Daily Scripture:
John 4:5 He came to a town in Shomron called Sh’khem, near the field Ya‘akov had given to his son Yosef. 6 Ya‘akov’s Well was there; so Yeshua, exhausted from his travel, sat down by the well; it was about noon. 7 A woman from Shomron came to draw some water; and Yeshua said to her, “Give me a drink of water.” 8 (His talmidimhad gone into town to buy food.) 9 The woman from Shomron said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for water from me, a woman of Shomron?” (For Jews don’t associate with people from Shomron.) 10 Yeshua answered her, “If you knew God’s gift, that is, who it is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink of water,’ then you would have asked him; and he would have given you living water.”
11 She said to him, “Sir, you don’t have a bucket, and the well is deep; so where do you get this ‘living water’? 12 You aren’t greater than our father Ya‘akov, are you? He gave us this well and drank from it, and so did his sons and his cattle.” 13 Yeshua answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will get thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I will give him will never be thirsty again! On the contrary, the water I give him will become a spring of water inside him, welling up into eternal life!”
15 “Sir, give me this water,” the woman said to him, “so that I won’t have to be thirsty and keep coming here to draw water.” 16 He said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” 17 She answered, “I don’t have a husband.” Yeshua said to her, “You’re right, you don’t have a husband! 18 You’ve had five husbands in the past, and you’re not married to the man you’re living with now! You’ve spoken the truth!”
19 “Sir, I can see that you are a prophet,” the woman replied. 20 “Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you people say that the place where one has to worship is in Yerushalayim.” 21 Yeshua said, “Lady, believe me, the time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Yerushalayim. 22 You people don’t know what you are worshipping; we worship what we do know, because salvation comes from the Jews. 23 But the time is coming — indeed, it’s here now — when the true worshippers will worship the Father spiritually and truly, for these are the kind of people the Father wants worshipping him. 24 God is spirit; and worshippers must worship him spiritually and truly.”
25 The woman replied, “I know that Mashiach is coming” (that is, “the one who has been anointed”). “When he comes, he will tell us everything.” 26 Yeshua said to her, “I, the person speaking to you, am he.” (Complete Jewish Bible).
Reflection Questions:We often see this story about a woman who had “had five husbands” described as meaning that she was immoral or unfaithful. However, “there are no apparently no records of a woman [in Jesus' day] being the one to initiate divorce…. She was a woman who had been rejected. Her current arrangement was probably not about casual sexuality. If a man wanted a woman of lower class, he could bring her into his pre-existing marriage as a concubine or second wife; this was very possibly her only means of survival.”*
- John 4:27 said Jesus’ disciples were “shocked” to see him talking to this woman. They might have understood him lecturing her about her racial or moral inferiority. But he was offering her “living water” (verse 10), and telling her that he was the Messiah everyone hoped for (verse 26). In short, he was treating her like any other human being he cared about and came to save. How can Jesus' example upgrade the way you treat and relate to any “Samaritan women” you encounter?
- The woman tried to keep the conversation abstract and impersonal, especially in verse 20. But Jesus wouldn’t take the bait—he kept aiming for her heart, and eventually reached it. Are there issues or questions that at times help you keep God “at a distance,” an interesting subject for study and discussion rather than a life-changing Savior and Lord?
Lord Jesus, teach me anew this week to recognize and value your image in myself, and in all the people, male and female, happy and hurting, who cross my path. Amen.
* John Ortberg, Who Is This Man? The Unpredictable Impact of the Inescapable Jesus. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012, pp. 48-49.
Read today's Insight by Brandon Gregory
Brandon Gregory is a volunteer for the worship and missions teams at Church of the Resurrection. He helps lead worship at Vibe, West and Downtown services, and is involved with the Malawi missions team at home.
For most Jewish people in Jesus’ time, the Samaritans were at best insignificant and at worst a blight upon Israel’s countryside. Due to centuries of political and religious differences, the Jewish people had ostracised them and pushed them away, despite their common lineage and similar religious customs. So of course Jesus, who came to save the world, would be interested in their lot. While he spent most of his time reforming the Jewish people, he took the time to promise hope to many religious outcasts, including the Samaritans. I have no doubt that in today’s passage (John 4:5-26), Jesus intentionally traveled through Samaritan lands to give them hope for a better future.
If you’re going to extend a hand to offer hope to a race rejected by Israel, common wisdom would tell you to go to the leaders, the influencers, and the well-respected ones. But that’s not what Jesus did at all. In fact, the only recorded conversation we have between Jesus and a Samaritan is with this woman at the well. She was not a leader, or an influencer, or well-respected. She had been rejected by five husbands, and the man she was dependent on now would not marry her. She hated the condemnation she got from other people so much that, in verse 15, she asks for living water so that she’ll never have to come to this very public place (the well) and see disapproving people again. In a town full of outcasts, she was the outcast—possibly the lowest-ranking member of that society.
