What is water? It's the stuff that sustains life. We can live weeks without food, but we can only go days without water. And food comes in many varieties, but there is just one kind of water. Or is there?...

The bible portrays Jesus as mainly concerned with Jews during the course of his ministry. While there are places where Jesus helps gentiles, and mentions the gentile believers who will follow (John 10:16), his ministry was exclusively focused on Jews.

Why? Not because Jesus didn't have access to other nations, but rather because the Jews are the only people-group with whom God is portrayed as having a contract.

At one point, Jesus meets a woman from one Jewish sub-group, the "Samaritans". The Samaritans, as the descendants of one of the two Jewish kingdoms, considered themselves Jews, but the greater body of Israel did not: Instead Samaritans were mocked and derided -- and were probably the subject of many ethnic jokes, similar to the ones I heard about the Polish when I was growing up in Milwaukee. (We have since repented: may the Poles forgive us.)

In Jesus's culture, Samaritans were the hated ethnic/national minority, equivalent in our culture to Poles, or Blacks, or Whites, or the French -- think of them as whoever you like least, based on some national or ethnic description.

Did Jesus buy into this kind of categorization, based on externalities?

No, he did not. Instead he went out of his way to visit them, and considered them authentic children of Abraham, regardless of the prevailing view at the time. In a little town named "Sychar", near a well which had been attributed to Jacob (from whom we get the name Israel), we read the following account:

Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) (John 4:7-9)

Again, this points to how unusual his journey was: He went far out of his way to visit this town, and broke a strong contemporary Jewish social taboo in doing so. But Jesus wasn't here by accident: "Jesus had to go through Samaria." (John 4;4, emphasis mine)

But that wasn't the only taboo being broken here: Jewish men also did not associate with strange women. And when we learn more about the character of this woman, below, we'll see how totally shocking this conversation really is...

(This is hinted at already by the fact she's alone at the well. The "watering hole" or "water cooler" has always been a social gathering spot, a place to discuss the gossip of the day. The fact she's alone indicates she's been excluded from the normal clique -- she's a double-minority. Like an HIV-positive black woman, or a black Republican. Even other minority members treat her with prejudice.)

Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."

"Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?"

Jesus is, in a sense, teasing her. Getting her mind on the right topics. Only a few sentences, and she's already talking about wells, their origins, water quality. She also realizes he's implying that, like Jacob, he can give some kind of "water", but that his water's "quality" is higher than that of Jacob -- a hint he's more important than Jacob. She did not miss this hint.

Yet she also has not asked him yet for this "water", so Jesus drives the point home even further, tantalizing her:

Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."

There. Now's she's asked for it.

For all the wrong reasons, of course. Is she interested in this "eternal life" thing? No. Is she interested in morality or the greater social-political question of the relationship between Samaria and Israel? No.

Instead, she wants to get out of making the trip.

And perhaps also the ensuing mockery.

Is this wrong motive a problem? No. Does Jesus give her this "living water", at her request? He does indeed, but he does it in typical Jesus fashion: by raising questions which appear irrelevant but actually cut to the heart of the matter.

He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back."

"I have no husband," she replied.

Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."

Good heavens! Even in our culture, five marriages would be amazing! And currently divorced and sleeping around at that! Imagine it in Jewish culture, two thousand years ago: She's a dirty whore, she is! Scum of the earth. Filthy tramp and slut! No wonder the she has to come to the well alone. Keep her away from our husbands!

Does Jesus condone her behavior or circumstances? No, he cuts to the heart of her shame. He accepts her and treats her with complete respect, but he does not bless nor approve the "externalities" in her life which run contrary to the will of God, whether behavior or philosophical, as we'll see...

Can you imagine her shock at having a total stranger bring this shame out in public, apparently still treating her with respect even though he knows her "dirty laundry"?

"Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet...

And what do you do when you have access to a prophet? You ask them to resolve the greater issues of your society! Who is right? The Democrats or the Republicans? The liberals or the conservatives? The French or the Americans...

For a Samaritan, cut off from temple-worship by distance and tradition, the big issue involved a question of religious practice:

Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."

Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.

Note: He puts her theology down. Sometimes, we construct our worldview around things which make us feel good; we deny things which makes us look bad, whether they are true or not.

The Samaritan: Hey, we didn't choose to be this way! It wasn't our choice to be born into this social group! Our history wasn't our decision! We're not less valuable people. Surely a loving God would approve of our accomodation of living and worshipping our way...

Jesus does not allow her to do this, but holds up correct theology: Sorry you're an outcast, but you can't fix that by rewriting history nor theology.

(Side note: He also predicts the future destruction of the temple, indicating in the future the "true worshippers" will worship neither in Sychar nor Jerusalem.)

Instead of her myth, he emphasizes the importance of approaching God with His truth, not our own ideas, and worshipping the God that is, rather than one we construct to flatter our own parochical interests:

Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."

Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."

There's no fuzz on that peach!
Did Jesus think he was the Messiah?
Uh, yes!

Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, "What do you want?" or "Why are you talking with her?"

Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, "Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the messiah?" They came out of the town and made their way toward him...

Technically speaking, he didn't relate every single event her in life to her. But it was clear he'd hit the major points, and laid bare her inner secrets. Soon others would reach the same conclusion based on their own conversations with him, which remain unrecorded (skipping vss 32-37)...

Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I ever did." So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers.

They said to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world."

Because she requested it, she, and her whole village, did indeed receive the "living water" of which Jesus spoke: they accepted Jesus as the messiah, God's representative to man. This Jewish man, "Yeshua", "savior of the world".

The rules are no different for us:
Seek, and you will find.
Ask, and it will be given.

Are you interested in truth?
If so, have you sought to live forever?
Do you want to?