Big Buts of the Bible

“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.”
—John 4:13–14

She must have known something about distance.

She was a Samaritan, and centuries of religious and cultural hostility separated Samaritans from Jews. Even where worship was concerned, there was distance. Her people worshiped on Mount Gerizim. The Jews insisted Jerusalem was the proper place.

Then there was her own story.

Five husbands. Now living with a man who was not her husband. We aren’t told everything that brought her to this point, and we should be careful not to write details into her story that John doesn’t give us. But whatever the circumstances, Jesus knew them.

He knew her. And still He sat beside a well and talked with her.

In fact, John tells us something interesting before the conversation ever begins: Jesus “had to go through Samaria.”There were other routes He could have taken, and plenty of cultural and religious reasons for a Jewish traveler to avoid Samaria altogether. Jesus didn’t.

Was this meeting part of the reason He had to come this way? John doesn’t explicitly tell us. But knowing what happens next, it’s difficult not to wonder.

Because Jesus doesn’t simply happen upon this woman and tolerate the interruption. He initiates the conversation. He asks for a drink. He keeps talking when custom might have told Him not to. He knows her story and stays anyway. And before the chapter ends, this woman who had come to the well alone will be running back toward her community saying, “Come, see…”

She may have felt distant from God. But Jesus had come remarkably close to her.

That may be the first wonder worth lingering over this Sunday.

Living Water

Jesus had asked her for a drink, but before long He was offering one.

“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.”

There’s our big but.

The water in Jacob’s well could satisfy for a while. She would drink, become thirsty again, return, lower the jar, draw more water, and repeat the process.

Jesus offered something altogether different. “Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Not another temporary answer to a recurring thirst. A spring. Life within. Something only He could give.

The woman understandably wanted it. “Sir, give me this water…” And that’s when Jesus took the conversation somewhere surprisingly personal.

Go get your husband.

She answered simply: “I have no husband.”

Jesus already knew.

He knew about the five husbands. He knew about the man presently in her life. He knew the complicated story standing before Him before she ever opened her mouth.

But He hadn’t walked away.

He didn’t expose what He knew in order to humiliate her. He brought truth into the conversation because what Jesus offers isn’t found by pretending. The One offering living water already knew the places in her life that were dry.

And He remained beside the well.

But Where Do I Worship?

Then the conversation turned toward God. 

“Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

There’s another but, and this one reveals another kind of distance.

Where do people like me go to meet God?

Her question was rooted in a very real centuries-old dispute between Jews and Samaritans. Jesus didn’t pretend those differences didn’t exist. In fact, He told her plainly, “salvation is from the Jews.”

Yet—another turn—something new was happening. “A time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.”

Read that last phrase again.

The Father seeks.

There is the wonder.

This woman is talking about all the reasons worship seems far away—history, geography, religious disagreement, and perhaps everything complicated about her own life.

Jesus tells her about a Father who is seeking worshipers.

God is not confined to her mountain. God is not confined to Jerusalem. And God has not been kept away by the messy details of her story.

The Father is seeking people who will come to Him in Spirit and truth.

The Wonder of Being Known

I wonder how often we create our own versions of Mount Gerizim and Jerusalem.

If I could get my life together, maybe I could come closer to God.
If I hadn't made those choices…
If people knew the whole story…
If I were more religious…
If I understood the Bible better…
If I could finally stop struggling with this…

Then Jesus meets a woman beside a well and overturns the whole idea. He knows her before she knows Him. He knows the story she might prefer not to tell. He knows what has failed to satisfy.

But He comes near anyway.

And He offers living water.

That’s worth our wonder and worship today.

The God we worship isn’t waiting somewhere far away for sufficiently respectable people to find their way to Him. In Jesus, God came looking for us.

Known completely. Loved still. Invited near. Offered life.

Perhaps worship begins right there—not with getting everything right, finding the right place, or finally becoming worthy enough to approach God, but with discovering that the One we thought was distant has already come near. And realizing, perhaps with astonishment:

He knew where to find me.