In those days, in their thirst for water, the people grumbled against Moses.
The ancient Jews did not just grumble against Moses, they hated him. They hated him so much that they wanted to kill him. Maybe they had been slaves back in Egypt, but at least they were able to get something to eat and drink. Not so in the wilderness. So, instead of being grateful for their freedom, they grumbled. They grumbled because the freedom came with a price.
Skip ahead about 1,200 years or so, and who did the Jews hate? The Samaritans. And the Samaritans hated them back. So, what was Christ, a Jew, doing in Samaria, which was thirty miles north of Jerusalem? He traveled there, the Vulgate states, “out of necessity.” He went because it was a safe bet that He would not find Pharisees there—Pharisees who hated and wanted to kill Him.
In the 2nd chapter of John, Christ drove the money changers out of the temple. Then He performed several signs of His divinity. When His disciples started baptizing more people than John the Baptist had, Christ was clearly becoming a problem. So, on His way back north to Galilee, instead of taking the flat and well-traveled Jordan River road, Christ ventured into the hill country of Samaria. Though Samaritans hated Jews, Christ was safer with them than with the leaders of His own people.
The Samaritan-Jew Feud
The hatred between the Jews and Samaritans started after 722 BC, when the Assyrians conquered the north part of Israel, including Samaria. After the Samaritans intermarried with their foreign conquerors, pure-bred Jews regarded them as half-breeds and mongrels.
To make things worse, in the 4th century BC, a Jewish high priest in Jerusalem (Manasseh) married a Samaritan woman. The Jews gave the high priest a choice: get rid of the woman or leave town. He left town with the woman. He went to Samaria, and with the help of the Greeks he built a temple on top of Mt. Gerizim. The Samaritans there practiced a sort of pseudo-Judaism, a mixture of paganism and worship of Yahweh.
“Our ancestors worshipped on that mountain,” the Samaritan woman told Christ. Her ancestors worshipped there, but not her, because the temple was gone…it had been destroyed by the Jews! In 128 BC, the Maccabees, who ruled Israel at the time, destroyed the temple on Mt. Gerizim.
So this is some background as to why the Samaritans and Jews hated each other.
The Meeting at the Well
“Give me a drink,” Christ told the woman. A rather odd way to start a dialogue. But that is what the ancient Jews on their journey yelled at Moses in the preceding verse to Sunday’s Exodus passage: “Give us water to drink!” Now the new Moses, tired and thirsty from His journey, asked the same favor from a hated enemy. The woman responded: “You, a Jew, ask me for water? You don’t even have a bucket.”
One of my heroes, Bishop Fulton Sheen provided brilliant commentary on this passage. Sheen, who died in 1979, was in the news last month. His beatification, the last step toward sainthood, was supposed to be in 2019, but it got “sabotaged” and called off at the last minute due to some skullduggery from the Archdioceses of Chicago and New York. It was announced a few weeks ago that Sheen will be beatified later this year and thereby be known as Blessed Fulton Sheen.
In his 1958 Life of Christ, Sheen noted that when the Lord wished to do someone a favor, He always began by asking for one first. He didn’t start off by preaching a sermon, instead He made a request: “Give me a drink.” But one cannot give what he or she does not have…
There must always be an emptying of the human before there can be a filling with the Divine, as the Divine emptied himself to fill the human.
As the conversation continued between Christ and the Samaritan woman, Sheen noted the spiritual development in her. She started out calling Christ a Jew, because that’s all she saw: a weary Jewish traveler. Then she called Him a man: “Are you a greater man than our father Jacob?” Man then advanced to sir: “Sir, give me this water that I may never thirst.”
Christ now had her where He wanted her: “Go get your husband.” He elicited a confession out of her, though her confession was less than forthcoming; it hardly went far enough. Sheen wrote that she asked for living water, but she did not yet know that the well had to be dug first:
In the depth of her spirit there was a potency for his gift; but the waters of grace could not flow because of the hard rocks of sin, the many layers of transgression, the habits formidable as clay, and the multiple deposits of carnal thoughts. All these had to be dug out before she could have the living water. Sin had to be confessed before salvation could be obtained.
After Christ told her she had five husbands, she called Him a prophet. Jew, man, sir, and now prophet. Then, wrote Sheen, she did what most people caught in this situation do—she changed the subject! She blurted out, “Our ancestors worshipped on that mountain,” but Christ would not let her off the hook. She wanted the water, and now she found herself in it, quite deep.
Christ told her not to worry about her lost temple, and He added that she didn’t have to worry about worshipping at the temple in Jerusalem either—for it would soon be destroyed as well. The Jerusalem temple would no longer be needed after Christ, for He was the true temple where true worship would be found.
After mentioning the words Messiah and Christ, the woman ran into town. She left her water pot, just like the Apostles dropped their fishing nets. Her weary Jewish traveler now was the Savior of the world. The woman’s conversion was complete. Jew, man, sir, prophet, Christ, and now Savior. She understood that Christ did not come to save the righteous, but sinners like her. Sheen concluded:
He had not come with a book in his hand only to read to those who wanted to be taught; he did more: He came with Blood in his Body to pour it out in full acquittal of a debt man could never repay.
Start Digging Your Well
What about you? Do you want the water? Do you believe there is water out there that will quench your thirst forever? Well, Christ has a favor to ask you. Not that He needs one; it’s just His way to open a dialogue. Shut off the noise pollution that is all around you, and in the silence listen for a weary Jewish traveler’s voice. Listen to Him say: Give me a drink… Give me a drink, and I will give you one.
If you are a reasonable person open to the truth, what should you begin doing at that point? You should begin digging a well. You should begin digging through the many layers of transgressions and habits formidable as clay. To dig or not to dig; to give or not to give. Remember you are on the hook, and Christ is not letting you off. He came to save sinners like you. Why would He let you off the hook?
Listen in the silence to a Man who can tell you everything you have ever done. Then start digging. Dig through the murkiness and turbidity of your wounded soul until you hit the rock where the sweet-tasting water flows. Give that water to Christ. Give Him a drink, and He will give you one. He will give you a spring of water welling up to eternal life.
Photo by Frank Albrecht on Unsplash
