New Community of Faith

This Sunday, November 8th in worship we’ll be looking at the passage from John 4:5-42. It’s one of my favorite passages where Jesus encounters the woman at the well. I’ve always loved this story but it was a few years ago while working with pastors in Ghana that I had a new lens to look at this scripture through. Each day, as I walked with the local pastors to the church or village hospital, we would pass women (young women) who were gathered at the local cistern. Many of them had to travel great distances in order to get fresh water that would be used for cooking, washing clothes, bathing children, etc. It was a communal activity.

A young Ghanaian child carries water back to her village.

To encounter the story about the woman who was by herself at the well in Samaria seemed a bit odd at first. We learn that it was the middle of the day, the worst part of the day to be gathering water too. These details in the story are just a glimpse of what the writer gives us to help us understand this woman’s plight in her society. She was not welcomed when the other women gathered. It seems to us that she is the outcast.

Jesus sits with her and has a conversation.

Read the story here. What do you hear in this story? What are the lessons you are learning from the cistern?