Jesus, a Woman, and a ‘Chance’ Encounter at a Well

QUOTES FOR REFLECTION

“What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace?

“This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him… though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words, by God himself.”

~Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), in his Pensées

“You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless, until they can find rest in you.”

~St. Augustine (354-430), North African bishop and theologian

“It is significant that God does not present us with salvation in the form of an abstract truth, or a precise definition or a catchy slogan, but as story… Story is an invitation to participate, first through our imagination and then, if we will, by faith, with our total lives in response to God.”

~Eugene Peterson (1932-2018), pastor, scholar and author

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”

~Simone Weil (1909-1943), French philosopher and activist

“Shame tells me what men are; but it tells me nothing what God or the Word of God is.”

~John Bunyan (1628-1688), English writer and preacher, who spent 12 years in prison for preaching the gospel

“Who gave mercy my address? Or told it how to get to my room? Didn’t it know a sinner lived in it? On the way down the hall, shouldn’t the smell of idols kept its feet from moving any closer. Then I remembered the one verse of the Bible that I knew by heart. ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.’”

~Jackie Hill-Perry, writer and hip-hop artist

SERMON PASSAGE

John 4:1-30 (ESV)

1 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), 3 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. 4 And he had to pass through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.

7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that 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 have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”

27 Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” 28 So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” 30 They went out of the town and were coming to him.