Jesus and his weather-beaten band of wandering disciples were still heading north and had been for some days. To some extent Jesus had decided to get out of Judea, where he had been working, in order to avoid competition with John the Baptist in that region. (John's gospel claims that the rumor was spreading all over that Jesus was baptizing more disciples than John the Baptist was.) Jesus also might have decided to head north towards familiar territory in Galilee, because the Pharisees had heard what was happening, and he may have thought that by getting away he could avoid a premature final confrontation with them early in his ministry.

The most direct route north to Galilee was through the region of Samaria. Yet a good Jew of Jesus' day would often be inclined to avoid this region. The problem with Samaria was the people who lived there. They were not good Jews. They were not pure Jews by heredity; they were Jews who had been ethnically mixed over generations of mixed marriages with the Arab race. The people of Samaria were not even faithfully practicing the Hebrew religion, but were mixing Judaism with vestiges of their earlier roots in pagan religions. Such religious practices made them (ritually) impure in the eyes of a Jew of Jesus' day. When it came to religious and social matters it was better for a Jew to avoid them.

Yet through Samaria on their way to Galilee, Jesus and his followers went. Perhaps his followers, people like you and I, wondered why the Lord would lead them into such a seedy section. Would not most of us rather just minister to people who practice their religion properly or who are socially respectable? It is easy for us to understand how Jesus' disciples might have felt. God never seems to do things our way.

At any rate, Jesus and his followers came right to the heart of the region of Samaria, to a city with a famous well called Sychar. Apparently, it had been a long, tough trip, and by the time they got near the well, about noon one day, Jesus was pretty tired. Our Lord was tired. It just reminds us again of his humanity, and how in Jesus, God has tasted all our human aches, pains and trials. God truly understands us, for he has walked in our shoes.

At any rate, Jesus sat down, rather tired, near the well that day. His disciples had proceeded into the city of Sychar to buy food for the group. And while Jesus sat there, a Samaritan woman came to the well to get water. Jesus, the Jew, met a foreign woman (a woman who was not part of an Orthodox Jewish community) at a well. For the first century Jews to whom John and the first disciples told this story, the stage was set for romance. In the stories and other forms of entertainment of the day, when a prominent Jewish boy and a foreign girl met at a well, everybody expected that a marriage between them was the next step. Yet it did not happen this time when Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well. It did not happen. Did it? God never does the things the way we expect him to. Or does he?

The reason why first century Jews hearing the story of Jesus' meeting the Samaritan woman at the well would have presumed that a marriage was soon to follow, was that the Hebrew ethnic heritage was built on such meetings between a Jewish boy and a foreign woman (who had some bloodlines in common with the Hebrews) at a well. Moses met his eventual wife at a well. The encounter began when the daughters of the priest of Midian, Jethro (sometimes called Hobab), were trying to get water for their father's flock. Moses was at that well, fleeing from Egypt. Some shepherds began to bother the women, and Moses came to their defense, helping them water the flock. When he heard the story of Moses' kind deed, the girls' grandfather, Reuel, gave one of the girls to Moses in marriage (Exodus 2:15-21).

Jacob, the heir of Isaac (Abraham's son), also met his wife Rachel at a well. Recall that like the Midianites from whom Moses' wife descended (Genesis 25:2), the Arameans, who were the people to whom Rachel belonged, were distantly related to the Jews (Genesis 29:1ff).

The story of a Jewish boy who met his beloved foreigner through an encounter at a well had even more ancient roots, one generation further back. Jacob's father Isaac had his eventual marriage to Rebekah arranged by a meeting at a well between one of his father Abraham's servants and Rebekah. Rebekah, though not of Abraham's line and so a foreigner, was distantly related to Abraham (Genesis 24:1ff).

