Giving Up Superiority

The story of the woman at the well in John 4: 5-42 is the single longest recorded conversation that Jesus has with one person. In it, the unnamed woman creates barriers between herself and Jesus. I challenge you to look at these walls she puts up, and see if you have ever done the same. If you find that you have, or are, I hope that her story helps you to deconstruct them. This seems to be a goal of Jesus', both for this woman and for you and I. He gives up his superiority in this moment to offer himself to the woman at the well.

The first barrier is prejudice. She was a woman (not valued very highly in society), and a Samaritan woman at that. Samaritan's and Jews did not get along; they had hostility towards one another. The woman said, “Why are you, a Jew, asking me to get you a drink?” The animosity she expressed was characteristic of the relationships between Jews and Samaritans. Maya Angelou wrote, “Prejudice is a burden which confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible” (All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes). That’s exactly what she was doing. She was distorting the past and making the present inaccessible. She couldn’t meet Jesus because she brought prejudice into the relationship. When we evoke prejudice, we are creating a barrier between us and the life-giving water than Jesus offers us.

The second barrier is social custom. It was not custom for a Jewish man to interact with any woman in public. It was also not custom for a Jewish man to ever speak to a woman except their mother, wife, or daughter. So, the Samaritan woman at the well evoked this barrier as a wall between her and Jesus as well. Social customs may keep us from interacting with certain people. This, too, is a wall we evoke or build up that keeps us from receiving life-giving water that Jesus offers us.


The third barrier that the woman highlighted was that Jesus was an outsider to her. Jews did not travel through Samaria. In fact, Jews were more likely to go out of their way to avoid the area, even if they had to get past it. So, Jesus was an outsider; not someone the woman at the well would normally see or interact with in her country. This made it difficult for her to truly listen to Jesus. It is true that Jesus is an outsider; he is not from that area. And Jesus is also an outsider to us; Jesus is different than us; Jesus is the son of God! We tend to think of Jesus as like us, but he just is not. If we accept the life-giving water that Jesus offers us, we will be different, too.


The woman also hesitated to be honest with Jesus but, as she tells us, the readers, Jesus already knew about her. She did not want to become vulnerable with Jesus, sharing her story, and we don't like too sometimes either. But Jesus already knows us. So, we can share our story and our experience with Jesus. This can bring us peace, healing, comfort...life.

My prayer is that you can see how you can relate to this unnamed Samaritan woman at the well, and ultimately do what she ended up doing: sharing about her experience with Jesus with her neighbors. She ended up offering Christ to those around her. Maybe if we can get past the walls we put up around Jesus, we can meet with him and share about him, too.

Prayer:

Fill my cup, Lord
I lift it up Lord.
Come and quench this thirsting of my soul.
Bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more;
fill it up and make me whole.

(Fill My Cup, Lord. United Methodist Hymnal, 641)

Credit to Ministry Matters, the source from which I drew the different "barriers" of the woman at the well

In Christ,

Jack