Jesus was a busy person, yet the Gospels reveal he had incredibly strong relationships. As 21st-century Christians, we may not realize how unusual it would have been in Jesus’ day to think a deity could befriend a human, but this was and is the invitation of the Son of God – not only to cover our sins, but to know us and allow us to be known by him.
Second only to offering himself on the cross, isn’t this offer of relationship with him the greatest act of generosity ever? The answer may be in plain sight, in an old story you’ve probably heard before.
An intimate conversation
The women didn’t associate with her, or she didn’t associate with them. Who knew, by this point, who had separated from whom. It had been a long time. That’s why she was out with her water jug when the sun was at its highest point in the sky.
Walking in the heat of the day, she didn’t have to be concerned about how anyone looked at her or what they might call her. She didn’t have to endure their silence when they should have been offering her a greeting. At this time of day, she’d be alone and wouldn’t have to be reminded of her shame.
Except, when she got there, she wasn’t alone. Jesus was there, sitting, exhausted, no disciples in sight. “Will you give me a drink?” he asked her.
“How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” she asked. It was almost certain in Samaria that you would not encounter a rabbi. Serious Jews did not come through Samaria (even though the only direct route between Judea and Galilee ran right through it), and if they did, they certainly didn’t start conversations with Samaritans. The dislike and distrust between them ran centuries deep.
As he did – so many times with so many people – Jesus said something perplexing, something she wasn’t expecting that forced her to think:
“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.”
She was doing chores under the hot Samaritan sun; it wasn’t really a good time for thinking metaphorically. What was Jesus asking her? What must she have thought? She bristled a little.
He doesn’t have a jug. He doesn’t know how deep this well is. He’s saying his water is better than the water we get from our well, the one Jacob dug centuries ago? Who does he think he is?
“Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself?”
(The simple answer, we know, is “Yes, he is.” The writer of Hebrews lays out how Jesus is better than everything. And he was the only one great enough to bear the weight of her hope, and ours.)
But if you read the rest of the story, you see it wasn’t just who he was that made this woman leave rejoicing. There was something else.
Later, she would mention it when she told everyone she could find. “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did,” she said to people who used to make her feel a terrible shame she didn’t feel anymore. “Could this be the Messiah?” (John 4:29).
Who didn’t know what she’d done? Who hadn’t heard the gossip about her? Her shame was no secret. Still, she’d never run like this before, never spoken to so many people in one day. Why was the fact that Jesus knew what she had done so special?
For years, she had been known and rejected by her own people. Where she lived, they knew what she had done and wanted nothing to do with her. Jesus knew everything about her, too, but he stayed and treated her like one of his own disciples.
“Go call your husband,” he said.
“I have no husband,” she answered.
“You are right,” he said. And then came all the details – her whole life of ugly sin exposed under the hot Samaritan sun. It was likely painful for her to hear it recounted; yet … there was no shame. He didn’t call her names or tell her how she should feel about herself. He didn’t punish or berate or proposition her. He just told her the truth about herself and stayed. She’d known a lot of men, but this one was different.
He knew her, all the ugly stuff. But he didn’t shame her or walk away. Instead, he offered himself to her, so she could know him, too. More than that, he gave her knowledge of himself even his disciples didn’t have yet. He taught her who he was the same way he had often taught them. Through a gentle, but firm, question-and answer-session, he led her to the fact that she was talking with the Messiah.
“I know that Messiah is coming,” she said.
“I who speak to you am he,” he answered.
Who else had ever heard this? Intimate knowledge of Jesus, knowledge so great, so profound that the rulers of Judea would later order soldiers to beat it out of him. Knowledge that would change the lives of millions for millennia to come. And this one unknown, sinful, desperately lonely woman would be the person he chose to reveal this news to first?
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him ….
The sinful Samaritan and Sychar
Why did Jesus come to this town, Sychar, the capital of Samaria? Why would Jesus come to this person, a woman with a bad reputation? God sees individuals, but he is also, always, working to redeem peoples and places. Through this one woman Jesus came to know and be known by, God would begin the work of redeeming an entire people group.
