Transformation at the Well

There is a story in the Gospel of John that often gets overlooked, in spite of its profound message. The story is known as the “woman at the well” and is found in Chapter 4 of John’s Gospel. The message this story conveys can be of great importance to anyone who is spiritually adrift.

To summarize this story, it begins with Jesus and his disciples arriving at a well outside a Samaritan town. The disciples left Jesus at the well and went into town to buy some food. As Jesus waited beside the well, a Samaritan woman came to the well with a water jar to draw water.

Jesus started a conversation by asking for water. The woman responded with surprise that a Jewish man would ask her, a Samaritan woman, for water. Jews and Samaritans hated each other and talking to a woman alone in this context would not have been done by a pious Jewish man.

Jesus responded with a statement about how he would provide living water that, once consumed, a person would never experience thirst again. The woman, not recognizing that Jesus was referring to spiritual water, asked for this living water so that she would not have to keep coming to the well to draw water.

Jesus then tells the woman to go and get her husband. When the woman replied that she had no husband, Jesus tells her that she was right: she had five prior husbands and she was not married to man she was currently living with.

The woman, shocked that Jesus knew her life history, proclaimed Jesus to be a prophet. A conversation followed in which Jesus told the woman that he was the Messiah. The woman left her water jar at the well and went back into town, proclaiming to the townspeople that she had met the Messiah. She was the first person in the Gospels that Jesus reveals his identity as the Messiah.

Consider the immense spiritual transformation that this woman experienced by meeting Jesus at that well. When the woman arrived at the well, she was spiritually defeated. Her self-esteem must have been at rock bottom. Women in those days could be divorced by their husbands for any reason, or no reason at all, simply by writing a letter of divorce. For whatever reason, this woman had been divorced by five men in a row. To seek some kind of security, she agreed to live with a man without the formality of marriage. This was a huge social disgrace in that culture. To avoid the shunning and insults from the other women of the town, this disgraced woman came to the well in the midday heat. After meeting Jesus, and sampling some of his “living water”, the woman was transformed into a person confident enough to go into the town which had previously treated her as a pariah and to declare to everyone that she had met the Messiah.

Both the Eastern and Western Churches recognize this woman as a saint. She is known in the Eastern Church as St. Photini (St. Photina in the Western Church). After meeting Jesus, Photini became a zealous advocate of Jesus’ message. By tradition, she spread the message as far as the city of Carthage in North Africa. She was ultimately martyred, ironically, by being thrown into a well.

If you consider yourself spiritually adrift, if you feel your life has been a failure, or if you don’t know where to turn to in your life, then this story can have a profound meaning for you. The moral of the story of the woman at the well is that even you can find transformation in your life by drinking some of this living water.

Sampling this living water involves getting to know the teachings of Jesus. One great place to start is in the Gospel of Matthew, chapters 5 thru 7, known as “the Sermon on the Mount”. This Sermon, I believe, is a concise description by Jesus of what it takes to live a life pleasing to God. I wrote my book, “The Way”, to provide an introduction to the Sermon and its meanings.

Learn more about The Way on my website: www.godpleasingway.com