Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
It was about the sixth hour, late in the afternoon in the heat of the day, when a weary Jesus sat down near the well of Jacob. It was a famous place, but its location was problematic for the Jews: the well was in Samaria, the northern kingdom of Israel, which had long ago forsaken the true worship of Yahweh Elohim. Yet travelers came from all over, sometimes out of necessity for water, sometimes so they could say they had drunk from Jacob’s well. It had much-needed water for the desert landscape, but it was also an important historic and religious landmark.
This was one of those rare moments when Jesus was all by Himself. He had sent His disciples into a nearby city to buy food. Shortly after Jesus sat down at the well, a Samaritan woman approached. No doubt she saw, as she approached, that He was a Jewish man. She made her water run during the off hours because of her reputation and her life and the numerous husbands she had had. It was customary for respectable women of the village to draw water early in the morning, in the cool of the day. It was the first duty of the morning, and something of a social event. Women of low standing drew water at odd hours to avoid the looks, the whispers, and the sharp tongues of the other women.
So there she was in the heat of the day, walking up the hill to get water from Jacob’s well, and there she sees a Jewish man. She thinks He is like any other man. Then the stranger spoke up and caught her off guard. It was a command, not a question, just a simple statement: “Give me a drink.”
The Samaritans were half-Jews. They could trace their bloodline back to the days of King Solomon, but over the centuries they had intermarried with Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians, and both the bloodline and the doctrine had become corrupt. The Jews accepted all the books of the Old Testament that we recognize today. The Samaritans accepted only the Torah, the first five books written by Moses. The Jews rightly believed that the Lord God of the Old Testament dwelt in the temple in Jerusalem. The Samaritans believed God was to be worshiped on Mount Gerizim, and about 500 BC they built their own temple there. There was a great deal of bad blood between the Samaritans and the Jews.
So when Jesus asked the Samaritan woman for a drink, she was taken aback. “How is it that You, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” There was something different about this Jewish fellow. He was willing to talk to her, and willing to take a cup of water from one who was unclean. But Jesus’ response underscores just how different He really is: “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”
Just as in His conversation with Nicodemus one chapter earlier, Jesus turns this meeting into a theology lesson. He takes that which is natural and needed for life, and He uses it to speak of eternal life. It becomes a metaphor for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation given in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Consider the power of water in the hand of God. In the beginning, God separated the waters from below from the waters above, and He said it was good. It was through the flood in Noah’s day that the unrighteous were drowned and judged, and the righteous were saved. Peter calls this an image of Holy Baptism: “Baptism now saves you.” When the flood waters receded, the Lord God attached His promise never to destroy the world again by flood, and He attached that promise to a rainbow, water droplets in the sky refracted by the sun. He attaches His promise of grace even to water droplets in the sky.
In Exodus, some of the plagues God sent upon Egypt came from the river: the Nile turned to blood, the frogs, the gnats. The water was also used when God divided the Red Sea and the children of Israel passed through on dry ground. The parting of the Red Sea is an image of Baptism used in the New Testament: the same water that saved the Hebrews drowned the Egyptians. In Exodus 15, the people complained about the bitter water, so God instructed Moses to throw a tree into the water, and the waters became sweet. In Exodus 17, our Old Testament reading this morning, the people complained again in the wilderness without water. The problem was not the complaint itself, but what they said: “Is the Lord with us or not?” They doubted the presence and promises of God.
Water was constantly present as a means of grace. At the well, Abraham’s servant knew Rebekah by her willingness to give water. Jesus’ ministry begins in the waters of the Jordan River, as He is baptized into our sin, our life, our death. In John 4 we are told that Jesus and His disciples baptized more people than John the Baptist did. When Nicodemus came to Jesus, Jesus told him he must be born again of water and the Spirit to enter the kingdom of heaven. In the Sermon on the Mount He says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” Jesus walked on the water of the Sea of Galilee. He stilled the storm. On the cross, a soldier pierced His side, and both water and blood came out.
The conversation began with a request for plain drinking water, but Jesus turned it into a discourse about everlasting life, the living water that is a metaphor for eternal life. Eternal life is only possible with the forgiveness of sins, which Baptism gives: water used with the Word. Jesus tells her she ought to be asking for that kind of water, the water that wells up into everlasting life.
Given her life, she does not get it at first. She thinks Jesus is talking about ordinary water. “Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get this living water?” She is on the right path now; she has asked the right question. “Are You greater than our father Jacob?” And Jesus essentially says, “Yes, I am. Jacob gave you a hole in the ground with water in it, but I give something much greater. Everyone who drinks this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”
She thinks she has found a miracle worker. “Give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty, nor come all the way here to draw.” But before Jesus goes further, having preached the Gospel to her, He must now preach the Law. He must show her the truth about herself. Before a sinner can comprehend and trust the Gospel, the sinner must first understand the need for the Gospel. He said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” She answered, “I have no husband.” Jesus said, “You have said well, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the one you are with now is not your husband. This you have said truly.”
She knows what kind of life she has lived. She does not deny His accusation. But she does not want to talk about it further, so she changes the subject: “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you say that people ought to worship in Jerusalem.” Jesus answers, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem shall you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.”
His response is a double rebuke: not only is her personal life a mess, but the doctrine in which she was raised is a mess too. Salvation comes by way of the Jews, and right worship is not on Mount Gerizim, because the doctrine is corrupt. He calls her to repent both of her personal life and of her false doctrine. But she knows this much, because Moses wrote it: “I know the Messiah is coming, who is called the Christ. When that One comes, He will declare to us all things.” And Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.”
There it is. In my liberal seminary, I had professors who constantly said Jesus never claimed to be the promised Messiah. I wore out half a dozen very clear Bible passages proving that statement false. He did not beat around the bush about who He is. There is a great error all over social media: people invoke Jesus’ name and talk about how He walked with sinners, as if it were fine for them to continue as reprobates. But Jesus never did that without a call to repentance. He never did that without sinners knowing they were sinners, and without those same sinners knowing that He was the righteousness they needed.
From that city many Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified. She went back to the village and told the people, “He told me all the things that I have done.” He never patted her on the head. Sin is sin, and salvation is salvation. When the Samaritans came to Jesus, they asked Him to stay, and He stayed two days, and many more believed because of His word.
Of all the people in that village, Jesus went to the worst of them. He preached the Law to her, He preached the Gospel to her, He forgave her sin, and thus He gave her a drink of the water that wells up into everlasting life: His words. He did not go to the mayor or the religious leaders. He went to the worst public sinner in the town. After all, He has come to us, to you and to me, and has forgiven our sins. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.