Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)
Jesus answered her, “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.”
“Sir,” the woman said, “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?”
Jesus answered, “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.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
I have had the opportunity, as have some of you, to travel to a number of countries in the developing world. And when I have visited places like Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, or Kenya, I have been reminded of the necessity and preciousness of clean drinking water. As I mentioned yesterday, every human being is thirsty – both spiritually and physically. We need water to survive. And while we grow up simply assuming that hot and cold running water is available to us 24/7 in our homes – most of the world does not enjoy this blessing. In fact, the constant search for – and retrieval of – water is one of the most important daily chores in the developing world. During perhaps 10 different trips to a rural area of the Dominican Republic I observed the same scene each and every morning. The Dominican women and children would leave their humble homes and walk to the local river carrying all kinds of empty buckets and water pots. They would fill them with precious water and then walk back to town carrying the heavy buckets on their heads. Because they did not have access to running water in their homes, life itself depended on repeating this ritual every day.
A few years ago I was reading this story from John 4 and I noticed an obscure but important detail for the first time. John says it was about the “sixth hour” when this woman came to the well seeking water. The “sixth hour” is roughly noon by the Jewish way of referring to time. So this woman is coming to draw water in the heat of the day – rather than in the morning when, presumably, all the other women from town would come to fetch their water. I wondered why? I think the answer is probably because she was not welcome with the other women. When we discover that she has had five failed relationships and is now living with a man who is not her husband – it starts to make sense. This woman had a reputation. She was probably seen as the town tramp – or worse. No one wanted to be seen with her – and she knew it – so she made the trip to fetch water alone in the heat of the day.
Notice that there are two people out of place in the story! This woman is at the well at the wrong time of day; and Jesus is in Samaria – where no self-respecting Jew traveled if he didn’t absolutely need to! What we see here might be called a “divine appointment.” Could it be that Jesus has walked all morning through a region where he and his disciples were neither welcome nor comfortable – just to meet this one lone Samaritan woman? Is it possible that Jesus cared so much about this one spiritual failure that he would go to such lengths just for one conversation? Yes, I think that is possible! In fact, I think it’s more than possible – I think that’s always what Jesus does! Jesus goes out of his way to find the spiritual failure. Jesus seeks out and pursues this woman because he knows she is thirsty for a kind of water she can’t draw from a well. And Jesus pursues each on of us in the same way.
Have you had a “divine appointment” recently? Jesus is waiting for you at the well!
Pastor Brian Coffey
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