A Meeting at High Noon – John 4:5-42

A text – John 4:5-42 

⁵ So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶ Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

⁷ A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” ⁸ (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) ⁹ 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.) 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.” 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?” 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.” 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.”

¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” ¹⁷ The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to 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!” ¹⁹ The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” 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.” 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.” ²⁶ Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

²⁷ Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with 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.

³¹ Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” ³² But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” ³³ So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” ³⁴ Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. ³⁵ Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. ³⁶ The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. ³⁷ For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ ³⁸ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”

³⁹ Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” ⁴⁰ So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. ⁴¹ And many more believed because of his word. ⁴² 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.”

A reflection:

The story of the woman at the well and the story of Nicodemus are right next to each other in the gospel of John, and I think they appear in no other gospels. Perhaps, Bible scholars say, we readers/hearers are meant to compare and contrast them. Nicodemus, one of the high elite of the Jewish faith, appears right next to the Samaritan woman, someone from a tribe formerly related to the Jews but then ostracized because they worshiped in different ways using only the first five books of scripture. A member of the highly educated and respected descendants of Abraham is found in the gospel of John next to a member of the nation disrespected and even despised and debased children of Abraham. And here, at Jacob’s well (Abraham’s grandson’s well), in broad daylight (as opposed to Nicodemus’s “by night” meeting) Jesus converses with her, going back and forth with her, she actively asking questions, he telling her everything about herself. It is this woman at the well who converts an entire city, who invites Jesus in, who amazes his disciples, opening their eyes to see, if they could, Samaritans differently than they had ever seen them before.

When Jesus comes to us, he surprises us and changes what we think about people around us, and that in turn changes how we behave and who we are able to talk with and be there for. That in turn will open up avenues for talking about God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit with new people in new ways.

Did Jesus intentionally wait at noon in the heat for this woman at this well? Probably. Did he argue back and forth with her to test her? I don’t think so. I think so few people took her seriously or even engaged with her that when this man at the well gave her the gift and energy of conversation about important things, she just enjoyed the argument and let it sink in that he might actually be who he said he was. A little incredulous and very surprised, she left her jar behind and ran back through the heat to the town to get others to come to meet him.  And look what happened. Even the disciples were transformed by the encounter and their stay in Sychar.

A prayer:

Lord God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you for sending your son to speak to both the elevated and the lowly. Help us to remember that when you come to us, we might be surprised and even unnerved that you care about people we do not like, and you help us to care, too. Amen.