Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water.”
“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?” John 4: 10-12.
Jesus begins a dialogue with an outcast among outcasts by doing the unthinkable as far as His Jewish heritage is concerned. Now He crosses the line firmly and remains on the other side of it by offering her somthing more than she had to offer Him. She knows He is the one He refers to because she shows it in her reply by addressing Him as “you”.
Notice how she works to throw Him off, probably thinking to antagonize Him or testing His sincerity, by calling Jacob her father. The Jews didn’t accept the Samaritans as heirs of the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, so immediately any other Jew would have handed her head back to her in short order. Knowing the psychology of those who get marginalized, I surmize she was testing His motives by being obnoxious.
Jesus didn’t rise to the debate but kept focused on His point, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thristy again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
She wanted to play the game of evasive action and misdirection so Jesus continued the illustration in order to peak her interest. At this point, I’m not sure she really believed Him because she immediately replied, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” Some writers have implied that she spoke this in hope of never having to come alone to this well again, which daily reminded her of her status. Others have said she saw divinity flash through humanity and ached for what Jesus had to offer. I believe she didn’t know who He was at all and was challenging Him to prove His claim.
Looking at the phrasing of our original passage, Jesus tells her “If you knew…” implying that she didn’t know at all who was speaking to her at the time. So she’s clueless and completely unaware that He is anything more than just a man, which follows what Isaiah prophesied about the Messiah, He had no beauty of majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him. Isaiah 53: 2b. So she couldn’t know who He was and Jesus wanted it that way because it forced her to listen first to his words not be awed by His appearance or presence.
The power of Jesus was in His message not His presence. His presence only took on effectiveness once a person witnessed His message and actions. In this He played a good hand of poker. God invented the game so knows the rules as well as every trick in the book. His trump, if you will, was putting Jesus in such a human, non-discript package that no one would mistake Him, once they got to know Him, for anyone other than who He was: the Savior of the world.
The woman challenges Him to give her this water. Without knowing her thoughts, I can only guess at what she must have been thinking. But from her questions and the methods she used to draw Jesus into those common debates between Jews and Samaritans, I’d guess she wasn’t interested in giving this man water, not interested in being given anything either, all she wanted to get her water and go home. Yet, at the same time, Jesus peaked her interest by not reacting to the most common cause for arguments between their cultures. In fact, He seemed to ignore it completely and went on to offer her something no man had ever offered before: life.
Not only did Jesus offer her a new life but He suggested she could find salvation. That’s what eternal life means, salvation from death.
She drew the line in the sand by virtually telling Him to show His cards or shutup. “Give me this water…” or leave me alone!
Jesus, as always, went a completely different direction she didn’t expect to prove Himself.
Tags: belonging, Jesus, marginalized, outcasts, salvation, woman at the well
June 8, 2008 at 4:47 pm |
That’s got to be the oddest take on this story I’ve ever heard!
June 8, 2008 at 9:20 pm |
Is that bad or good? I wasn’t going for odd, I tried to look at the story from the perspective of the day rather than bringing my own traditions to it. I also wasn’t trying to just find something original to say about it, because I’m pretty sure most everything has been said that can be. In exegesis (the study of context) we have to take the era, customs and cultures into consideration before we can even begin to understand the story. My attempt here simply tried to ask myself as many questions as I could to grasp what was at stake.