The People Who Go to the Well at Noon

 

There’s a story in the Gospel about a woman who goes to get water in the middle of the day.

Which, if you know anything about deserts, is a terrible time to go get water.

Morning? Lovely.

Evening? Sensible.

Noon?

Noon is when the sun turns the ground into a cast-iron skillet and reasonable people stay inside reconsidering their life choices.

So when this woman shows up at the well at noon, you get the feeling there’s a reason.

She’s avoiding people.

Because people know things.

And small towns have always had two remarkably dependable utilities:

Running water.

And running gossip.

Apparently this woman's résumé had been circulating for a while.

Five husbands.

Now living with a man who wasn't her husband.

Which means if Samaria had a neighborhood Facebook group, she would've been the pinned post.

Comments disabled.

Probably for the best.

So she does what human beings have been doing forever when the whispers become too loud.

She changes her schedule.

Shows up when nobody else will be there.

Just her, a bucket, and the enormous relief of not having anyone look at her sideways.

Except that day someone is there.

A man sitting beside the well.

Wonderful.

Nothing like carefully arranging your entire day to avoid humanity only to discover humanity got there first.

Then He speaks.

“Give me a drink.”

Now she's confused.

Because men didn't normally speak publicly with women like this.

Jews and Samaritans weren't exactly exchanging Christmas cards either.

And a respected religious teacher talking with a Samaritan woman carrying her reputation?

Jesus managed to make the situation uncomfortable for nearly everyone except Jesus.

Which seems to have been one of His spiritual gifts.

But then He does something even stranger.

He keeps talking to her.

Like she's a person.

Not a rumor.

Not a scandal.

Not a cautionary tale parents mention to their teenagers.

A person.

That must have been disorienting.

Because when people know your mistakes, they have an interesting tendency to talk about you rather than to you.

Then Jesus says the thing that probably makes her stomach drop.

He knows.

The husbands.

The man she's living with now.

The whole messy story.

All of it.

And here's the part I can't get past.

He doesn't leave.

No lecture.

No disgust.

No dramatic clutching of pearls.

No:

“Wow. Okay. That's...a lot.”

No:

“Get your life together and then maybe we'll revisit this.”

He just stays.

Sitting beside the well.

Talking with her.

As though knowing everything about her hasn't changed His desire to be near her.

That part gets me.

Because I think a lot of us secretly believe the opposite about God.

We believe in grace, of course.

Grace sounds wonderful.

We sing about it.

Read about it.

Put it on coffee mugs.

But actually needing it?

That's different.

Because somewhere deep inside, many of us suspect that if God really knew everything about us—the pride, the addiction, the lies, the failures, the thing we said, the thing we did, the moments we'd give almost anything to rewind—He might slowly back away from the well.

Nothing dramatic.

God is polite.

Maybe a little nod.

“Best of luck with everything.”

Then several feet of healthy divine distance.

Except He doesn't.

He sits down.

Starts a conversation.

And asks for water.

Which is funny when you think about it.

Because the woman came to the well believing she was the thirsty one.

Turns out God was already there waiting for her.

I understand that woman more than I wish I did.

There are seasons when shame changes your schedule.

You walk into rooms wondering who knows.

You wonder what people have heard.

You notice conversations stopping and convince yourself they were about you.

You arrive a little later.

Leave a little earlier.

Keep your head down.

Smile.

Say you're doing fine.

Because shame has a remarkable memory.

Grace may forgive us in an instant.

Shame sometimes needs considerably more convincing.

And shame loves isolation.

It tells us:

Stay home.

Don't go.

They know.

You don't belong there anymore.

God may forgive people, but surely He has standards.

So we start carrying our mistakes around like that woman carried her water jar.

Everywhere.

Heavy.

Familiar.

Almost part of us.

But here's what I love about this Gospel.

Jesus knew exactly who was coming to that well.

He knew her story before she arrived.

He knew every husband.

Every mistake.

Every whisper.

Every reason she chose noon.

And He went there anyway.

Actually, maybe that's not quite right.

He didn't go there anyway.

He went there because she was coming.

That's different.

Because maybe Christianity isn't primarily the story of messed-up people somehow finding their way back to God.

Maybe it's the story of God repeatedly sitting in places messed-up people eventually wander into.

Wells.

Roads.

Fishing boats.

Dinner tables.

Hospital rooms.

Church pews.

Recovery meetings.

Kitchen floors.

Places nobody would think to call holy until God shows up there.

And maybe that's the lesson I keep needing to learn.

We spend enormous amounts of energy hiding the parts of ourselves we think would make God love us less.

Meanwhile, God keeps walking directly toward them.

Not because the mistakes don't matter.

They do.

Jesus tells the woman the truth about her life.

Grace isn't pretending the bucket isn't heavy.

Grace is discovering you don't have to carry it alone anymore.

And then something remarkable happens.

The woman who came to the well avoiding everybody eventually runs back toward everybody.

The woman hiding from the town becomes the woman telling the town.

That's what grace does.

It doesn't erase your story.

It changes what your story is for.

Maybe some of us are still arranging our lives around noon.

Avoiding certain people.

Certain places.

Certain memories.

Convinced that if everyone knew the whole story, we'd have to keep carrying our bucket alone.

But perhaps that's why this story has survived two thousand years.

Because sooner or later, every one of us becomes the person walking toward the well hoping nobody will be there.

And maybe the great surprise of faith is discovering Someone already is.

Not standing there with crossed arms.

Not holding a clipboard.

Not asking why it took us so long.

Just sitting beside the place we chose to hide.

Waiting.

Because the well was never the place she went to disappear.

It was the place God went to find her.