With these stories so much a part of their background, it is little wonder that when first century Jews heard the story of Jesus' meeting with the foreign Samaritan woman at the well, they would have expected a marriage between her and Jesus to have been the next step. Yet, of course, marriage was not on Jesus' mind. God does not usually conform to our expectations; he never does things our way. Or does he?

Besides, our beloved Jesus would not have had anything to do with such a wayward woman as the Samaritan woman he met that day at the well. Would he? After all, she had been married five times and most recently she had been living with another man. All of the foreign brides of the Old Testament patriarchs, whom I have mentioned, were virgins when they met their Jewish suitors. Not so with this Samaritan woman whom Jesus met. Our Lord would not want to have anything to do with a woman like that. Or would he? After all, God never does things our way, according to our plans. Let us return to our gospel story once again.

The Samaritan woman came to the well, and Jesus, tired as he was, asked her to give him some water. Put yourself in her shoes. God often comes to you with a request, does he not? He and his church have asked you for a lot of things over the years, have they not?

The woman's reaction was a lot like our characteristic reactions when our Lord and his church ask us to undertake a new task. "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" she said to Jesus. Is that not the sort of thing we usually say when Jesus calls us? "Oh God," we say, "I am not worthy to undertake this task. Find someone else more qualified or with more time."

Jesus' response to the woman is his Word to us. He shatters all our preconceptions about him; God never does things our way. "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' " he said, then "you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water."

Jesus seems to be saying to the woman and to us that in making the request for water, he was really inviting her and us to come to him. Is that not the way God calls us? The requests or calls he makes of us are really invitations to come to him and to be strengthened by him. Is it not the case that we usually gain more than we give when we respond to God's call or the needs of our neighbor? We gain more than we give. So often God calls us to respond to him, and we feel inadequate to the task. Yet in those moments God will set us out on these tasks only after he first serves us, only after he first feeds us with spiritual food and drink.

In a sense this is the point of our second lesson (Romans 4:1-5, 13-17 or Romans 5:1-11). Its message that we are justified by grace through faith, apart from our works, entails that we can do no good, that we cannot respond to our Lord's call until we have first been filled with the water of life, first heard the gospel of justifying grace and believed it. Jesus himself is said to have made this point elsewhere in the Gospel of John (15:5). He refers to himself as the vine and calls us believers the branches. We are urged to abide in him, to draw our sustenance from him, "for apart from me you can do nothing."

There are no good works and there is no service rendered to God unless they spring from him, unless he gives us the gift of new life. This is why Jesus made the apparently surprising move of asking the Samaritan woman to render him a service (obtaining water for him), but then telling her that she should first ask him for the true living water. Contrary to what we would ordinarily expect from God, when he calls us to service (when he asks us to work for him and his church), he is actually first giving us a gift. Keep that in mind the next time you are called to serve: You are getting something for nothing.

We are that Samaritan woman, called by Jesus, feeling unworthy of the task to which he calls us, and surprised by the generosity of his offer. What happens to her and us next? At first we, or I mean she, are hesitant about God's ability to give us this living water, this new life, that we need so badly in order to live fully. Consequently the woman questions how Jesus could provide this living water that he has promised: "Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where do you get that living water (John 4:11)?"

We all have our doubts about the promises God makes. Like the Samaritan woman we question how God can really deliver on those promises. As he does with us in dealing with our doubts, Jesus responded to the woman's doubts by proclaiming his Word: "... the water that I shall give ...will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life (John 4:14)."

As often happens to us when the Word is proclaimed, the Word overcame the woman's doubts and she confessed her faith, asking for the Lord's gift. "Sir, " she said, "Give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw (John 4:15)." We really are this woman from Samaria. Her experience with our Lord is also our experience. Just like he did with the woman, so God consistently shatters our expectations. He never does things our way, or at least he rarely gives us his gifts in the manner that we could expect him to do.

Jesus seemed to surprise the woman again. In response to her request for the living water that he alone could provide, Jesus urged the woman to go and call her husband to come. Is that not our Lord's usual manner of confounding us? We are no sooner enriched by his gifts than he sends us out to a new task. He sends us out to spread his gospel to others.

