16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What 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, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.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 he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
I love this scene for all its depth of love and compassion and insight into our human condition.
She must have been in such pain, this woman drawing water by herself at the well outside of the dusty Samaritan town. Five husbands, and a sixth man who is not her husband. And here she is again coming back to the old well alone, lugging her dry and empty bucket.
A man asks for a drink. He is a Jew; and a Jew would only have wandered into Samaria and spoken with a woman for reason and was not water. She was flattered. She was disgusted. She was ashamed. She was hopeful. She was all these things and none of them. She was empty.
But then the curious stranger begins to speak of something, some kind of water that he has, some water that can fill up the emptiness and pour -- gush -- out of the well, out of the pit, out of a place that sometimes in Scripture refers to hell. Here he is offering something so full of water that it can quench the flames of her living hell. "Give me this water," she says.
"Go, call your husband, and tell him to come here too," the stranger says. "Husband? I have no husband?" "Right you are, you've had five and you are now living with a sixth who you aren't married to."
And here she tries to turn the conversation. She wants to talk about religion. "Your people worship on a mountain in Jerusalem, right?" That's an old trick, a defense shield; when things start to get personal people talk about church, about worship, about religion. "Do y'all teach there's only one way to heaven? Are ya'll charismatic? I gotta have the spirit. Do you have guitars? Do you wear robes?" It's much easier to talk about my issues with the minister of music than it is to talk about my issues with me, and men and women and this old well.
The stranger turns the conversation back. "It's about time," he says, "that those who really want to worship God will worship God in both spirit and also in truth." In other words, he was telling her the work of the spirit won't just be on the surface but will go way down to uncover the truth of who we are and why we do what we do.
"I know the Messiah is coming," she says, "and when he comes he will uncover everything." "I -- the one speaking to you -- am he," the stranger said.
And there must have been something in those words which was so moving, and so tender. His tone must have been so full of compassion, his eyes so inviting, his heart so evidently honest and trustworthy and full of love: "I -- the one speaking to you -- am he." It must have been because after he said this she turned and went back into town to tell others.
"I've found a man," she said when she got back into town. "Yeah, yeah," a friend of mine says the people must rolled their eyes, "you're always finding men." But this man was different. And to prove it, she showed them all that she had left her bucket behind. She had left that well, that he'll, for good.
The stranger still comes. Showing up at old wells and worn-out bars. He still comes, offering us a drink to slake our thirst, and a style of worship that gets at the truth. He comes, to our well -- to our hell. "Come, and taste," he says. "I -- the one who is speaking to you -- am he."
And some deep, deep inside us -- some emptiness -- believes it, and trusts it, and already begins to be filled.
| Attribution: | He, Qi. Samaritan Woman at the Well, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=46112 [retrieved January 22, 2016]. Original source: heqigallery.com. |
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