John
Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was
making and baptizing more disciples than John
— although Jesus himself was
not actually performing the baptisms, but his disciples were, as his
agents
—
he left Judea and went back to Galilee.
But he had to go through
Samaria.
So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of
ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus,
tired from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
A Samaritan woman came to draw water and Jesus said to her, “Give me
a drink.”
His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.
The Samaritan
woman said to him, “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a
drink?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
Jesus answered her,
“If you knew the gift of God and who it is who requests a drink from you,
you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
The
woman said to him, “Sir,
you do not even have a bucket and the well is
deep; where then can you get this living water?
Are you a greater man than
our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself with his
sons and his cattle?”
Jesus replied, “Everyone who drinks this water will be
thirsty again.
But whoever drinks the water I will give will never thirst: the
water I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to the
Life of the Age to Come.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I will not get
thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Jesus said to her, “Go
and get your husband.”
The woman answered, “I have no husband.”
Jesus said, “The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you are now
living with is not your husband. What you have just said is true.”
The
woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet.
Our ancestors
worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must
worship is in Jerusalem.”
Jesus said, “Believe me, woman, the hour is
coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in
Jerusalem.
You people worship what you do not understand; we worship
what we understand, because salvation comes from the Jews.
Yet a time
is coming, and has now come, when the true worshippers will worship the
Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is looking for such people to worship
Him.
God communicates through spirit,
and those who worship Him
must worship Him on the basis of spirit and truth.”
The woman said, “I
know that the Messiah (called Christ) is coming. When he comes, he will tell
us everything.”
Jesus replied “I am he, that Messiah,
the one speaking to
you.”
At this point his disciples returned and were amazed to find him
speaking to a woman, but none of them asked, “What do you want from her?”
or “What are you talking to her about?”
The woman left her water jar and
went into the town and said to the people,
“Come and meet a man who told
me everything I ever did! Could this be the Messiah?”
They left the town and
were on their way to see Jesus.
Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.”
But
he said, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.”
So the disciples
said to one another, “Could someone have brought him something to eat?”
Jesus said, “My food is to do the will of the One who commissioned me and to
complete His work.
Do you not say, ‘Four months and then the
harvest’? Well, I tell you, look around, look at the fields; they are ripe, ready
for harvest!
Already the reaper is being paid his wage; already he is
bringing in fruit for the Life of the Age to Come, so that sower
and reaper
can rejoice together.
You know the saying, ‘One sows and another reaps.’
I sent you to reap a harvest you have not labored for. Others have labored
for it; and you have shared the rewards of their labor.”
And many of the Samaritans of that town believed in him because of the
words of the woman who testified, “He told me everything I ever did.”
When the Samaritans came to him, they invited him to stay with them, and
he stayed there two days.
Many more believed because of his word
and
they said to the woman, “We no longer believe because of your word; for we
have heard for ourselves, and we are convinced that this is truly the Savior of
the world.”
When the two days were over Jesus left for Galilee.
For Jesus himself
testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country.
So when he came
to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, after seeing all the things that he did
in Jerusalem at the feast; for they themselves also went to the feast.
Once more Jesus visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water
into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at
Capernaum.
When he heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he
went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, who was close to
death.
Jesus said to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you
will not believe.”
The royal official said, “Sir, come down before my child
dies.”
Jesus said to him, “You may go; your son will live.” The man
believed what Jesus said to him and departed.
While he was on his way
home, his servants met him and told him that his boy was alive.
He asked
them at what time he began to recover. They said to him, “The fever left him
yesterday, about one in the afternoon.”
Then the father realized that this was
the exact moment at which Jesus had said to him, “Your son is going to live.”
So he and all his household believed.
This was the second symbolic miracle
which Jesus performed, on his return from Judea to Galilee.
John