The Gospel of John relates an encounter that Jesus had with a Samaritan woman. Jesus and His disciples were traveling through Samaria and they stopped in the town of Sychar to rest and eat. While the disciples went into town to buy food, weary and worn from His travels Jesus sat down by a well known as Jacob’s well.
A Samaritan woman came to the well to draw water. Jews hated Samaritans! They considered them half-breeds and the Samaritans knew it. It was unusual for Jews to even travel through Samaria, as they would often cross over the Jordan River to avoid Samaria altogether and therefore avoid any contact with the despised peoples. Yet, here was Jesus sitting at the well right in the middle of a race of people His race was supposed to hate, and He turns to ask the woman a question.
“Will you give me a drink?”
Jesus has actually spoken to this woman which in His culture was wrong on so many levels. First of all, she was a Samaritan. Second of all, she was a woman and Jewish religious teachers did not have conversations with women, especially in public. And now He has asked her for something to drink. For Jesus to take water and drink from any vessel that she would have offered Him would have made Him ceremonially unclean.
Regardless of the prejudices and at the risk of becoming “unclean,” Jesus asks her for a drink. Was He really so thirsty that He was willing to push aside all societal propriety just to have His own thirst quenched? I do not doubt His physical thirst, but I believe there was so much more in the question He asked than just a request for a drink of water. Wrapped in that simple question was Jesus’ immeasurable love and total acceptance.
While scripture does not give us the circumstances, it does reveal to us that this woman has had 5 husbands. I suspect that she had experienced great rejection and abandonment in her life. She may have even felt that she was exactly what the Jews said of her: a dirty, half-breed. With His actions and His words Jesus proclaims that she is none of that. He asks to receive a drink of water from someone who is considered completely unworthy and unclean and thereby extends His love and acceptance of her regardless of who she is and what she has done.
Jesus was not constrained by the social norms of His day. He did not allow society to dictate to Him who He engaged in conversation with or how He should behave. Later on in John’s Gospel Jesus explains that He can only do what He sees His Father doing. Jesus came to give us a clearer picture of the Father. He came to break down the barriers that man had created that served to separate people according to class, race, sex, social standing, financial success, etc. Jesus did not come for some, but He came for ALL!
Jesus is not concerned with our “packaging,” nor is He concerned with our past. Jesus is concerned with our hearts and if our hearts are a broken mess, He wants to make them new again. Jesus asked the Samaritan woman for a drink, but what He really wanted was to GIVE her Living Water. And that is His offer to us today ~ to take our brokenness, our pain, our anger, our disappointments, our failures and fill up all the emptiness with His Living Water.
Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. Psalm 34:8
No comments:
Post a Comment