Of course, the Samaritan woman's response to Jesus' request, her reason for first hesitating to do what the Lord has asked, may seem initially odd to us. Yet in fact her response is not unlike the response we often make to our Lord when he calls us to service. And Jesus' response to her excuse is a lot like the response he makes to us in our sin.

The woman responded to Jesus' request that she summon her husband to meet Jesus and hear his word by informing Jesus that she had no husband. Oh, but Jesus saw through her excuse. He always sees through our excuses, does he not? He knows the score. Consequently he said to the woman, "You are right in saying, 'I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband."

Jesus was dealing with a wayward woman. He was willing to offer this living water, to offer himself, to a common whore (and a Samaritan one at that). He is also willing to give himself to wayward children like you and me. For we are equally mired in sin and unfaithfulness as was that Samaritan woman.

The identification between our situation and that of the woman is made even more explicit by John in our gospel lesson when he has Jesus tell the Samaritan woman that she has had five husbands (John 4:17-18). The number of husbands she had (five) corresponds to the number of false gods (five false gods) worshiped by the Samaritans (2 Kings 17:30-34). It seems that Jesus, or at least John, wished to indicate that this woman and the Samaritans had been whoring after false gods. Is that not the way it is with us? Are we not often whoring after our false gods, be it money, success, self-indulgence, whatever? Yet Jesus came and offered the living water to the wayward woman. He even gives it to us wayward people who surely do not deserve it. God never does things the way that we would expect him to do.

A final word: Recall that every first century Jewish hearer of this story would, at the beginning of the story, have expected Jesus to marry this woman, to marry us. For when Jewish boy met foreign girl at a well, a wedding was thought soon to follow. Yet God always confounds our expectations. He did not marry the woman. Or did he? Does he not usually carry out his promises, but just not in the way that we would expect?

John claims that after Jesus had confronted the woman with information about her waywardness and had proclaimed more of his word to her, she became firmly convinced that Jesus was the Messiah. She went into the city and proclaimed this message to the Samaritans. Not only had she received the water of life, but she had been forgiven by Jesus. She was brand new; she was a changed woman. In a sense, her relationship with Jesus had changed her, as happens in a good marriage. (You do not love in a good marriage without it changing you, right?) In a sense the Samaritan woman and Jesus had been joined in a marriage after all. It is in the same sense that we faithful should consider ourselves married to Jesus.

Martin Luther explained it so well. In 1520 he once wrote this: "The third incomparable benefit of faith is that it unites the soul with Christ as a bride united with her bridegroom. By this mystery, as the apostle teaches, Christ and the soul become one flesh [Ephesians 5:31-32]. And if they are one flesh and there is between them a true marriage ... it follows that everything they have they hold in common, the good as well as the evil. Accordingly the believing soul can boast of and glory in whatever Christ has as though it were his own ..."1

We have all that Christ has. That is why the woman and we can go out and boldly witness to Christ. We do not do it on our own. It is Christ who gives us the courage and ability, for we have all that he has. We have his courage and ability - his courage and ability to work for good and to spread the gospel to others.

These gifts belong to you and me! You have them now.

Married to Christ. In an unexpected way it happened to the Samaritan woman at that well. In the same unexpected way it happened to us at the well of our baptismal waters. Of course, the idea of being married to Jesus in our baptism is not what we expected. (It is probably not what your parents or sponsors expected when they arranged your baptism.) But then, God never does things our way.

The story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman, a story about your relationship with Jesus, puts us on our guard in this Lenten season. It reminds us that the best way to prepare ourselves for Christ's coming is to be "heads-up." To be "headsup," because God is always looking to surprise us with new ways of loving us. Are you not glad he does not do things our way? Praise God that he does not do things our way. Again and again he is always surprising you and me with his love.