Intent on avoiding even the appearance of competing with John, whose disciples the Pharisees had goaded into a quarrel with his own, Jesus decided to withdraw from Judea to pursue his mission in Galilee. To do so, however, he must either travel by way of Perea, fording the Jordan twice as many of his countrymen did, or cross the full length of Samaria, which divided the two provinces. It was a choice of no mean significance inasmuch as the Jews and the Samaritans had long since severed relations with bad blood between them.

Because the Samaritans had intermarried with their Assyrian conquerors, the Jews had denounced them as a mixed breed, impure before the law, and therefore to be held in contempt. Moreover, they crowned this conviction by denying the Samaritans a part in the rebuilding of the temple, angering them to such a degree that they built their own temple on Mount Gerizim. As a result a bitter feud had developed between the two peoples, putting at risk any Jew making his way into Samaria.

It was a risk with which Jesus was all too familiar. Nevertheless he determined to take it in the interest of his mission. Consequently, he set out for Galilee early in the morning when the hours were cool for traveling, arriving probably about noon at Jacob's Well near the village of Sychar.

I

Jesus had sat beside the well only a short time when he saw a woman, a water jar on her shoulder, plodding through the noontide heat toward him. Even before she reached him he knew she was an outcast. Her very presence at this hour told him so.

Traditionally the time for drawing water was the cool of the evening shortly before sunset when soft breezes were blowing. Besides, the years had made it a social hour providing the village women a welcome break in the day's occupation. (cf. Proverbs 31:15, 18) Yet here the woman came with never a glance behind her, walking a stranger in her own land.

Placing her jar on the stone coping of the well, the woman uncoiled the goat's-hair rope looped about her forearm, tying one end to the handle of her crock. Then, hand over hand, she lowered the vessel until she felt its added weight in the water. When she pulled the crock up it brimmed over, spilling a small puddle at her feet.

Only then did Jesus speak. He had had a long morning under a hot sun, and he was parched. So he asked the woman for a drink.

It was a daring thing to do, not simply because she was a Samaritan and an outcast, but because she was a woman; and his request astounded her. Surely, she must have thought, this strange Jew was familiar with the laws of his own people! Had not the rabbis decreed that "A man should hold no conversation with a woman in the street, not even with his own wife, lest men should gossip?" Besides, his obvious need notwithstanding, how dare he breach the wall of separation dividing their two peoples? Castaway she might be, but she was still a Samaritan and she would be met as one. Thus, taking no pains to conceal her scorn, she faced Jesus and asked him sarcastically, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" (John 4:9)

II

Early in life Jesus had learned that the best way to meet a contentious spirit is to ignore it. Accordingly, he refused to be drawn into the sleeveless argument the woman was attempting to provoke. Instead he surprised her by replying, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him and he would have given you living water." (John 4:10)

Jesus was speaking figuratively. But the woman was a literalist. So she failed to catch his meaning despite the fact his metaphor should have been clear to her. From time immemorial the presence of water in a barren land had betokened the outpouring of God's sustaining grace. (cf. Psalm 23) But so deep-seated was the woman's prejudice against Jews that all she could hear was an audacious rabbi disparaging the patriarch who had bequeathed the well to her people.

Accordingly, her eyes flashing angrily, the woman sarcastically rebuked Jesus. "Sir," she said, pointing with a sneer to the stone-enclosed shaft, "you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle?" (John 4:11)

The woman had chosen her bait adroitly, for most Jews would have risen to it heatedly, their attention diverted from the woman to the ancient rivalry between their two countries. But Jesus was not about to be so easily diverted. There was, he knew, but one way to reach the woman. He must make her see he was interested in her, not as a Samaritan, but as a person. So, letting her jibe pass, he directed the discussion to her need.

"Every one who drinks of this water," Jesus said, glancing toward the well, "will thirst again; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." (John 4:13-14) He was, of course, speaking symbolically as a means of offering the woman his continuing concern and support. Even as he spoke, however, the woman's eyes gleamed with a cunning that robbed her of his meaning. Curling her lips in ridicule of his metaphor she scoffed, "Sir, give me this water that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw." (John 4:15)

III

To the Occidental mind what Jesus did next seems irrelevant. He bid the woman call her husband. The directive surprised her. Nevertheless, her conscience twinging, she resolved in self-defense to brazen things through. "I have no husband," she replied.

The response was true as far as it went. But it also gave Jesus the opening he sought. For years of dissipation had etched their testimony on the woman's face.

"You are right in saying, 'I have no husband,' " Jesus rejoined, "for you have had five husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband." (John 4:16-18)

It was a thrust the woman had not anticipated, and her insolence wilted with it. Surely, she thought, only a prophet could have known what Jesus did about her. Yet how different this prophet was! For unlike Samaria's prophets here was One whose very manner bespoke concern for even the likes of her! It was enough to set the woman thinking about her better self.

IV

Still the woman could not resist one final ploy. "Our fathers worshiped on this mountain," she said, lifting her hand toward the 3,000-foot height of Gerizim, "and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." (John 4:20)

Some have felt the woman was attempting a diversion at this point by using her national religion as a shield against Jesus. It seems more likely, however, that she was raising a question which, by both its tone and its nature, indicated the first sign of a readiness to be taught.

Child of her people, the woman had been told from her earliest days that Gerizim was the original site of Paradise. It was here, according to her Samaritan traditions, that God had fashioned Adam in his image, that Noah had beached the Ark, and that Abraham had prepared Isaac for sacrifice. Nor had her elders ever tired of forecasting the day when Gerizim would become the Messiah's steppingstone to establish his earthly kingdom.

It was an inheritance hard to ignore, as Jesus well understood. So, too, he understood the woman's obvious effort to confirm it with him. But the very effort indicated her insights could be broadening. So he seized it to bring her his final revelation.

"Woman," Jesus said, his voice reflecting the patience of a parent speaking to a child's curiosity, "believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father .... But the hour is coming and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth." (John 4:21-24)

Here at last was something the woman could grasp. How often in the rainy season she had seen a mountain stream overflow its bounds and run unchecked across the desert to rouse the barren land into bloom. (cf. Isaiah 35:11) Could the divine grace be any more constricted to Jerusalem or Gerizim than the stream to the mountain? (cf. 1 Kings 8:27)

Salvation, the woman suddenly realized, is not of the shrine but of the heart; and that being so "whosoever will" wherever one is may receive it. It was an exhilarating thought, and with it a new and daring idea trembled on the verge of the woman's mind -- an idea so big it must be too good to be true. Could the weary rabbi smiling at her beside Jacob's Well be the long-awaited Messiah? Reason sought to shout the notion down. But the woman's heart refused to relinquish it. Thus, almost before she knew it, she found herself saying, "I know the Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ); when he comes, he will show us all things." (John 4:25) The words were barely past her lips when she heard the reply, "I who speak to you am he." (John 4:26)

Instantly the outcast forgot she was an outcast and, abandoning her water jar, she ran as fast as she could the half-mile to Sychar to witness to her neighbors that the Redeemer had come. And so tellingly did she bear her testimony that, losing sight of the fact they had been ostracizing her, they followed her to the well to hear Jesus for themselves. As a result, because of the woman's witness Jesus spent two days evangelizing in Sychar to let loose his gospel in Samaria. (John 4:39-41)