The Unexpected Jesus: Week 3 // The Woman at the Well

This isn’t a story about sin or repentance. It’s actually a story of belonging.

Hi friends,

Thank you so much for your kind responses to our Evolving Faith news last week. Your kindness, support, and blessing meant a lot to me, our community, and the new leadership. It’s a complicated thing to set down something that you love, even as you know it’s the right thing for everyone, so the response has bolstered my own spirits during this bittersweet transition.

All right, that’s enough of that, eh? Let’s get to this week’s instalment in our ongoing series The Unexpected Jesus. If you are new around here, here’s the introduction post to the series; here is the first instalment on the incarnation; and this is the second on the wedding at Cana. Today we’ll spend some time with the woman at the well. I do love this story.

There is an audio version on The Secret Field Notes Podcast, too. Here’s the link to listen to that (and here’s an article explaining how to add this Secret Field Notes Podcast feed to your podcast app, too so that you have it in your preferred app as soon as it’s published). Just as a note, the platform I use to send these newsletters - Substack - provides an auto-AI-version of narration for accessibility on every post, which is great, but if you want to hear actual me reading it to you, then you do need to go to this other link and press play there.

Scripture Reading: John 4:4 - 42

This week, I did read the full story in our audio version but I will just link to the story over at Bible Gateway for us since it’s on the long-ish side and the word count limit is working against us today.

However, if you’d like to read more of a narrative retelling of this story, I’d also recommend a section called “The Water” from my dear friend Rachel Held Evans’ brilliant book Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again. Rachel, a writer’s writer, fictionalized this story beautifully but I particularly love this part when the woman and Jesus share a drink of water together:

“At that, he handed me the bucket of water. I brought it to my lips, lifted my head, and drank deep of the coolest, richest water I ever tasted. I drank and drank and drank. I drank until I could no longer breathe. 

When I finished, I wiped my mouth on my sleeve and handed the bucket back to the man, who, to my amazement, threw his head back and gulped the rest of it down, dousing his dusty face with the last splash that remained. For a moment, I doubted what I’d just witnessed. This man, this Jew - this Messiah - drank from my defiled cup. And with relish.

He saw my surprise and laughed, the deep belly laugh of a man who sees our religious absurdities for what they are. I joined him, all the tired and thirsty cells in my body awake with life once again. It was like giving birth and being born at the same time.”¹