The Story of the Samaritan Woman

The Story of the Samaritan Woman Title

I want to make a quick note: these blog posts won't be in any specific order, and they won't follow the order of the stories in the Bible Study, but I will cover all of them. So please be patient with me! Now on to our first story!

We have all heard this story before, but if you haven’t, I recommend reading it. It’s found in John Chapter 4, and trust me, you will want to read it.

However, for those of you who have read it, how many times did you read it thinking Jesus was naming her sin? How many of you thought that encounter was “normal” and how many of you picked up on a very important statement, one of great significance.

I know I never connected the dots, and I didn’t understand because I was unfamiliar with the culture of the time. However, I've just learned something completely amazing about that story, and I have to share it with you. First, I need to preface this with a few quick details, ready?

The culture of Jesus in the day was like this:

·      Honor and Shame were their justice, and still are. Only someone honorable could reach down and lift a shameful person up and restore their honor.]

·      Hospitality was super important. If you were hospitable, you were honorable. If you weren’t, they were viewed as responsible for sin coming into the world; you were shameful. This is still the culture as well.

·      By the time Jesus came on the scene (the period between the end of the Old Testament and Matthew, called the Intertestamental Period), women lost their honor. They were viewed as evil, detestable; they were viewed as responsible for sin coming into the world; they couldn’t testify because they were not to be trusted. The view of women was so lowly that a man was able to divorce his wife over burning bread. A man was told not to sit and talk to a woman.

·      Samaritans: They were seen as horrible people, so much so that a Rabbi said, “He who eats the bread of a Samaritan is like he who eats the flesh of swine.” And the Samaritan women? That was worse. It was said that the spittle of a Samaritan woman is unclean.

·      Finally, the land was divided like so: Galilee to the North, Samaria below them, and Judea or Jerusalem below that. To travel from Nazareth to Jerusalem, they had to pass through Samaria.

·      Jacob’s Well is in Samaria.

So why are these things important? Well, Jesus and his disciples traveled through Samaria a lot when they went to Jerusalem. But no one would open their home to them (here’s that hospitality piece) because even though not doing so was shameful, they preferred shame over being nice to the Jews. That’s how bad the beef was between the two.

But with this story, something amazing happens!! Be sure to consider all the things I mentioned above. Are you ready? Ok, here we go!! Our story picks up in John 4:4-30.

Jesus and the Samaritan Woman

As we know from the story, the Samaritan woman went to the well (Jacob’s Well) alone on a hot, noonday. This happened to be the same day Jesus was traveling, and he went to sit at the well. Now, for her to go to the well by herself in the middle of the day tells us a lot. She had no friends to accompany her; culturally, most women would go in the morning or in the evening when it wasn’t so hot. But no one was with her, which is also odd, because this is a Hospitality and Communal culture. Which means this woman was already viewed as shameful.

So, here she is going to the well by herself to fetch water, and Jesus is already there, by himself. He was a Rabbi, remember? Which makes this interaction even more unusual. Think about it, a Rabbi sitting at a well, in the heat of the day, alone with a Samaritan Woman? As Kristi said, this would not have happened.

But then it begins…Jesus speaks first!! “Will you give me a drink?” Now the drink would come from her cup, and remember the spittle of a Samaritan woman was considered unclean and worse than a Jewish woman. Yet he was asking her for a drink! Even the Samaritan woman understood this, because she asked him why he would ask her that.

Then what does Jesus do? He goes on to talk about living water, and she wants some!! So, he tells her to go call her husband, but she says she doesn’t have a husband. To which Jesus says, 'You are right, you have no husband, you have had five, and the current one is not your husband.' Ok, remember a woman could be divorced for anything, and only men had the right to divorce, and when that happened, she was seen as shameful. So, 5 husbands and divorced 5 times, and the current one she is living with isn’t her husband, she’s at the well, alone, at noon, and she’s a Samaritan. Nothing is going her way.

But here’s the neat thing…when Jesus brings it up, he wasn’t naming her sin, he was naming her SHAME! So far, an honorable person (Jesus) has reached down to the shameful person (the Samaritan Woman); the next part is the lifting. Are you ready?

Recap! Jesus is a Rabbi; it’s unusual for a man, especially a Rabbi, to talk to a woman in public. Even worse, that they would talk to a Samaritan woman in public, especially a holy Rabbi like Jesus. Additionally, you rarely find a rabbi discussing theology with women. BUT that’s what he does! He is honoring her by discussing things related to God, worship, and the nature of it, including where, what, and how it is. He is having this conversation with HER, not with a man, not in a temple, not with religious leaders.

See, she brings up that he’s a prophet and how they are waiting for the Messiah to come. Now, Jesus makes 7 very powerful “I Am” statements in the Bible, the first one, the one with the most impact, the one you can’t do again, is made here.

Jesus helping a woman.

Jesus, a holy Rabbi, sitting alone at a well in the heat of the day, talking to a woman in public, and a Samaritan woman at that, who has been divorced 5 times and is seen as shameful, tells this woman, “I, the one speaking to you, I Am he.” Jesus makes the first I AM Statement to a Samaritan woman of all people!! A woman whose own culture sees her as shameful, unworthy, evil, and untrustworthy, and Jesus shares it with her FIRST! How cool is that!! He lifts her up; he brings her out of her shame and restores her! He HONORS her!!!

The woman left her water jar, went back to town, and told people about Jesus. A woman who could not testify in court, because people wouldn’t believe her. But when she shared her testimony, the people believed her. They went to see Jesus, and they invited him to stay with them. A group of people who had once turned Jews away was now inviting them to stay. When they heard from Jesus themselves, they believed in Jesus.

Jesus did this for every woman he encountered. Every woman. Jesus saw her in her shame; he reached down to her, lifted her up, and restored her. Because of what Jesus did for her, she became a “missionary” who brought her whole town to Jesus, literally. A woman who wouldn’t be trusted, a woman who was seen as shameful, was the one who shared Jesus with her whole town.

This story takes on a whole new meaning, and there are many more like it throughout the study. She talks about the woman who washes Jesus’s feet. She discusses the woman who was unclean and the adulteress. Each story has a deeper meaning and understanding when you hear it as it was meant to be.

If Jesus can lift and restore women in a world that viewed them so negatively, I promise He can lift and restore you. No matter where you are, no matter the storm you face, he can restore you, and the love that comes with it is so immensely powerful.

“Take Heart Daughter” “Take Heart Son”

God Bless

K. M. Leffler