Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
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John 4:27-42
The Disciples Rejoin Jesus
27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” 30 They came out of the town and made their way toward him.
31 Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”
32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”
33 Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”
34 “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36 Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37 Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. 38 I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”
Many Samaritans Believe
39 Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41 And because of his words many more became believers.
42 They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”
Yesterday we read and thought about the first part of the story, in which Jesus was sitting by a well in the heat of the day when the Samaritan woman came to draw water. He asked the woman for a drink, a request that surprised her because the Jews considered Samaritans to be unclean and most would rather be thirsty than drink after them. Jesus then offered the woman “living water” that would cause “a spring of water” to well up within her ‘to eternal life.’
Jesus also showed that he knew details of her personal life that a stranger was unlikely to know. That convinced her that he was a prophet – someone with supernatural knowledge. Eventually, she concluded that he was the Messiah, and Jesus confirmed that. And what’s more, he confirmed it in a way that gave her a clue of something nobody expected about the Messiah – that he was actually God in human form.
In our reading for today, the disciples come back from the village, where they’d gone to buy food. They’re surprised to find Jesus talking to a woman, probably because Jewish tradition said that religiously observant men should avoid conversation with women. This story takes place early in Jesus’ ministry, so apparently the disciples had not yet realized that Jesus was willing to interact with women as well as men. But it’s also possible that the disciples shared their people’s prejudice against Samaritans, and were surprised that Jesus would engage in meaningful conversation with any of them.
But whatever the disciples were thinking, the heart of the story is what the Samaritan woman does from that point. She leaves her water jar at the well and goes back to the town to tell people about her conversation with Jesus. The fact that she leaves her jar is significant, because it would have been a valued possession – she must have had a real sense of excitement and urgency about the news she was hurrying off to report.
There’s a part of this story that I probably haven’t appreciated fully up to now. While the woman is gone to tell the people of the town about her experience with Jesus, he engages in a conversation with his disciples in which he speaks about doing God’s will as ‘food.” His point seems to be that he is sustained by doing the work of the kingdom.
Then Jesus tells the disciples about some of that work. He says that the fields are “ripe for harvest” – and it seems that most of the time when Jesus uses that metaphor, he’s using it to represent the process we call evangelism. Those who bring in the harvest are his followers who bring others to saving knowledge of Jesus – to experience new life in him. And Jesus tells his disciples that their ministry will include working along with others who will also play a part in this harvest.
I’ve never noticed it before, but it now seems to me that he was talking about people like this Samaritan woman. Because the core group of disciples basically play no part in this story – they go off and buy food that Jesus doesn’t eat. It’s the Samaritan woman – probably an outcast in her village – who ‘brings in the harvest.’
So, back to her.
It seems like we’re supposed to notice the way she tells people about her contact with Jesus. She says, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” The woman bears witness to her own experience with Jesus – exaggerating a little, but passing along the important fact that Jesus knew things about her that no ordinary person could know.
And after she reports her own experience with Jesus, the woman suggests to the townspeople that he might be the Messiah. Notice that she doesn’t try to persuade everyone that Jesus is the Messiah, she just asks the question – “Could this be the Messiah?” – and then puts people in a position to judge for themselves. Apparently she believes that when people encounter Jesus, the truth will be revealed to them as it was to her.
When the people of the town ‘come to Jesus’ because of the woman’s report about him, their own experience with him causes them to believe, as well. They persuade Jesus to stay in the village and teach them for a couple of days before he departs. And by the time Jesus leaves, the people of the town have concluded that he “really is the Savior of the world.”
In this story, a very unlikely person becomes an extremely effective evangelist. Jewish people hearing this story would probably have found it surprising and maybe even shocking that a woman – and a Samaritan woman at that – would be among the first to identify Jesus as the Messiah, and would be so effective in her personal witness that a whole town came to faith in him.
Most of us tend to think we don’t have the theological knowledge or persuasive skills it takes to bring people to Jesus. But this woman didn’t expound on theological doctrines or anything of the sort. She just told people about her own experience with Jesus, and helped people to come in contact with him so that they could judge for themselves who he was and what he meant to the world.
Let’s pray. Lord, just about all of us feel inadequate to the task of telling others about you. But we see the example of this woman – a woman from a marginalized people group who was probably a target of scorn and gossip – and we are reminded that you have often used unlikely people to do important things. In Jesus, bring us into closer encounters with yourself, and empower us to be effective witnesses, too. Amen.
Blessings,
Henry
(The other listed readings for today are Psalms 25 and 146; Jeremiah 2:1-32; and Romans 1:16-25. Our readings come from the NIV Bible, as posted on Biblica.com, the website of the International Bible Society.)
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