Our text says that Jesus “had to go through Samaria.”  This wasn’t an absolute necessity though.  There was another way He could have traveled.  The necessity was not a result of geography, but a result of Jesus’ mission.  There was a compelling divine necessity.  Jesus had come as “the light of the world” and it was imperative that this light shine to others besides the Jewish people.  So He heads through Samaria.  Jesus is tired from the journey and so He sits down by a well.  This wasn’t any well, this was Jacob’s well.  Jacob of course was the great Old Testament figure.  John says it was about the sixth hour, which means noontime.  So it was no doubt hot.  Not the normal time to be drawing water from the well.  Jesus and His disciples would have the spot to themselves no doubt.  So He sends the disciples into town to get some food and since He is tired, He sits down by the well. 

          He isn’t there long when He sees a woman approaching with a water jar.  “This is an unusual time for a woman to be coming to draw water”, Jesus says to Himself.  Usually people got their water early in the morning or at sunset when it is cooler, rather than drawing at midday.  Perhaps it was the woman’s reputation that was the explanation—she may have chosen this time and place to avoid the other women.  Anyway, here comes the woman.  She could tell He was a Jew by the way He was dressed.  She was silent.  She wasn’t about to speak with Him.  Jesus, being the friendly evangelist He is, figures this is a good time to strike up a conversation with the woman.  Maybe He can even get a chance to invite the woman to church sometime.  Apparently someone had already led her to Christ, at least in one sense, because here she is.  While she was getting ready to lower her bucket into the well, Jesus decides to make some small talk: “Will you give me a drink?” He asks. 

          The Samaritan woman is taken aback by this question from the man.  Jesus is aware though that the way to get to a soul is often to ask a service of it.  But no doubt He really was thirsty as well.  The woman is startled and surprised by the request and says, “What?  You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman.  How can you ask me for a drink?”  After all, Jews considered Samaritans unclean.  They wouldn’t even use the same drinking vessel that had been handled by a Samaritan.  Jesus though, takes the conversation to a higher level.  “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” (4:10).  The woman takes Jesus very literally here and says, “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?”  In Jewish speech the phrase “living water” meant water that was flowing, like water in a river or stream, as opposed to water that was stagnant, as in a cistern or well.  Living water was considered to be better.  Therefore, when Jesus said He could give her “living water” the woman quite naturally thought of a stream.  She wanted to know where Jesus had found it.  It seems she may have even considered His comment a bit blasphemous, for it was a claim to have done something greater than her ancestor Jacob had been able to do. 

          Jesus though, in offering living water, is referring to the new life He brings.  Had the woman been aware of the realities of the situation in which she found herself, and especially of the fact that she was speaking to the One God had sent to give life to the world, the asking would have been the other way around.  The living water that flows from within the believer is later explained in terms of the Holy Spirit, and that is the idea here.  Jesus is speaking of the new life that He will give, a life connected with the activity of the Spirit.  So He says to the woman, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.  Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (4:13-14).  What water can do for your body, Jesus can do for your heart.  Like water, Jesus can go where we can’t.  Water can satisfy and quench our thirst, and so can Jesus.  We thirst after so many things that really can’t satisfy.  Jesus truly quenches our spiritual thirst.  He says, “If anyone is thirsty, let them come to me and drink.  Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within them” (Jn. 7:37-38).  Notice He says “Come to me.”  Not come to my church or come to this system of beliefs, but “come to me.”

          Jesus’ response contrasts the impermanent result of drinking water from the well with the permanent consequences of receiving water from Him.  Water from Jacob’s well might quench a thirst, but it could not prevent thirst from rising again.  The living water that Jesus gives is such that those who receive it are permanently satisfied.  Now this doesn’t mean we never thirst for God or desire to go deeper in our relationship with Him.  We should be like King David who wrote in Psalm 63: “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”   David uses physical thirst as a metaphor for spiritual longing.  Both are caused by a deeply felt need.  Both, if not quenched, if not satisfied, can lead to death—one physical, the other spiritual.  I wonder this morning, do we thirst for God like David did?  Do we hunger and thirst for God like we are nomads in the desert?  Like the woman at the well, are we asking Jesus for living water even if we don’t quite understand what He even means? 

          The woman said to Jesus, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”  If the woman has any inkling of the meaning Jesus is giving the living water she chooses not to show it.  The woman here seems to be concerned with her personal convenience.  She wants the water so she won’t be thirsty again and have to keep coming to draw water.  It would be nice not to have the need to make frequent journeys to the well and go through the trouble of drawing water.  Like us, she wants a quick fix from Jesus.  She doesn’t know it is Jesus, which lets her off the hook a little, but we are certainly on the hook.  We still want the quick fix from Jesus.  We want the easy, simple life. 

          Jesus isn’t going to give it to her or us though, at least not right away.  In fact, things get worse for the woman before they get better.  Jesus decides to step things up a notch and so He says to her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”  It seems here He intends to bring her sins out into the open.  He wants to confront her with her sins and wants to deal with her sins, in spite of the fact that she would obviously rather not.  Again, we can probably see ourselves in the woman.  We can relate to her.  We would rather divert the conversation and would rather not talk about our sins.  The woman replies, “I have no husband.”  She’s tricky here, isn’t she?  She doesn’t lie, but she certainly isn’t going to offer any more information than she has to.  So in the fewest possible words she tries to stop a dangerous subject immediately.  Jesus’ reply though is devastating.  “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.”  Wow.  So much for the sugar-coated, nice, meek and mild Jesus.  Jesus knows all about her marital misadventures.  She has had more husbands than poor Elizabeth Taylor—let’s just say she has been unlucky when it comes to love.

