Why are we called Jacob’s Well?

In Jesus’ day, the land of Israel was divided into three regions, Judea to the south, Galilee to the North, and in the middle was Samaria.  At that time there was a lot of tension between Jews and Samaritans, to the Jewish people Samaria was like a ghetto and Samaritians were considered unclean and undesirable.  The Israelistes who lived in Samaria were of mixed-race and had adopted many pagan practices creating a convoluted mixed religion that was detestable to religious Jews.

The New Testament Book of John tells the story of Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman on the fringes of her culture.  Despite the tension between Jews and Samaritans Jesus chose to go through Samaria while traveling between Judea and Galilee.  Along the way he stopped at Jacob’s Well to rest while his disciples went into town to buy some lunch.  As he rested, a samaritan woman came to the well to draw some water.  She was a woman of low reputation, she had a string of five failed marriages and was now living with a man to whom she was not married, essentially trading sex for rent. She did not come to the well in the cool of the morning as the reputable women would, but she came alone during the mid-day heat when she would not feel the shame of her many sins.

When she arrived she did not say a word to Jesus, knowing that a Jewish Rabbi would have nothing to do with a woman like her. In that culture, men did not befriend women, Jews did not socialize with Samaritans, and self-righteous rabbis did not associate with lowley sinners.  But in a surprising turn of events Jesus boldly crossed religious and cultural barriers by asking her for a drink.  To drink from her container would have been viewed as sinful, dirty, and ritually unclean by the pretensious, self-righteous religious leaders of the day. But Jesus saw the opportunity to reach out to a woman who was far from God and offer her forgivness, grace and place to belong.

In reaching out to this culturally undesirable woman Jesus turned Jacob’s Well, a cultural gathering place, into a place where all people can encounter God.  We have chosen the name Jacob’s Well because we want to be a place where all people, no matter what their past, no matter what their background, no matter where they are in their spiritual journey can come as they are and encounter God.  We want to break down cultural barriers and build a community where people can be open, honest and real, where they can freely seek answers to their spiritual questions without fear of judgement, and where people are accepted for who they are.

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