Christ Speaks to Women

“I am he, the one speaking with you.”

The third Sunday of Lent is a familiar story of what seems to be a chance meeting between Jesus and “the woman at the well.” It’s a surprising moment in many ways: Jesus spoke at length with a Samaritan, held a deep conversation with a woman, and conversed with a Gentile about salvation. But leave it to Jesus to cross boundaries and raise eyebrows (looking at you, disciples).

Jesus and the disciples had been walking all morning, and around noon, they stopped at a popular well to regroup. The disciples headed into town for supplies, and Jesus, worn out and thirsty, sat down at the well. Enter the Samaritan woman, coming to draw water.

The Gospel doesn’t mention a crowd, or even another person, so we read that it’s just the two of them. “Give me a drink,” Jesus said. This woman would not have been expecting that, given the fact that Jesus was a Jewish man, so she shot back something along the lines of, “Really? Don’t you see who I am?”

The fact that she engaged with Jesus opened the door to a more extended conversation. Living water? That sounded far better than a jar dragged up from seventy‑five feet below. No more repeated trips in the heat, that sounds good, too. “Go call your husband and come back.” That stopped her cold.

Jesus then shocked the woman by telling her her life. And she recognized him then as a prophet. But he revealed himself as much more. “I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Christ; when he comes, he will tell us everything.”

Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one speaking with you.”
And she went and told everybody.

This is another Scripture story that we might skim over, attaching to it some valuable but surface meaning. Often, the Samaritan woman is seen as a model of someone who has led a scandalous life. After all, five husbands. So we might wag our heads and think: It’s a good thing Jesus came along when he did, to save her and get her on the right track. But that’s not me.

But the story is far more layered than the reputation that’s often attached to her. Like our own stories, it’s rarely cut-and-dried.

So notice what Jesus did not do. He didn’t interrogate her about her past. He didn’t guilt-trip her. He didn’t pull the superior card. He saw her. And her eyes were opened. And her life was changed.

The woman’s transformation didn’t begin with her confession — it began with His revelation. Jesus didn’t say, try harder. He said, I am he. He entered the quiet truth of her story, addressed it with clarity and mercy, and offered her living water. Lent is our invitation to stand at that same well, to hear Him say to us, in whatever our own truth is, “I am he, the one speaking with you.”