The two groups hated each other. The bad blood between the Jews and Samaritans went back hundreds of years to the time when Assyria conquered the northern tribes of Israel. When the Assyrians conquered a place, they deported the people who lived in the land. Those people were replaced with different people who came from another conquered place. While most of Israel was taken into Assyrian captivity, some remained and survived. The Jews who were left behind in Israel intermarried with the foreigners who had been brought in. This mixed group of people were called Samaritans.
By the first century, the Samaritans represented more than 700 years of combined cultures and religions. The Samaritans hated the Jews, The Jews hated the Samaritans.
The troublesome thing was that Samaria was located between the Jewish centers of the Galilee in the north and Judea in the south. As the Jews traveled back and forth between the two areas, most people went the long way around. Instead of traveling through the middle of Samaria, most Jews crossed over the Jordan river to the east to bypass them. Once they passed Samaria, they crossed back over the Jordan again. The extra time and distance seemed worth it since it allowed them to stay away from the Samaritans. They wanted nothing to do with those they thought were beneath them.
Jesus and His disciples had been in Jerusalem and were headed back home to Galilee. His followers must have been shocked when Jesus told them they would travel through Samaria instead of going around.
Maybe they exchanged uneasy glances with each other when they heard the plan. Maybe they whispered their surprise and confusion among themselves as they walked north. Maybe they prepared themselves for trouble with the Samaritans.
They didn’t know Jesus had a divine appointment to keep.
Jesus and His disciples arrived at noon to the ancient site of Jacob’s well. Jesus, weary and hot from the journey, sat on the well while the disciples went together into town to get some food. With perfect timing, Jesus watched as the woman approach with her waterpots. This was the woman he came to meet.
The woman came alone in the heat of the day to draw water. She had grown used to it. She wasn’t welcome to join the “good” women of her village when they came to draw water in the cool of the morning. Hot and sweaty, the woman glanced at the Jewish man sitting there and ignored him. She knew he would ignore her. She lowered the bucket, and was startled when he spoke.
“Give me a drink,” said the man.
She was shocked that the Jewish man spoke to her. It just didn’t happen. She couldn’t help herself and asked out loud, “How is it that you, being a Jew, ask me for a drink being a Samaritan woman?”
“If you knew who it is that asks you for a drink, you would ask for living water,” the man replied.
“You don’t even have a waterpot, so where would you get living water?” She said said, pointing out the obvious.
“Everyone who drinks this water will thirst again,” he said and gestured toward the well. “But the well of water I can give is a spring of eternal life.”
With a smirk she said, “Sir, give me this water so I won’t be thirsty and won’t have to come all the way here to get water.”
“Go call your husband,” he said.
So, the man was done talking about water. She could just ignore him. She could pick up her waterpot and walk back home. What would this man say if she told him the truth? Would he stop talking to her? Would he shame her? Would he turn away from her like others had done?
“I don’t have a husband,” she answered.
“You have had five husbands, and the man you live with is not your husband,” he said.
How did he know this? He must be a prophet since he knew her history. If he was a prophet then she wanted him to clear up something she’d wondered about for a long time.
“Our fathers worshipped here on these mountains, but your people say you must worship in Jerusalem,” she stated.
“The time is coming when true worship will be in neither place. True worshippers will worship the Father in Spirit,” he said.
She didn’t understand what the man was talking about. She said what she knew to be true, “I know the Messiah is coming and when He does, He will tell us what to do.”
“I am the Messiah,” he said.
He said it with authority and power. He was the one and only, long-awaited Messiah.
Her soul recognized the truth that He was the Messiah and she believed. The Messiah offered her the living water of eternal life. She wanted to tell . . . everyone. She left her waterpot and turned back toward the village, not even slowing up as she passed by His disciples coming toward the Messiah. She told everyone she saw about Jesus and what had happened. Jesus and His disciples stayed for two days with the Samaritans. Many listened to Jesus and believed He was their Savior.
Scripture doesn’t tell us what the disciples thought during their stay in Samaria. Did they wrestle with their own prejudices? Did they struggle with the idea that even the Samaritans could be offered the gift of eternal life? If the Samaritans could come to Jesus, were the hated Romans be accepted too?
Maybe Jesus wanted His disciples to see that no person is too sinful to come to Him. And no group of people is too far away and mixed up to come to Him.
The same is still true today. People are all around us who are thirsty for the living water of eternal life.
Maybe Jesus puts some of them in our path for our own diving appointments.
Carla Killough McClafferty