Sir, I have no husband
Here at Seaton Road Methodist we resumed “Time 4 You” for the winter months, where sessions use the practise of “Godly Play” to look at a visual presentation that takes you on a personal level into a story & then we discuss & “wonder”.
In October we looked into “The Woman at the Well”.
Jesus needed to travel from Judea to Galilee for baptisms. He chose to go through Samaria. Samaria was considered dangerous, not a safe place for a Jew. Samaria had developed from ancient tribes interbreeding with foreigners & practised part Judaism & part idolatry. They didn’t follow the Judaic Law & became a refuge for criminals, the excommunicated & those not following the laws. Jews looked on them as “half-breeds” & wanted nothing to do with this lawless society.
Many would have chosen to journey round but Jesus chose to go through Samaria.
Our first message was, that sometimes to go from where we are to where we want to be you have to go through a difficult bit. (Like the Felixstowe Methodists moving from four churches into one.)
Jesus stopped at a well near Sychar & sent the disciples off to find food. Alone at the well in the midday heat he meets a woman coming to collect water. These two strangers, a man & a woman, a Jew & a Samaritan have a conversation that apparently is the longest one-to-one conversation that Jesus has in the Bible. So John’s Gospel (Chapter 4) wants to convey a message to us.
Jesus talks in riddles about “Living Water” i.e. eternal life. In response to her “Sir, I have no husband”, Jesus points out she’s had 5 husbands & the man she’s with now is not her husband. Ouch. (We wondered how you’d feel if a stranger knew every detail of your personal life.)
Having a series of husbands was not a sin. Men died of warfare, famine, disease, injury but to live with a man not your husband was a sin. (How times have changed.) Did the villagers know her circumstances & was that why she was at the well alone in the midday heat, an outcast?
We decided she was a confident speaker, not shy & retiring, (Perhaps having 5 husbands she was used to talking to men!), but that she’d been truthful with Jesus (no invention of a merchant trading camels). Perhaps this allowed Jesus to respect her & reveal who he was.
Realising this could be “The Anointed One”, the Messiah that people talked about, she rushed back to the village to tell all who she’d met. They came to him, where he preached for two days. (Perhaps Samaria was a fertile/needy ground for the sower to sow seeds.)
So the unlikeliest of people, an outcast Samaritan woman became an evangelist. She found it so easy to share Jesus with people (when we sometimes find it difficult).
Sadly the story tells of neighbour not getting on with neighbour; of one race looking down contemptuously on another. How poignant with the present troubles in the Middle East!