About This Guide: This weekly groups guide, “A Light Has Dawned,” is designed as a companion to our Epiphany 2022 teaching series, fostering discussion, study, and prayer, especially in a group setting. Join a group for a meaningful way to connect to our community.
clearing the temple
Teaching Text: John 4:1-42
Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. So 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 noon.
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 livestock?”
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them 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 ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, 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 the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the 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, the one speaking to you—I 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 Messiah?” 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. Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a 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.”
Themes
Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:
We are changed when we encounter Jesus
A supernatural sustenance
Presence
Take a moment of silence and think about these questions:
Today’s account from the text is about a moment of encounter with Jesus.
Can you recall an encounter with God that you have had recently?
What happened as a result of this encounter?
What space do you create in your life to encounter God?
Ask God to meet you again.
Formation
Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:
This story today has two people in it that are changed by the end.
An exhausted Jesus and a hiding woman.
Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John—2 although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. So 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. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?”
What is Jesus tired from?
physical - the walk
emotional - the tension with the pharisees - spirit of rivalry
spiritual - messiah of Israel, savior of the world - feeling the divisions
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.)
Jesus begins by asking her for something. So many stories begin with someone asking Jesus for something. What I am talking about - you can drink and never be thirsty again - He is peaking to her heart and imagination.
Jesus has a word of knowledge about this woman - a mature use of a spiritual gift of prophetic discernment, and she… changes the subject.
Most of us are masters of self-protection and self-justification even if it keeps us from growing.
A new way to worship in spirit and truth. By the spirit that Jesus just told Nicodemus brings the new life and new brith and in accordance with true reality.
Not numbing, not hiding, not obscuring, not rationalizing, not telling ourselves a million false stories to not have to hear the truth.
Jesus says: you have a father who seeks you (because He loves you) and is offering to fill your life (no matter what mountain or valley you are in).
The woman stops hiding, her shame has been transformed. She brings up that this man reveled her past - the very thing she was hiding about. She becomes and invitation to Jesus her witness transforms her neighbors.
Jesus turns down lunch, Jesus is utterly replenished, not by self-indulgence but by love. By the end Jesus gives his friends a new way to see the world.
Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.
There is an exchange available when we come to Jesus. We give Christ what we have. We receive that Christ has.
Bring Jesus your imagination, exhaustion, shame, confusion, and avoidance.
Receive Living Water and a way to worship to see the world (imagination) and the Holy Spirit without limit.
What is the place of your hiding?
What exchange do you feel like you need to do with Jesus?
What do you need to offer up?
What are you asking Jesus for? Why?
Love
Read these notes and discuss the questions below:
Could you imagine the amount of hiding people are doing around you?
Shame, guilt, regret cause us to hide as did the woman in the story, Adam and Eve in the garden and us today.
Consider the invitations you can bring to neighbors, loved ones, co workers, strangers that would have them tasting living water.
The woman at the well ultimately became an invitation for others.
Ask God to highlight people you can be an invitation for.
Ask God for courage today to connect with and invite these people.
Pray for one another in the group.
