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.” John 4:15
Have you ever been in a meeting with a group of people, and the topic you wanted to talk about never gets brought up? Instead, the other people keep sidestepping it by talking about everything else. You have certain questions you need answered or problems that need solutions. But instead of getting any work done, the group talks about food or the weather or the latest controversies in the news.
That is how reading this dialogue between Jesus and the woman at the well feels. As readers, we know who Jesus is, and we want to see this scene explode with his marvelous glory. But what really happens is a conversation with a woman who would rather talk about anything else than what Jesus wants to talk about. She tries to throw him off track by bringing up a controversial and somewhat political matter. She is also striving to find safe, neutral ground rather than letting Jesus take the lead.
Jesus doesn’t try to get the conversation back on track but uses the opportunity to teach her about who he is. Eventually, the woman starts to catch on and she says, “When the Messiah comes, he will explain everything to us.” Jesus then reveals his true identity by saying, “I am he.” This means, “I Am is the one speaking to you.” It’s the term God uses for himself when speaking to Moses from the burning bush. “I Am.”
“Give me this water so I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here,” the woman requests of Jesus. She is thinking of the household task of drawing water every day. Jesus is thinking of the deeper matters in her life that had isolated her in the first place so that she must come to the well at a time when no one else did.
She doesn’t want to talk about the inappropriate relationships. They are too disappointing and too shameful. It was much safer to keep the conversation on the well. But Jesus wants her to understand that the water he offers her will heal her of everything that happened in her past. She must first come to terms with who he is, then agree with him about the truth of her life, otherwise called repentance. When we agree with God about the things we’ve done and the choices we’ve made, we can see our lives for what they really are and then take the steps to make changes. Then, like the woman at the well, we can be free from sin. The river of cleansing that Jesus offers will flow into us as soon as we start to confess.
In this disjointed conversation with the Samaritan woman, Jesus seizes the opportunity to talk about the nature of God and of the worship he deserves. True worship, according to Jesus, is defined by our relationship to God. We adore a person, not a philosophy or idol set up in his place. We express praise, gratitude, and love to a real, live person.
The twists and turns of this dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman cover a lot of ground. How do the topics of life-giving water, repentance, and worship relate? It begins with the presence of God. He appeared that day in Samaria, near Mount Gerizim, in the form of the human Jesus. He invited a woman into conversation with the goal of helping her see her life accurately so that she might make changes. When the repentance and confession was completed, she was then released from sin and able to worship God in a proper way.
The presence of God invites repentance which in turn invites worship. We see what God has done for us and then our hearts respond with outpourings of love and gratitude. This happened in the woman’s life when she left her water jar and went back to town to invite her neighbors to come and see Jesus. She took action as a result of having been in God’s presence.
We can follow the same pattern in our own lives. At some point, we encounter the presence of God because he is searching for us, the lost sheep. “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us,” Romans says. Then God helps us see, by the gentle power of the Holy Spirit, what our lives are really like. We make changes by confessing and allowing him to wash us clean. We are released from sin and free to take action, to move in faith as a result of being in God’s presence. This can happen when we first become a Christian, and also every day of our lives as we grow in relationship with him, praising, serving, and loving him with our worship.
