“Come and see.” Do these words sound familiar? A few weeks ago we heard the account of Jesus
calling his first disciples in the Gospel of John. Shortly after John the Baptist exclaims, “Look, here is
the Lamb of God!” two young disciples of John’s begin following in Jesus’ steps. When Jesus turns
and sees them, he asks, “What are you looking for?” And the two ask him in turn, “Rabbi, where are
you staying?” Jesus simply replies “Come and see.” And then a few verses later, after Philip begins
following after Jesus, he tells his friend Nathaniel, “We’ve found the one the Law and the prophets
wrote about.” And Nathaniel says, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip’s reply is,
“Come and see.”
We hear this intriguing invitation again today, and this time from a most unlikely source. It’s one
thing inviting young men close to the inner circle of the prophet John the Baptist, to check out this
man John is so excited about. But what about in the hinterlands of Samaria, among a people long at
odds with the Jews, as Jesus has a conversation with a lone woman on a hot, dusty day at Jacob’s
Well? Why was this woman induced to say “Come and see” to the local villagers after this brief
exchange?
This morning I’d like to spend a few minutes looking at the sequence of events in this story and
explore what it tells us about Jesus, and about how a woman drawn unexpectedly into His world
responds to Him.
Jesus and his disciples were heading back north to Galilee after the Pharisees had gotten their
tunics in a twist about the fact that his disciples were baptizing more people than John the Baptist
down in Judea. Their journey took them through Samaria. Now, the Samaritans had been at odds
with the Jews for a long, long time. Way back in the 8th Century BC the Assyrians had invaded and
taken over the whole area. Many of the Samaritan survivors eventually intermarried with their
captors, which was considered by many stalwart Jews to be an unforgivable sin.
The Jewish people of Judea went through centuries of captivity and persecution, and finally returned
to their homeland in the 5th Century BC, in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. The Samaritans offered
to help in the sacred task of rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem, but were roundly snubbed. They
were told that they were no longer Jews, and had no part in Jewish life or Jewish heritage. The
Samaritans never forgot this, and the Jews and Samaritans had been enemies ever since. The
Samaritans had even built their own rival temple on Mt. Gerizim, and this was sacked and destroyed
under a Jewish general in the 2nd Century BC. There was no love lost between them, and these
feelings of animosity were still strong in the time of Christ.
So here are Jesus and the disciples arriving near Sychar at midday, hot, tired and hungry from their
journey. The disciples trudge into the city to buy provisions, and Jesus stops to rest at Jacob’s well.
Then comes the woman with her bucket to draw water. First Century Jewish men didn’t have a lot of
respect for Samaritans, and weren’t exactly overflowing with respect for women, either, in some
ways. And the person here at the well was both. I can imagine her feeling quite ill at ease as Jesus
asks her for a drink. (And that’s nothing compared to what develops in a few minutes.)
But she does something pretty impressive. Rather than politely responding to his request, then
excusing herself from his presence, she lets her curiosity get the better of her. She asks, “How is it
that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” And in Jesus’ familiar fashion, he opts not
to answer her question, but sharpens her curiosity by saying, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it
is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would give you living
water.” And like Nicodemus last week, this simply floats right over her head. She thinks Jesus is
talking about water quality issues. Kind of like a sermon you might get in some of our churches
today.
But even though she doesn’t understand what Jesus is talking about, she says something absolutely
profound. She says, “Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his
sons and his flock drank from it?” And of course, the answer screams out at us who have the
benefit of hindsight in knowing who Jesus is. YES!! Yes, he is greater than your ancestor Jacob.
He’s greater than John the Baptist, he’s greater than Jacob, he’s greater than Moses, he’s greater
than Abraham. “Before Abraham was, I am!” he told the Pharisees.
But this isn’t how Jesus responds. He almost playfully continues to whet her curiosity by describing
the water He has to offer as water that permanently relieves thirst and wells upward to eternal life.
Of course now we know that Jesus is talking about the gift of himself and of the Holy Spirit whom he’ll
offer to all when His work on earth is complete. Still unclear about all of this, but completely mystified
by this man, the woman then says, perhaps even with a little chuckle of sarcasm, “OK, give me this
water so I don’t have to keep trudging back here to this well.”
Then Jesus really starts rocking the water jar. He says, “All right, go get your husband and come
back.” Her lips tighten a little, and she replies, “I have no husband.” Jesus responds by recounting
her marital and relationship history in rather unsettling detail. She’s had five husbands. And he
affirms that the man she’s now living with is, indeed, not her husband.
