Hello

John tells us about Jesus’ meeting with two very different people; Nicodemus and the woman at the well.  I reckon these two meetings show us some interesting and important things about Jesus and his message.

Nicodemus was a Pharisee and a member of the Jewish ruling council.  So, he was a very important religious leader.  He came to see Jesus and he may have tried to engage Jesus in a formal debate.  Certainly, his opening words sound like the beginning of the kind of formal debate that took place in 1^st Century Greco-Roman societies:

“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” (John 3:2)

(In formal debates it was customary to say nice things about your opponent before taking them apart.)

Jesus then seems to interrupt him saying:

“Truly, truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again.” (John 3:3).

If Nicodemus intended to have a formal debate, Jesus just broke the rules.  He may have interrupted this VIP and what he said had nothing to do with what Nicodemus was saying.  Quite possibly Jesus was being very rude, as he often was to religious leaders.  In any event, what Jesus said made no sense at all to Nicodemus, who responded:

“How can anyone be born after having grown old?  Can they enter a second time into their mother’s womb and be born?” (John 3:4)

Jesus replied:

“Truly truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and spirit.  What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the spirit is spirit.  Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’  The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit.” (John 3:5-8)

 

I have often reflected that Jesus’ commands are clear and easy to understand but his theology is not.  This is a good example of that.  Jesus was talking about theology, and it isn’t easy to understand what he was saying.  Nicodemus certainly didn’t understand it.  He said:

 

“How can these things be?” (John 3:9)

 

And Jesus answered:

 

“Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?  Truly truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony.  If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?” (John 3:10-12)

 

Nicodemus was confused by this conversation.[1]  He didn’t understand what Jesus was talking about, probably because Jesus, perhaps deliberately, said things that weren’t clear.  This provides an interesting contrast with Jesus’ conversation with the woman at the well.

Jesus’ conversation with the woman at the well is one of the longest, perhaps the longest, one-on-one conversation recorded in the gospels.  And this person, unlike Nicodemus, was not important in the culture of the time.  She was a woman, and she was not a Jewish woman.  In even speaking to her, Jesus broke the conventions about how men and women were allowed to interact and how Jews and non-Jews were allowed to interact.

It was the middle of the day.  Jesus was on a long journey, on foot.  He was tired and sitting by a well just outside a town in Samaria called Sychar.  A woman came to get water from the well and Jesus asked her for a drink.  She was surprised and said:

“How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”  (John 4:9)

Jesus responded by saying:

“If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” (John 4:10)

The woman said:

“Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep.  Where do you get that living water?  Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?”  (John 4:11-12).

 

Jesus said:

 “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.  The water that I give will become a spring of water in them, gushing up to eternal life.” (John 4:13-14)

I love this.  This is a wonderful image.  Jesus gives us living water to drink.  When we drink this water, it wells up inside us, it overflows and pours out.  So, it’s not just refreshing for us – it’s refreshing for others too.

Today, we followers of Jesus have some understanding of what Jesus meant by these words.  We know who Jesus is but, at this moment, the woman didn’t.  She was just talking to a man who was behaving peculiarly and saying some very odd things.  He was making a very strange claim about being able to provide some miraculous water.  We can’t see the look on her face or her body language or hear the tone of voice she used, but if we’d been in this woman’s situation, how would we have responded?  It’s not difficult to hear a note of derision, or at least challenge, in the woman’s voice.

“Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” John 4:15

Then things get interesting:

Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.”  The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.  What you have said is true!”   (John 4:17-18)

 

This woman had had five husbands and was not married to her current partner.  Even today, this would be unusual.  Would a woman with this kind of history be welcome in our churches?  Would the pastor or priest be comfortable being seen talking with her?

But Jesus could see her heart.  He was starting to engage in a deep conversation with her.  She may not have understood about the water, but now she realized that he knew things about her that a stranger could not possibly know, so she understood that she was dealing with a man of God, as we see by her next response.

“Sir, I can see that you are a prophet.  Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is Jerusalem.” (John 4:19-20)

The woman sees that Jesus is a prophet and immediately asks him a question about religion.

I was taught that she said this because she didn’t like having the spotlight on her marital history and wanted to change the subject.  I’ve even read this theory in textbooks in the library of the seminary where I studied.  But I don’t know of any evidence for this view.  There is a principal in science called Occam’s razor.  The principal is that the simplest explanation is likely to be the correct one.  The simplest explanation for her asking this question is that she wanted to know the answer.  There is every reason to suppose that this is a question that bothered her because she was a spiritual person, and Jesus gave a straight answer to her question:

“Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem….” (John 4:21)

Let’s face it, if the woman’s intention was to try to distract him from talking about her love life, then she has been totally successful.  She has distracted him completely.  Is that likely?  Jesus can see this woman’s heart.  If he wanted to talk about her marital history, is it likely he would have been so easily distracted?  I don’t think so.

Let’s look at these words of Jesus: “…a time is coming when you will worship the father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem….” (John 4:21).  Jesus gave a direct answer to the woman’s question and so introduced a new order for worshiping God in which old practices and procedures would be put aside.  Where you worship was no longer important.  And Jesus explained this, simply and clearly, to this non-Jewish woman who had had a very irregular love life.  But he did not explain these things simply and clearly to Nicodemus who was a Pharisee and a member of the Jewish ruling council.  Interesting, isn’t it?  Jesus told his disciples that it was God’s pleasure to hide things from the wise and learned and reveal them to little children (Matthew 11:25; Luke 10:21).

Jesus continued:

“…A time is coming, and has now come, when the true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the father seeks.  God is spirit and his worshipers must worship him in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:23-24)

Our loving heavenly Father wants his children to worship him “in spirit and in truth”!   In spirit means in our souls, in truth means we can have no secrets from God so we might as well be completely honest with him.  (I talk about this some more in the article “What did Jesus say about worship?”.  Link below.)

The woman may, or may not, have fully understood what Jesus meant.  Perhaps her next words indicate that she did not fully understand him:

“I know that Messiah is coming.  When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” (John 4:25)

And Jesus said

“I, I am.  The one speaking to you.” (John 4:26)

Jesus used the very emphatic “I, I am.”  He used the name of God and applied it to himself.

If the woman didn’t understand everything that Jesus said, she had time to ask more questions.  John tells us that she went into the town and told everyone about Jesus.  The citizens of Sychar went out to him, listened to him, and invited him to stay.  Jesus stayed in that town for two more days.

One final point on this story.  I don’t think there can be any doubt that Jesus was setting an example, a standard, for how men treat women.  This was acknowledged and accepted in his church in its early days.  Women were respected, and many played important roles, in that early church.  But this was revolutionary at that time and, quite quickly, women were put back into their traditional, subservient roles.  It is only now that we are returning to the attitudes that Jesus meant us to have all along.  (I look at another example of Jesus responding to a woman, Mary the sister of Martha, in the article “How does the devil attack the church? – Distraction.”  Link below.)

I hope this has been interesting.

May our loving Father bless us and guide us safely along the path he walks with us.

Jesus is Lord.

Peter O

 

Related Articles

“What did Jesus say about worship?”

“How does the devil attack the church? – Distraction”

 

[1] Despite his confusion, Nicodemus became a follower of Jesus.  According to John, he was with Joseph of Arimathea when, after Jesus’ crucifixion, the two of them wrapped Jesus’ body in spices and placed it in the tomb.

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