Maybe in these days of COVID, you’re feeling alone, isolated from your friends. But maybe you don’t have many friends to begin with. And maybe people have turned away from you because of bad choices you have made or hurtful things you have said. Maybe you feel like you don’t have much to offer, or that you yourself aren’t worth very much.

The Samaritan woman who came to the well would understand. After all, most of the women of her village would have come to fetch water as a group – laughing and talking, and enjoying a break from the rest of their household chores. But she didn’t feel welcome at the party. No, she came by herself, probably in the hottest part of the day.

And that was probably because she would have been the subject of so much of the village gossip. After all, she had been married five times, and the man she was living with at the time wasn’t her husband at all (John 4:17-18). We whisper about someone like this even in our modern world of rather free-wheeling sexual ethics. But in the ancient world, such a life would have made her an outcast. It’s no wonder she kept to herself. She may even have begun to believe what other people said about her – that she wasn’t worth very much.

But there was another reason she was so amazed that Jesus would ask her for a drink of water – for He was a Jew, and she was a Samaritan (John 4:9). For hundreds of years, the two groups had despised each other for their differences in theology and ancestry. So when Jesus demonstrated that He knew all about her checkered past, she drew one of these differences to His attention (John 4:20), probably so He would go away and leave her alone.

But the good news for her, and for us, is that Jesus doesn’t care about the racial or cultural differences that so many of us think are so important. And He doesn’t think that anyone’s sins are too wicked or too perverse to be forgiven. For, as John makes crystal clear, Jesus didn’t come into the world to condemn sinners like this Samaritan woman – or like you or me. No, even though He knows everything we’ve ever done, He came to die for all who would trust Him as Savior and bow the knee to Him as Lord (John 3:16-17).

Yes, the good news is that Jesus continues to reveal Himself even to the depressed and the lonely, even to those whom other people have cast aside. For it wasn’t to His chosen disciples that He first revealed His identity as the Messiah – it was to this Samaritan woman (John 4:26). And He continues to pour out His Spirit on those who are unworthy, enabling us to worship Him in spirit and in truth (John 4:24).

That’s good news today, even for you and me. May we believe it, and trust in Christ to make us clean and new and worthy of His love.

John 4:7-26 (NASB)

7 There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.”
8 For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
9 The Samaritan woman therefore said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
10 Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”
11 She said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that living water?
12 “You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself, and his sons, and his cattle?”
13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water shall thirst again;
14 but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”
15 The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty, nor come all the way here to draw.”
16 He said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”
17 The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have well said, ‘I have no husband’;
18 for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly.”
19 The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet.
20 “Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.”
21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall you worship the Father.
22 “You worship that which you do not know; we worship that which we know, for salvation is from the Jews.
23 “But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.
24 “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
25 The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us.”
26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.”