It’s easy to forget that Jesus was flesh and blood like you and I. He was fully God, but also fully human. He felt pleasure and pain, joy and sadness, hunger and thirst – just like you and me. Today’s Gospel passage tells us Jesus and his disciples were travelling through Palestine – from Judea in the south to Galilee in the north. A journey that took them through the region of Samaria. A journey that left Christ and his companions thirsty, hot and hungry in the heat of the day. So while his friends went in search of refreshment, Jesus sat down by a well and ask a passer-by for a drink – nothing noteworthy in that, you might think. But what is surprising is who he asked for water. Not a rich and respectable Jewish man, like Nicodemus last week – but a woman from Samaria. As verse 9 tells us, Jews like Jesus did not normally “associate with Samaritans”. Some Jews believed that to come into contact with a Samaritan made them ritually unclean. Many even avoided Samaria at altogether, and took a long detour along the East Bank of the Jordan to travel between Galilee and Judea.
Living Water
But Jesus did not keep this Samaritan woman at a distance, did he? Because he begins by asking her for a drink, and ends by offering her “living water” in return. Its important to recognise that the ‘living water’ that Jesus offered to the Samaritan woman wasn’tliquid water, like we might get from a tap or buy in a bottle. The Samaritan woman initially makes this mistake, doesn’t she? She assumes that Jesus is simply offering her access to a supply of clean water that will make her daily trips to the well unnecessary.
So Jesus proceeds to explain that the water he’s offering is even more precious than what comes out of a tap. He’s even offering her something more remarkable than the water from a rock which we heard about in our Old Testament reading. What Jesus is offering is “living” water that will “well up to eternal life” (v.14). Incredibly, Jesus is offering salvation to this Samaritan woman. He is offering to give her the Holy Spirit – a Spirit who will renew her heart, save her soul, and endow her with everlasting life!
What makes Jesus’ offer even more astonishing is that it was offered to a woman with a complicated personal history. – she has had at least six male partners and seems to have been something of social outcast. That may explain why she was collecting water on her own in the heat of the day. The wonderful truth of the Christian Gospel is that Jesus makes the same offer of salvation to complicated people like you and I as well. Jesus knows every detail of our past failures, he knows every twist and turn of our own imperfect lives – yet still he offers us God’s grace and mercy. He offers it to us for free and forever. By faith, we too can taste Christ’s living water.
Worship in Spirit and Truth
If you follow the news, you will have noticed that so many of the world’s trouble spots come down to a conflict over territory. Whether its Greenland, the Chagos Islands or the Dombas in Ukraine, nations squabble over land for their people to live in, or over land with a strategic location, or over land endowed with precious natural resources. Two thousand years ago, the major geographical dispute between the Samaritans and the Jews was religious in nature – where was the right place to praise God?
It was this controversy that the Samaritan woman raises with Jesus in verse 20 of our reading – possibly to change the subject of the conversation from her own personal life, or because she saw him as a wise prophet worth consulting on this important subject. Whatever her motive, she says: “our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place we must worship is in Jerusalem”.
As a Samaritan, this woman believed Mount Gerizim in Samaria was where God should be worshipped, while the Jews claimed their Temple in Jerusalem was the world’s most holy place. But Jesus’ reply to her question cuts through this centuries’ old controversy. “The time has now come”, he says, for God to be worshipped “in spirit and in truth” – not at any specific site or city. Now that he has come, God can be approached anywhere through him. To honour and serve God, people don’t need to know the right place, they need to know the right person.
In contrast to other religions, Christianity says we don’t need to go to a special place like Jerusalem, Mecca or the river Ganges to truly worship God. Rather, by becoming a disciple of Christ, anyone, anywhere can worshiping God in spirit and in truth. To truly know and serve God the Samaritan woman didn’t need to go to Mount Gerizim or journey to Jerusalem. She simply needed faith in Jesus Christ. And I’m sure you noticed that during the course of her conversation with Jesus, the Samaritan woman did indeed come to faith! Her eyes were progressively opened to perceive Jesus’ true identity:
- At first she simply saw a tired and thirsty man.
- Then she recognised him as an intriguing religious teacher.
- His supernatural knowledge of her past then convinced her that he was a prophet.
- Finally, she came to fully appreciate him as the Messiah, as the God-given Redeemer of the World!
Conclusion
As I close, today’s passage is a reminder to recognise Jesus for who he really is: It’s no good to dismiss him as simply an historical figure; Its quite mistaken to merely call him a moral teacher; and its inadequate to simply give him the status of a prophet. Like the Samaritan woman we need to receive Jesus as the Christ, the Son through whom we can worship God the Father in spirit and in truth.
And if we have come to Christ for ourselves, we need to tell others about him – we need to be his witnesses to the world! Because if we were to read on a couple of extra verses in our passage, we would see that after meeting Jesus the woman dropped everything and ran to tell her whole town about him! (v.28-29). Because of her testimony, many in that Samaritan community came to believe in Jesus too. Many came to recognise him as the “Saviour of the world” (v.42). This woman’s inspiring example should motivate us to tell our own family, friends and neighbours about Jesus. After meeting with Jesus at a well, just one Samaritan woman was used by God to bring salvation to her whole community. Think what he could achieve in Ashton and Mouldsworth through our words and witness today!