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TITLE: The Woman At the Well By Patricia Jordan 02/02/23 |
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The Woman at the Well
Breaking The Spirit of Rejection
“Jacob’s well was there; and Jesus, tired from the long walk, sat wearily beside the well about noontime. Soon a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Please give me a drink.” John 4:6-7
The complete story of the woman at the well is found in John 4:1-44. I hope you take a few moments to read it for yourself. The crux of this whole encounter between a Jewish rabbi and an “outsider” known only as “the woman at the well” is about salvation. But it’s also a story about overcoming rejection. She had been married and divorced five times and was living with a man she wasn’t married to by the time she met Jesus. That alone has rejection written all over it. Not much “wounds” our consciousness like rejection does.
Let’s look at what we know about this woman. The woman at the well was a member of the Samaritan race. That race was rejected by the Jewish people during that time. The Samaritans were a blend of some Jewish men who intermarried with foreign women several generations earlier. So, the fact that Jesus was even in that Samaritan community with his Jewish disciples was outside the lines of social acceptability.
The woman at the well had been rejected multiple times and it was weighing her down. Her shoulders were slumped, her face downcast in the harsh Middle eastern midday sun. We don’t know how old she was, but I perceive her to be approaching middle-age or already there. She had been rejected by members of her own race who also were rejected by most everyone around them. The Samaritans weren’t a pure race on either side so nobody liked them. And the Samaritans didn’t like her. She was truly rejected by the rejected.
We know that she walked the distance from her home to the well alone. Perhaps she walked to the well daily all alone. All the other women had gotten water for their bustling households much earlier that day. They probably left their houses at the “crack of dawn” and were the first of a steady flow of women traveling to the well all through the mid-morning hours.
Getting water for the day was a dreary task to be sure. But most likely, the village women going there together made it less mentally draining on each of them. Likely each woman had clay pots tied to both ends of a long pole which was laid across their shoulders.
This well might’ve flowed into a “holding pond” for livestock. The early morning hours was when the water was at its purest. After the groups of women got their water, then the livestock were led to the well and given water. Watering animals took some time, and the area wasn’t clean by then. After all that activity was over with, then the woman came to the well by herself.
In Bible times when a man divorced his wife, he got it all because he owned it all including the children. The ex-wife was left with nothing more than “the clothes on her back.” Prostitution was one of the few ways women could make money back then.
Perhaps this woman walked by the current wives of her former husbands and saw them wearing her jewelry, her clothes. Maybe she even saw her own children who weren’t allowed to run to her.
This woman had experienced deep personal rejection on different levels. And it was all weighing her down. And by the time she met Jesus he knew all about her. She wondered and asked him, how in the world did he know this about her? (John 4:17,18)
Being rejected and rejecting is a part of life. But it’s the big rejections that can hit us in the gut. We’re rarely ever ready for those times. That unannounced negative experience can break us down if we don’t keep our guard up.
The Spirit of rejection can cut a deep emotional wound no matter if it’s through divorce or a parent-child relationship. And it usually lasts a long time.
We see Jesus taking time to talk with this lonely forlorn woman. He spoke to her the message of hope and salvation in a way that she understood it. The message of hope and salvation always go together. You will experience hope when you receive the message of salvation.
This woman’s attitude changed for the better once she met Jesus and received his message of salvation and complete forgiveness of her sins. It was then that she understood that God had never rejected her. That God unconditionally loved her. And of all the people that could’ve been at the well somehow it was her that was talking with God’s Son face-to-face.
After hearing Jesus say to her, that “true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth” (Jn 4:23). It didn’t matter that she was of the lowest rung of the village social ladder. Jesus spoked to her spirit where she longed to know the true meaning of life itself.
When this woman received the truth of what Jesus had spoken to her, she immediately left her burdensome task of carrying water and ran quickly back to her village. There she told the very people who had rejected her about the message of hope and salvation. They received the truth also and went to meet Jesus for themselves.
It seems clear to me that this woman became the first woman evangelist of the New Testament.
But what about you? If you’ve experienced painful rejection, please know that there is always hope. True and realistic hope flows from the portal of Heaven and it’s there readily available for all of us.
Why am I discouraged?
Why is my heart so sad?
I will put my hope in God!
I will praise him again—
my Savior and my God!
Psalms 43:5
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