At this point I can envision the blood draining from her face as she pauses, then utters words of
profound understatement: “Sir, I see that you’re a prophet.” I don’t know if “Oy vey!” was in the
Samaritans’ vocabulary. I mean, what can you say to that? This kindly stranger has just nailed her
situation exactly, leaving her stammering.
Before we go further, let’s stop and look at the remarkable significance of what’s happened so far.
We have Jesus stopping to chat with a Samaritan woman at an oasis in the middle of the day. He
almost casually (but believe me, this was anything but casual) banters with her in slightly veiled
terms about who He really is. He says that He has something to give that makes the physical
necessities of life pale in comparison. He calls it living water. And as she converses and questions,
it becomes apparent that he sees her with disturbing clarity. He knows her life very well. He sees
right down to her heart.
It’s here that I really have to admire this woman. Because after having her life laid bare by this man,
she stays right with the conversation and doesn’t retreat. Maybe she’s especially plucky, or maybe
she notices something in Jesus that compels her to keep sharing and asking. Because after Jesus
explains to her that a new time is coming, and has come, a time when people won’t just worship God
in the temple or on the mountain, she says, “I know that Messiah is coming. When he comes, he’ll
proclaim all things to us.” Then Jesus drops the bomb. He says, “I who speak to you, am he.”
Boom.
Jesus has intrigued the woman with talk of the living water. He’s said, “If you only knew what this
really is, you’d ask, and I’d give it to you.” He’s demonstrated his prophetic powers by reading her
like a book. He’s explained that we’re now entering a whole new phase in which the very way we
worship God is being radically changed, that soon our spirits will have direct access to God. Then,
probably with her heart starting to beat faster, the woman starts connecting the dots and talking
about the Messiah. And Jesus calmly says, “You’re talking to Him right now. Here I am.”
In the context of its time and place, this is an explosive event. For the Messiah, the Son of God, the
One bringing the people Israel to completion, early in his ministry is announcing himself not to a high
priest in Jerusalem, but to an unknown woman with a jar, at a well in Samaria. This starts into motion
something that directly touches us today. Salvation is no longer just for the Jews. Fulfilling the
ancient promise to Abraham that all nations will be blessed through his offspring, the door is now
opening. And one of the first to get a peep through to the other side is this Samaritan woman, this
water bearer. This scene must have been electrifying: Jesus perhaps scanning the woman’s face to
see if she’s getting what’s happening. And the woman in all likelihood mentally reeling and trying to
assimilate everything that’s just been said to her. What next?
Enter the disciples. Carrying their grocery bags from the Sychar Safeway, they almost drop their
pomegranates when they see Jesus there face to face with a Samaritan woman. “Oy, what is he
doing now?” But they say nothing. They probably know better. In a breathless moment, the woman
makes a decision. In such a hurry that she forgets her water jar at the well, she rushes off to the city
and excitedly tells people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I’ve ever done! He can’t
be the Messiah, can he?” She says, “Come and see,” and the people come. They don’t want to
miss this. At the very least this will make the six o’clock news.
So while Jesus is telling his disciples about the fields being ripe for harvest and that the reaper is
already being paid and gathering fruit for eternal life, the Samaritan woman is spreading the news
about this man Jesus, and St. John writes that “Many Samaritans from that city believed in him
because of the woman’s testimony.” They believe and they want him to stay with them for a while.
These people who’ve been rejected by their cousins the Jews, yet have retained their hunger for
God’s truth and their expectation of a savior, ask him to stay, and as a result, many more come to
believe. The great harvest has begun. The harvest of people, of human souls, snatched from the
jaws of sin and death and carried toward the great granary of heaven.
As we look at this story, do we have a better blueprint for how it works among us today? We’re
confronted with the truth about the Lord. And through the Holy Spirit we’re confronted with the truth
about ourselves. In a moment of stark clarity we see all that we are; we see ourselves the way
the Lord himself sees us. We see our need. And rather than fleeing, we sense that the one who
has shown us all these things might have the answer. He might be the One. So we decide to trust.
We take the plunge. We trust and receive, and then we become water-bearers. Our jars are filled,
and we carry the living water to others. The great Scottish Bible scholar William Barclay writes: “No
discovery is complete until the desire to share it fills our hearts; and we cannot communicate Christ
to others until we have discovered him for ourselves. First to find, then to tell, are the two great
steps of the Christian life.”
