The story about Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well is a story about revelation and change through encounter. The story unfolds in a somewhat surprising way, however. For one, we never learn the woman’s name. Her identity is not important, for the spiritual thirst that she brings to the well is the same spiritual thirst that we all have. As the woman soon learns, God is the only one who can satisfy this thirst. So, we do not know her name because her name is our name. At one time or another, Jesus invites each of us to take her place at the well.
Another unexpected detail is the gradual way in
which the woman comes to believe Jesus is the messiah who can satisfy her
spiritual thirst. Jesus describes the
nature of his offer in clear terms of living water. Yet, she initially misunderstands his
meaning, for she understands his message only in a physical sense. As the encounter continues, however, she
gradually comes to understand the spiritual significance and meaning of the
water Jesus offers her. Her initial lack
of understanding is like our own inability at times to understand the message
that God sends our way. Like this woman,
we too must hear God’s message many times and in many ways before we finally
get it.
Once the woman gets the message, once she realizes
that Jesus is the messiah, she runs back to share her gift with others, and in
her haste, leaves behind her water jug.
Her reason for coming to the well in the first place no longer seems
important. She came looking for water to
satisfy a physical need, and left with satisfaction of a spiritual need she was
unaware she had. Her leaving behind the
water jug represents the priority that spiritual thirst has over physical
thirst. We need the living water that
Jesus offers for eternal life more than we need ordinary water for physical
life. No jug can hold the water of life
that Jesus offers.
Perhaps the most surprising detail is the woman’s
honesty in her conversation with Jesus. She
holds nothing back, does not attempt to fool him in any way as to who she is or
what she has done. Nor does she hesitate to confront Jesus with her need for
more information. She doesn’t accept
anything he says at face value. To each
of his attempts at identifying her true need and his gift that will satisfy
that need, she gives the same honest response.
She wants more information because she doubts the possibility that his
offer is enough, that it can satisfy her spiritual need. Eventually, her encounter with Jesus transforms
her, but how that happens is not part of the story. What stands out most is her honesty in her
encounter with Jesus as the beginning of that transformation.
The lesson for us is clear. We have no need to hide from Jesus. He knows who we are, what we have done, and
what we plan to do. From that
perspective, we have every reason to take Jesus at his word. When Jesus said, “I am the bread of life;
whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never
thirst” (Jn6:35), he in fact claims that he can nourish our spirits however
broken. He claims that he is enough for
all. The difficulty for us today is the
same difficultly for the woman at the well—we doubt this possibility. We hear his message, but we are slow to see
the possibilities. Our doubt makes us hesitant and slow to respond.
We doubt because we do not know what our spiritual
need is or how to find satisfaction. We thirst
in a spiritual sense, but we do not know how to find genuine nourishment. We look for it in the wrong places. We spend our spiritual coin for what is not
bread, our wages for what fails to satisfy our thirst. Many of us live in spiritual poverty. We have nothing to eat or drink. We are not satisfied.
Yet, the Lord Jesus calls us out of our
poverty. He invites all of us to come to
his banquet. Come to me all you who
labor and are burdened, Jesus says, and I will give you rest. Like the woman at the well, no matter who we
are or what we have done, all we have to do is bring our hunger and our thirst
to Jesus and do as he says. When we
bring what we have to Christ—our needs and ourselves—and unite them to him,
Christ becomes the foundation of our lives and he changes us. How we do not necessarily know, but every encounter
with love is transformative. Our
relationship with Jesus then motivates us to imitate what he says and how he
acts. We put on the mind of Christ, as
St. Paul describes it (1Cor 2:16).
With the mind of Christ, we find reason and desire
to share our gifts with others in a spirit of love like the woman who was eager
to share her new found gift with others.
This is what Jesus means when he identifies himself as the bread of life
and the source of living water. For all
of us, Jesus says: take me in, become what I am. Be the bread of life and the living water to
others, and your eternal life will begin here and now.
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