Where do you see yourself at the well?

Down by the water, on Ngarwal country, we come to one of the most remarkable scenes in all four gospels. John chapter 4 gives us the longest recorded conversation Jesus has with a single person. He's sitting on the edge of a well, tired from the journey, and a Samaritan woman comes to draw water. What unfolds between them is layered with tension, history, and an intimacy that still speaks.

The judgment and separation between Jews and Samaritans had been building for nearly 700 years before that day. Foreigners had flooded into central Palestine, the region known as Samaria, and the rift had hardened into something that shaped every interaction. So when Jesus, a Jewish man, sits and talks with this woman, he has crossed the line. He knows it. She knows it.

But today, rather than pulling the passage apart, I want to read it the way Jesus lived it: relationally. I want to ask a simple question. Where do you see yourself in this story?

Do you see yourself in Jesus?

Tired out by the journey. Carrying all the leadership responsibilities and expectations that others place on you. The disciples have gone ahead to get food, and you go and sit by the well.

Is it hard to be tired? Is it hard to let other people do something for you? Is it hard to be at a well and yet have nothing to draw the water up with?

Do you see yourself in the disciples?

Focused so often on the basic things of life. The food. And even when you are in the presence of Jesus, after everything you have read and seen and heard, you are shocked by the people he sits with. The people he talks with. The people who are acceptable.

And yet you find yourself focused on the food.

Do you see yourself in the woman?

She has come to draw water alone, in the heat of the day, because the other women who come out to the well don't accept her. She has been married many times. Do you feel abandoned or lonely or isolated?

Do you see yourself in the woman who carries a grief in life?

Do you see yourself in the woman who doesn't realise when God is present? Or who is shocked, even when God asks something of her? Do you think there is too much asked of you, or too little?

Do you see yourself in the woman who believes in something and yet searches to understand the ways of God, the spiritual life, when so much that surrounds you is the ordinary struggle of everyday?

Do you see yourself in the woman who has a moment when she is amazed, awoken, touched by the reality of God in her life? So much so that she leaves behind her water jar and goes back to the village. Do you remember a time when you were amazed at the presence of God in your life?

Do you see yourself in the woman who simply shares her story with others? Who shares her faith, even among the people who have scorned her, forgotten her, rejected her?

Do you see yourself in the crowd?

The people from the village who invited Jesus to stay. Welcoming him. Needing him. Listening to him.

Do you see yourself in the people who come out to see Jesus and who come to believe, who grasp on to their own faith? The ones who say to the woman: first, we believed in Jesus because of what you told us, but now we have come to believe in him ourselves. "We know that this man really is the Savior of the world" (John 4:42, NRSV).

Where do you see yourself?

A word for wherever you are

Wherever you find yourself in this passage today, it might be important for you to hear a word.

To hear Jesus say: "I am he. I am the one talking to you" (John 4:26).

To hear Jesus say: "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but 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" (John 4:13-14, NRSV).

To hear Jesus say: "One sows and another reaps. I sent you to reap that for which you did not labour. Others have laboured, and you have entered into their labour" (John 4:37-38, NRSV).

Or perhaps today, your response is simpler than all of that. Perhaps it is just to say to Jesus: come and stay.

Or to say: I believe, because I have heard for myself. I know that this man really is the Savior of the world.

Let the living Christ speak to each of us today.

Like the woman at the well. Like the disciples. Like the townspeople who came out to see for themselves. We come, Lord, and you speak to our lives. You are the living water, the Savior of the world. Come and stay with us.

Amen.