He Came to Her

When putting together a series on unnamed women in the Bible, a lot of people immediately come up with a list of who those women are. It’s surprising just how many there are and how well-known they are. But what exactly are they so well-known for? Not all of the situations were the same – we have the woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears, the account of the woman who stood before Jesus, and the story of the woman who submitted to God.

Two of these women came boldly to Jesus – one of them weeping and the other calling after Him – and the other stood before Jesus against her will and in shame. But all three encountered God’s love. One was known as an immoral woman, another was adulterous, and the other was a displaced Gentile who had no seat at God’s table. All three experienced restoration through grace and mercy.

Today, I want to look at another unnamed woman – but this is not a woman who went to Jesus, but rather Jesus went to her. We only know her as the Samaritan woman, but her story echos through the hearts of women everywhere – please take a moment to read John 4:3-26.

If you didn’t already know it, Samaritans and Jews did not get along. The Samaritans were ethnically Jewish-mixed-with-pagan, which made the pure-blood Jews see them as dirty animals – or more like half-breeds. The parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37) paints the picture of contempt that the two groups had for each other with the priest and the Levite passing someone in need, but a Samaritan shows love. As a Samaritan woman, to a Jew she would have been considered not only a half-breed, but unclean and not someone to even look at much less speak to.

But in John 4:3-26, Jesus – very much a Jew – had a deliberate conversation with a very disconnected Samaritan woman.

You may wonder what I mean by disconnected. Sometimes we read something in the Bible that seems a bit odd, but the details included in scripture are not there by accident. In this passage, the detail of the time of day tells us that there was probably not a long line at the well that Jesus came to (John 4:5-6). The seemingly insignificant detail of the time being the sixth hour of the day is like saying that it was high noon – this is not the time of day that women would typically be drawing water. I’m thinking that it’s probably hot and most everyone is eating lunch somewhere out of the heat.

But not this woman.

It was also customary for women to go to draw water from the well together. They would normally go in the cool of the morning to get water for the day. This was generally also used as a social time – they would catch up on the news and happenings – and there was probably a bit of gossip, too, knowing how a lot of women tend to be. We don’t know, but this woman may not have been welcomed in the group of other Samaritan women.

Have you ever done something at a very specific time in order to avoid something uncomfortable? Kind of like making a phone call that you really don’t want to make, so you call at a time you know that the other person won’t be likely to answer. Then there are choices we make to avoid something hard and by those choices, we make other things hard. This Samaritan woman chose her hard, but God still brought about a divine moment for her to stand before Jesus.

She was a Samaritan – disconnected by her ethnicity from the traditions of the Jewish faith, but she wasn’t even accepted by many of her own people and the practices of their worship. We can assume that this woman came alone to the well at such an uncomfortable time of day because she was socially disconnected from her female neighbors. But then Jesus peels back the layers of her life to reveal that she’s also been disconnected from multiple husbands.

What happened in this woman’s past is not spelled out for us. We learn that she had been married five times and was playing house with someone who she was not married to. This paints her in the same light as the immoral woman in Luke 7 as well as the adulterous woman in John 8. But is that picture complete? The light is not shed on why she was married five times. She could have been widowed. She could have been divorced. Perhaps there was a combination of the two. The option of divorce was only allowed to be initiated by the men and women had no say in the matter. Was she a concubine to the man she lived with or something else?

We may never know on this side of eternity, but I can’t help but wonder… how had this woman been hurt…

But Jesus came to her. Someone who likely felt alone, unloved, unwelcome, disconnected, and forgotten. Jesus didn’t give her a verbal tongue-lashing for having multiple past marriages or living with a man without being married to him. But Jesus saw her, knew her story, and revealed Himself to her. Of all the people in Samaria, he revealed Himself as the Messiah to an outcast!

Jesus knew her story, He knew her pain, and He offered her something new.

Jesus replied, “If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.” John 4:10 NLT

In this verse, the words living water is translated from the Greek word zao (Strong’s G2198). Its meaning is in opposition to stagnant water that has no life in it. Nothing moving, nothing new, while the world passes by in the current of joy, love, and connectedness.

Instead of doing the normal thing of avoiding Samaria, Jesus purposed to travel through to place Himself where He could offer His very identity to someone who society deemed unworthy. But that’s all of us, isn’t it? We were facing an eternity disconnected from God – feeling alone, unloved, unwelcome, disconnected, and forgotten. But Jesus left Heaven and came to earth – our own Samaria – to reveal Himself to us at the well.

“For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.” John 3:16-17 NLT

The Samaritan woman was so changed that she started the revival in Samaria. People heard her testimony and then heard Jesus’ words… and they believed Him to be the Messiah (John 4:39-42). She was reconnected. She was healed. She was given living water.

This is our story, too. He came to her – He came to us… How has your encounter changed you?