The Words of Jesus

In the previous post we saw how Jesus broke the social conventions of his day by starting to talk with a Samaritan woman by a well. The conversation that followed had a major impact on the woman's life and that of her community.  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 livestock?” Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 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...

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 noon. 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.) Every society has its divisions. Leavers and Remainers; Conservatives and Progressives; Black and White. In first-century Judea, a major division was between Jews and Samaritans.   The Samaritans claimed to be preserving the true faith of the ancient Israelites and the true version of the Jewish holy writings; the Jews regarded the Samaritan religion as a corrupt form of the faith introduced by a mixed-race community who were not really true Jews. By the time of Jesus, the mutual hostility between Jews and Samaritans was such that the two communities did not mix and avoided any social or phy...