John 4:7

A Samaritan of the fairer gender arrives at the well where Jesus is sitting.  She has come to the well to draw some water.  Jesus, who has been sitting under the hot noontime Samaritan sun, addresses the woman.  “I am thirsty. Can you give me some water?” he asks.  John 4:7 EFP

So here is the reason Jesus comes through Samaria, stops by Sychar, sits down by Jacob’s Well on the plot of land the patriarch gave to Joseph his son.  A woman arrives at the well during the heat of the day to draw water.  Jesus is waiting just for her.  There is no coincidence here—no happenstance.  This is specifically what Jesus is expecting to happen.  He has sought out this situation for just such an outcome.

The fact that this woman arrives “around the sixth hour,” by Jewish reckoning about noon, is also significant.  This woman is not just any woman, she is a woman who is trying to avoid the other women is Sychar who come every morning to draw water.  She does not want to talk to them.  She prefers not to bump into them.  It probably is not even her choice, she may have been told to come draw water at a different time of the day, if not in words, certainly in the looks and frigid glances she endured in the past.  She is a lightning rod for gossip and innuendo.  She is the “other woman” or “that woman” in this little town.  But Jesus is “that man” and he came to town to talk to her.  Oddly enough, he does not just speak to her; he proceeds to ask something of her. “Would you be so kind as to give a cup of water?” Jesus requests of her.  “I’m very thirsty.”

What seems an innocuous petition is anything but.  Remember, this is Jesus!  He turned water into wine at a wedding in Cana.  He singlehandedly drove out the strong–handed merchants from the temple court.  He stood toe to toe with the temple guards and the religious leaders who questioned him.  He is anything but helpless.  Yet he asks for a cup of water.  The Giver comes as the one needing.  The Source presents himself as the recipient.  In a simple sentence he defines the incarnation—His coming into this world as a newborn baby.  The Almighty Father becomes the helpless son of a young Jewish maiden and a carpenter. How else can he engage the likes of me unless he becomes one like me in every sense of the word?  Even as one in need.  This seems truly odd when I think about it, but it is the unthinkable and untenable that becomes the non-negotiable and immovable core of the Gospel and the “power of God leading to salvation.” (1Corinthians 1:18)