Once Jesus learned that the Pharisees were keeping score of how many people Jesus and John the Baptist had baptized as a way to cause conflict between the two, Jesus and his disciples left the Judean countryside and went back to Galilee. On their way, they passed through Samaria and stopped in the town of Sychar, which is near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jesus rested next to Jacob’s well while His disciples went into the town to get food. While He was resting, a woman came to the well to draw water. Jesus asked the Samaritan woman to give Him some water. This request shocked the Samaritan woman, as Jews did not speak to Samaritans. The woman asked Him why He was talking to her and asking her to help Him. He told her that if she knew who He was, she would be asking Him for water because He would give her living water. She didn’t understand what He meant and asked how He could offer her living water when He didn’t even have a bucket to draw water from the well. Jesus told her that anyone who drinks water from the well will get thirsty again, but anyone who drinks the water He gives will never thirst again. It becomes an eternal, internal spring. She asked Him to give her this water. Jesus told her to bring her husband to the well, and He would give them both the water. The woman told Jesus that she had no husband, and Jesus said that she responded truthfully. He told her that she had had five husbands and that the man she was living with then was not her husband. She was shocked that she knew so much of her life and thought that Jesus must be a prophet. She asked Jesus why the Jews believed that the only place for worship was in Jerusalem. Jesus told her that soon it would not matter where you come from or where you worship as long as you worship honestly as yourself. He told her that God is Spirit, and He is looking for those who worship as themselves, truthfully and from their spirits. She didn’t really understand what He meant by this and said that she knew that the Messiah was going to come and that He would explain it all. Jesus told the woman that He is the Messiah. The disciples returned, and the woman went back into the town where she told the people there about Jesus and asked if they thought He might be the Messiah. They all followed her out to the well to see Him for themselves.
