Week 42 (13-19 Oct): Open Up!

The youth have been doing a series on the gospel of John, and last week we covered the story of the Samaritan woman at the well. As we watched The Chosen’s portrayal of this account, there was a moment that struck us (this moment can be found in John 4:16-19). When the woman told Jesus she had no husband, He agreed by pointing out that she had five husbands before, and the man she now lived with was not her husband. The actress’s shock quickly melted away, and she turned instead to accuse Jesus of bias and to show this bias within the Jewish-Samaritans divide.

Our first takeaway was that it is instinctive to run from the uncomfortable truth that God is trying to present. This idea is echoed in Jesus clearing the temple in John 2, where the Jews demanded to know by what authority He acted. When God begins to turn over the tables in our lives, pointing out sins we have grown comfortable with, surrender rarely comes easily. Facing the truth of our brokenness is an uncomfortable and messy process.

Importantly, we also took a step back to evaluate if the woman’s response had merit. It may be instinctive to dismiss her response since it seemed that she was just fending off criticism for her “immoral” behaviour, but it would have greatly limited our understanding of the passage. So, we turned to the historical context to understand her response better.

When the northern kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians, many Jews were deported and intermarried with foreigners, giving rise to the Samaritans—a people the Jews considered “half‑breeds.” The Jews saw the existence of Samaritans as a betrayal of their faith and refused to worship with them. This reflected an older understanding of Christianity when God’s relationship with humanity was confined to covenants with a single chosen people.

With that understanding in place, Jesus choosing this moment in Samaria to first reveal Himself as the Messiah is monumental. It marked a change in what faith meant — no longer bound by lineage or location, but open to all who believed. The actress’s joyful leap down the hill at the end of the scene captured that transformation beautifully. It reminded us of the promise in John 1:12–13: that God’s love is for all who would accept and believe in Him. Our second takeaway, then, was that the love and grace of God extend to everyone willing to receive them.

In closing, we linked both takeaways and came to this conclusion: As Christians, we are saved, so our challenge is different: It is to continually let Him work in us. Salvation is not a full stop but a turning point (a comma, if you will) where God begins to re‑shape us. 

It is the recognition that He has the right to overturn the tables in our hearts when we most need renewal. The realisation that we must choose to keep surrendering so that we can truly move out of the old is something I grapple with. But.... this is the good fight, and I believe God is calling us in this season, as a church, to open our hearts to Him again. May God reveal to us how He is beckoning each of us home. Shalom! See you guys soon. 

With love,

Zoe (for the youth)