21 Days of Prayer; a Devotion on JohnSample

John 4 | You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan Woman, how can you ask me for a drink?

Well, Jesus asked the woman for a drink because he needed a drink, he was tired and weary, and sat to rest at the well, and she evidently had means to draw water and help him. What has Jesus asked of you? And what can you give him? But the Samaritan woman’s question probes the socially unusual request from Jesus. In first-century Israel, Jews, certainly religious Jews, generally disdained their neighbours the Samaritans, and would not have engaged them, let alone drank from their vessels, regarding them as religiously unclean. Men, certainly religious Jewish men, would not have spoken to an unknown adult woman in public, violating strict cultural norms. But Jesus is not one for man-made rules when the rules get in the way of God’s rule. Jesus has a need, and Jesus sees her need. Jesus needs a drink (the request was not a ploy to speak at a deeper level), and this Samaritan needs to drink the living water of the gift of God. She is to offer Jesus a temporal satisfaction of his physical thirst, and Jesus will offer her existential and eternal satiation. The Bible doesn’t say whether she did or didn’t give Jesus a drink. It does suggest she received Jesus and drank from his well. And he offers us that living water to eternal life and satisfaction – and he asks us for something to satisfy his thirst, not a cup of water, but he thirsts for us.