He Told Her What He Never Told His Own Disciples

Jesus told one person directly and explicitly that he was the Messiah.

Not Peter. Not John. Not the disciples who had been traveling with him for months. Not Nicodemus the Pharisee who came to him at night specifically to ask the deep questions. Not the crowds who followed him across the countryside. Not the religious leaders who demanded he tell them who he was.

One person.

A Samaritan woman who had been married five times and was living with a man who was not her husband. Alone at a well in the heat of the day because the other women of her town would not walk with her.

And what he told her at that well was not just the disclosure of his identity. It was the most complete theological teaching in the entire Gospel of John. A teaching about the nature of God, the nature of worship, the nature of the divine presence, and the nature of the living water that every human being is actually thirsty for.

The institution that built itself on the testimony of the twelve disciples gave this woman a feast day and almost nothing else. This piece restores what he actually told her. Word by word. From the original Greek.

Before we can hear what Jesus said to her we need to understand who she was. Because the tradition has consistently presented her as a moral failure who had a surprising encounter with Jesus. That reading misses the entire point.

The woman at the well was a Samaritan. In first century Palestine this meant she occupied a specific and painful social position. The Samaritans were descended from the northern tribes of Israel who had intermarried with Assyrian settlers after the Assyrian conquest in 722 BC. The Jewish community in the south considered them racially impure, religiously compromised, and socially untouchable. There was a saying among Jews that eating the bread of a Samaritan was like eating the flesh of a pig.

She was also a woman. In the social structure of first century Jewish culture a Jewish man did not speak publicly with a woman who was not his wife or a close family member. To speak with a Samaritan woman was to violate two layers of social prohibition simultaneously.

She was at the well at noon. This detail is significant. The women of the town typically came to the well in the morning or evening when the air was cool. Coming at noon, in the heat of the day, suggests she was avoiding the other women. The five marriages and the current living arrangement were not a private matter in a small ancient town. She would have been the subject of public judgment. She came at the hour when she could be alone.

This is who Jesus chose for his most complete theological disclosure. Not the qualified. Not the clean. Not the religiously acceptable. The woman the entire social structure of his day had written off.

That choice was not incidental. It was the whole teaching before he said a word.

John 4:4 says Jesus had to pass through Samaria.

The Greek word is edei. It was necessary. Not geographically necessary. There were routes around Samaria that Jewish travelers regularly took to avoid passing through Samaritan territory. Edei describes a necessity of a different kind. A divine necessity. A must that comes from something larger than geography.

He went to Samaria on purpose. For her.

He arrived at Jacob’s well and sat down. He was tired from the journey. The disciples had gone into town to buy food. He was alone when she arrived with her water jar.

He asked her for a drink.

This was the first boundary crossing. A Jewish man asking a Samaritan woman for water. She said to him how is it that you a Jew ask for a drink from me a woman of Samaria. The text notes that Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. She knew exactly what the request represented. She named it immediately.

He did not apologize for the boundary crossing. He did not explain himself. He moved directly to what the conversation was actually about.

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.

The conversation had begun. And it was already operating on two levels simultaneously. The literal level of water and wells and thirst. And the deeper level of what human beings are actually thirsty for and where the water that satisfies it actually comes from.

Sir you have nothing to draw water 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 as did his sons and his livestock.

She was being precise. The well was deep. He had no bucket. The claim to offer living water without a bucket at a deep well was a practical problem before it was a theological one. And she grounded her challenge in history. Jacob’s well. The inheritance of the ancestors. The water that had sustained generations.

He answered her.

Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

The Greek word for living water is hydor zon. Moving water. Spring water. Water from a source that does not run dry. In the ancient world living water was distinguished from cistern water. Cistern water was collected and stored. Living water flowed continuously from its source.

The distinction was everything.

Everything the woman had been drinking from in her life had been cistern water. Collected. Stored. Finite. The five marriages. The current relationship. Whatever she had been reaching toward across those years of reaching. All of it cistern water. Satisfying temporarily. Requiring a return to the well. Never enough.

The restoration:

Everything you have been drinking from will eventually run dry. The relationship. The approval. The achievement. The thing you keep returning to hoping it will finally be enough. I am offering you something that does not run dry because it does not come from outside you. A source that once received becomes its own spring. Welling up continuously from within. You would never need to return to the well again because the well would be inside you.

She said sir give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.

She understood it on the literal level and wanted it on the literal level. He moved to make the deeper level visible.

Go call your husband and come here.

She said I have no husband.

He said you are right in saying I have no husband for you have had five husbands and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.

The tradition has consistently read this exchange as a moment of moral exposure. Jesus revealing her sin. Her shame becoming visible. But the Greek text does not support that reading. There is no word of condemnation in what Jesus says. No word of shame. No instruction to repent. He states what is true about her life with the same plainness with which he stated that the well was deep.

He said it for a specific reason. Not to condemn her. To show her he already knew everything about her. And was still talking to her. Still offering the living water. The knowledge of her full story did not change the offer. The knowing was not a barrier to the encounter. It was the foundation of it.

The restoration:

I already know everything about you. Everything. Every marriage. Every failure. Every thing you have been reaching toward and every time it did not satisfy the thirst. I know all of it. And I am still here. Still sitting at this well. Still talking. Still offering what I was offering before I knew. The knowing did not end the conversation. It was the reason for it. You came to the well to draw water and found someone who already knew your water supply and had something better.

