Samaritan Woman at the Well Sunday School lesson

Last week in our Sunday School lesson we saw Jesus raise Jairus’ daughter and heal a bleeding woman.  This week we will see Jesus just stop and talk to someone.  It’s amazing how such a small thing can have a huge impact on someone’s life.

My takeaway from the Samaritan Woman at the Well story

When I was in college I saw an amazing one-woman show taking this story and portraying it from the woman’s viewpoint.  It really changed my viewpoint of the entire thing, and I want to share what it taught me with you.

Think about the story, this woman is coming to get water in the heat of the day.

What is going to happen to a lot of that water?  It’s going to evaporate.  She is doing more work than she has to.  Why is that?

She doesn’t want anyone to see her.  It rather reminds me of the song “God Help the Outcasts” from Hunchback of Notre Dame.  She doesn’t think God wants the outcasts either, and her prayer is desperate for God to help them.  It’s the same for this woman, she doesn’t think anyone wants her.

We find out why when Jesus is talking to her.  She’s been divorced several times, and she’s LIVING with her boyfriend.  Think of how unheard of that was.  In our time we still talk about someone who’s been divorced that many times wondering what she is doing wrong, how much more so then.

But Jesus talks to her.  It changes her life so much she goes and tells all of the people she’s been hiding from.  She is so excited she can’t wait for them to hear about it.  The same women who probably whispered behind their hands as she walked by.  The same men who probably spit at her as she walked by.   She tells them.

And they’re curious.  Wouldn’t you be?  It’s like the drug addict who’s been doing all sorts of crazy stuff coming in to work and telling everyone he’s clean sober and is never going to touch drugs again.  I’d be dying to know what happened.

They were too.  They followed her and listened to Jesus.  Then comes my favorite part of the story.

“We listened because of what you said, but now we believe because of what we learned.”

There’s so much more you can plumb from this story, but this blog post will be long enough without my meandering on about that.

Jesus and the Samaritan Woman mapwork

IN the text it says “And he had to pass through Samaria.”

Strictly speaking, that is not true.  Most Jews of the day went out of their way to NOT go to Samaria.  It is perfectly possible to get to Galilee without going through there, it’s just a longer trip.

So, why did he have to go?  I think Jesus had an appointment.  Otherwise, he would have been like all of the other Jews of the time and gone around.

To verify this we pulled out our Kings of Israel Board Game (affiliate link) to check out our theory.  I was going to take pictures, but honestly, it would just look weird.  We found there were several routes he could have taken, but Jesus had a reason to go there.  He had a whole town to save.

Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at the Well craft

Since the main crux of the story is his discussion with her at the well, and all about getting water I knew I wanted us to make a well craft.

[Side note, I find it interesting she’s never named in this story.  I can think of two reasons for that:  1.  To preserve her dignity, you probably don’t want to go down in history as the woman who had too many husbands OR 2.  To make this story more accessible, allow different people to see themselves as this woman.  I find both possibilities rather intriguing, sorry I just thought of that as I was typing.]

I pretty much only cut out their milk cartons.  As I was fiddling with the top half of one so I could make a well too, they just started cutting away and made pretty much the same craft without much help from me.  They needed a little help tieing (how do you spell this word?) the cross-bar on, but other than that they just raced through it.

It made this crafter Mom happy.

Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well resources

• Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well lesson
• Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well post (I personally found this post to be very encouraging)
• Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well craft

Next Jesus will be meeting a rich man who thinks he has everything and a short man who knows he doesn’t.

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