Her conversation with Jesus is the longest one-to-one chat recorded in the whole Bible. The conversation began at noon, in the heat of the day. Jesus’ question to her, profound in its irony, ‘Will you give me a drink?’ gets the chat underway. Jesus, never one to be bound by cultural norms, turns the world upside down. Jews weren’t supposed to speak to Samaritans. Men weren’t permitted to address women without their husbands present. Rabbis had no business speaking to ladies of a certain reputation and this lady definitely had form.
The Samaritan lady, more accustomed to the cultural norm, questions Jesus’ wisdom in asking her for a drink: ‘You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan woman,’ she reminds him. ‘How can you ask me for a drink?’ This is a conversation about two different worlds – the everyday versus the everlasting. Water does quench our thirst, but Jesus was talking about a different thirst and a different kind of water. Jesus’ cutting to the chase reveals the way the Holy Spirit works in our lives – he always convinces and convicts us of the darkness so that we may be healed by the light.
Just like the Holy Spirit, Jesus is direct and forthright: ‘The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you have now is not your husband’. Five marriages didn’t make her a sinner. Due to warfare, famine, disease and injury, men in those days dropped like flies. A widow became a beggar, a prostitute or another man’s wife. Each time, this Samaritan woman had chosen the best option. It was sharing her bed with a sixth man who wasn’t her husband that was the problem.
Jesus reveals himself as the Messiah, the Christ, and the woman begins her journey of conversion. In a society which considered women to be less than second-class citizens Jesus chose a woman to have this most profound theological / spiritual conversation. There is a way in which we all have this conversation with Christ because we all identify an interior ache or longing which can only be satisfied by the living water of the living God. We drink from this cup of salvation every time we drink the blood of Christ in the Eucharist.
