John 4:16-19 (NIV): (Jesus) 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.
Jesus’ command for the woman to go and get her husband was an effort to turn the conversation in a different direction. He already knew her history, as well as all that was in her heart (cf. John 2:25), so He was speaking from knowledge of her situation, not from ignorance.
This woman, as she freely admitted, currently had no husband. She had had five husbands up to that point in time. Jesus’ insight and the woman’s response gives no clue as to whether she was divorced five times (the usual teaching these days), or if some of her husbands had died, leaving her to remarry (at least possible for some of them). But the central fact was that this woman’s heart had taken a beating over the years. Five times she had given her body and heart to another, and five times it was broken, whether by death or divorce.
Jesus’ statement that “the man you now have is not your husband,” can be taken a couple of ways. It was unlikely for a woman to be living with a man out of wedlock back then (whatever form marriage had in that society), even in Samaria, but is not entirely impossible. But Jesus’ statement could have meant no more than that a man was courting her, and may have even proposed marriage to her, but the marriage had either not taken place yet, or she was putting him off, afraid to give herself a sixth time and risk having her heart broken again.
Whatever the situation was, the precision of Jesus’ insights blew the woman away completely. Up to this point, Jesus had been nothing more to her than “a Jew” (verse 9) who made strange requests and puzzling proclamations. But now some of His strangeness seemed to slip into focus. He must be a prophet! How else could He know all of these things about her? In all of the old stories, prophets were depicted as strange men who spoke from God many things that were hard for people to understand. This man certainly fit that pattern!
And so this woman took the first step toward this man who now appeared to be so much more than He had seemed at first. There were still more steps that she needed to take, but the journey had begun!
Father, everyone’s journey into relationship with Jesus must begin with the realization that He is more than just a man. So many today are not willing to take that step, insisting that Jesus never claimed to be more than a human being. They admit that He might be an unusually good man, a great ethicist and teacher, but still believe that He was merely human, like Plato or Aristotle. In their minds, there is no room for a divine Jesus. They have to be moved so that they can take that first step, to at least acknowledge that the words Jesus spoke were far beyond anything that could have come from a mere human brain. If they can, like this woman, acknowledge that He must have been at least a prophet whose words came from You, that is a step in the right direction. Thank You for this insight. Amen.