Sunday Readings: Exodus 17.3-7; Romans 5.1-2,5-8; John 4.5-42
WOMAN: . . .Sir, you don’t have a bucket and this well is deep. Where do you expect to get living water? You don’t pretend to be greater than our ancestors Jacob, Leah, and Rachel, who gave us this well and whose family and flocks all drank from it? Jesus replied, “Everyone who drinks this water will keep getting thirsty, but whoever drinks the water that I give will never be thirsty again. The water I give will become a spring within that wells up into eternal life.” The women said, “Sir, give me this water! Then I will never be thirsty again, and I won’t have to keep coming here for water.”
Jesus said to her “ Go, call your husband.” “I have no husband,” the woman replied. “Jesus answered, “You are right. You have had five husbands, but the man you are living with now is not your husband. What you have said is true.” “I see you are a prophet,” the woman said, “Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews say Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship God.” … Jesus said, “The hour is coming , and is now here, when the true worsshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth (John 4.11-20, 23).
On the strength of a Samaritan woman’s witness, her townspeople come to meet Jesus and believe in him. The Eastern Church gives her the name Photina (light bearer).
In the late 700s BCE, Assyria destroys Samaria, deports many of its people, and resettles the land. These new settlers from Babylon, Cuth, Hamath, Avva, and Sephariam worship their own gods. Because the Samaritans intermarry with them, Samaria becomes the home of heretics, according to the Jews of the south. It is not the woman but Samaria that has had five husbands in its past—the false gods of the new settlers.
The woman recognizes Jesus is a prophet because he speaks like prophets such as Hosea when he compares people’s relationship with God to a marriage. Jesus is calling the woman and her people out of their past relationships with other gods and offering himself as the real husband of Samaria.
In her conversation with Jesus, the woman recognizes he has come in spirit and truth to include her people in his community. Like the fishermen who leave their nets to follow Jesus, she leaves the water jar that symbolizes her work and goes to tell her townspeople she has found the messiah. The strength of the Samaritan woman’s word and witness brings her people to hear Jesus for themselves. Her witness can inspire our own.
When have you experienced the Spirit well up within you?
Who believes on the strength of your witness?