Like Crystal, I learned that the woman specifically went to the well at the hottest time of the day to avoid meeting up with anyone. Was she ashamed? Was she simply trying to avoid others who might treat her unkindly? Did she want to avoid the feeling of being shunned? Her isolation must have been very painful.
I love the redemption implicit in this passage. This woman is living in sin, she has a bad reputation but Jesus offers her salvation. In turn, the sinner goes to bring others to salvation when she witnesses to those in her town. That must have been difficult for her -- she may have been avoiding contact with others and now she returns to tell her townsfolk the good news.
2 comments:
Hi Marjorie :-). It's interesting how it seems that Jesus heals people and then he sends them out to be with others - it reminds me of when Mary M finds Jesus in the garden after the resurrection and he sends her to tell the other disciples what's happened.
Years ago I heard a great sermon on this theme. It was about a medical missionary who went to those foreign fields where blindness was common due to some sort of ignorant higiene, curable with a simple operation.
One of those he had cured left, but soon he came back holding a long rope; hoards of blind people were coming along holding on to the rope.
The punch line of course came when the preacher looked at us all and said "WHERE'S YOUR ROPE?"
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