The Son of Man is a friend of sinners… Wisdom is proved right by all her actions (Luke 7:34-35)
John 4:1-42 contains the longest single conversation that Jesus had with any individual in the Gospels. Records of such long conversations are rare in the Bible where brevity and conciseness are valued. The length of the story indicates its significant place in the eyes of John the Apostle and those in the Early Church.
What was it that drew Jesus to the Samaritan woman that others despised? This is clearly not a case of a lost soul chasing after Jesus for help and forgiveness. But, Jesus sensed a need within this Samaritan lady. In the Gospel of John, the Samaritan woman was the first recorded woman that Jesus chose to personally reveal his identity as Messiah of the World! She also became the first recorded woman evangelist (and a “despised” half-breed Samaritan at that)! What an extraordinary divine choice!
Jesus befriended the Samaritan woman. He broke her defensiveness, earned her trust, and made her feel affirmed and at ease with him. Jesus also pointed out to the Samaritan woman that in seeking that one perfect relationship, she had formed many sexual relationships. However, these human relationships cannot ultimately “quench her thirst” (satisfy her need for love). But, Jesus offers her the better substitute and true solution, the true Living Water of Life that would eternally satisfy her.
Was the woman’s life changed? Indeed, it was! And she became the first recorded foreign woman missionary in the Gospel of John! (Source: Gail R. O’Day “John”. The Woman’s Bible Commentary, C.A. Newsom and S.H. Ringe, Eds, Westminster/John Knox, 1992, pp. 295-6)
And she will have a Son, and you are to name Him Jesus (which means The Lord Saves) for He will save His People from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21)
Like the apostles who left their fishing nets, boats, and parents, this Samaritan lady left her water jar, momentarily forgetting her mission to get physical water. (Likewise, Jesus was uninterested in the food that the disciples brought–He said His “food” was to complete the mission that the Father gave Him.)
Overjoyed with the love and affirmation she had found, the Samaritan woman ran to the townspeople that had treated her as an outcast. She had been a curse to them, but now she became a blessing to them. Risking rejection, she made them take notice, “Come and meet Christ! He told me everything that I did!” Now that she meets the Source of Living Water, rivers of living water flow from within her! Those that believed her message also came and drank deeply from the Fount of Living Water! (Read “I’m the Samaritan Woman” here: https://agapetos.xyz/?p=26768)
Some people are surprised that Jesus chose to speak to this “bad” woman, not unlike the disciples’ reaction (John 4:27). But, then again, maybe Jesus was not being so out of character in speaking to this morally disreputable woman–Jesus has a history of associating with “bad girls’, forgiving them and helping them out of their problems (Luke 7:34-50, John 8:1-11).
He was not afraid to be condemned by the Pharisees who said he “welcomed sinners and eats with them” (Lk 15:2; Mt 9:9-12).
Matthew the tax collector included five women of disputable moral histories in Jesus’ genealogy. By doing so, He pointed out that Jesus even deliberately chose to be born to women with questionable moral past lives, but who have cleaved to God their Salvation: Tamar who slept with her father-in-law to get what is rightfully hers (in Levirate marriage), Rahab the repentant prostitute, a respectable but stigmatized Moabite woman Ruth who asked a Jewish Boaz to marry her as her kinsmen-redeemer (knowledgeable Jews familiar with Israelite history would remember their relationship with the Moabites, and how they were banned from intermarriage for 10 generations), Bathsheba the woman whom David lusted over and killed her husband for (she was a godly mother who taught Solomon well, cf. Proverbs), and innocent Mary whose fiancé Joseph wanted to “put away” because she was found to be pregnant before marriage (albeit later Joseph changed his mind, after it was revealed to him that God was the one that caused this miracle). God the Father could very well put Him in a family of pure blue blood, with no strange histories. But, God did so for a purpose. (Matt. 1:21) He identified with them, and proclaimed through that choice, that He is part of them.
Jesus has not stopped his work among people of “low repute”. He does not impose Himself on others, and to the ones that nailed Him on the Cross, He said, “Father, forgive them!” But, He is still extending His love and forgiveness to them, giving them the better offer of life than the lousy human substitutes that they stumble upon. We too are messengers of that marvelously Good News!
(Written by Lilian Yap, 2004 Updated in 2014)
