From Water Pots to Witnessing

by Janet Peifer

John 4:4-42

This portion of John 4 is a pivotal teaching of our Lord and one in which the deeper messages are commonly overlooked. The interaction of Jesus and the Samaritan woman bears all the marks of divine planning. Jesus explains the purpose of this encounter near the end of the story when his disciples chide him for not taking time to eat the lunch they had brought back for him. He said, "my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work." This lay over in Sychar becomes then one of the necessary tasks God had asked of Jesus in order to complete his ministry on earth.

That task is clearly stated in the first verse of our text. Verse 4 in the NIV states, "now he had to go through Samaria." The KJV is "and he must needs go through Samaria." That actually is closer to the original Greek meaning. A literal translation of this phrase from the Greek is, "And it behooved him to pass through Samaria." The inner imperative for Jesus to go through Samaria is very strong in the original language. There is one word translated" to pass through" and that word is followed by the another Greek word translated "through." Jesus was behooved (called, sent on a mission, charged) to go through Samaria for one of the most important encounters in his life and in the life of the Samaritan woman.

Likely, you know that people in Jesus' day did not "have" to go through Samaria. They routinely took a loop root out around the despised place. But Jesus had to go through. He was behooved to do it. Behooved in the English language means "to be necessary or proper." In Jesus' day going through Samaria was not the politically correct thing to do. But it was God's will, God's mandate for Jesus.

Why was Jesus behooved to go through Samaria? Why did God direct Jesus to follow him in this way? What difference did it make whether Jesus followed this mandate or not? There may be many reasons--more than we have time to explore in this sermon. But I believe that this account was recorded and placed in the holy scriptures as a model of the new way of living which Jesus ushered in. He came to set captives free and there were obstacles that needed to be carefully dismantled in order for that freedom to become a reality. Going to Samaria and having a lengthy conversation with the Samaritan woman modeled the breaking down of numerous obstacles.

The Samaritan woman had at least three strikes against her. She had a low-assigned status as a woman in the culture and religion of the first century. She had a low-assigned status as a Samaritan--a kindred people whom the Jews despised. And she had a third low status as a woman whose life-style was suspect. In this one encounter, Jesus demonstrated the demise of three obstacles. The obstacle of racial barriers, gender barriers, and economic-social barriers.

The hatred between the Jews and the Samaritans had been going on a long time and was no imaginary situation in Jesus' day. Dating back to the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, following the period of captivity, when people of Samaria wanted to join the Jews but were seen as adversaries, a lasting hostility began. The inhospitality and hostility of the Samaritans induced many pilgrims from the north to Jerusalem to go on the east side of the Jordan rather than traveling through Samaria. The Samaritans rejected all the Old Testament except the Pentateuch, of which they claimed to have a more original copy than did the Jews, and claimed as well that they observed the precepts better. Social and commercial relations, though they could not be broken off completely, were reduced as much as possible. The Samaritans were publicly cursed in the Jewish synagogues. The Samaritans could not be called as witnesses in the Jewish courts, could not be admitted to any sort of religious teaching classes, and were thus, so far as the Jews was concerned, excluded from eternal life.

That Jesus should purpose to go through Samaria and then choose to have an extended conversation with one who was a despised member of a despised mixed race gives us an inside look at the futility of all prejudice and discrimination. Jesus came to break down the walls that divide people on the basis of racial and geographical origin. In Christ there are no levels of status, worth, or importance. As is often said, "at the cross we are all on the same level."

Let's take a closer look at the Samaritan woman and begin to allow the significance of Jesus' encounter with her to sink in. Jesus and his disciples get to Sychar about noontime, the heat of the day, and they are hungry and thirst. Jesus sits down while the disciples go a bit further to get some food. It is worthy of note in this narrative that the sixth hour (noontime) was not the typical time to be going to get a water supply. But the woman was at the well with her container to get water just at the time Jesus arrived. Some have also questioned why the woman came to Jacob's well at all for water because on the way from Sychar, she would have passed several streams along the way that permitted easier collecting than putting a skin bucket down a deep well.

