Jesus at the Well

We are pausing reading the Bible beginning to end for Lent and a theme of Encounters with Jesus. In today’s scripture, Jesus, traveling through Samaria, finds himself sitting at a well, tired and famished in the middle of the day, when a Samaritan woman approaches the well. It is a familiar story, but there are aspects of it that merit exploration. Traditionally, this woman who had been married five times and is now with a man who is not married was thought to be a woman of ill repute. But the story does not say why she was married five times – did her husbands die? Jesus asks for water, and she is put off by this Jew. But in the intervening conversation, hospitality takes over both from Jesus and from the woman. They both cross forbidden societal lines, but their conversation leads to conversion. Perhaps this lengthy story challenges us to do the same – cross societal lines with hospitality to do the work of Jesus, which is evangelism.