John 4.13-19.
Back to Jesus talking with the Samaritan at the well.
John 4.13-15 KWL - 13 In reply Jesus tells her, “All who drink of this water
- will thirst again.
- 14 Whoever might drink of the water I give them,
- will never thirst in the age to come,
- but the water I’ll give them
- will become a spring of water within them,
- gushing with eternal life.”
- 15 The woman tells Jesus, “Sir, give me this water!—
- so I might not thirst,
- nor travel to this place to get water.”
A number of interpreters take this statement the Samaritan made—“Give me this water”—at face value. I don’t. You’ll see why in a moment. But at this point, she’s treating Jesus as if he’s some weirdo… because to her mind, he is some weirdo. Judeans never talk
Ironic answers aren’t actually honest answers, and Jesus realized she didn’t really believe him, and that’s why he decided to “read her mail,” as prophets call it nowadays.
John 4.16-19 KWL - 16 {Jesus} tells her, “Go;
- call for your man,
- and come back to this place.”
- 17 In reply the Samaritan tells him, “I have no man.”
- Jesus tells her, “Well said, ‘I have no man’;
- 18 you had five men,
- and the one you now have isn’t your man.
- You said this truthfully.”
- 19 The woman tells Jesus, “Sir, I see you’re a prophet.”
And now he has her attention. “I see you’re a prophet”? Well duh
Christian evangelists should be taking notes about now. Too often we try to share Jesus with skeptical people, who think all our claims about who Jesus is and what he does are ridiculous, and aren’t receptive to it whatsoever.
But tell them something we can’t possibly know about them, and suddenly they go, “Wait—who told you that?”
So when you’re sharing Jesus, pay attention to the Spirit! He’ll tell you whether this person is receptive or not—and if he tells you something completely random, like “She’s had five men,” don’t just dismiss it as too weird to share: Tell her that, and watch the reaction. (Although, a word of advice? Don’t bring up her relationship history when other people are around. Be discreet like Jesus.)
Anyway that’s why I figure her previous statement, “Give me this water,” was ironic: It wasn’t a truthful response. “I have no man”—now that’s a truthful response.
And from here on out, you’ll notice the Samaritan takes Jesus seriously.
Everybody has history.
Preachers like to claim everybody in the Samaritan town of Sychár already knew the woman’s history, and therefore she was an outcast, and had to get her water from a well way outside of town. And maybe that’s so… and maybe it’s not. Maybe nobody knew her story. Maybe she kept far, far away from everybody lest anyone find out her story. You don’t know. Neither do I.
What little we do know, comes from Jesus: The woman previously had five
Because most ancient cultures, Samaritans included, figured if you lived together and had sex, you were married. Our culture doesn’t; it’s not marriage unless legal paperwork was filed. Seriously; I know of people who had a church ceremony and everything, but because they never bothered to register their relationship with the state, certain conservative Christians are gonna balk and insist no, they’re not married. Which is ridiculous; what makes ’em married, God or the state?
Marriage in the ancient middle east usually did involve legal paperwork. Mostly to protect the woman’s family in case her man divorced her. But otherwise the ancients, including the Hebrews, defined marriage by sexual activity and living arrangement. Like Genesis describes it, a man leaves his parents, bonds to his woman, and the two become “one flesh.”
And this Samaritan didn’t have this arrangement. She had some sort of relationship with a man… but he wasn’t her man. She wasn’t even a girlfriend; to the ancients’ minds,
But previously, the Samaritan had five husbands. We don’t know why those relationships ended. Judgmental preachers figure since she had a casual relationship by the time she met Jesus, she was likely an unfaithful wife before. But we don’t know that. We don’t know anything more than Jesus said. Jumping to conclusions, and preaching those conclusions as if they’re fact,
Let’s not even leap to the conclusion the reason she left town to get water was because Sychár knew she was a problem, and shunned her. They might not have! They certainly listened to her when she had something to say.
Nobody except, somehow, some wandering Galilean prophet who somehow knew everything. Well, not everything, but enough for her to think he knew everything.
How’d Jesus know that?
A lot of Christians just assume Jesus is
But there are big, big problems with this “simple” explanation. Y’see, if Jesus were all-knowing, it means every single time he asked a question for the sake of gaining information, it was an act. He already had that knowledge. He was only pretending to not have infinite knowledge so he could keep up the appearance of being an ordinary human. He faked ignorance. He lied.
Yeah. Claiming Jesus hadn’t
True, sometimes Jesus does already know the answer to a question, and is asking people in order to test ’em. He did this later in John with his student Philip.
They can’t fathom the reason John had to explain, “And this he said to prove him: for he himself knew what he would do,”
Nope; the more biblical explanation is Jesus surrendered his divine power to become human.
But we humans covet power. Not God’s nature, like we should; power. And we’d never surrender power—and can’t fathom a Jesus who’d voluntarily give up all his power to save us. He’d hold onto those reins somehow, because we would. Which just goes to show how very little we understand Jesus.
In order to share our human experience, Jesus had to depower himself. He had to surrender immortality so he could die. He had to surrender immutability, ’cause life is change. He had to surrender omnipresence, ’cause humans only exist at one point in spacetime. And if he gave up these powers, it’s not hard to imagine him surrendering the big two: Almightiness, and omniscience.
So how could Jesus know the unknowable, and do the impossible? By the Holy Spirit.
If Jesus were play-acting, his statement, “Go; call for your man” is nothing but cruel: He already knew the correct answer, already knew she’d give a truthful response. The only reason to bring it up—and some Christians do in fact teach this—was to remind her she was a sinner. (And when these teachers are also sexist and racist, they also particularly enjoy the idea of “putting her in her place.”) Basically, Jesus would be picking on her. And that is not Jesus. He’s kind. He would never have any such motive. The reason he told her to get her man, was because he was following the Spirit moment by moment.
I’m speculating, but I suspect this is something like what went on in Jesus’s head:
- SPIRIT. “She’s had five husbands, and the guy she’s with isn’t hers. Tell her to bring her man here, and she’ll admit she doesn’t have one.”
- JESUS. [internally] “Gotcha.” [aloud] “Go; call for your man, and come back to this place.”
- SAMARITAN. “I have no man.”
- SPIRIT. “Told ya.”
- JESUS. [relieved] “Yeah you did.” [aloud] “Well said, ‘I have no man’…”
This is
True, other scriptures indicate Jesus also had
