WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED?

Jesus used just three words, “I Am He,” to freely admit to the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well that He was the awaited Messiah, the Christ she had spoken of. This is the first of several “I Am” statements John reports that Jesus made. Earlier in the conversation Jesus had also revealed Himself to this woman as the giver of Living Water gushing up to eternal life. But nothing Jesus said before or after this was as clear a statement as this was.

This is the only time prior to His trial that Jesus openly stated that He was the Messiah. Jesus so closely guarded such claims that many scholars have talked about a so-called “Messianic secret.” Clearly John debunks that theory with this story of Jesus’ “Messianic admission.” Although everything else in this story is secondary to this revelation there are no coincidences in this story. Each and every element in the story played a significant role in the cosmic drama that took place that day at Jacob’s Well in Samaria.

Jesus crossed the verboten border and entered Samaria on His “had to” travel route back to Galilee. This was not only Jesus’ witness to the fact that there is no exclusion of anyone in Him, it was also the only route that would take Him to the plot of land Jacob bought and named El Elohe Israel (God of Israel). To get there and to meet the woman that would be there, “He had to go through Samaria.” It was there at Jacob’s Well that Jesus chose to stop for a rest, for at noon (the sixth hour) a Samaritan woman would arrive to draw water. Far from being a coincidence, this encounter with this particular woman, at that particular place, at that particular time, was a part of Jesus’ divine agenda. Who would have ever guessed that Jesus would take such a route and do what He did that day?

When God acts it always appears to mankind that He chooses people, places, and plots that are the most unlikely by all human standards. Although this is true, be assured God is not capriciously playing some game with mankind. I have problems with the idea that God acts counter to our expectations just to throw us off balance or to make some point. By our sin we are already blind and off balance. God’s ways are not our ways and beyond our finding out. Thus whatever God does, by definition, is going to seem unexpected and unlikely. It is for this reason that Jesus said to Nicodemus, “No one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again.” Living by human wisdom, values and world views, we will never accurately anticipate God actions, nor will we ever figure Him out, even after He has acted. Jesus was simply being God when He did this unlikely thing of going through Samaria to reveal who He was to this particular Samaritan woman.

What would be the odds against a woman in the first place, add a Samaritan woman and one with moral issues even as being the most likely one to be chosen by Jesus for such a moment as this? She had three strikes against her in any human opinion poll of her day, and even in ours, as to who would be the most likely person to have an encounter with God and receive such a revelation. Totally without any merit or status by any human standard, she, nonetheless, was the very one Jesus chose.

So much more could be said about this “unlikely” woman and this “unlikely” event, but the most important thing is the conclusion to her magnificent encounter with Jesus, the Messiah. “She believed Jesus!” Those words alone thrill the soul. “She believed Jesus” and immediately went back to her village to share the good news of Jesus with others.

John 4:39-40 states the exciting conclusion to this amazing story, “Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in Him because of the woman’s testimony.” Also as a result of her witness the villagers went out to see Jesus for themselves. They invited Him to stay with them, which He did for two days, and “because of His words many more become believers.”