May we always remember and be enlivened by our encounter with the One who gives us living
water. May we come to the well daily and share with each other the overflow of our Lord’s love and
goodness. Amen.
calling his first disciples in the Gospel of John. Shortly after John the Baptist exclaims, “Look, here is
the Lamb of God!” two young disciples of John’s begin following in Jesus’ steps. When Jesus turns
and sees them, he asks, “What are you looking for?” And the two ask him in turn, “Rabbi, where are
you staying?” Jesus simply replies “Come and see.” And then a few verses later, after Philip begins
following after Jesus, he tells his friend Nathaniel, “We’ve found the one the Law and the prophets
wrote about.” And Nathaniel says, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip’s reply is,
“Come and see.”
We hear this intriguing invitation again today, and this time from a most unlikely source. It’s one
thing inviting young men close to the inner circle of the prophet John the Baptist, to check out this
man John is so excited about. But what about in the hinterlands of Samaria, among a people long at
odds with the Jews, as Jesus has a conversation with a lone woman on a hot, dusty day at Jacob’s
Well? Why was this woman induced to say “Come and see” to the local villagers after this brief
exchange?
This morning I’d like to spend a few minutes looking at the sequence of events in this story and
explore what it tells us about Jesus, and about how a woman drawn unexpectedly into His world
responds to Him.
Jesus and his disciples were heading back north to Galilee after the Pharisees had gotten their
tunics in a twist about the fact that his disciples were baptizing more people than John the Baptist
down in Judea. Their journey took them through Samaria. Now, the Samaritans had been at odds
with the Jews for a long, long time. Way back in the 8th Century BC the Assyrians had invaded and
taken over the whole area. Many of the Samaritan survivors eventually intermarried with their
captors, which was considered by many stalwart Jews to be an unforgivable sin.
The Jewish people of Judea went through centuries of captivity and persecution, and finally returned
to their homeland in the 5th Century BC, in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. The Samaritans offered
to help in the sacred task of rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem, but were roundly snubbed. They
were told that they were no longer Jews, and had no part in Jewish life or Jewish heritage. The
Samaritans never forgot this, and the Jews and Samaritans had been enemies ever since. The
Samaritans had even built their own rival temple on Mt. Gerizim, and this was sacked and destroyed
under a Jewish general in the 2nd Century BC. There was no love lost between them, and these
feelings of animosity were still strong in the time of Christ.
So here are Jesus and the disciples arriving near Sychar at midday, hot, tired and hungry from their
journey. The disciples trudge into the city to buy provisions, and Jesus stops to rest at Jacob’s well.
Then comes the woman with her bucket to draw water. First Century Jewish men didn’t have a lot of
respect for Samaritans, and weren’t exactly overflowing with respect for women, either, in some
ways. And the person here at the well was both. I can imagine her feeling quite ill at ease as Jesus
asks her for a drink. (And that’s nothing compared to what develops in a few minutes.)
But she does something pretty impressive. Rather than politely responding to his request, then
excusing herself from his presence, she lets her curiosity get the better of her. She asks, “How is it
that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” And in Jesus’ familiar fashion, he opts not
to answer her question, but sharpens her curiosity by saying, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it
is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would give you living
water.” And like Nicodemus last week, this simply floats right over her head. She thinks Jesus is
talking about water quality issues. Kind of like a sermon you might get in some of our churches
today.
But even though she doesn’t understand what Jesus is talking about, she says something absolutely
profound. She says, “Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his
sons and his flock drank from it?” And of course, the answer screams out at us who have the
benefit of hindsight in knowing who Jesus is. YES!! Yes, he is greater than your ancestor Jacob.
He’s greater than John the Baptist, he’s greater than Jacob, he’s greater than Moses, he’s greater
than Abraham. “Before Abraham was, I am!” he told the Pharisees.
But this isn’t how Jesus responds. He almost playfully continues to whet her curiosity by describing
the water He has to offer as water that permanently relieves thirst and wells upward to eternal life.
Of course now we know that Jesus is talking about the gift of himself and of the Holy Spirit whom he’ll
offer to all when His work on earth is complete. Still unclear about all of this, but completely mystified
by this man, the woman then says, perhaps even with a little chuckle of sarcasm, “OK, give me this
water so I don’t have to keep trudging back here to this well.”
Then Jesus really starts rocking the water jar. He says, “All right, go get your husband and come
back.” Her lips tighten a little, and she replies, “I have no husband.” Jesus responds by recounting
her marital and relationship history in rather unsettling detail. She’s had five husbands. And he
affirms that the man she’s now living with is, indeed, not her husband.
