The Woman at Jacob's Well

Part 3 (verses 16-25)

He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back."

"I have no husband," she replied.

Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."

"Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."

Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."

Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."

The gospel continues with the woman gathering her neighbors to listen to Jesus. "Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I ever did." So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers." (verses 39-41)

So much for not visiting the towns of Samaritans.

How Jesus told the woman everything she did is an issue for another day. In any case, Jesus puts aside his cryptic comments and shifts to matters profoundly personal.

In my reading her initial reaction is defensive. She expects the Jew to belittle her Samaritan tradition.

Instead Jesus critiques both Jew and Samaritan pointing to a more fundamental understanding of worship. The Greek used for worship here is proskuneo. This is to bow down to kiss, a humble intimacy, or a profound submission. Jew or Samaritan is not important. What is important is to be truly and spiritually in relationship with God.

Jesus reaches out to the woman of another faith - and her co-religionists - by initiating the conversation, taking the conversation to a deeply personal level, and emphasizing the transcendent aspects of faith rather than the instrumental aspects of religious practice.