The Sundry Husbands of Samaria

Samaritan Woman, by Serghei Ghetiu

  

Lections: The Third Sunday in Lent, AD 2026 A

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Samaritan woman at the well is the sort of story one only finds in John’s Gospel. It is upon the one hand clever, flirtatious, straightforward, yet upon the other layered with allusion and weighted with meaning. But in order to get all of that out of the text, we first must speak a bit about Samaria.

Once upon a time, there was a family chosen by God in order to bless the world. Abraham was their progenitor. Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Israel, and Israel begot 12 sons who in time would grow to Twelve Tribes. But they didn’t get along. Brothers rarely do. And so the Kingdom of Israel, the federation of the Twelve Tribes, split in twain: the Kingdom of Ephraim in the north, and the Kingdom of Judah in the south. Sometimes they fought together, and sometimes they fought each other. You know how it goes with family.

The northern kingdom had a hard time of it, conquered by a particularly ruthless empire known as the Assyrians. And the Assyrians were no fools. In order to suppress rebellion, they deported the movers and shakers from Ephraim, dispersing them throughout the empire’s vast domains. These became known as the Lost Tribes. Their overlords then imported five other conquered peoples from five other conquered lands, settling the newcomers in the north of Israel, mixing them up with the natives. The resulting hodgepodge became Samaria, a land half-Jewish and half-pagan; for those foreign tribes brought with them their tribal gods, known as the five Ba’als, or “Lords.”

The north-south split occurred a thousand years before the birth of Christ, yet memories in the Middle East wax long. Good and pious Jews of Jesus’ day often dismissed Samaritans as half-breeds, bumpkins, country cousins whom decent folk were reluctant to acknowledge, let alone interact with. I mean, who’d ever heard of a good Samaritan? Yet they too were once the people of God. And He does not forget His own.

Our story this morning begins with Jesus passing through Samaria on His way back from Judea to the Galilee. He had not received a terribly warm welcome in Jerusalem. Yet His choice of route appears provocative. Samaria is north of Judah; Galilee, northeast. You don’t really need to pass through the one in order to get to the other. Regardless, He is tired out from His journey, and takes a break from the noonday heat at a well which had been dug, they say, by Israel himself—common ancestor both to Jews and to Samaritans.

As the disciples enter a nearby town in order to purchase some food, a Samaritan woman arrives at the well to draw some water. Jesus, scandalously, asks her for a drink. And this ought to set off alarm bells in our heads, because wells are very suggestive places in the Bible. Young girls aren’t strong enough to lift earthenware jugs of water. Established matrons generally have people to do it for them. So young women of marriageable age disproportionately draw the water.

Isaac’s wife Rebekah was discovered at a well. Israel met his favorite wife Rachel at a well. Moses chose a wife from amongst the daughters of Jethro, whom he defended at a well. This is a trope of the Hebrew Scriptures; this is how you get a wife.

So when Jesus asks a drink of her, the Samaritan woman is taken aback. “How is it,” she replies, “that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria? Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.” Thus the banter has begun. “If you knew the gift of God,” He says to her, “and who it is who asks you for a drink, you would have asked of Him, and He would have given you living water.” Well, look who thinks He’s the gift of God. Points for chutzpah.

The woman, for her part, comes across as confident and clever. “You don’t even have a bucket,” she tells Him, “and this well is deep. How exactly are you going to give a drink to me?” You can see how this is almost flirty. She’s not putting up with any nonsense, but she wants to see where this strange Jew is going with all of this. Let him shoot his shot.

“Those who drink of the water that I will give to them will never be thirsty,” Jesus enigmatically replies. “The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” Well, fair enough. “Sir, give to me this water,” she retorts, “so that I may never have to keep coming here to draw water again”—that is, that I need never come back to the well.

“Go and get your husband,” Jesus says. “Sir, I have no husband,” she replies, sounding rather coy. This might even be going somewhere. But then He says to her something she does not expect to hear: “You are right to say you have no husband. In fact, you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you’ve said is true.”

And this is a double entendre, you see, because the term that Jesus uses for husband is lord, or ba’al. She, a woman of Samaria, has five ba’als, five gods, yet none of them are her true Lord. Her true Lord is the Lord our God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. This is the One who has come now in the flesh, sitting by the well of Jacob, searching for His wife. All throughout the Bible, the relationship between God and His people Israel is spoken of as the love between a husband and a wife.

The whole wordplay, the whole encounter, all the flirtatious banter has led up to this one great revelation: that God has come; that the Lord has descended to earth as He promised through the prophets from of old; and He now claims His wife, His people, His beloved Samaritans, who abandoned Him a thousand years ago to chase after other ba’als. A millennium of enmity, conflict, and strife are here proclaimed undone, the division of God’s people annulled, and all the children of Abraham, north and south, are hereby called to witness the fulfillment of the promises given unto their ancestors so many ages past.

And by God, she gets it. The woman at the well understands. As soon as He mentions the husbands, she switches to topics theological. Rapidly she realizes that this man before her might actually be the Messiah, the Anointed One, the promised Christ who is none other than Immanuel, God-With-Us, calling her home, calling all of her people home.

Thus she runs to tell her Samaritans—her jar forgotten, her thirst slaked—who come then to see for themselves, and they proclaim to her and to all the world, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

The woman at the well is, in effect, Christ’s Apostle to the Samaritans; she sows where others reap. And all of Samaria rejoices that at long last the mercies of God have come to dwell amongst them. Meanwhile, Jesus’ Twelve Apostles react with befuddlement regarding whatever just happened here in this half-breed hick town while they were off looking for lunch. It’s adorable.

We know from the book of Acts, and from the Fathers of the Church, that the Samaritans go on to become enthusiastic converts to Christianity. But this tale of reconciliation and redemption goes beyond the story of any one particular people. This Gospel speaks to the very heart of who and what God is, of His inexhaustible patience with those who go astray; of His ceaseless love for all of His children, no matter how wayward or fallen; such that even a thousand years of bitter division prove as nothing before the fountain of grace poured out for the world in Jesus Christ our Lord.

That’s why I love this story of the woman at the well: for not only did she find her true Lord at the watering hole that day; but she also led all of her people to exalt in Him as well. Thanks be to God that He is ever waiting for us to return to the waters of our Baptism, the waters of eternal life; ever ready to forgive us; ever eager to welcome us home.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pertinent Links

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