The Reality of Sychar

In the gospel of John, chapter 4, Jesus and His disciples move from Judea to Samaria to avoid an encounter with the Pharisees over His evangelistic work there. It may have been His plan all along to go there. What happened is nothing short of amazing in Christian terms. It all started with His encounter at the town well.

⁴ Now he had to go through Samaria. ⁵ So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶ Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
⁷ When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” ⁸ (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
⁹ 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.^[a])
¹⁰ 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.”

There are several odd things about this situation. First, Jews were not in the habit of traveling through Samaria. They would traverse a longer route east of the Jordan river to get to Galilee in those days. This was because of the animosity between them and the Samaritans. Jews considered Samaritans as half breeds, as heretics and as unclean. They had very specific differences of opinion over where to worship and what constituted God's written word. It was sort of like the difference between an evangelical Christian and a Mormon, but I digress.

Second, a Jewish man, and most especially a Rabbi, would have avoided speaking to any woman not related to him when they were in a public setting. That this woman was a Samaritan, made the encounter all the more disturbing from a first century Jewish point of view. Nonetheless, Jesus engages her in conversation and she responds in kind, without fear and is even a bit aggressive. When Jesus pushes, she pushes back.

For convenience, I have named this woman Delores. She is a character that would have been comfortable in our culture I think. Her openness and willingness to to speak is intriguing. And so Delores speaks.

¹¹ “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? ¹² Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
¹³ Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
¹⁵ 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.”
¹⁶ He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”
¹⁷ “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. ¹⁸ 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.”

Delores may not have been a Rhodes Scholar, but she knew her mind. What she did not understand is that Jew she was talking to knew her mind better than she did. In their discussion of water, the conversation turns to a type of water only offered from one Source. She wanted to know where to get this eternally thirst quenching water, but before the discussion could continue, Jesus asks Delores to go get her husband.

Uh-oh.

What was that about? Delores had no intention of discussing her personal life with this Jew. She wonders to herself, "how does He know these things? About my past; yes even about my sinful life?"

Indeed, Jesus knew everything about her, about her need for something to end her searching, to help her settle and get repointed in her approach to life. The best parts is, she wants to pursue what Jesus is saying to her in that effort. So she begrudgingly admits her sin and says Jesus is right in one statement.
 

¹⁹ “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
²¹ “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²² You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³ Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴ God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
²⁵ The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
²⁶ Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.

Delores is no one's dummy. She immediately gets it. She is onto Jesus almost as fast as Jesus was on to her. What happens after this is incredible. As the disciples return with lunch, Delores runs into town, tells everyone about Jesus, and they invite Jesus and His disciples to stay for two days. Everyone in town becomes a believer.

Delores goes from being the town joke to the town evangelist. It was a profitable junket for Jesus and His apostles. After this, they go on to Galilee.  

It's interesting to me that this story comes on the tail of Jesus' encounter with Nicodemus; He was the staid Pharisee that approached Jesus in stealth and by night. He was the religious authority, Sanhedrin member and power broker. He was the doctor of the the law; the teacher of Israel and yet he did not understand as Delores did, what Jesus was offering. Nicodemus was blocked by many things including his perception of who God is and and what He wants for His creations. Delores had nothing like that holding her back from accepting Jesus. Her religious presuppositions were fluid enough and her life experience was drastic enough that she knew there had to be other answers. She found them in Jesus.

We who call ourselves believers are many times more like Nicodemus than Delores. We miss the real Jesus, we miss rebirth, we miss the absolute joy of knowing Him because we have Him in our little box, figured out and surrounded by man-made rules. We do not really understand the man we call Lord because we cannot put down the religion we created and pick up the life of faith. It's hard. I have been there, but I have also been where Delores was. I find I relate to Delores more now than Nicodemus. Delores wanted to know God and she had a chance to question Him at the well. Nicodemus enjoyed the same opportunity and left the discussion baffled by the young rabbi. 

Do you see the difference? An old church elder more interested in keeping rules and control and a believer jaded by sin that still gets excited about Jesus. Who did more for the kingdom? 

It's Delores, hands down!

I love people like Delores. I wish we had a whole church full....wait...I think we do. They just need to be set free. Let's make that happen!