The Woman at the Well

Originally posted on Jan 8, 2012

John 4:1-42

            For the last couple of months I’ve been drawn to the story of the Woman at the Well over and over. I don’t really know why except that God must have something to teach to me. All I know is that I could read this passage over and over. Something in it just pulls me in and it amazes me the things God is showing me. Things I had never thought of before. I still have a lot from to learn from it, but I wanted to share a few things that God has been opening my heart to.

            This passage got me thinking about what life was like for this woman. It’s a short chapter so there’s not a lot of information.  You have to look between the lines a little to catch a glimpse of her life and even then its only speculation. What I’ve written below only gives an idea of what I think she was thinking and feeling.

Now he had to go through Samaria. ⁵ So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶ Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

             ⁷ When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” ⁸ (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

-John 4:4-8

One commentator states that there several wells closer to town but she headed for the furthest one. It makes me wonder why. Was she trying to avoid the other women as they headed for the well? Here was a woman who had been divorced five times and now she was living with a man who was not her husband. She had been kicked aside so many times, had been told over and over that she wasn’t wanted. She probably thought she wasn’t good for much and didn’t deserve more then she had out of life.

If anyone had asked her ten, fifteen years ago if she’d be living with a man outside marriage she would have emphatically said no, but life had happened and it had worn away at the woman she had been.  In its place, it had left a woman scarred and broken. To the world, she showed a woman who didn’t care what people thought. She told herself it was easier that way, it hurt less. It didn’t matter that it was lie, that deep inside she bled every time they taunted or ignored her, when men dropped her on the wayside as soon as they found something better.  All that really mattered was that no one saw how deeply they’d wounded her. She may not have acknowledged it but deep inside, under the all scars, all she really wished for was for someone to want and need her, but life had taught her dreams never come true. So she moved through life putting up walls in an unsuccessful attempt to stop the world from hurting her again.

Life passed by, and then on one ordinary day at an ordinary well, Jesus showed up.  He knew about her before he ever showed up at that well. He knew about her heartrending pain. How her life seemed to stretch out before her like a barren wasteland. How everyday it was an effort just put one foot in front of the other. How little by little she was dying of thirst, never knowing how to quench its fire. But Jesus knew the answer and so he came and met her in the everyday moments of her life.

She woke up that day and went about life just as she did every day; nothing extraordinary happened that morning to warn her life would never be the same. At noon she headed for the well avoiding the other women, it’s not as if they’d talk to her anyway, even if they did it would only be cutting remarks. 

Finally, after a long trek, she reaches the well only to find a man, a Jew, sitting on the edge of the well. She cringes inside and considers for a moment coming back later, but she knows she needs the water. She doesn’t relish the thought of the long walk back, only to come back again later, so she hefts her jug higher and heads for the well. She keeps her head down and walks quickly to the opposite side of the well.

“Could I have a drink?” a voice speaks. The woman looks up in confusion looking around for the person he is speaking to only to realize there is no one there but her and the man.  She cautiously speaks to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?”

Let’s pause for a moment and look at what Jesus was doing. He didn’t jump in and start cramming his message down her throat; instead, he draws her attention with a question. It doesn’t seem like much but he knew it’d get her attention. Here was a man, a Jew, asking a Samaritan, a woman no less, for a drink of water. Jews didn’t talk to Samaritans, especially not a woman. But now that he had her attention, he could slowly draw her in and capture her curiosity before leading her to the ultimate goal– her need for God.

I can just imagine the thoughts racing through her head as she stared at him incredulously, “Why was this man asking me for a drink? Why is he even talking to me? Was he crazy? Should I run? If I scream, will anyone hear me? WHAT is going on?!  Maybe, even as these thoughts raced through her head, she edges a little further away from him.

To her surprise, Jesus speaks to her AGAIN! “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.”

Well settles that she decides. He really is crazy! He’s talking about some “living water,” what is that? I mean he doesn’t even have a bucket! (I wonder if Jesus chuckled a little inside at that moment knowing what was going through her head?) And so she scoffs, “Sir 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?”

I imagine he smiled at her as he spoke, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

This draws her attention, despite her belief he might be a little crazy. If such water did exist, she would never have to haul water again and best of all she’d never have to encounter the women on her way either!

Jesus knew about this desire, but while he cared about her physical wants and desires, he cared more about the spiritual and emotional. He knew he could fulfill the greater thirst within her, her thirst to be accepted for who she was flaws and all. She wanted an unconditional love and as he sat on that dusty well, that is what he offered her.  Here was a woman no one wanted, a woman no one wanted to associate with, and yet he started up a conversation with her because he cared. He loved her despite the scars, insecurities, anger, and the hidden and not so hidden sins. He wanted to fill her barren life with abundance and goodness. And so he reached out and offered the one thing that would give life to that landscape--his living water.

Despite this, he knows she still doesn’t understand so he tells her to go and bring her husband.

Instantly shame fills her and she hangs her head a little lower. She can barely get the words out past the shame blocking her throat. “I have no husband,” she tells him.

“I know,” says the man “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 blushes in shame and wishes the ground would open up and swallow her. But wait, she pauses. How could he know? He is a stranger here, how does he know these things about her? Her eyes widen in shock, could it be that he is a prophet? Could she be standing here talking to a prophet of God?!

Jesus stopped in the middle of the busyness of life to reach out to a woman desperately thirsty for God.  He knew her need and dropped everything for her. I like how Amy Nappa says it in her book “Thirsty”:

“It’s almost as if Jesus made a note in his appointment book: ‘Thursday, meet the woman at the well. Don’t be late.’…  He went out of his way to wait for her. And he does the same for you and me today, finding us in those unexpected places and moments.

Why did God choose that day, and that place, to open the floodgates of heaven and pour out his love into her soul? To let her go thirsty through so many years of heartbreak and husbands and debasement before her community of peers? I honestly don’t know. Who knows why God does anything, really? But I do know this: He came. And when she wasn’t there, he waited patiently for her until her own need drove her straight to his presence. And he met her, of all places, by the side of an ancient, dirty, much used, mundane, grimy well.”

He is meeting us in the everyday moments of our lives, seeking to fill the thirst we have.  Each of us broken inside in some way or another, each of us has a barren waste land that we travel , even if we don’t always knowledge it. Jesus is waiting there beside his well of living water for us to come to him in the midst of our busy day so he can pour that living water out on our dry parched life.

I find that in my life I tend to walk by that well over and over without ever stopping. I think I’m doing fine. I don’t feel my thirst until I stop for a sip and realize that I’m thirstier then I realized. So please stop for moment and let Jesus fill up the dry parched landscape of your life. Trust me when I say the encounter with Jesus is worth more than anything else you might be missing as you stop in the midst of your busy life. He’s sitting there patiently waiting; will you stop and let him fill you up?

There is so much more to this story. So much more her story, to what she learned, and how Jesus used her to bring her small town to himself, but I’m going to stop here for now. Hopefully in the near future I’ll get to the rest of her story!

“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” John 4:13