John is noted for his one on one dialogues, encounters between Jesus and another, which results in insight and transformation. This is what happens in Jesus’ encounter with this lady of Samaria, alone at the well at noon. She should have drawn her water early in the morning with the other ladies, laughing and talking and hauling up the water for the day, but she has to wait until everyone is inside resting and we find out why. Her life with multiple “husbands” makes her an outsider.
Jesus here is an outsider too: a Jew, in Samaria, where the centuries of mutual charges of religious unorthodoxy and hateful prejudice should have ensured their mutual avoidance of each other.
Then Jesus, shockingly for Jewish listeners, breaks the rules as he requests water from this woman, and she breaks them on her side by even noting his request. The theme of thirst connects them both, over water, the key of life. Jesus’ spiritual promise of an eternally satisfying water only he can give, is met with the woman’s misunderstanding. For the listener, however, Jesus’ promise rings true since our encounter with Jesus does result in that fountain of life springing up like a fountain inside us.
In Jesus’ responses which show his knowledge of her true life, she tries to distance herself from him, stating the differences in the place of worship which divides their two peoples, but Jesus brushes it away in his promise of a future re-unification of both in the worship of God in Spirit and in Truth. Then, he reveals himself as the Messiah for whom both peoples wait.
Now John shows us the effects of this powerful spiritual current she has received from Jesus: she leaves that earthenware water jar there, and instead hurries to the very townspeople she had been trying to avoid and announces “Come , see a man who told me all that I ever did. He couldn’t be the Messiah could he?” And they do respond to her call. And amazingly, invite Jesus to stay with them, which he does, for three days. And they tell the woman, “It is no longer because of your words, that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed, the Saviour of the world”.
This account shows us the effects of the waters of life that spring up from an encounter with Jesus: it is the complete ignoring of prejudices, suspicions and long held separations justified on religiously self-righteous grounds. Rather there is a free and refreshing outreach in love and care for others, a reconciliation, and a union, which is a worship of God in Spirit and in Truth.
Sister Wendy Cotter CSJ, Ph.D.