Jesus came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there. Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well. It was about noon. A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” His disciples had gone into the town to buy food. The 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.–Jesus 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.” 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? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this cistern and drank from it himself with his children and his flocks?” Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who 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.” The 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.” (John 4.5-15)
As we listen to the text on this Third Sunday of Lent, the first thing that may strike us as odd is that it is from the Gospel of John, not from the first gospel as we would expect in this year of Matthew. “Why the break in continuity,” we might rightly ask. It is a good question, considering that the next two Sundays also will borrow from John’s gospel.
There are several possible answers, the first being the fact that there is no liturgical year assigned to John, so parts of his gospel are inserted here and there in the three year cycle given to the synoptic texts. This is especially true in the Easter Season. This explanation gains traction when we see that other texts from John will be used during these Sundays in Year B, the year given to Mark’s gospel.
Another answer might be an attempt to align the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, the means of bringing newcomers into the church, with gospel texts that emphasize themes associated with that rite. Given the fact that this text today concerns water, we have no problem seeing the connection between the two since those entering the faith for the most part will do so by way of baptism. The same argument can be made for the next two Sundays, although other themes will be at the forefront.
While it is always a worthwhile exercise to use today’s text to revisit our own baptisms, assuming we are already members of the Christian faith, I intend to bring our attention to yet another emphasis that the evangelist highlights in this passage, that of the relationship between the Jews and the Samaritans. We will find much to ponder if we direct our attention to that matter.
Although our text skips two important verses at the start, they should be included because they set the stage for what will follow. In verse 3, we are told that Jesus left Judea and returned to Galilee. Verse 4 follows with this statement, “He had to pass through Samaria.” That information is important because of the long-standing antagonism between the Jews and the Samaritans, rooted in several significant differences that arose over time.
It was not always that way. When the Israelites took possession of the Promised Land, some of the tribes had settled in the region that would become known as Samaria, an area between Judea to the south and Galilee to the north. The upper part of the Promised Land became known as the Northern Kingdom with Samaria as its capital city and the lower part was called the Southern Kingdom with Jerusalem as its capital.
With the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom in the eighth century B.C. and the deportation of many of its inhabitants, other peoples moved in and intermarried with the small population of Jews that remained. Such intermarriage between Jews and Gentiles was a violation of the law. Adding to the discord, the people of Samaria had built their own temple on Mount Gerazim, the site where Abraham intended to sacrifice his son Isaac, while the people of the Southern Kingdom built their temple in Jerusalem, believing it alone was the true temple of the Most High God.
With this background now understood, the verse that starts this story should come as somewhat of a surprise, finding Jesus passing through Samaria, something good Jews generally avoided, even if it was the direct route to Galilee, preferring instead to go a round-about route to the east, thereby avoiding Samaria, even if it took more time.
So, Jesus is breaching decorum if not breaking the accepted rules for law-abiding Jews when he chooses to travel through Samaria, its inhabitants now the sworn enemies of the Jews. That fact tells us something important about how Jesus sees his mission and how the evangelist wants us to take note of this fact, something he will continue to emphasize as the gospel moves along.
Put simply, Jesus does not allow geographical barriers or interracial discord to stand in the way of his mission. Borders disappear in his mind as do cultural differences. He understands that God’s love for his children does not stop at manmade borders or barriers, but moves freely across the world, reaching out to peoples of every nation and of every culture.
This is the “gift of God” that Jesus refers to when he speaks to the woman of Samaria beside the well of Jacob. The phrase is tucked into the conversation and is easily overlooked, particularly when we consider that this story of the woman at the well is the longest dialogue that is found in this gospel, no small achievement when we consider the other dialogues, such as the one between Jesus and Nicodemus that has preceded this one.
Another matter that we should look into concerns Jesus’ willingness to speak to this woman, not only because she is a Samaritan, but just as importantly because she is a female. Here our own cultural habits put blinders on our understanding of the rarity and the peculiarity of a Jewish man initiating a conversation with a woman. Whereas it is everyday business in our culture, it was not so in Jesus’ time.
That point is made clear when the woman responds to Jesus’ request for a drink of water with the question, “How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” Her question alerts us to the obvious breach of acceptable behavior done by Jesus. If we pass over the implication in the question, the evangelist stops us in our tracks, parathetically telling us that “For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans,” or translated another way, Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” In this way, he is insisting that we understand what is going on here when Jesus talks with the woman.
The fact of the matter is no Jew in good standing or with good sense would talk to a Samaritan and, equally certain, no Jewish man would initiate a conversation with any woman. These things simply weren’t done not only because a Jew would not accept food or water from a Samaritan for fear of being contaminated, but also because it was improper behavior for a Jewish man, especially a rabbi, to ask hospitality from a woman.
It is easy enough for us to miss the shock value of Jesus’ behavior, living as we do in a different time and in a different place. But it doesn’t escape the disciples who, upon their return from going into the town for some food, finds Jesus in a conversation with some woman. The evangelist describes their reaction in this way, “At that moment his disciples returned, and were amazed that he was talking with a woman.”
Actually, the word amazed does not do justice to the reaction of the disciples, the word better understood as stunned, shocked, or taken aback. In other words, their eyes popped out of their heads and their mouths hung open at the peculiar sight, something so clearly outside the bounds of normal behavior of the time that they were left speechless.
Having said this, we can now see better how radical Jesus’ behavior was, his actions flying in the face of everything that was assumed the right way–and for that matter, the only way–for a good Jew to live. He took out a sledge hammer and smashed into bits the cultural mores of the time, redefining what was good and what was proper.
We can also better understand certain other passages in the Christian scriptures, for example in the opening chapter of Acts of the Apostles when the Resurrected Lord gives this final instruction to his disciples before he departs this world, returning to his Heavenly Father, telling them, “You will receive power when the holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the world.”
His instruction leaves no doubt as to his intention that their mission, like his, should not be deterred by borders, by bigotry, or by blind-eyed prejudices. Jesus’ radical acceptance and welcome of all others, regardless of origin or nationality, is to be replicated in the lives of his followers. And if that instruction were not clear enough, Saint Paul amplified it in his Letter to the Galatians, telling them, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
What, then, are we to do with this story of Jesus and the woman at the well? Much depends, I suppose, on how open we are to the radical message that it carries for our own actions and our own beliefs, requiring us to break free from our own limited perspective in order to embrace the unlimited perspective of Jesus.
The problem for many of us is that we have convinced ourselves that God agrees with our way of thinking, that conviction allowing us to hold on to our prejudices and our short-sightedness, treating others who are not like us as inferior to us, building walls through attitudes and laws that will keep them away from us, not a dime’s difference from the ways that the Jews looked upon the Samaritans.
The truth of the matter, of course, is that Jesus’ message directs us to do the opposite. We are told to agree with God’s way of thinking, implying that we open our hearts and our minds to all others, regardless of caste, culture, or class. We cannot allow social norms or long-held beliefs or the small-mindedness of our clan to hinder us from welcoming others, embracing the foreigner, and offering assistance to the needy. Or as the Jesuit priest Gregory Boyle likes to say, “We need to find ourselves poised to enter into a relationship with anyone anywhere.”
Everything about this story of the woman at the well challenges us to put aside our old ways of thinking and to open ourselves to a new way of thinking, one that transcends tradition, boundaries, and everyday expectations. If we do, then we will have found another reason for this story’s appearance during the Season of Lent, finding in it a call for the conversion of our hearts, making them more and more like the heart of Jesus who not only walked on water, but who walked right across borders without a second thought, refusing to allow any barrier between himself and others.
–Jeremy Myers
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