Note: From At This Time: Dialogues in Theological Education, ed. Corwin Malcolm Davis & Ted A. Smith (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2026). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Citations have been omitted.
The following passage from the Gospel of John had a profound effect on my ministry as a theological educator in Latin America:
Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John – although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
He 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. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”
Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town. (John 4:1–28 NIV)
As I said, participatory studies of this passage did much to shape my understanding of my ministry in Bolivia and my work as academic dean of the Community for Interdisciplinary Theological Education (CETI, for its acronym in Spanish), a transnational community that gathers participants from across Latin America. Reading the passage together with instructors and facilitators shaped not only my own ministry but also the ethos of our community. By retelling the story in John 4, we rediscovered Jesus’s dialogical approach to theological reflection. We also explored challenging aspects of Christology, soteriology, and our own identity as theological educators. Here, I offer you a taste of that process of community formation.
“Give me a drink,” the weary theological educator asked of a surprised woman coming his way. The teacher was weary not only because of the scorching midday heat. He had also just finished a fruitful teaching season, and he had stopped at that well in search of a safe place where he could restore his energies. His success had drawn the attention of his critics, who realized that more students had enrolled with him than with one of the most iconic teachers of the time, the Baptizer.
Noon is not the usual time of day for women to gather at wells to draw water. Why did this woman come at such an unusual hour? Was she trying to hide from the community? