Though I am a Samaritan woman

John 4:4-42 from the daily reading in the One Year Bible

And He had to pass through Samaria. ⁵ So He came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of land that Jacob gave to his son Joseph; ⁶ and Jacob’s well was there. So Jesus, tired from His journey, was just sitting by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

⁷ A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.” ⁸ For His disciples had gone away to the city to buy food. ⁹ So the Samaritan woman said to Him, “How is it that You, though You are a Jew, are asking me for a drink, though I am a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) ¹⁰ Jesus replied to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who is saying to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” ¹¹ She said to Him, “Sir, You have no bucket and the well is deep; where then do You get this living water? ¹² You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well and drank of it himself, and his sons and his cattle?” ¹³ Jesus answered and 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 shall never be thirsty; but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up to eternal life.”

¹⁵ The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty, nor come all the way here to draw water.” ¹⁶ He said to her, “Go, call your husband and come here.” ¹⁷ The woman answered and said to Him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’; ¹⁸ for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this which 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, and yet you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one must worship.” ²¹ Jesus said to her, “Believe Me, woman, that a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²² You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, because salvation is from the Jews. ²³ But a time is coming, and even now has arrived, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. 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 that One comes, He will declare all things to us.” ²⁶ Jesus said to her, “I am He, the One speaking to you.”

²⁷ And at this point His disciples came, and they were amazed that He had been speaking with a woman, yet no one said, “What are You seeking?” or, “Why are You speaking with her?” ²⁸ So the woman left her waterpot and went into the city, and said to the people, ²⁹ “Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is He?” ³⁰ They left the city and were coming to Him.

³¹ Meanwhile the disciples were urging Him, saying, “Rabbi, eat something.” ³² But He said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” ³³ So the disciples were saying to one another, “No one brought Him anything to eat, did he?” ³⁴ Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to accomplish His work. ³⁵ Do you not say, ‘There are still four months, and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I tell you, raise your eyes and observe the fields, that they are white for harvest. ³⁶ Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that the one who sows and the one who reaps may rejoice together. ³⁷ For in this case the saying is true: ‘One sows and another reaps.’ ³⁸ I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored, and you have come into their labor.”

³⁹ Now from that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me all the things that I have done.” ⁴⁰ So when the Samaritans came to Jesus, they were asking Him to stay with them; and He stayed there two days. ⁴¹ Many more believed because of His word; ⁴² and they were saying to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this One truly is the Savior of the world.”

In today’s text it says:  A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.” For His disciples had gone away to the city to buy food. So the Samaritan woman said to Him, “How is it that You, though You are a Jew, are asking me for a drink, though I am a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) Jesus replied to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who is saying to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” She said to Him, “Sir, You have no bucket and the well is deep; where then do You get this living water? You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well and drank of it himself, and his sons and his cattle?” Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never be thirsty; but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up to eternal life.”    Jesus didn’t come to right every wrong. He didn’t come to change the culture and society.  The Samaritans were viewed as a lower class of people by the Jews. Society was divided by class, by ethnicity and by gender. There were slaves and slave masters, rich and poor. Jesus didn’t focus on changing society. All those things existed after He was crucified and risen. All those things still exist today. Jesus didn’t focus His teaching on trying to change society. Jesus came to redeem sinners from sin. God’s law was not able to make people live rightly and neither can all the laws that our society can put in place.  Changing the hearts of people is the only way to effectively change what’s wrong with society. You can mandate tolerance, but you cannot mandate love.   1 John 4:19 says:  We love, because He first loved us.   For society to truly change, it must be in response to God’s love for us. Romans 5:8 says: God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.  John 3:16 says:  God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.  That is the true measure of equality, that whoever believes, regardless of race, gender, age, education, social standing or any other thing that divides people, whoever believes in God’s love demonstrated in the cross will be saved. There will always be things that separate and divide by earthly standards. We are after all not all the same. In God’s sight though all are equal through the lens of the cross, though different, all are equally loved.

The text says:  Jesus said to her, “Believe Me, woman, that a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, because salvation is from the Jews. But a time is coming, and even now has arrived, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I am He, the One speaking to you.”  Today our culture and society has determined that truth is relative; that each person can have their own truth. A lie though does not become truth because it is accepted by society.  In John 14:6 Jesus says:  “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”  Truth is more than a concept or a fact. Truth is personified and embodied in the person of Christ. Those who reject truth also reject the only true way to love and equality.

Heavenly Father, Lord Jesus Christ; precious Holy Spirit, may we begin, as a society, to see things from Your perspective. May we respond to the truth that our ability and capacity to love is solely based in Your love for us. May we not focus on the things that divide us, but rather on the cross that unites us. May we see true change across our land as hearts are redeemed one at a time.  Amen.