Daily Devotional • August 15
A Reading from John 27-42
27 Just then his disciples came. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but none said, “What do you wish?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” 28 So the woman left her water jar, and went away into the city, and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” 30 They went out of the city and were coming to him.
31 Meanwhile the disciples besought him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Has any one brought him food?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see how the fields are already white for harvest. 36 He who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor; others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
39 Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”
Meditation
The woman whom Jesus meets at Jacob’s well does not have her name preserved in Scripture, but she has an honored place in the ministry of Jesus. She is the first missionary in the Gospels, and to people who were not Jews, her fellow Samaritans. Samaritans and Jews were neighbors who had some common ancestors but Jews looked down on Samaritans as people of mixed ancestry who did not worship God properly in Jerusalem. She instigated a conversation with Jesus after he asked her to give him a drink when she came to draw water, wondering aloud why he, a Jew, would talk to her, a Samaritan, and even ask her for a drink from her bucket. He asks her to call her husband. When she says she has no husband, he says that she has had five husbands and is living with a man now who is not her husband. She realizes he is a prophet and starts a conversation about worship and God.
Jesus tells her that he is the Messiah her people as well as the Jews are seeking. She then runs back to the town to tell everyone, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” They stop whatever they were doing and come to find him, asking Jesus to come stay with them, which he does for two days. They then exclaim that they asked Jesus to come to them because of her words, but became believers in Jesus because of his words, concluding, “You are the Savior of the world!”
She does what every believer in Jesus as Lord and Christ is called to do — to tell people about Jesus. If we think we are not very fit for the work of evangelism, just remember that this lone woman at a well with her interesting history with men didn’t seem like a very promising evangelist either. But she listened to Jesus and look at what she accomplished!
The Rev. Dr. Jean McCurdy Meade is a retired priest of the Diocese of Louisiana, formerly the rector of Mount Olivet Church, New Orleans.
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Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer
Today we pray for:
The Diocese of Idoani – The Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion)
St. John’s Episcopal Church, Corsicana, Texas