jesus and the samaritan woman

Today's Reflections 

       

jesus and the samaritan woman 

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Jn 4:5-42 [or 4:5-15, 19b-26, 39a, 40-42]

⁵[Jesus] came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶Jacob’s well was there. Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well. It was about noon.

⁷A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” ⁸His disciples had gone into the town to buy food. ⁹The Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” (For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.) ¹⁰Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who 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 do not even have a bucket and the cistern is deep; where then can you get this living water? ¹²Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this cistern and drank from it himself with his children and his flocks?” ¹³Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; ¹⁴but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” ¹⁵The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water. …

¹⁹“I can see that you are a prophet. ²⁰Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain; but you people say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.” ²¹Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²²You people worship what you do not understand; we worship what we understand, because salvation is from the Jews. ²³But the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him. ²⁴God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth.” ²⁵The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Anointed; when he comes, he will tell us everything.” ²⁶Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking with you.”

³⁹Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him. ⁴⁰When the Samaritans came to him, they invited him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. ⁴¹Many more began to believe in him because of his word, ⁴²and they said to the woman, “We no longer believe because of your word; for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.”

AN INVITATION TO RETURN. While John’s narrative conforms to the pattern of “biblical encounters by the well” that end in a wedding, there are marked differences in his story. It begins with the meeting at an unusual hour—about noon—while women normally draw water in the early morning or the late hour in the afternoon. Probably the woman chooses this hour because she is less likely to meet anyone there. Why? Her marital situation does not endear her even to the Samaritan villagers. She wants to avoid hearing them say what Jesus will tell her.

The Samaritan woman’s marital situation makes her the image of unfaithful Israel and Judah whom the Lord plans to allure back to himself as we read in the book of the prophet Hosea. God will speak to “her heart,” that is, espouse the people back to himself. It is he, the Lord, who is the “true husband”—not the Baals and other idols. Now, Jesus comes to restore this broken alliance. He makes of the Samaritan woman and the entire village who believe in him God’s very own people.