The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing
more disciples than John,
although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his
disciples.
When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back
once more to Galilee.
Now he had to go through Samaria.
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 the sixth hour.
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 are a
Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a
drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)
Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it
is that asks 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 living water?
Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well
and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and
herds?"
Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty
again,
but whoever drinks the water I give him will never
thirst. Indeed, the water I
give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
The woman said to him, "Sir, give me
this water so that I won't
get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."
He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back."
"I have no husband," she replied. Jesus said to her, "You
are right when you say you have no husband.
The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you
now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."
"Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you
are a prophet.
Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim
that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."
Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you
will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship
what we do know, for salvation is from the
Jews.
Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true
worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are
the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.
God is spirit, and his worshipers 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 who speak to you am he."
Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find
him talking with a woman. But
no one asked, "What do you want?" or "Why are you talking with her?"
Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and
said to the people,
"Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could
this be the Christ?"
They came out of the town and made their way toward
him.
Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat
something."
But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know
nothing about."
Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone
have brought him food?"
"My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent
me and to finish his work.
Do you not say, 'Four months more and then the harvest'? I
tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for
harvest.
Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests
the crop for eternal life, so
that the sower and the reaper may be glad together.
Thus the saying 'one sows and another reaps' is
true.
I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others
have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor."
Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him
because of the woman's
testimony, "He told me everything I ever did."
So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay
with them, and he stayed two days.
And because of his words many more became believers.
They said to the woman, "We no longer believe
just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that
this man really is the Savior of the world."
After the two days he left for Galilee.
(Now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no
honor in his own country.)
When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him.
They had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, for they
also had been there.
Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned
the water into wine. And there was a certain
royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum.
When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from
Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to
death.
"Unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders," Jesus
told him, "you will never believe."
The royal official said, "Sir, come down before my child
dies."
Jesus replied, "You may go. Your son will live." The man
took Jesus at his word and departed.
While he was still on the way, his servants met him with
the news that his boy was living.
When he inquired as to the time when his son got better,
they said to him, "The fever left him yesterday at the seventh hour."
Then the father realized that this was
the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, "Your son will live." So he and
all his household believed.
This was the second miraculous sign that Jesus performed,
having come from Judea to Galilee.