          The woman here knows now that something is different about this man.  She admits that He is one up on her—surely not in spouses, but as far as knowledge goes.  “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet.  Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”  What Jesus has just said has forced on the woman the realization and confession that He is no ordinary person.  It is possible she was already considering the idea that this might be the Messiah, the Christ.  The only prophet the Samaritans acknowledged would come after Moses was the Messiah.  For her to speak of Jesus as a prophet is certainly a step in the right direction and a step down the path toward seeing Jesus as He truly is: the Messiah.  She still tries to change the subject though and so she brings up the current worship wars that were going on at the time.  “Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, in this place, but you Jews claim we must worship in Jerusalem.”  Perhaps the woman was genuinely interested in this topic though.  The right place for worship was a prominent topic of dispute between Samaritans and Jews.  She may have been truly interested in what this prophet would say about this ancient and bitter controversy.  But it seems more probable that the woman was just trying to change the subject again.  She wants to steer the conversation away from the unpleasant subject of her sin, so she introduces another distraction. 

          But this only opens the way for Jesus to speak of the essential nature of God and of the worship that should be offered to Him.  He says that genuine worship is spiritual and is not simply dependent on places and things.  He says, “God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth.”  The woman had appealed to the example of “our fathers”, but Jesus points her to the one Father:  “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.”  Jesus also says the Father seeks worshippers who worship in spirit and in truth.  We need complete sincerity and reality in our approach to God.  And Jesus says God seeks worshippers.  It is not simply that He accepts such worship when it is brought to Him.  He is a God of love, a God who seeks the best for people, and therefore a God who actively seeks them out. 

          The woman responds to all of this by saying, “I know that Messiah is coming.  When He comes, He will explain everything to us.”  Jesus responds with: “I who speak to you am He.”  Jesus here flat out says that He is the Messiah, the Christ.  Our English translations don’t do the Greek justice here.  The text literally has Jesus saying, “I that speak to you, I am.”  There is no “he” in the Greek.  It is just the “I am.”  Jesus here takes after His Father who said to Moses years before, “I am who I am.”  Jesus here at the well says that He also is the great “I am.”  Elsewhere in John’s gospel He will put it like this: “I and the Father are one” (10:30). 

Just after His affirmation that He is the Messiah, the disciples return.  It seems like they just missed the proclamation.  Imagine that?  Jesus blows His cover explicitly; one of the few times if not the only time before His trial where He admits He is the Messiah, and the disciples miss it.  I hope they got a good lunch for themselves.  They come back and they are surprised Jesus is speaking with a woman.  No rabbi back then would have carried on a conversation with a woman.  One of their sayings went like this: “A man shall not be alone with a woman in an inn, not even with his sister or his daughter, on account of what men might think.  A man shall not talk with a woman in the street, not even with his own wife, and especially not with another woman, on account of what men might say.”[i]   

What happens next is what I find fascinating.  John tells us that “leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, ‘Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did.  Could this be the Christ?”  She leaves her water jar there and takes off.  The woman had come to the well with the sole purpose of obtaining water.  It is an indication of the deep impression that Jesus makes on her that she leaves it there at the well and just takes off.  From one point of view the story is all about water.  The woman had come for literal water.  There was a discussion about wells and water.  Christ had offered her living water.  Now having found the water that alone satisfies the soul, the woman thinks no more of her water jar for the time being.  She came for natural water and left with spiritual water.  Think about what image best describes your heart.  How would you describe your spiritual state?  Are you like a water-drenched kid dancing in front of an open fire hydrant?  You just can’t get enough of Jesus?  He brings you joy and you live your life for Him and with Him?  His love and grace amazes you and keeps transforming you and shaping who you are?  Or are you like a dried up desert tumbleweed?  Blown here and there aimlessly, no direction for your life—in fact, not much life in you at all.  It has all been sucked dry from years of searching and living life your own way.  Which word picture best describes your life? 

The disciples turn out to be just like the woman was at first.  They urge Jesus to have some of the food they have gone to get.  “Rabbi, eat something” they say.  But Jesus says to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”  Imagine that?  Another cryptic saying like He used with the woman when He mentioned the living water.  The disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought Him food?”  The dummies.  They are probably thinking to themselves, “Was this guy holding out on us the whole time?  We went into town to get food and He sat down here and ate chow without us?”  They don’t get it.  The woman finally seems to get who Jesus is, but His disciples haven’t figured Him out yet.  And the woman goes one up on them for another reason as well.  She goes into town and tells people about Jesus and brings some people back to see for themselves.  Look at the text: “Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in Him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me everything I ever did.’  So when the Samaritans came to Him, they urged Him to stay with them, and He stayed two days.  And because of His words many more became believers.  They said to the woman, ‘We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world” (4:39-42).  You see, the woman is one up on the disciples because they had just been into town—they who knew Jesus much longer and better—but all they brought back was some food.  That was all.  The woman went into town; she brought back people. 

She thirsted for Jesus now and wanted others to do the same.  She was dead in her sins but had found living water to quench her soul.  She drank deep from the well of Christ and found a never-ending supply of grace, love and mercy.  She had come when she did probably to avoid others who would ridicule her and judge her.  She meets a man who instead talks with her and accepts her and reaches out to her with love and grace and the offer of living water.  She finally found a man she could really truly love and who would truly love her.  The story really does turn out to be a love story, for only one who loves you knows you as you are and not as you pretend to be.  Only one who loves you knows your deepest desires.  Only one who loves you can look at your past without blinking as Jesus does here and with us.  That’s what Jesus does with the woman at the well.  That’s what He does with us if we don’t try to keep Him from asking us about our lives.  Let Him offer you living water.  Thirsting for Jesus is after all a good feeling—because the more we thirst, the more living water He will provide.  Amen.