She is a shunned outcast, a woman alone, a foreigner, one of the heathen, 'the enemy'. And a disreputable woman at that, the sort respectable people cross the road to avoid.
He is tired and hot. He really needs the water he asks her for. Does he look into her eyes? Many men have, and do. She is doubly, trebly unclean, yet he will take water from her hand, share her cup. Appalling, to the law-abiding. How could he?
When He speaks of living water, she mocks him. He just repeats and underlines what he said before - ignoring her mockery. He again holds out a strange promise, with echoes of their common prophet Moses. She recognises something of great moment happening, but what?
When finally she stops playing games and asks for the living water, he stops her in her tracks with his knowledge of her private life. But he is not from 'around here' - how does he know all this? WHO IS HE?
He tells her that the awaited time is now here. That neither the Samaritans' holy mountain nor that of the Jews will do, but that from her people's enemies, the Jews, salvation will come, and very soon.
The conversation is serious now. He is talking to her as he would to a Jerusalem Temple doctor. Seriously, respectfully, as no-one else has ever spoken to her, a mere woman, let alone a lower-than-low outcast with a despicable personal history.
She looks into his eyes, in awe. She acknowledges that Messiah will come. He says, I AM HERE, talking to... YOU.
When they are interrupted by his companions, she is embarrassed even though they do not interrogate her, do not even address her. She breaks away, runs home, probably wondering if she had imagined what He seemed to be saying.
Shunned she may be but she cries to anyone and everyone that maybe, just maybe, she has met the Messiah, but surely not? Would MESSIAH speak privately to her of all people? This is NOT how one expects the Messiah to behave, to announce his millennial arrival! (But... but... Elijah's still small voice...)
He tells the disciples to look around them at the harvest ripe for reaping. Look around at this small Samaritan village. Harvest. In unexpected places like this, He says.
And then some of the villagers came to Him because of her frantic earnest report about Him. They had to see for themselves. They saw for themselves and believed, and told her so.
WHAT exactly did they see for themselves? The Gospel does not tell us. But he stayed with them for two days before moving on to Galilee.
How did the disciples feel about staying in a Samaritan village instead of going home?
'We realised that this was a completely new and huge thing, If we wanted to stay with Jesus, we had to change our thinking and abandon all our preconceptions. Our prejudices.'
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