Sychar was likely not the original name of the area where Jesus sat and talked with this woman in Samaria. When Jacob had dug this well, many scholars agree, it was called Shechem. The city of Shechem was a place of promise and of worship (Genesis 12:7, 33:16-20). It was where God had committed to give the land to his people – Abraham’s descendants – who would belong to God. Through an offspring from among those people, the promise went, the whole earth would be blessed (Genesis 12, 22, 26).
Centuries later, descendants of that promise would rebel against God (at Shechem) and establish their own nation, creating a syncretistic mix of worship according to God’s law and the Baal worship of the people who lived in the surrounding nations. (1 Kings 12 tells the story of the division, and 2 Kings 17 describes Samaritan worship and the five “baals” – a word that can also mean “husband” –they adopted.)
Now, here was Jesus – a descendant of that promise, the descendant who came to bless the whole world – sitting with a descendant of that rebellion. Here was the Messiah (who, surprisingly, had come for this nation, too) telling her that true religion was not found on the mountain her people called holy (Mt. Gerizim), or any other mountain, but in him, the source of all life.
The beginning of John 4 says Jesus “had to pass through Samaria.” Why? Because in Samaria lived a whole group of people who would be lost to cruel pagan gods, lost to history and eternity, if he did not go and offer them salvation. This seemingly insignificant person Jesus had taken the time to get to know became the first in her nation (and even the first ever) to hear from the Messiah himself that he had come.
No wonder she didn’t care what anyone else thought as she spread the words that opened the door of her nation to salvation. The Messiah of the world knew and loved her. Nothing else mattered.
Known
To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything.
– Tim Keller
This form of generosity our God and Father offers us through Jesus is extreme and immeasurably kind. It is the same kind of generosity Jesus offered to the woman he met in Sychar. And we don’t talk about its value enough.
Romans 5:6-8 says that while we were ungodly, unrighteous, sinners, totally powerless to do anything about it, Jesus died in our place. Why? That was the only solution that could save us and satisfy God’s wrath toward sin.
But now, instead of being disgusted with us because of what he had to do, Jesus does the unthinkable. He invites us into his family, into a loving relationship in which we will be known by him and grow in knowing him too. We are offered relationship with the Messiah, the Creator of the world. In any other religion, it would be unthinkable that God and man could be family, could each offer themselves in intimate relationship, to know and be known. Yet this is exactly his generous offer to us.
“If anyone loves God, he is known by God.” – 1 Corinthians 8:3
“Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.” – James 4:8
“He rewards those who seek him.” – Hebrews 11:6
“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. [But] when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” – 1 John 3:1-2
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” – 1 Corinthians 13:12
Brothers and sisters, let us rest today in this grace. Contemplate the unfathomable generosity of a perfect and holy God offering himself not only for us but to us. Oh, how much we are loved. How wonderful and how generous is our God!
Knowing
“But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord GOD my refuge, that I may tell of all Your works.” – Psalm 73:28
It was good for the Samaritan woman to be near God. After she’d drawn near to him, she began to tell everyone she knew. John 4:39 says that many Samaritans of that city came to believe because of her testimony. These people – separated, geographically isolated, and culturally ostracized from the Jews who lived north and south of them … These hated people could’ve gone the rest of their days never knowing the Messiah if Jesus hadn’t stopped to know her.
But he did.
As we are transformed by the renewing of our minds with Scripture, and as we are conformed to the image of Christ, doesn’t it make sense that we will become people who love like Jesus did? Could we become a refuge for the unloved, a sharer of salvation for someone no one seems to notice? Could we offer them close relationship?
There is no more personal gift and no relationship more likely to move them further along the path to salvation. No greater generosity than to become like Jesus for the sake of bringing someone to him.
Could we do it even if they were unpleasant, had a bad reputation, were even known for their sin? Isn’t that what he did for some of us?
Jesus knew the Samaritan woman the moment he saw her. He loved her. He let her know him. And in the span of this this short interaction, he brought her (and her people) eternal life. Let us find a way – and find someone – to go to and do the same.
