A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become min him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.” (John 4:7-15 ESV).
Our reading today describes an encounter between Jesus and a Samaritan woman at a place called Jacob’s well. Through their conversation something of the glory of Jesus is revealed. It’s enough to convince the woman that Jesus is the Messiah. And more conversations convince many others that Jesus is the promised Savior. Extraordinary!
Here’s how it starts. Jesus is bone tired. So, he sits down by the well while his disciples go into town to buy food. He’s obviously hungry, but that will have to wait till the disciples return. Meanwhile, he’s thirsty. So, when a woman comes to get water from the well, he asks her for a drink. It appears to be an ordinary encounter that one could expect in the typical events of any ordinary day of that time. However, it would turn out to be extraordinary before it was finished.
It’s all so ordinary and human. Of course, Jesus is tired. Of course, he’s hungry. Of course, he’s thirsty. He’s human, after all, He is like us in every way, with the same basic needs that must be satisfied every day. Jesus is not disguised as a human. He is fully human, just as he is fully God. And nothing about his humanity sets him above common human experiences, even ordinary ones like fatigue, hunger, and thirst. This will be true of him until the day he experiences the ultimate reality of being human: that we are vulnerable to suffering and death. Yet, He is the one source of all things extraordinary: redemption, healing, and eternal life! Halelujah… what a Savior!