Women in the Bible: Sam, the Evangelist

John 4: 1-30, 39

Jesus and the Woman of Samaria
4Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, ‘Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John’— 2 although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— 3he left Judea and started back to Galilee. 4But he had to go through Samaria. 5So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. 8(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 10Jesus answered her, ‘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.’ 11The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’ 13Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ 15The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’

16 Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’ 17The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; 18for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’ 19The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’ 21Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’ 25The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’ 26Jesus said to her, ‘I am he, the one who is speaking to you.’

27 Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, ‘What do you want?’ or, ‘Why are you speaking with her?’ 28Then the woman left her water-jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 29‘Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?’ 30They left the city and were on their way to him.

39 Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me everything I have ever done.’


This text is normally heard during the season of Lent. About halfway through his journey to Jerusalem, Jesus finds himself with the opportunity to travel through Samaria on his way. He probably didn’t have to take the road he took; isn’t that just like Jesus?

On this un-needed sojourn, Jesus meets an un-necessary woman, or at least, she seems this way at first. Coming to the well in the middle of the day is code language for the fact that she was shunned by her community. But Jesus turned that on its ear: this is the longest recorded conversation we know of between Jesus and anyone else. And its kind of a one-sided conversation—it’s all about her: her past, her men, her choices, her consequences, like having to come out in the hottest hours of the day to get the water to sustain your life.

And speaking of her life, Jesus sure does know a lot about it. And isn’t that an interesting testimony that she is left with; “He told me everything I’ve ever done.” Fred Craddock comments that this is not exactly a recitation of the Apostles’ Creed. Barbara Brown Taylor says that when Jesus tells her who she is, he is also telling her who he is. She’s a woman, not allowed to have much choice in how her life is lived out, not even allowed to pray with the men in the synagogue, born a Samaritan and, therefore, a half-breed child of God. The morning devotions of men included a prayer that actually said, basically, “Thank God I am not a woman.” She was all the things that one was not supposed to be—at least one who spent time with the Son of God. But then again, so was he.

I think that sometimes Jesus surprises us with who he is. He know us; he get us; he loves us; he shares God with us. Sam wasn’t really known by anyone anymore, and I am certain that no one “got” her. I wonder if she had ever received much real love in her life, and she was excluded from everything—God included. By knowing and spending time with her, Jesus opened the relationship back up between God and her, and that was something so wonderful in her life, something she needed so much, that she just couldn’t keep quiet about it. I imagine it might have been something like that feeling you have when something unbelievable happens to you and you tell others whom you don’t expect to believe you with a sense of unbelief yourself. Her message is simple: he knew me. My God, he knew me.

And her audience: the people who have no interest in anything she has to say. They already know her. Who cares who else knows her? And her declaration is actually a question: could he be the one? She’s not really even sure of anything except that something unbelievable has happened, something that could change her life forever. And it changed all of our lives. The ones who heard her, not Jews, born enemies of Jesus and his people, call him by name: the Messiah. She is among the first to preach the Word.

Once again, Jesus surprises us with his embrace of this woman. He reminds us that we are all loved beyond expectation by God, no matter who we are or what is in our past. I think that sometimes we hide behind the belief that we are not good enough for God’s love. It is easy to stand outside the love and expectation of God if we can prove that we are undeserving. And to be able to stand outside the love of God is to not live with an expectation on our lives, the expectation of living that love out in our own lives. Once we are brought inside the circle of God’s love and expectation, we now live in the knowledge that something is expected of us. We are expected to live in and contribute to the community. Up until this point, Sam was not allowed to do that. But now she brings them the word, and she suddenly has new expectations around which to orient her life. Now she matters to someone; now she has a story to share. Now she understands that there is love available to her that is positive and supportive, and she’ll have to pay that forward at some point. There is a lot of responsibility tied up in accepting God’s love and grace.

Sam does her part by having the courage to tell an unbelievable story to folks who probably tend not to believe anything that comes out of her mouth. The Greek text tells us that what came out of her mouth was “the Word.” The gospel; the story of Jesus. And it came from her own life.

Maybe you have a story to tell. Maybe you have no cause to make anyone listen to you. Maybe you believe based on experience or your own ideas that no one wants to hear anything you have to say. But you have encountered the graceful love of God, and you need to talk that out, to tell someone.

What are you going to say?