Come, See the Savior of the World
Text: John 4:5-30, 39-42
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Jacob’s well in the town of Sychar is a very real place. It’s one of the places in the Holy Land that there’s high certainty that it’s really what people claim it to be—the well that Jacob, the grandson of Abraham and forefather of Jesus, dug himself. And because it was Jacob who dug it, that meant that it has significance for both Israelite and Samaritan alike, for both claimed Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as their ancestors. And it’s at this important well that we see a scene unfold—a scene that would have been familiar to both Jew and Samaritan: there’s a man, a woman, and they meet at a well in a land that is not the man’s homeland. This is how so many great and important engagements in the Scriptures began. It’s where Isaac’s servant met Rebekah, the woman who would become Isaac’s wife. It’s how Jacob met Rachel. A well is where Moses met his wife-to-be Zipporah. And anyone paying attention to the scene in our Gospel reading would have recognized that this was too familiar to be coincidence.
The woman in our account today comes to the well alone, at noon, in the heat of the day; a rather unusual time to be drawing water. We don’t know her name. She’s only identified by what’s happened to her: she’s had five husbands and the man she’s with now won’t formalize what they have together. Now before we assume we know what’s happening here, we have to get something straight. In this time, in this part of the world, women could not initiate marriage or divorce under the law. It was only something that could be done by a man. She had been chosen, and then unchosen; taken and then sent away, five times. She might have been barren. She may have been widowed. Whatever the causes, we know the result—she’s been discarded. And the one she clings to now for shelter won’t even commit to her. Her life has not gone the way that she—or anyone—wanted it to go.
You know how this feels. You aren’t living her particular story, but you know the effects all too well—what it feels like to be thrown aside, counted as being of little value, used, your dignity degraded. You have chapters in your history that you would rather no one knew—secret shames and uncleanness you try to keep out of sight. You’ve felt that uncertainty of whether you’re truly welcomed or simply tolerated. You’ve been afraid that you’ll be abandoned; that something will go wrong, yet again, with nothing you can do about it.
This is what sin, death, and the devil do to us. They do not treat us as valuable. Oh, they claim to give us what we want—satisfying an itch that comes through temptation, giving us a distraction from the difficulties of life, even the age-old empty promise that we can be like God—but as soon as they’ve claimed you through these things, they immediately discard you. They leave you feeling hollow and ashamed, thinking that you need to come to the well alone at noon, if only to avoid judgment from others.
So when a Jewish man, Jesus, starts speaking to this woman, it’s understandable that she’s cautious and hesitates with her replies. This already feels out of bounds for her from the start. Jews do not have any dealings with Samaritans. Men do not address women alone in public. But this man doesn’t seem to care about those boundaries. He asks her for a drink. This is not what she’s used to—being treated as someone who has something of worth, someone who can help. It’s a lot to take for someone who’s been thought so little of for so long. So she deflects: “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?”
But this stranger keeps flipping things around. “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.” She’s intrigued, she can feel herself being drawn in, but her experience is warning her to be careful. “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?” And then, for good measure, she shows that she knows exactly who she’s dealing with, an Israelite, and claims Jacob as her ancestor, “Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and livestock.”
But this man won’t be dissuaded or chased off by the politics of Samaritan vs. Jew. He simply keeps offering: “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I give 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.” His word, His offer, is landing with her, in spite of herself. She’s tired of coming to the well, day after day, under the hot sun, alone. “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.” The walls are starting to fall down.
But then comes the gut punch. Jesus says, “Go, call your husband and come here.” This is it, she must have thought. You know the feeling she must have had in her stomach. This is when He’ll find out about her history, her life, and He’ll judge her just like the rest. She answers honestly, as simply as she can: “I have no husband.” There’s no lie in it, even if it’s not the entire story. But Jesus doesn’t press her for more. He doesn’t condemn her. He responds just as simply. “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 light begins to dawn on her. He knows. He sees her, everything she is and has been, everything she’s carried to the well alone, all of her disappointments and shame. He knows it and yet he’s still here. He’s still talking with her instead of shunning or scolding her. He’s still offering that living water. “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet,” she says, for only a prophet could see that much. And because He’s a prophet, that means that He’s the one she should ask her hardest theological questions to. “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship. Who’s right? Whose side is God on?”
And then, in yet another surprise, He answers, but flips everything on its head again. He doesn’t pick a side in the age-old debate between Israelites and Samaritans. He blows up the question itself. He transcends it. “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 worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship Him.” Jesus has torn down yet another wall.
The Samaritans have their own prophecy of a Messiah. He’s called the Taheb in their language. The promise that the Taheb would come, like a new Moses, and reveal the truth about everything, restore all that’s been broken, and end the long age of exile and disfavor to begin a new age of God’s goodness—this is the One the Samaritans looked forward to. She confesses this, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When He comes, He will tell us all things.” And then Jesus answers the question she’s too afraid to ask, too afraid because of her long life of disappointment, because everyone else has ultimately failed her in the end—a disappointment that we’re all too familiar with in this disenchanted age of ours. Jesus says, “I who speak to you am he.”
It’s amazing that Jesus makes this direct of an answer to her, long before He ever says anything like it to His disciples. But it’s all so fitting with who our Lord is and what He’s come to do. He’s not come for those who have their lives in perfect order, who’ve gone from victory to victory, who are able to hide the parts of their histories that aren’t as impressive or even shameful. He came for her, the woman at the well. He came for the those who’ve been broken by the world, by sins they’ve committed and that have been committed against them. He’s come for those who are looking forward to a Savior to come and fix all that’s broken. So she leaves her water jar—an intriguing detail that St. John gives us, she doesn’t need it anymore because He’s given her the living water—and she tells the town that the Messiah, the Savior of the world—not just for the Jews or the Samaritans—the Savior of the world has arrived. “Come, see a man who told me all I ever did. Could this be the Christ?”
Come, see a man who knows all you ever did. Come, see a man who knows your entire history, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and who’s still here—here at the deep well of Baptism, here at the infinite well of those nail marks in His hands, where crimson forgiveness flows eternally. Come, see the One who gives you faith, makes you believe, because of His Word. Come, see a man who isn’t interested in your status or pedigree, who isn’t interested in what the rest of the town or even the rest of the world thinks about you. He’s come for you. He’s come to remove your barriers. He’s come to forgive your past. He’s come to ensure your future—at time of favor and joy, a time of peace and being united to Him and all the forgiven as one of the true worshipers of God. Come, see the Savior of the world, your Savior, the man who is God, Jesus. In the name of Jesus, the Savior of the world. Amen.