Perhaps she was getting water to take to nearby men working in the fields and was not collecting for her own household needs. Or others suggest that she, a woman with a questionable lifestyle may not have been welcome at the usual evening time when the women gathered to get water and catch up on the latest news. Whatever the circumstances, we believe that this woman who was searching met the source of her need in Jesus at just the right time.

Sermons on this passage have frequently been pretty hard on the Samaritan woman. She is seen only as a terribly lose and sinful woman who, when Jesus addresses the problem of her many husbands, wants to quickly change the subject. In our culture, we can hardly realize the numerous barriers that were broken down in this encounter at the well. She knew how unbelievable it was that Jesus would even verbally address her, let alone carry on a theological conversation with her. She asks right up front, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" Men in that culture did not talk to women in public and Jews did not talk to Samaritans. There was a rabbinical saying, "A man should hold no conversation with a woman in the street, not even with his own wife, still less with any other woman, lest men should gossip." And Jesus did both. He talked to a woman and a Samaritan even when the disciples were absent. Can you imagine how people must have talked! His disciples were aghast when they returned, but were afraid to say anything (v.27).

Only 3 verses out of this long discourse contain information about her marital status. But this part of the story sometimes carries the weight of messages and articles on the Samaritan woman. It is helpful for us to know that in first century Palestine, women had no say in a divorce. Only men could divorce their wives. There isn't enough information here to know if any of her husbands died, or if all of them divorced her. Whatever the case, she was a woman with much heartache in life. At this time she was not married to the man she was living with. It is not that this was unimportant to Jesus. He wants us to have moral and healthy relationships. It is just that he knew that if she would find living water which would fill the void in her life, other things would come together for her spiritual and social well being.

This woman when affirmed for who she was as a worthwhile human being, was so energized that she became an immediate preacher and witness to the people in her town. It is a beautiful example of what happens when social and religious barriers are destroyed. She left her water pots (a socially assigned duty) for witnessing (a Jesus-assigned duty). And people responded to her message in force. Verse 39 says that "many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony."

Then finally, one other barrier which Jesus came to abolish is clearly addressed in this account. Jesus and the Samaritan woman are talking about places for worship (vv.19-24). There was a severe division of opinion about the most appropriate place to worship. The Samaritans said it was on Mt. Gerizim that one should worship and the Jews said it was in Jerusalem. Jesus came to abolish such division forever. He said, "the time is coming when and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth" (v.23). One place of worship such as in the temple at Jerusalem or in the temple on Mt. Gerizim would not claim the primary focus of "the" place to worship. Now God could and would be worshiped wherever two or three believers gathered in his name. The living water which Jesus offered was for everyone anywhere. Jesus was here giving guidance about how to deal with wounds and divisions, especially those of long standing. This truth has been tragically ignored down through the violent history of Christianity. Jesus endeavored to take the barriers down and people keep putting them up again. The story of the Crusades (from 1100 to 1300 A.D.) is one of Christianity and violence. Christianity (or their version of it) was the religion of preference and all who did not embrace it were killed. In the 1500's the reformers became intolerant of the radical reformers, (the Anabaptists) and hunted them down to imprison and kill them. In our own century, Arian Christianity in the 1940's as seen by German leaders was preferable over being Jewish and 6,000,000 Jews lost their lives in the Holocaust. Religious intolerance which thrives on division is not the way of peace which Jesus modeled and taught while here on earth. Even today, we can be tempted to think that our denomination, or our theological perspectives have the "edge" on truth. And that is just one step away from the ugly things that intolerance breeds.

In our spiritual pilgrimage, we too are behooved to go through our own "Samaria." We are agents of Jesus in this world to keep the obstacles away which Jesus came to take down. And we are behooved to worship and witness in a way which adequately reflects the new way of living that Jesus brought. May God help us so to live.

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