Loving Without Limits: The Woman At The Well

Welcome back, dear one! We left off discussing how Jesus showed compassion to the woman caught in adultery. Today, won’t you join me as we explore Jesus’ love lived out in a radical way?

Social norms. The term sounds so polite, right? A general, agreed upon, expected set of ways to behave in and between cultures? Oh, how that innocent definition plays so very differently in the real world.

I don’t know about you, but the junior high years were some of the most awkward, embarrassing, difficult to navigate years of my educational experience (I am so glad that there were no digital cameras or cell phones back then, preventing my awkwardness to live on forever). There were several reasons that this time of my life was so tough. First and foremost, the junior high years are just tough. Multiple studies have documented how hard this age group is. Adding to the normal challenges of the junior high years was the fact that my family had moved from Hawaii to Oregon two months before the school year started. I sounded different, the culture was different, the climate was ridiculously different, and I didn’t know a soul. The bottom line was that I always felt like I belonged to a group of social pariahs, and the “cool kids” never interacted with the social pariahs. 

Junior High students definitely don’t have the corner on the market of the “us” and “them” battle. One of the greatest examples of this struggle is actually in the Bible. In one corner were the Jews and in the other, the Samaritans. Interaction between the two just didn’t happen. Ah...social norms.

And then, there was this rebel who didn’t really care about social norms. He spent his time with tax collectors, thieves, widows, lepers, those living with infirmity, women...you name the outcast, there is probably a story of Him spending time with them. Who was this strange man who blasted through social norms like the kool-aid man? Jesus, of course. Simply put, social norms weren’t His thing.

One of the best examples of Jesus destroying social norms is found in John 4:4-26.

4 Now he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

9 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.)

10 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.”

11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

15 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.”

16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

17 “I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 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.”

19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

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

26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.” (ESV)

Wow. I mean, really, wow. Talk about shredding social norms. There are a lot of reasons why the woman at the well was considered an outcast. First, she was a woman. That in and of itself was huge. She was Samaritan, and hostility between the Jews and Samaritans was well known. Getting water from the well was generally regarded as a social activity and provided the opportunity for interaction with others; however she was on her own. And, as if that wasn’t enough, she was not married, rather living with a man, the sixth in a line of men she had lived without outside of marriage. You couldn’t live much more in the margins than this woman.

But Jesus didn’t care about the rules and norms. Jesus was clear in Mark 2:17 that a physician doesn’t attend to the well, rather the sick. This woman was ailing. In every way, her life was painful and broken. So at the well, she met the Great Physician.

“Will you give me a drink?”

Baffled, the woman reminds Jesus of all of the reasons why this was a bad idea. I can almost feel her thoughts “I am an outcast. No one in my own town will even talk to me. Do you know the risk you are taking just being seen with me?”

Jesus responds to her self-criticism with a promise of living water. Confused, she starts in with the reasons why this is impossible. So He tries again. Continued confusion. Then, she gets it...well, kinda. She knows that only the Messiah can provide this kind of water. And Jesus drops a truth bomb…”I am He”.

Y’all, do you know how huge this is? The first time Jesus reveals that he is the Messiah is to a woman so on the fringes that she was an outcast even amongst her own people. You read that right; the Messiah revealed His true identity for the first time to a Samaritan woman, ostracized from her community, on her sixth affair. It is the sick who need a physician, not the well.

I am not sure about you, but I know that I normally have a list of failures or mistakes a mile long running through my head. Carefully organized exhibits, prepared as evidence of why I will never be enough for God’s love. But, dear one, God’s love is unconditional and limitless. Whether we accept it or not, whether we believe it or not; His love is always there. 

Will you join me in laying down the list “never lovable” reasons and allow His love to wash over you?

In Love, JSB

PS: Don’t forget to grab your journal page here!