The Woman at the Well

It is the middle of the day, the hottest hour, when no one with good sense is out drawing water. And yet here comes a woman to the well. She comes alone, and the loneliness is not accidental. She has a history that has made her an outsider even among her own people. She is not expecting a conversation. She is certainly not expecting the one she gets.

Jesus is already sitting at the well when she arrives. John tells us He "must needs go through Samaria", a route most Jewish teachers avoided, because Jews and Samaritans shared nothing but contempt for each other. But Jesus takes the long way through the difficult place, because there is a woman there who needs to be found. He asks her for a drink of water, and in doing so, He crosses every social boundary of the day, religious, ethnic, and moral. She is stunned: "How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria?"

His answer turns the whole conversation upside down. He is not the thirsty one. She is. "If thou knewest the gift of God," He says, "and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water." She has come to draw water and leave. He has come to offer her something that will mean she never thirsts again, not a physical spring, but a well of living water springing up into eternal life. He is not speaking of hydration. He is speaking of the deep, unquenchable longing in the human soul that no relationship, no achievement, and no religion has ever fully satisfied.

Then comes the moment that changes everything. He tells her about her own life, five husbands, and the man she is with now is not her husband. He does not say it with cruelty. He says it with the calm of someone who has known her longer than she has known herself. She is not shamed into faith; she is seen into it. She runs back to her village and says, "Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?"

For the new reader: notice that Jesus chose this woman, unlikely, overlooked, living on the margins, as the first person in John's Gospel to whom He openly declared Himself the Messiah. For the seasoned believer: where have you been drawing from the wrong wells? The living water is still being offered, and the offer is still free.