I want to tell you about the strangest encounter I had a couple of days ago. If I tell you it was life changing, you might laugh at that cliché, but it's true.
First of all, I should tell you something of myself. I live in a small village in Samaria, not that far north of Jerusalem. I am not married, which is something of a drawback in our society. It's even worse because, partly to get some support, I have moved in with a man who also has no partner. That’s really frowned on, but I was desperate. I had gone through five husbands who had all died, either from illness or injury, or simply disappeared. You could say I was considered bad luck, to put it mildly. However, this man had been a good friend to one of my husbands and took pity on me.
One of my daily duties is to take my water jug and go to the town well every day for our supply. Because I am looked down upon by my fellow citizens, especially the women whose job it usually is to go and get water, I am not welcome to go when they go. They get to fetch their water first thing in the morning when they are fresh and it's not so hot. I have to go later.
On my way out to the well this morning, I had met a group of men entering our village. I could tell by their rough beards and their plain clothing, the way they gave me a wide berth as we passed each other and the accent of their speech that they were Jews.
Now, it's not very common for us to see Jews in our village. Most of the time, if they're going from Southern Israel to the north or vice versa, they take a road around by the Jordan River. This is because of the negative feelings between us Palestinians and the Jews. We are all equally, as far as the government is concerned, oppressed by our masters, but we Samaritans have even less advantages when it comes to how we are treated in this empire.
I don't know why these men had entered our village, but from the little conversation I heard as I met them and passed on, it sounded as if they were looking for food. Good luck with that, I thought. The way you treat us as a rule, you're not likely to satisfy your hunger here.
When I reached the village well, it looked like it was one of the men of this party sitting there all by himself. I hesitated, but I did need to get water. As I approached the well, the man spoke to me, a Samaritan and a woman at that. He asked me for a drink. Initially, I wasn't sure whether this was some kind of trap and whether I should even answer him. I busied myself with setting my jug down and proceeding to let the bucket down into the well to fetch my water. The man didn't say anything more, but as I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye, I saw that he indeed looked tired and likely thirsty too. Then his eyes met mine, and what I saw there, what I felt, was a strange sense that this was not someone I needed to be afraid of or be upset with for basically breaking a social taboo in our area.
I steadied myself, looked at him and asked "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria? "I was expecting some kind of simple answer, such as that he was just thirsty. However, what he said came out of the blue. At first it didn't seem to make sense and I wondered where this was going to go.
The man had said that if I knew the gift of God and who it was that was talking to me, asking for a drink, I would've asked him and he would've given me living water. That didn't make any sense to me so I decided to stick with what I knew, the practical, and said to him, "Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep." Then I decided to tackle his actual words and continued, "Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?" I thought by invoking the name of our common ancestor, Jacob, I might draw out of him something about how he as a Jew could engage in this conversation with me as a Samaritan woman.
The man's response was still strange. He said, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give them will be a spring of water gushing up to eternal life."
I didn't really understand anything he was saying, but I continued to play along with him and responded, "Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water."
What the man then said was even more strange. Now I really did not know what he was getting at or how to respond. Perhaps he realized he was getting in too deep with talking to a woman. He asked me to go and call my husband and come back. Typical man; he probably felt safer talking to another man. But why was he so interested in continuing this conversation in the first place?
That kind of put me on the spot, but I decided to tell him the truth and see where that would lead. I said, "I have no husband."
What this stranger said in response to that really caught me off guard. He said "You are right in saying, I have no husband; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true! "At first I thought, has this man been to our village before? Is this why he knows this about me? But that seemed preposterous. But he knew the truth from somewhere. Now some of the things he said about him having water, giving me living water etc. began to make me feel that he might be saying something that I had not yet caught on to. Going on a hunch that came from - I’m not sure where! - I said to him, "Sir, I see that you are a prophet." Then, for some reason, maybe I was beginning not to make sense – I'm often curious and looking for answers about things though – I asked him a question that I thought a prophet would give a good answer to. I said "Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem."
He replied, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 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 in truth, for the father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."
I could have got a little upset with his negative comment about our worship. I wasn't sure what he meant by that because I believe we worship the same God that the Jews do. And all this talk about the father was strange. I had no clue whom he was referring to until he mentioned God, and I kind of put it together that he was referring to God as the father. That was something I had never heard before. I really began to wonder who he was and how someone who seemed to be so knowledgeable, a prophet as I had wondered, had ended up in our village. I decided to go deeper. I said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming. When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us." I expected him to agree to that. We do share some same understandings of who the Messiah is and what his purpose is when he comes, according to all of our prophecies.
What this man said next left me absolutely speechless though. He simply said "I am he, the one who is speaking to you." I felt my head spinning. I didn't know what to say. Me, a Samaritan woman, talking to the Messiah. Either this guy was a crazy impostor, or he was the real deal. If he was the last, where did that leave me? Fortunately, that group of ragtag men whom I had encountered on my way to the well returned at that moment. They had caught the tail end of our conversation and seemed to be unsure of where to step in. I could see that they had managed to get some food. Good for them I thought. I just figured I had to get somebody from the village to come with me and talk to this man and see if they understood what he was saying or if he sounded just as crazy to them as to me. In my confused state, I hadn't realized until I was well on the road running into town that I had left my jug there. Never mind, I thought, I am going back. He had told me to come back with my husband.
I went home first and persuaded my partner to come out with me. When I explained the situation to him, telling him that this man had told me things about my life that he could not have possibly humanly known, his ears perked up and he said he would also get a couple of friends of his to come along to see what they thought.
When we reached this man and his companions at the well, the men were sharing some of the food that the group had purchased. It seemed that this man was waiting for us though. When he saw us coming, he gestured to his companions to stay back while he leaned forward to face us. Between what he said and our questions to him, we were indeed convinced, unbelievable as it may seem, that we were talking with the real Messiah. In the end, we asked if he could stay longer and tell us more of the good news he seemed to bring. The group agreed and we actually hosted these Jews for a couple of days. Word spread quickly in the village and many came to meet him and listen to what we had to say. To begin with, they could hardly doubt our word. However, by the time they had met and talked to him personally, they said to us that they also believed that this man was the Messiah because they had heard for themselves what he said. His ultimate message to us, something that he said was for us as well as for the Jews, indeed the whole world, was that he had come to be the saviour of the world. This was a message we all were interested in and wanted to hear more of. Our world certainly needed saving, there was no doubt about that. We were all becoming convinced that we were being saved, regardless of where our world was at. We could start with that. As I said, it was a life-changing conversation I had gotten into at the well that day. Life has not been the same since.
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