At this point I can envision the blood draining from her face as she pauses, then utters words of
profound understatement: “Sir, I see that you’re a prophet.” I don’t know if “Oy vey!” was in the
Samaritans’ vocabulary. I mean, what can you say to that? This kindly stranger has just nailed her
situation exactly, leaving her stammering.
Before we go further, let’s stop and look at the remarkable significance of what’s happened so far.
We have Jesus stopping to chat with a Samaritan woman at an oasis in the middle of the day. He
almost casually (but believe me, this was anything but casual) banters with her in slightly veiled
terms about who He really is. He says that He has something to give that makes the physical
necessities of life pale in comparison. He calls it living water. And as she converses and questions,
it becomes apparent that he sees her with disturbing clarity. He knows her life very well. He sees
right down to her heart.
It’s here that I really have to admire this woman. Because after having her life laid bare by this man,
she stays right with the conversation and doesn’t retreat. Maybe she’s especially plucky, or maybe
she notices something in Jesus that compels her to keep sharing and asking. Because after Jesus
explains to her that a new time is coming, and has come, a time when people won’t just worship God
in the temple or on the mountain, she says, “I know that Messiah is coming. When he comes, he’ll
proclaim all things to us.” Then Jesus drops the bomb. He says, “I who speak to you, am he.”
Boom.
Jesus has intrigued the woman with talk of the living water. He’s said, “If you only knew what this
really is, you’d ask, and I’d give it to you.” He’s demonstrated his prophetic powers by reading her
like a book. He’s explained that we’re now entering a whole new phase in which the very way we
worship God is being radically changed, that soon our spirits will have direct access to God. Then,
probably with her heart starting to beat faster, the woman starts connecting the dots and talking
about the Messiah. And Jesus calmly says, “You’re talking to Him right now. Here I am.”
In the context of its time and place, this is an explosive event. For the Messiah, the Son of God, the
One bringing the people Israel to completion, early in his ministry is announcing himself not to a high
priest in Jerusalem, but to an unknown woman with a jar, at a well in Samaria. This starts into motion
something that directly touches us today. Salvation is no longer just for the Jews. Fulfilling the
ancient promise to Abraham that all nations will be blessed through his offspring, the door is now
opening. And one of the first to get a peep through to the other side is this Samaritan woman, this
water bearer. This scene must have been electrifying: Jesus perhaps scanning the woman’s face to
see if she’s getting what’s happening. And the woman in all likelihood mentally reeling and trying to
assimilate everything that’s just been said to her. What next?
Enter the disciples. Carrying their grocery bags from the Sychar Safeway, they almost drop their
pomegranates when they see Jesus there face to face with a Samaritan woman. “Oy, what is he
doing now?” But they say nothing. They probably know better. In a breathless moment, the woman
makes a decision. In such a hurry that she forgets her water jar at the well, she rushes off to the city
and excitedly tells people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I’ve ever done! He can’t
be the Messiah, can he?” She says, “Come and see,” and the people come. They don’t want to
miss this. At the very least this will make the six o’clock news.
So while Jesus is telling his disciples about the fields being ripe for harvest and that the reaper is
already being paid and gathering fruit for eternal life, the Samaritan woman is spreading the news
about this man Jesus, and St. John writes that “Many Samaritans from that city believed in him
because of the woman’s testimony.” They believe and they want him to stay with them for a while.
These people who’ve been rejected by their cousins the Jews, yet have retained their hunger for
God’s truth and their expectation of a savior, ask him to stay, and as a result, many more come to
believe. The great harvest has begun. The harvest of people, of human souls, snatched from the
jaws of sin and death and carried toward the great granary of heaven.
As we look at this story, do we have a better blueprint for how it works among us today? We’re
confronted with the truth about the Lord. And through the Holy Spirit we’re confronted with the truth
about ourselves. In a moment of stark clarity we see all that we are; we see ourselves the way
the Lord himself sees us. We see our need. And rather than fleeing, we sense that the one who
has shown us all these things might have the answer. He might be the One. So we decide to trust.
We take the plunge. We trust and receive, and then we become water-bearers. Our jars are filled,
and we carry the living water to others. The great Scottish Bible scholar William Barclay writes: “No
discovery is complete until the desire to share it fills our hearts; and we cannot communicate Christ
to others until we have discovered him for ourselves. First to find, then to tell, are the two great
steps of the Christian life.”
May we always remember and be enlivened by our encounter with the One who gives us living
water. May we come to the well daily and share with each other the overflow of our Lord’s love and
goodness. Amen.
Woman at the Well
John 4:1-42
John 4:1-42
February 24, 2008
Fr. Dan Tuton
Fr. Dan Tuton