September 17, 2017

Well Woman

“When a Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman.  How can you ask me for a drink?”  John 4:7

There was a woman, not just any woman.  A woman from the wrong side of town, the other side of the tracks.  The place she lived was avoided by many, who thought it risky or distasteful to pass through.  You know the places where you lock your car doors and roll up those windows.  The streets you may avoid driving down, especially at night.  Places where you just don’t fit in; where you know, you’re not the same.  If you have to drive through such streets or neighborhoods, you do it quickly.  This woman’s past was checkered and her present open to judgment.  She was subject to ridicule by her neighbors.  She had this habit she couldn’t seem to kick – men.     

Men – she loved them.  Even if they beat her, she loved them.  If they left her, she still loved them…she just would move on to another man.  It wasn’t a healthy love she had, if it was love at all.  She’d just go from one to the other to another.  Of course, the men got hold of this and were thrilled – at least some of them.  The other women in town were not too happy.   They were afraid she would take their man.  That kind of fear can get real ugly, real quick. 

So this woman ventures out one day to get some water.  She waits until noon, when she thinks it will be the safest time to go without someone else spotting her and giving her a hard time.  She makes the long walk to the well…dusty paths and the smell of fear all around her.  She doesn’t want any trouble, just wants some water for her and her latest man, who is back at her home waiting for her.  She thinks to herself as she makes the journey to the well, “hey at least I got a man.  This one won’t leave me likes the others. He seems nicer than the others.  He hasn’t hit me yet.”  She sees a man sitting up by the well. He is looking, quite frankly, like he has been up all night and hadn’t eaten in days.  This guy was looking pretty ragged.  New in town, she thought to herself, or just passing through.  She needed the water and since he was a new face, she figured he wouldn’t give her a hard time.  In and out with the water, she thought.

He asks for a drink of water.  She stares at him, bewildered.  How could he ask her for anything?  She sees he is a Jew, and well you know the Jews have avoided her kind for years.  Yet he asks for a drink.  So she tells him, why would you ask me to get you anything?  I am a Samaritan, and you are a Jew. 

He looks at this woman, knowing everything about her, including her five husbands and the guy in the bed right now, waiting for the water.  He says to her, if you knew me, you would be asking me for water and I would give it to you.  It is different water – it is living water, water that makes you thirsty no more.  For there is water in the well; if you drink of it, it satisfies you only for a time.  But this living water takes the thirst you have away, forever.