Summary: Jesus' comments to his disciples about the woman of Samaria suggest that he is thinking about the numerous people who, like that woman, his message can reach. He also models a way to focus on what is crucial to us all rather than exclusively what "our side" values.
People who help others in need are sometimes referred to as "Good Samaritans." That term comes from a person in a parable that Jesus told1 to answer the question "Who is my neighbor?" after he quoted the commandment "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." But besides that and our text about Jesus' conversation with a Samaritan woman, there are only four brief references to Samaritans in our gospels. In one, Jesus' opponents toss the charge of being "a Samaritan" at him as an insult.2
In our Bible, we can get an unfavorable view of Samaritans, which isn't surprising if we know a bit of the history. Jesus might have been arguing against that negative view by making the good guy in one of his parables a Samaritan.
So who were the Samaritans? The twelve tribes of Israel had been united under King David and his son Solomon, but northern tribes broke away after Solomon's death and formed their own kingdom. That northern kingdom, centered on the region of Samaria, fell to Assyria a bit before 700 B.C. Some of its inhabitants were deported, and people from other parts of Assyria were brought in.3 Years later, some Samaritans tried to hinder the rebuilding of Jerusalem after Jews returned from exile in Babylon.4 To put it politely, Jews and Samaritans often didn't get along well with one another.
The Samaritans had a version of the five books of Moses, but their picture of Israel's history after its entrance into Canaan varied considerably from what we read in the books of Samuel and Kings. They didn't expect a Messiah, an "anointed one," like the Jews, but awaited "the Taheb," "the one who returns." Both Jews and Samaritans based their expectations on Deuteronomy 18:15, which says, "The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet."
In our text, Jesus was returning to his home territory of Galilee from Jerusalem, where he'd gained some believers and also some opponents. He was accompanied by his disciples on this journey, and they took the most direct route, even though it went through territory of Samaritans, who often weren't friendly with Jews. They'd been making good time, and by noon Jesus was tired, so he sat down by a well that tradition connected with the patriarch Jacob. While he was resting, the disciples went into a nearby city to buy food.
(It's not surprising that Jesus was tired after a few hours of walking on a hot day. But John's gospel emphasizes Christ's divinity5 from beginning to end, and it's good to be reminded that he is also human.)
While Jesus was sitting by the well, a Samaritan woman came to draw water. (Instead of just calling her "the woman," I'll use the name the Russian Orthodox have given her, "Svetlana") That was surprising, because the women of a town usually came to its well with their water jugs fairly early in morning before the sun got too hot. (The evangelist tells us that this encounter took place around noon.) That suggests that Svetlana had a reason for wanting to avoid other women of the town -- a suggestion that would soon be confirmed.
She was puzzled when Jesus asked her for some water -- most Jews wouldn't want water from a Samaritan. But Jesus said something that surprised her even more: If she had known the gift that God could give her, Jesus told her, as well as who it was that was speaking with her, she would have asked him for "living water." Svetlana understood that phrase in the most literal way -- "living water" would have been flowing water, the kind that you might dip from a stream in the countryside rather than from a well. But Jesus soon made it clear that he wasn't referring just to physical water. He was talking about something more profound and important, something that would always satisfy a person. Probably she didn't get his meaning fully, but what he said sounded pretty good to her. "Sir," she said, "Give me this water so that I'll never get thirsty."
In other circumstances, Jesus might have been happy to fulfill her request, but there was a problem. The fact that she arranged her trips to the well to be at an unusual time suggested that she was trying to avoid other women of the town. Probably they regarded her as a "loose woman." To bring everything out into the open, Jesus told Svetlana to get her husband and return with him. When she replied that she has no husband, Jesus sets out the situation fully -- that she was not just telling the truth about having no husband at present, but that she'd had five husbands previously, and was now living with a man who wasn't really her husband.
We could speculate about why Svetlana's relationships with men hadn't gone well, and it's possible that some of the fault was hers. But, having brought out that aspect of her life, Jesus didn't dwell on it. His display of knowledge about her life led her to believe that Jesus was a prophet -- though she may have had a limited view of what a prophet was. Svetlana thought that a prophet would be able to say which was the proper place to worship God. Was it Mount Gerizim -- where the Samaritans had had a Temple in the past -- or in Jerusalem, as the Jews believed?
Jesus didn't tell her that Jerusalem was a better place to worship, and in fact doesn't say that any location is really better than another. "But the hour is coming and now here," he told her, "When true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth." When Svetlana said she believed that "Messiah6 is coming ... [and] will proclaim all things to us," Jesus replied, "I am he, the one who is speaking with you."
Jesus' disciples returned at that point and were surprised to find him speaking with a woman -- though she soon left to tell the people of the city about a man who might be the Messiah. The disciples urged Jesus to eat some of the food that they bought, but at the moment he was focused on his meeting with the Samaritan woman and its significance. He had already known that his mission was for all the people of the world. But the coming to faith of a sinful woman who hadn't been part of the historic community of faith was an encouraging sign that the message of salvation really was starting to spread.
Note that when Svetlana asked Jesus how he, a Jewish man, could ask a Samaritan woman for water, he never answered the question directly. By moving on to the question about "living water," he indicated that the Jew-Samaritan difference isn't that important and also moved the conversation to what is crucial -- the living water.
In so doing, Jesus offers us a model for getting past partisanship in our divisive times today: Focus on what is crucial to us all rather than exclusively what "our side" values.