Putting Away Shame and Drinking from the Living Water

This content was excerpted from the Ashamed Bible Study.

Have you ever been shocked by someone’s kindness? I grew up in big cities— LA, NYC, and Miami. I didn’t get a taste of southern hospitality until I moved to Nashville as an adult. In big cities, you walk fast, do your thing, and watch out for yourself. But I’ll never forget my first day in Nashville when a man in a parking lot said, “Hey!,” and I jumped in fear, assuming I was about to die. But he wasn’t a murderer or a mugger. He was just saying hello.

In Nashville, people brought me meals when I had babies and waved me ahead to go first at four-way stops. It was weird and striking, experiencing such a gracious cultural context. But meal trains and cordial drivers aren’t a huge deal compared to the text we’re about to look at.

Today’s story isn’t “city girl meets southerners.” That’s because Jews and Samaritans were not just slightly culturally different. They did not mix at all. They hated each other.

Samaria had been captured by the Assyrians, who deported many of the Jews, settling with and marrying remaining Jews and practicing their religion their way. So, Jewish people looked down on Samaritans politically, religiously, and racially. Their beef also included a disagreement about where they believed God’s people should worship.

The conflict was so intense by the time Jesus was around, that Jews wouldn’t even pass through Samaria when they traveled. They’d cross the Jordan River instead. This wasn’t bumping into a frenemy at the grocery store. This was Capulet and Montegue type tension.

There was then a unique sort of cultural shame that the woman at the well in John 4 likely felt before Jesus even opened His mouth, just at the sight of a Jewish man at a Samaritan well. So, when Jesus spoke to her, it wasn’t just a friendly Nashville wave hello. It was a radical, beautiful, cross-cultural, theological statement.

Have you ever questioned someone’s kindness as too good to be true? The example I immediately think of is when a child wants five dollars or a Sonic® slush or a day off school, so they clean the dishes and approach with a hug and a, “Mom, you’re SO beautiful and wonderful and I love you!” Mom responds, “Okay, what do you want?”

The Samaritan woman knew it didn’t make sense for a Jew to stop by for some water, so she questioned Him. What’s this guy’s angle?

I’m going to be honest with you—if I didn’t already know this story, I, too, would question the phrase “living water” in verse 10. What does that mean? I picture some sort of sci-fi water creature made with CGI. But Jesus often used words with double meanings.

“If you knew,” Jesus said, “you would ask him . . . ” (John 4:10). That is such a powerful statement. Not just for the woman at the well, who clearly didn’t know who she was talking to, but for long-time believers like me, who walk around with shame, forgetting that I have all-the-time access to the One who died to take that shame away. “If you only knew . . . ”

We who do know Christ should ask Him for help when we feel ashamed. We ask even if we are ashamed because of religious, cultural, or racial tension like the Samaritan woman. These things feel too big to tackle, but just like Jesus walked right into Samaria and spoke right to that woman, He walked right into our broken world and offered us an abundant life to live.

The living water is available if we will drink, no matter the severity of the source of our shame. Shame is washed away when we know Jesus. When we ask, He gives living water.

Today, take time to read this story in John 4, and pray about and around the sort of shame you or people you interact with might experience, not based on sin, but based on outside expectations. Pray that you and those you minister to will experience healing and renewed confidence, the kind that comes from the Lord.