Going Through Samaria

143:5.1When the Mas­ter and the twelve ar­rived at Ja­cob’s well, Je­sus, be­ing weary from the jour­ney, tar­ried by the well while Philip took the apos­tles with him to as­sist in bring­ing food and tents from Sy­char, for they were dis­posed to stay in this vicin­ity for a while. Pe­ter and the Zeb­e­dee sons would have re­mained with Je­sus, but he re­quested that they go with their breth­ren, say­ing: “Have no fear for me; these Samar­i­tans will be friendly; only our breth­ren, the Jews, seek to harm us.” And it was al­most six o’clock on this sum­mer’s evening when Je­sus sat down by the well to await the re­turn of the apos­tles.

143:5.2The wa­ter of Ja­cob’s well was less min­eral than that from the wells of Sy­char and was there­fore much val­ued for drink­ing pur­poses. Je­sus was thirsty, but there was no way of get­ting wa­ter from the well. When, there­fore, a woman of Sy­char came up with her wa­ter pitcher and pre­pared to draw from the well, Je­sus said to her, “Give me a drink.” This woman of Samaria knew Je­sus was a Jew by his ap­pear­ance and dress, and she sur­mised that he was a Galilean Jew from his ac­cent. Her name was Nalda and she was a comely crea­ture. She was much sur­prised to have a Jew­ish man thus speak to her at the well and ask for wa­ter, for it was not deemed proper in those days for a self-re­spect­ing man to speak to a woman in pub­lic, much less for a Jew to con­verse with a Samar­i­tan. There­fore Nalda asked Je­sus, “How is it that you, be­ing a Jew, ask for a drink of me, a Samar­i­tan woman?” Je­sus an­swered: “I have in­deed asked you for a drink, but if you could only un­der­stand, you would ask me for a draught of the liv­ing wa­ter.” Then said Nalda: “But, Sir, you have noth­ing to draw with, and the well is deep; whence, then, have you this liv­ing wa­ter? Are you greater than our fa­ther Ja­cob who gave us this well, and who drank thereof him­self and his sons and his cat­tle also?”

143:5.3Je­sus replied: “Ev­ery­one who drinks of this wa­ter will thirst again, but whoso­ever drinks of the wa­ter of the liv­ing spirit shall never thirst. And this liv­ing wa­ter shall be­come in him a well of re­fresh­ment spring­ing up even to eter­nal life.” Nalda then said: “Give me this wa­ter that I thirst not, nei­ther come all the way hither to draw. Be­sides, any­thing which a Samar­i­tan woman could re­ceive from such a com­mend­able Jew would be a plea­sure.”

143:5.4Nalda did not know how to take Je­sus’ will­ing­ness to talk with her. She be­held in the Mas­ter’s face the coun­te­nance of an up­right and holy man, but she mis­took friend­li­ness for com­mon­place fa­mil­iar­ity, and she mis­in­ter­preted his fig­ure of speech as a form of mak­ing ad­vances to her. And be­ing a woman of lax morals, she was minded openly to be­come flir­ta­tious, when Je­sus, look­ing straight into her eyes, with a com­mand­ing voice said, “Woman, go get your hus­band and bring him hither.” This com­mand brought Nalda to her senses. She saw that she had mis­judged the Mas­ter’s kind­ness; she per­ceived that she had mis­con­strued his man­ner of speech. She was fright­ened; she be­gan to re­al­ize that she stood in the pres­ence of an un­usual per­son, and grop­ing about in her mind for a suit­able re­ply, in great con­fu­sion, she said, “But, Sir, I can­not call my hus­band, for I have no hus­band.” Then said Je­sus: “You have spo­ken the truth, for, while you may have once had a hus­band, he with whom you are now liv­ing is not your hus­band. Bet­ter it would be if you would cease to tri­fle with my words and seek for the liv­ing wa­ter which I have this day of­fered you.”

143:5.5By this time Nalda was sobered, and her bet­ter self was awak­ened. She was not an im­moral woman wholly by choice. She had been ruth­lessly and un­justly cast aside by her hus­band and in dire straits had con­sented to live with a cer­tain Greek as his wife, but with­out mar­riage. Nalda now felt greatly ashamed that she had so un­think­ingly spo­ken to Je­sus, and she most pen­i­tently ad­dressed the Mas­ter, say­ing: “My Lord, I re­pent of my man­ner of speak­ing to you, for I per­ceive that you are a holy man or maybe a prophet.” And she was just about to seek di­rect and per­sonal help from the Mas­ter when she did what so many have done be­fore and since—dodged the is­sue of per­sonal sal­va­tion by turn­ing to the dis­cus­sion of the­ol­ogy and phi­los­o­phy. She quickly turned the con­ver­sa­tion from her own needs to a the­o­log­i­cal con­tro­versy. Point­ing over to Mount Ger­izim, she con­tin­ued: “Our fa­thers wor­shiped on this moun­tain, and yet you would say that in Je­ru­sa­lem is the place where men ought to wor­ship; which, then, is the right place to wor­ship God?”

