The most startling aspect of this famous conversation is that it happened at all. The woman herself alludes to the break from tradition when she asks Jesus: “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” One may wonder: Was the woman embarrassed or ashamed? Or was she perhaps afraid of the moment when Jesus would expose her?” She had quite a reputation. She was no angel and had been married five times and was living with a man who wasn’t her husband. Jesus doesn’t only converse with the woman. He also asks to share her drinking vessel, making him unclean according to Jewish law. The thing is, it doesn’t matter to Jesus. It must not have mattered to the Evangelist John either or he wouldn’t have included the story.
The Samaritan woman, like so many other female figures in the Bible, is only identified by her gender, her ethnicity, and her place in society. One thing we know immediately is that this woman is an outcast, even from the other women in the area. She is traveling by herself, at noon, in the heat of the day. Something in her life has prevented her from being part of the in-crowd. She has no friends among the women who come to the well in the cool of the day to share the news of the day. She is treated like a leper. This is the longest recorded conversation Jesus has with anyone. And it’s with someone who is the wrong gender, from the wrong place, and has lived the wrong life.
Don’t you love Jesus? He’s out in the hot sun. He’s thirsty. He’s pondering how to get some water out of the well. Then along comes a woman with a jug. Maybe she reminds him of the many times his mother went to meet her friends at the town well. This was a chore she reserved for herself – it was a time of camaraderie with the neighbor ladies.
Jesus is the one who begins the conversation with the woman. He doesn’t rush her. Slowly he stirs her interest. To her relief he is not fresh with her. She does not feel intimidated. But, imagine her reaction when this man, a stranger and a foreigner at that, asks her for a drink. The water is the medium. Without the water in the story would the woman have been out in the open alone at high noon? Would a foreigner have approached her? Would she have responded? She’s been mistreated too often by men. She’d had taken her share of abuse and wasn’t about to let this man take advantage of her. She talks back to him. And he takes mercy on her. He offers her living water. Maybe he means a flowing spring was nearby? But, no, he changes gears and starts talking about her personal life. This man is remarkable! He must be a prophet. This woman may be wary, but she is bold. She engages Jesus in a theological discussion. She is not about to let him just say things about her past and get away with it. She wants to talk more. She recognizes that this man is a pretty special person. He’s saying amazing things. Who could he be?
The high point of the conversation is when Jesus reveals himself to her as the Messiah. She dashes off to spread the news that one who calls himself the Messiah is right there in the center of their town! Notice that she does not hurriedly fill her jug and dash off with it. She does not grab Jesus by the hand and drag him around showing him off to the women who had shunned her. She abandons her jug and her new-found friend to return to her town and lead others to this Jewish traveler she has fallen in love with over a cup of water.
She tells her story to the townspeople, even the part that Jesus knew she was a sinner. She is not a show-off. She knows she does not have all the answers. She does not demand that they believe what she says about the stranger. She lets her hearers arrive at their own conclusions about Jesus. And they do: “This is indeed the Savior of the world.”
This one day Jesus shared time, a conversation, the gift of himself with her. This one day Jesus was the epitome of RADICAL HOSPITALITY. And, notice that the woman did not just sit on the edge of the wall everyday waiting to see who might happen by. She may have been lonely, but she did not sit with her skirts spread prettily around her hoping some northern visitors would drop in. She did her woman’s work, her daily chore of getting water. She did not run when strangers came. She did not force herself or the town rules upon them. When she recognized the potential for good for her village, she ran back and raised the cry: “Come and see” … Like her we can’t sit on the front door step and wait for potential to show up. We have to step into scary places – like the village square at high noon. Yes, some may take “pot shots” at us or ignore us. They may know little about our community and think they know everything. If we offer them “water,” one by one strangers may become friends. If we reach a hand out in friendship, speak up when invited to parishes, join in village activities, our community will be the richer, our profile higher in the Google and Chrome search engine.
This woman’s story and her encounter with Jesus show us that grace, living water, radical hospitality are ready to refresh the parched earth and its peoples. We spent the first 9 months of our existence in an environment surrounded by water; we were baptized in water and we are nourished daily by the Living Waters of the Eucharist. Perhaps even more significant than the individuals in this story is imagining what this story might have meant to the community that was hearing it for the first time.
~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB
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