“My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work,” Jesus told them.
John 4:34 CSB
Shopping for Groceries
If you’re reading the Gospel (Good News) wondering why Jesus did something or other you will often find mentions of food. John answers our cravings into the personalness of Jesus with stories using symbolism for food, signs like turning water into wine or feeding of the five thousand.
In our series on the Gospel and writings of John you may find satisfaction for your hunger to know why Jesus did what He did. We left off with John’s most famous story of Nicodemus coming to Jesus in Jerusalem at night.
John 3:
22 After this, Jesus and his disciples went to the Judean countryside, where he spent time with them and baptized.
23 John also was baptizing in Aenon near Salim, because there was plenty of water there.
John then continues his stories of witness with Jesus having a conversation with someone unexpected as they travel north through Samaria, a woman at a well. Even though John was not present, he tells us what they said and provides context into why their conversation is important.
This story connects the first journey of Jesus and the Disciples in their travel and mission from Judea and Jerusalem, then back to the Galilean towns where they live.
Food for Thought
I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able.
1 Corinthians 3:2 KJV http://blb.sc/008Bfe
To begin, just a brief mention here from a letter of the Apostle Paul to the church at Corinth.
Paul uses a Greek word τροφή trophē which the King James Version translates literally as ‘meat.’ Trophe figuratively means nourishment, which most Bibles translate symbolically as food.
We have more here than just milk or a little ‘evangelism moment.’ This is meat for the mature believer with ears to hear, nourishment for our famished souls.
Jesus’ teaching to the Disciples after this encounter with the Samaritan woman and Paul’s encouragement to the church are the same; that is, both provide food to the mature listener.
John 4:
When Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard he was making and baptizing more disciples than John (though Jesus himself was not baptizing, but his disciples were), he left Judea and went again to Galilee.
“He, Jesus, left for Galilee. John records that his disciples were baptizing (presumably in the Jordan near where the Baptist drew crowds). As at other times Jesus may have gone ahead and set a meeting place with the Disciples for a later time.
4 He had to travel through Samaria; 5 so he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar near the property that Jacob had given his son Joseph.
Retelling the Gospel
John would have learned this Gospel witness in the time that followed; for only Jesus and the woman at the well were present at first.
In order to put this conversation into an observable context I have chosen the name of Samira for the woman at the well.
Samira means ‘someone you chat with in the evening’ (in this instance, a Samaritan woman).
Samira سميرة – a woman at a well in Samaria
7 A woman of Samaria came to draw water.
Jesus: Give me a drink
Samira: How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?
Jesus: If you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would ask him, and he would give you living water.
Samira: Sir (سيدى) (sayedy), you don’t even have a bucket, and the well is deep. So where do you get this ‘living water’?
You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and livestock.
Jesus: Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again. But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again.
In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up in him for eternal life.
Samira: Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and come here to draw water.
John’s later commentary
[John (to the reader): The men of Sychar told me how their wives resented the sinful life of this woman, but Samira later witnessed to me that Jesus lovingly smiles at her, then initiating their quick dialogue.]
Jesus: Go call your husband and come back here.
Samira: I don’t have a husband.
Jesus: You have correctly said, ‘I don’t have a husband,’ For you’ve had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.
[John: She told me she wondered if this man could have spoken with the men in town; then thought, ‘No, it is not possible; for he has just arrived from the Jerusalem road.’ It was then that she knew this was no ordinary traveler and drew some water from the well for this son of man, as prophets are called.]
Jesus, a man like no other
Samira: Sir, I see that you are a prophet.
Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.
Jesus: Believe me, woman, an hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, because salvation is from the Jews.
But an hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth.
Yes, the Father wants such people to worship him.
God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and in truth.
[John: That was the same thing Jesus had just said to the Pharisee Nicodemus in Jerusalem.]
Samira: I know that the Messiah is coming (who is called Christ). When he comes, he will explain everything to us.
Jesus: I, the one speaking to you, am he. [ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ λαλῶν σοι]
The Messiah, the Christ
What a remarkable encounter John records. The Apostle will retell this story of Good News for years to come.
Jesus, the Messiah of Israel, has come not only for those in Judea and Jerusalem, but to those of all of Israel, even the despised Samaritans.
John’s Gospel records:
27 Just then his disciples arrived, and they were amazed that he was talking with a woman. Yet no one said, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
Of course these were questions John also wanted to ask Jesus, but did not.
The Samaritan woman returns to Sychar and later men and women from town come out to the well by the highway to meet the Messiah in person.
John now records a conversation with Jesus and the Disciples with a focus no longer on water, but on food.
31 In the meantime the disciples kept urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.”
“I have food to eat that you don’t know about.
33 The disciples said to one another, “Could someone have brought him something to eat?”
34 “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.
The Disciples most likely failed to understand this connection between their literal food and Jesus’ symbolic meat of spiritual nourishment.
Why would Jesus even stop to talk to this Samaritan woman?
35 “Don’t you say, ‘There are still four more months, and then comes the harvest’? Listen to what I’m telling you:
A Harvest of Faith
What is the harvest? What does the Messiah mean?
Jesus speaks now to John and the Disciples.
Jesus: Listen to what I’m telling you:
- Open your eyes
- and look at the fields, because they are ready for harvest.
- 36 The reaper is already receiving pay
- and gathering fruit for eternal life,
- so that the sower and reaper can rejoice together.
37 For in this case the saying is true: ‘One sows and another reaps.’
38 I sent you to reap what you didn’t labor for; others have labored, and you have benefited from their labor.”
The Harvest they Witnessed
What did the Disciples likely see? Crowds of Samaritans, men and women coming from town to see their Messiah. These must have looked like a flowing sea of ripened wheat moving in waves toward them.
Yet what harvest did Jesus see in Samaria?
Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed.
John 6:27 KJV
Jesus tells John and the Disciples that they must work in the fields. They must stop and tell the people they meet about the meat or the food of the Gospel, the Good News of everlasting life.
Other translations of John 6:27 read: ‘Don’t work for the food that perishes..’ or ‘Do not work for food that spoils..’
Jesus and the Disciples were traveling though Samaria. The Disciples nearly missed the harvest, Jesus tells them before dwelling there for two nights. We almost miss the harvest as well.
Work for the ‘food that lasts for eternal life,’ ‘food that endures to eternal life..’ This is the joining of the Reaper and the Sower in Samaria in John 4. It is the joining with Jesus after the feeding of the five thousand in John 6.
We have food – food the Son of Man has given us, “.. because God the Father has set his seal of approval on him.”
Samira, first fruits of an abundant harvest – food for the faithful
Along a road less traveled in a place unexpected on the way to where we thought we were headed, a harvest of faith appears. In a simple encounter Jesus simply asks a sinner:
“Give me a drink”
What is your answer, fellow Samaritan, rejected gentile, priest or Levite?
What say you, when a stranger approaches and asks you,
“Give me a drink?”
Will you ‘love your neighbor’ with the food of eternal life, as Jesus did for Samira, a mere woman by a well on His journey to the Cross?
To be continued...
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