143:5.6Je­sus per­ceived the at­tempt of the woman’s soul to avoid di­rect and search­ing con­tact with its Maker, but he also saw that there was pres­ent in her soul a de­sire to know the bet­ter way of life. Af­ter all, there was in Nalda’s heart a true thirst for the liv­ing wa­ter; there­fore he dealt pa­tiently with her, say­ing: “Woman, let me say to you that the day is soon com­ing when nei­ther on this moun­tain nor in Je­ru­sa­lem will you wor­ship the Fa­ther. But now you wor­ship that which you know not, a mix­ture of the re­li­gion of many pa­gan gods and gen­tile philoso­phies. The Jews at least know whom they wor­ship; they have re­moved all con­fu­sion by con­cen­trat­ing their wor­ship upon one God, Yah­weh. But you should be­lieve me when I say that the hour will soon come—even now is—when all sin­cere wor­shipers will wor­ship the Fa­ther in spirit and in truth, for it is just such wor­shipers the Fa­ther seeks. God is spirit, and they who wor­ship him must wor­ship him in spirit and in truth. Your sal­va­tion comes not from know­ing how oth­ers should wor­ship or where but by re­ceiv­ing into your own heart this liv­ing wa­ter which I am of­fer­ing you even now.”

143:5.7But Nalda would make one more ef­fort to avoid the dis­cus­sion of the em­bar­rass­ing ques­tion of her per­sonal life on earth and the sta­tus of her soul be­fore God. Once more she re­sorted to ques­tions of gen­eral re­li­gion, say­ing: “Yes, I know, Sir, that John has preached about the com­ing of the Con­verter, he who will be called the De­liv­erer, and that, when he shall come, he will de­clare to us all things”—and Je­sus, in­ter­rupt­ing Nalda, said with startling as­sur­ance, “I who speak to you am he.”

143:5.8This was the first di­rect, pos­i­tive, and undis­guised pro­nounce­ment of his di­vine na­ture and son­ship which Je­sus had made on earth; and it was made to a woman, a Samar­i­tan woman, and a woman of ques­tion­able char­ac­ter in the eyes of men up to this mo­ment, but a woman whom the di­vine eye be­held as hav­ing been sinned against more than as sin­ning of her own de­sire and as now be­ing a hu­man soul who de­sired sal­va­tion, de­sired it sin­cerely and whole­heart­edly, and that was enough.

143:5.9As Nalda was about to voice her real and per­sonal long­ing for bet­ter things and a more no­ble way of liv­ing, just as she was ready to speak the real de­sire of her heart, the twelve apos­tles re­turned from Sy­char, and com­ing upon this scene of Je­sus’ talk­ing so in­ti­mately with this woman—this Samar­i­tan woman, and alone—they were more than as­ton­ished. They quickly de­posited their sup­plies and drew aside, no man dar­ing to re­prove him, while Je­sus said to Nalda: “Woman, go your way; God has for­given you. Hence­forth you will live a new life. You have re­ceived the liv­ing wa­ter, and a new joy will spring up within your soul, and you shall be­come a daugh­ter of the Most High.” And the woman, per­ceiv­ing the dis­ap­proval of the apos­tles, left her wa­ter­pot and fled to the city.

143:5.10As she en­tered the city, she pro­claimed to ev­ery­one she met: “Go out to Ja­cob’s well and go quickly, for there you will see a man who told me all I ever did. Can this be the Con­verter?” And ere the sun went down, a great crowd had as­sem­bled at Ja­cob’s well to hear Je­sus. And the Mas­ter talked to them more about the wa­ter of life, the gift of the in­dwelling spirit.

143:5.11The apos­tles never ceased to be shocked by Je­sus’ will­ing­ness to talk with women, women of ques­tion­able char­ac­ter, even im­moral women. It was very dif­fi­cult for Je­sus to teach his apos­tles that women, even so-called im­moral women, have souls which can choose God as their Fa­ther, thereby be­com­ing daugh­ters of God and can­di­dates for life ev­er­last­ing. Even nine­teen cen­turies later many show the same un­will­ing­ness to grasp the Mas­ter’s teach­ings. Even the Chris­tian re­li­gion has been per­sis­tently built up around the fact of the death of Christ in­stead of around the truth of his life. The world should be more con­cerned with his happy and God-re­veal­ing life than with his tragic and sor­row­ful death.

143:5.12Nalda told this en­tire story to the Apos­tle John the next day, but he never re­vealed it fully to the other apos­tles, and Je­sus did not speak of it in de­tail to the twelve.

143:5.13Nalda told John that Je­sus had told her “all I ever did.” John many times wanted to ask Je­sus about this visit with Nalda, but he never did. Je­sus told her only one thing about her­self, but his look into her eyes and the man­ner of his deal­ing with her had so brought all of her check­ered life in panoramic re­view be­fore her mind in a mo­ment of time that she as­so­ci­ated all of this self-rev­e­la­tion of her past life with the look and the word of the Mas­ter. Je­sus never told her she had had five hus­bands. She had lived with four dif­fer­ent men since her hus­band cast her aside, and this, with all her past, came up so vividly in her mind at the mo­ment when she re­al­ized Je­sus was a man of God that she sub­se­quently re­peated to John that Je­sus had re­ally told her all about her­self.