Sir I perceive that you are a prophet.

She shifted. The personal had become too direct. She moved to the theological. The move of someone who has been seen too clearly and needs to reestablish some distance. Jesus followed her into the theological without losing the thread of the personal.

Our fathers worshipped on this mountain but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.

The mountain she was referring to was Mount Gerizim. The Samaritans had built a temple there. The Jews said Jerusalem was the only acceptable location for worship. The dispute had been running for centuries. Communities had divided over it. Relationships had fractured over it. It was the central theological disagreement between the two traditions.

She raised it as a theological question. He answered it in a way that made both sides of the dispute simultaneously irrelevant.

Woman believe me the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshippers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is Spirit and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth.

The Greek word for Spirit is pneuma. Breath. Wind. The animating force that underlies all life. Invisible. Unbounded by location. Present everywhere simultaneously.

The Greek word for truth is aletheia. The un-hidden. What is actually real when everything concealing it has been removed. Not correct doctrine. Not approved theological positions. What is genuinely real when all the performance and pretense have been stripped away.

The restoration:

The debate about which mountain is the right mountain has always been the wrong debate. God is not a location. God is not a building. God is not an institution with an approved address. God is the animating breath of all reality. Invisible. Unbounded. Present everywhere simultaneously. To worship in Spirit and truth means to encounter what is actually real with the full breath of what you actually are. Not the performance of correct religion. Not the observance of approved ritual. The genuine encounter of what is real in you with what is real in God. Location is irrelevant. The where has never been the point. The what has always been the point.

The Father is seeking such worshippers. The Greek word for seeking is zeteo. Active searching. Deliberate pursuit. The divine is not passively waiting to be found by whoever performs the correct ritual in the correct location. The divine is actively seeking people who will encounter what is real with the full breath of what they actually are.

This is the most radical statement about the nature of worship in the entire gospel tradition. And Jesus gave it to a Samaritan woman at a well.

She said I know that Messiah is coming he who is called Christ. When he comes he will tell us all things.

And then Jesus said the most explicit thing he says in the entire Gospel of John.

I who speak to you am he.

The Greek is ego eimi. I am. The divine name. The same words spoken to Moses at the burning bush. The eternal present. The awareness that has no beginning and no end.

He did not say I will be revealed as the Messiah eventually. He did not speak in parables. He did not deflect the question. He said I am. Present tense. Already here. Already speaking. Already offering the living water. Already knowing everything about her life. Already at the well she came to at noon to avoid the other women.

The restoration:

The one you have been waiting for is not coming. He is already here. In this conversation. At this well. With you specifically. Not in Jerusalem. Not on Mount Gerizim. Not in an approved religious location attended by approved religious people. Here. Now. Talking to you. The waiting is over. The Messiah you were expecting to arrive in a form the religious establishment would recognize arrived at a well in Samaria and asked a Samaritan woman for a drink of water.

This is the only place in the Gospel of John where Jesus makes this disclosure directly and explicitly. To no one else. Not to Nicodemus who asked the most sophisticated theological questions. Not to the disciples who had been following him for months. Not to the Pharisees who demanded signs and proof. To her.

At noon. At a well. In Samaria. Alone.

The disciples returned and were shocked. The Greek word is ethaumazon. They marveled. They were astonished. A Jewish rabbi in sustained public theological conversation with a Samaritan woman was a violation of every social norm simultaneously. They said nothing. The text records their astonishment without recording a word they said.

She left her water jar.

This detail is easily missed. She came to the well to draw water. She had a conversation that changed everything. And she left without the water she came for. Not because she forgot it. Because something had replaced the need that brought her there. The living water he had described had already begun to well up from within. She no longer needed what she had come for.

She went back to the city and said come see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ.

They went out of the city and were coming to him.

The woman who came to the well alone because nobody would walk with her left the well and the city came out to follow her. The social dynamic had completely reversed. The one who was excluded became the one who led. The one who was written off became the reason an entire city encountered the divine.

Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony. He said to me all that I ever did.

Her testimony was not a theological argument. It was a personal witness. He told me everything about my life. And was still talking to me. And offered me something I have been thirsty for my entire life. That was the whole testimony. And it was enough.

Here is what becomes visible when you read the conversation in the original Greek with the original meanings of the words restored.

Jesus crossed into Samaria on purpose. For her. He arrived at the well before her and waited. He initiated the conversation by making himself vulnerable first. Give me a drink. He asked something of her before he offered anything to her.

He then offered her living water. A source that does not run dry because it does not come from outside.

He then demonstrated that he already knew everything about her life. And kept talking anyway. Because the knowing was not a barrier to the encounter. It was the foundation of it.

He then dissolved the central theological dispute of her tradition in one sentence. The where is irrelevant. The what is everything. God is Spirit. Worship is encounter. Not performance. Not location. Not approved ritual. The genuine encounter of what is real in you with what is real in God.

He then told her directly that he was the Messiah. The one thing he told no one else in the entire Gospel.

And then the disciples came back and she left her water jar and went back to the city and the city came out.

The woman who came to the well to avoid people left the well and brought the people to the divine encounter she had just had.

That is not a footnote to the ministry of Jesus. That is the ministry of Jesus in one story.

A boundary crossed. A life known completely and not condemned. A thirst named and offered its actual source. A disclosure made to the one the system had most completely written off.

The tradition gave her a feast day.

Jesus gave her the living water.

And she gave a city the encounter that changed everything.

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