So Jesus has gone up to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, one of the three feasts when Jews were supposed to come to the temple. Jesus and his people, you’ll remember, were in Galilee. Galilee is separated from Jerusalem by Samaria. The Jews and the Samaritans did not get along. They were descended from common ancestors—Jacob, for example—but somewhere along the line they had split and their worship was different. And they despised each other.
Jesus is traveling back home to Galilee in this story after the Passover. John’s Gospel says that he had to go through Samaria. Now, he could have gone around, but Samaria was the direct route. And I cannot overemphasize how difficult, how hard this travel was. This was mountainous country, mountains and valleys, bandits and wild beasts. There were dangers along the way. That’s what happened in the story of the Good Samaritan. One of the bandits got him. Despite these challenges, the experts who have read the texts closely tell us that they were able to travel about 20 miles a day by foot, which to me is astounding.
But you can imagine that by the time Jesus gets to this well in the heat of the day, he’s got to be pretty tired. Sychar is about 40 miles from Jerusalem, so they’ve presumably been on the road for two days already. He’s resting in the heat of the day while his people go off to get food. This Samaritan woman comes alone to the well. He asks her for a drink. She’s quite surprised that he’s speaking to her for two reasons: First of all, Jews and Samaritans don’t generally talk to each other, and a man would not talk to a woman alone in a situation like that.
But Jesus says, “Give me a drink,” and they begin this long conversation which is really quite profound. He tells her about living water. She doesn’t totally get that. Which is not surprising, but it’s not like last week’s Gospel, the story of Nicodemus, where he seems sort of baffled the whole time.
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