to her and looked at her like she was just a normal person, like she had a husband and was – I don’t know, she thought – like she was real.

Then he said something so weird. If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.

Now what did that mean? She told him that it was obvious that he had nothing to draw the water with and it was pretty deep. He surely couldn’t reach in and scoop some out. So how was he going to give her some water? And living water on top of it all.

She asked him, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?

He gave her the oddest answer. Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

Now, if that were possible, that would be great. She wouldn’t have to come to the well anymore and endure the looks and sniffing of the women.

So she said, Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.

He looked at her for a moment and then told her to call her husband and come back. She figured maybe he felt he had crossed some line in talking with her. In the regular life, a man could get in a lot of trouble just talking to some strange woman.

She batted her eyes this time and tried to look younger. She used to be able to do that well. She said, I have no husband. She tried really hard to look unmarried.

He shocked her. “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

She was afraid. This was no ordinary man, and all of a sudden she felt undressed. Not like he was looking at her lustfully or anything like that, but like he could see every flaw she had, every thought she was thinking.

What would she do?

She knew what she would do. If there was anything these Jews loved to do, it was show people how smart they were. The guys down at the synagogue were always sitting around talking about stuff that no one else understood. They thought it made them look so intelligent.

She would ask him one of those questions that many talked about.

“Sir,” she said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

She didn’t really understand what this meant, but she knew it was a big topic of conversation at the center of town. People got to talking about this and talked for hours. If she could get him off the topic of her life and onto something else, she would be relieved.

Maybe then, too she could kind of slide away and go home.

His answer, though, hit her hard.

He said, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”

In other words, who cares? His answer completely took away the question. It didn’t answer it, it just made it sound foolish. She had never heard anyone, ever, give an answer that was as good and stopped the conversation more than his did.

Not only that, it was also the answer a man of God would give. But he couldn’t be a man of God. If he were, he sure wouldn’t be talking to her. If he were a man of God, he would have gone into town and found the important people, not out at the well with someone like her.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the group of men come back. They had evidently gone into Sychar to get some food. They were looking at the man and at her and looked a combination of offended, embarrassed and confused. Mostly they just milled around a little waiting for an opportunity to talk to the man.

Rahab was a little afraid. The next question she asked, surprised even her.

She said, “I know that Messiah is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

Then the man declared, “I who speak to you am he.”

This is the Messiah? A man who can’t even get his own drink of water? But she knew, in her heart, down in that place where that small grain of hope still lived, that it was true. This was him, the One, the Messiah.

What could she do? She felt like running around and hollering. She caught hold of herself, thought for a moment, set the jar down and ran back to town past the little group of men. She barely noticed them.

Rahab went to Hosea first and told him what had happened. He was already a little drunk and laughed at her. The men began to take up his lead and jeer a little, but she was just too insistent. No! she said. I talked to him and he told me everything I had ever done. He read me like a book.

One man started to comment that she was an awful short book, but one of the others – Elijah, she thought his name was – said, Wait. Why don’t we go out to see for ourselves? It isn’t like we have a lot to do. She could tell that something hit them, a need to investigate.

The whole bunch went out with her kind of trailing behind them. They talked to the man – his name was Jesus, one of them said – and knew he was real. He was the Messiah, come from God. They knew it and they believed him.

The whole group talked for a couple of hours. The men with Jesus stood away just a little, just like Jews, too good to talk to normal folk. But Jesus talked, and she loved him. Maybe he would stay in town for a while and she and he could have discussions. He was, after all, the first man to talk to her like she was a real person in a long time.

But Jesus said he was going. The men begged him to stay and talk a little while longer. Spend the night, have supper with us, come downtown and talk.

But no, he was going. He had to get home to Galilee.

As they went back, she bragged a bit about the fact that she was the one who had brought them to Jesus. Finally, Elijah turned to her and said, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”

That was okay with Rahab, though. She had found something that she was looking for. She had found a piece that had been missing from her heart for a long time.

Hosea seemed like he was really thinking about it, too. Maybe things would work out. Whatever, she found she wasn’t worried as much, anymore.

Whatever the rest of them said, she had found Jesus first.

Of course, she had to go back to the well to get her jar. But she found she didn’t mind as much.