Lectio. Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."

"Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?" Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

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." 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."

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?"

Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, "Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?" They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something." But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about." Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone have brought him food?" "My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 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. 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. Thus the saying `One sows and another reaps' is true. 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 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. 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." (John 4:4-42)

Meditatio. There is a great deal of meaning concealed in cultural, linguistic and historical references in this passage. The scene takes place near the village of Sychar, at one of the most venerable biblical landmarks, Jacob's Well. "Sychar", which is identified with the village of Askar, may mean "lying town" (or "drunken town"). Scholarship suggests that Sychar is distinct from the eminent shrine at Shechem, which is believed to be where Naublus is now. Jacob's Well and the nearby Shechem and Sychar were in Samaria, a region that had been depopulated by the Assyrians when the northern kingdom fell, and repopulated by people the Jews regarded as religiously suspect. The extent of the distrust and revulsion between the groups was so extreme as to preclude the sharing of dishes [1].

If all this were not enough to convey a scene fraught with danger, Jesus converses-- alone- with a woman who we later learn is an adulteress. The conversation, in itself, probably verged on being a capital offense, and certainly could have been very damaging in the hands of Jesus' enemies. The text says that the encounter took place in the sixth hour, which some commentators argue represents 6AM rather than noon [2]. Since Jesus is said to be weary from journeying, it would seem to be noon. That is an ominous time, the time at which the Synoptic gospels say that darkness fell over the land during Jesus' crucifixion. So, at this ominous time of day, we find Jesus deep in conversation with a woman of doubtful virtue and scandalous religion near the Village of Drunkenness (or Lies).

The repartee may sound obscure, but is a kind of spiritual combat. Once the symbols are understood, the dialogue is much clearer. "Living water" (which appears in Zech. 14:8, but more commonly from Essene sources) represents God, and joy is the rope that draws water from the well (see Isa. 12). The scriptural source for the phrase "gift of God" is ambiguous, but in context, it is likely that God's gift is the breath of life (Job 32:4, Isa. 42:5), a reference to the Spirit. Marriage is a symbol of faithfulness to God.

The woman asks Jesus how he can violate the religious mores dividing Samaritans and Jews. Jesus tells her that if she knew the "gift of God" (Spirit) and the one who asks for water (Jesus), he would give her living water (God). She shrewdly parries that the living water (God) is hard to get and that Jesus lacks what it takes (abounding joy) to bring God to light. Rather than quibble, Jesus confronts the woman's unfaithfulness to God as evidenced by her promiscuous life.

Overwhelmed by his revelation of her secrets, this denizen of the Village of Liars concedes that Jesus is a prophet, but can't quite bridge the sectarian divide. Jesus assuages her doubt by telling her to look beyond the material world to the world of spirit, where there is neither a Jerusalem nor a Mount Gerizim, but only God and truth. She trembles on the brink of accepting him, at which point Jesus reveals Himself as the Messiah. And so she rushes away, leaving her water jar, and brings the rest of her Village to Him, to be healed. The closing lines tell us that to believe we must always see for ourselves.

One last puzzle remains. In the first three lines, not included in the lectionary passage, we learn that Jesus left Judea at the time when He heard that the Pharisees had come to incorrectly believe that He was baptizing more disciples than John. In the course of the story, He saves and presumably baptizes a whole village. The ones He baptized, however, were not Jews, but people the Jews despised. One explanation for why He might have left Judea to go to Samaria would be to tell the Pharisees, "Don't look at the number of people that I am baptizing. Consider the fact that I can save those you regard as hopelessly defiled." The story of the woman at the well is, beyond the story of Jesus' remarkable power to effect the salvation of an entire village, an allegory for the power of love and truth to overcome lies and heal lives based on lies.

Contemplatio. Adoration. In our Lord's Kingdom, there are no lies. Every word is true. Every word, every thing and everyone is worthy of full trust. There is no fear, no calculation, no trickery, no disappointment. Confession. That is not our world. We lie to keep the favor of friends and loved ones, to keep a job, to make a sale. Few words are true. Few people are reliable. Thanksgiving. Therefore, we are grateful for the rare people who are trustworthy, for the unchanging promise of the gospel, for children who teach us to be innocent. The door to the Kingdom is at hand. When we are truthful, we grasp the doorknob. When we trust, we push the door. Supplication. Guard us against all harm when we trust, Lord. Show us that we can freely enter Your Kingdom, and abide.