Today we trek with Jesus on a round trip to Samaria where Jesus meets some desperate people who are almost out of hope. Have you ever been so desperate that you put a plea out into the universe? Feeling hopeless, abandoned, unheard, unseen and unloved can lead people to do desperate things, like dropping a message in a bottle as a plea for help and then casting it out into the ocean. Perhaps today people use social media or graffiti, but how desperate would you have to be to fling a message out to anyone who would listen? Sending a message in a bottle is the last hope that someone, anyone will care, and psychologists tell us that when someone is that desperate, their message in the bottle is like a type of prayer. To anyone out there who will feel my pain, who will maybe care enough to stop and hear me who might listen and then the message goes on. They don't think anyone realistically will ever answer but just knowing someone out there could possibly care is enough. In John 4 we meet a woman who's been so let down and abandoned by everyone she's ever trusted in. Perhaps she too, sent her prayers into the universe, like some send messages in bottles. She could have never believed that God would answer her by sending Jesus to sit down, right next to her, in a chore that she did every day. The chapter starts by telling us Jesus’s popularity was hoping so he blew out a dodge or Judea, where John the Baptist was to head back home for Galilee, but verse 4 adds something odd about his journey. “Now he had to go through Samaria.” We'll come back to that in a minute because that's odd but let's keep reading verse 5, “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 as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.” Noon! That's the hottest part of the day, nobody came to draw water at the wells on the hottest part of the day, unless of course they wanted to avoid everyone else, here she comes in verse 7. “When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” His disciples had gone into the town to buy food, the Samaritan woman said to him, “You're a Jew and I'm a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) Have you ever gotten used to somebody judging you? Jews judged Samaritans and she's just used to it here, so when Jesus asked for a drink, he was breaking all social custom and she's a bit taken back that he's not acting racist. Jews were normally rude to Samaritans like her. A Samaritan by the way, was a half Jewish half Assyrian created by northern Israel seduction to paganism hundreds of years before. When the Israelites had gone to the dark side and started worshipping Pagan idols, they intermarried with the foreign Assyrians who conquered their land. You see in a way they were a symbol of judgment. Not only had they lost their identity and religion as Jews, but they were also a living warning of compromise to be despised and avoided by most Jews who still worship the true God. But Jesus wasn't most Jews. Remember that statement, “but he had to go through Samaria.” If you told a Jew that someone had to go through Samaria, that you would say, “no you don't” and “why would you want to?” So, why did Jesus have to go there? Was this woman the reason that Jesus had to go through Samaria? There's something we're not being told here; it's like he had gotten her message in a bottle. Verse 10 and see Jesus’s response to her question. “How are you a Jew asking me for a drink?” Verse 10, “Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it was who asked you for a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” “Sir,” the woman said, “You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank for him in himself, as also his sons and his livestock?” If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him. This is Jesus saying if you knew who “I was” you'd ask me for the water I have, and I'd give you something better than a bucket of water. I'd give you living water. Living water was a spring of rushing water that flowed up from the ground and never stopped flowing. I love her response. How would you give me a drink? She said, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. In other words, a strange guy talking to me at the well, you don't even have a bucket. Then she seems to tease him. Are you greater than our father Jacob? If only she knew how much greater he was. Jesus had said, if you knew who it was who asked you for a drink you would be asking him. Jesus knows she's thirsty and this well isn't going to bring her any more satisfaction than her life had up to this point. You see she had been as the bucket she used verse 13, “Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” Whoever drinks the water I give will never thirst. This struck a chord in her as deep as the well she was standing. Verse 15, “The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water so I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” She gives in. Jesus tells her to go call your husband and come back. Verse 17, “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you've had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you've just said is quite true.” “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet.” She was quick to answer, “I have no husband,” this was a source of shame for her and Jesus was quick to reveal that he knew her long history with the love of every one of those previous men that had left her high that's right you see their love for her and run out like an old well and here was this prophet telling her there is a fountain of living water that can spring out of your heart, a love that never fails. Each time she'd hoped, in a love that would last that well ran dry with each new man. It's possible she stopped even believing in love that lasted forever. A love that was always flowing like living water and endless spring of unconditional love. She catches herself here beginning to hope again, beginning to believe that someone could really love her, but suddenly she remembers, “Wait I'm a Samaritan this prophet and this God he worships will reject me” she thinks his fountain of living waters must be a segregated drinking fountain bearing a sign for Jews only. So, she says it before he does in verse 20, “Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus’ answer in verse 23 is not what she expects. “Yet a time is coming and has now come when true worshippers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in Spirit and in truth.” The woman said, “I know that “Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you-I am he.” Talk about the reveals of the century! It's me, I am he. This was no chance meeting. No wonder Jesus had to go there; God had been seeking her. He had just said it, “the father seeks worshippers.” He'd answered her message in a bottle where she dropped prayers down that well hopelessly rejected and unloved. Wishing the love of somebody would fill her heart once and for all. But something Jesus said that the time was coming when it didn't matter where you worship. She must have staggered, the father seeks worshippers like me? It's the same for you. Every prayer you’ve thrown out into the universe has been heard. It's mattered to God because you matter. You being here is a no chance encounter. Think about that for a moment and like this woman take it in. I really hate to interrupt this moment but right then the disciples blunder onto the scene and in verse 27 and they're all thinking why is he talking with her? She of course didn't wonder anymore, she knew it was because she was loved and desired. Obviously, her real thirst was quenched because verse 28 tells us “Then leaving her water jar” Satisfied now by something deeper she tells the entire village about Jesus and when they meet him, they call him the Savior of the World. Not just the Jews, did you catch that? Jesus was the Savior who had come for everyone, Jews, Samaritans and you. The chapter ends in verse 46 with another story of an official who was on the wrong team, but salvation was for him too. He desperately seeks Jesus out as his son is dying and Jesus responds to him too. You can read about that on your own. Two tragic stories in this chapter, two desperate people, one savior for them both. These were just two messages in bottles put out to God and God answered them and showed up just in time, as if he'd been seeking them out. He answered their desperate pleas and my friend, he'll answer yours. Why not send him a message in a bottle today by maybe praying to him for the first time.
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