See https://www.thetrinityinjersey.org/newsletter.htm?id=871. We’re back a third time in AD 30 Galilee at Jacob’s Spring near Sychar, a village in despised-by-Judeans Samaria.. The un-named woman mentioned above was, in her own eyes and in the eyes of others in her community (as well as religious Judeans), the very “bottom-of-the-pack”. And, in those days and in that area women as a whole were seriously sidelined.
Why is Jesus speaking with her of all people?
Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”
The disciples, all of them, having returned from buying food in Sychar, decided to ignore the woman and the bizarre situation of their Jewish master speaking with a woman, a Samaritan. Do we do that in similar circumstances? When we’re with business colleagues, do we say hello to a down-and-out?
But what was it that changed this dear woman? She had come at blisteringly hot noon to draw water and had earlier complained about having to do so day after day. Now she “left her water jar and went away into the town and asked people to come out to the well and meet Jesus.
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Can you picture the scene? Sychar in the distance. A crowd approaching.
Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘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.”
It seems that, for Jesus, the sandwiches are secondary – if not further down than that. What was his primary food? “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.” In your experience has that become the primary food of followers of Jesus today? Or not?
More important perhaps, had it become the primary food of the woman of Samaria? Was she thinking about harvest when she went back to Sychar - without her water jar?
Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.”
Harvest. This Samaritan woman. And those whom she called. Food?
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So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word.
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More harvest. More Samaritans. More food. “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.” Not only were these dear sidelined folk made anew by the work of Jesus but also this took place because it was the will of the one who sent Jesus into the world.
They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world.”
Even more harvest. In fact, harvest from the world through that man who spoke with a woman, a Samaritan… And who speaks, from his cross, to that world.
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