Jesus picks this woman at the well to be his message-bearer to the Samaritans. And you have to ask: why? It would be much more efficient to pick someone influential. It would be much more authoritative to pick someone respected. But he picks her. Why? I believe he does it to give value to this woman, to show her and her neighbors that she matters more than anyone in life had told her. Jesus humbled the gatekeepers of truth and morality in her town by picking her and giving her the honor of bringing hope to her town.
There are honestly a lot of modern-day parallels that can be drawn from this passage. But this week, we’re specifically talking about women, so that’s what I’m going to talk about. I come from a different church background where women were not allowed to teach or become pastors. I also work in an industry (tech) where women’s voices are frequently dismissed or even mocked. I also live in a nation where women often do not have the same respect as men, and that has implications on their career paths, their income, and their self-worth. Women have a lot of things telling them they’re just worth less than men. And what’s worse, sexual immorality is often judged more harshly in women than men, while financial independence is often less attainable for women than it is for men, so we can end up with some of the same problems that we see in today’s scripture passage. The woman at the well is not just a metaphor for women today—there are actually some direct parallels.
So what’s to be done? That’s a very big topic that I can’t sum up in one paragraph. But we can start by emulating Jesus’ behavior in John 4: respect women even when society doesn’t, invite them to be a part of religious movements, and show empathy when society forces some of them to compromise on their values to make ends meet. There are a lot of forces at work that can make women feel like outsiders, especially in religious circles. Work, as Jesus did, to make them feel like insiders.
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Brandon Gregory is a volunteer for the worship and missions teams at Church of the Resurrection. He helps lead worship at Vibe, West and Downtown services, and is involved with the Malawi missions team at home.
For most Jewish people in Jesus’ time, the Samaritans were at best insignificant and at worst a blight upon Israel’s countryside. Due to centuries of political and religious differences, the Jewish people had ostracised them and pushed them away, despite their common lineage and similar religious customs. So of course Jesus, who came to save the world, would be interested in their lot. While he spent most of his time reforming the Jewish people, he took the time to promise hope to many religious outcasts, including the Samaritans. I have no doubt that in today’s passage (John 4:5-26), Jesus intentionally traveled through Samaritan lands to give them hope for a better future.
If you’re going to extend a hand to offer hope to a race rejected by Israel, common wisdom would tell you to go to the leaders, the influencers, and the well-respected ones. But that’s not what Jesus did at all. In fact, the only recorded conversation we have between Jesus and a Samaritan is with this woman at the well. She was not a leader, or an influencer, or well-respected. She had been rejected by five husbands, and the man she was dependent on now would not marry her. She hated the condemnation she got from other people so much that, in verse 15, she asks for living water so that she’ll never have to come to this very public place (the well) and see disapproving people again. In a town full of outcasts, she was the outcast—possibly the lowest-ranking member of that society.
Jesus picks this woman at the well to be his message-bearer to the Samaritans. And you have to ask: why? It would be much more efficient to pick someone influential. It would be much more authoritative to pick someone respected. But he picks her. Why? I believe he does it to give value to this woman, to show her and her neighbors that she matters more than anyone in life had told her. Jesus humbled the gatekeepers of truth and morality in her town by picking her and giving her the honor of bringing hope to her town.
There are honestly a lot of modern-day parallels that can be drawn from this passage. But this week, we’re specifically talking about women, so that’s what I’m going to talk about. I come from a different church background where women were not allowed to teach or become pastors. I also work in an industry (tech) where women’s voices are frequently dismissed or even mocked. I also live in a nation where women often do not have the same respect as men, and that has implications on their career paths, their income, and their self-worth. Women have a lot of things telling them they’re just worth less than men. And what’s worse, sexual immorality is often judged more harshly in women than men, while financial independence is often less attainable for women than it is for men, so we can end up with some of the same problems that we see in today’s scripture passage. The woman at the well is not just a metaphor for women today—there are actually some direct parallels.
So what’s to be done? That’s a very big topic that I can’t sum up in one paragraph. But we can start by emulating Jesus’ behavior in John 4: respect women even when society doesn’t, invite them to be a part of religious movements, and show empathy when society forces some of them to compromise on their values to make ends meet. There are a lot of forces at work that can make women feel like outsiders, especially in religious circles. Work, as Jesus did, to make them feel like insiders.
Like this post? Share it!
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Scripture quotations are taken from The Common English Bible ©2011.
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