The Woman at the Well

CAST OF CHARACTERS:

SAMARITAN WOMAN, JESUS, PETER, JOHN, TOWN’S PERSON

(As the lights come up, Jesus is sitting at a well and a woman enters carrying a water pot to draw water. She does not speak to Jesus and just goes to the well to draw water.)

JESUS: Give me a drink.

SAMARITAN WOMAN: You want me to give you a drink? You are clearly a Jew. How is it that you, being a Jew, would ask me for a drink? Surely you must know that I am a Samaritan woman. Everyone knows that Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.

JESUS: 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.

SAMARITAN WOMAN: Living water? Sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get this living water? You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You? He gave us the well…he drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle. What is this living water that You speak of?

JESUS: Everyone who drinks of this (gestures to the well) water shall thirst again; 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.

SAMARITAN WOMAN: Never thirst again? What type of water is this? Is it possible to never thirst again? Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty, nor come all the way here to draw. It is a long walk to Jacob’s well!

JESUS: Go, call your husband and come here.

SAMARITAN WOMAN: I have no husband.

JESUS: You have well said, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly.

SAMARITAN WOMAN: (Shocked at his statement.) How could you have known that? Sir…I perceive that you are a prophet! To know that I have had five husbands….to know the details of my personal life…truly…you are a prophet from God. (Trying to change the subject from herself) My people worship God…the same as the Jews. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. Do you really think that it matters where we worship…here on this mountain…or must we travel to Jerusalem?

JESUS: Woman, believe me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall you worship the Father. You worship that which you do not know; we worship that which we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 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. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.

SAMARITAN WOMAN: You say that an hour is coming…do you refer to the time of the Messiah? I know that Messiah is coming…He who is called Christ; when that One comes, He will declare all things to us.

JESUS: I who speak to you am He.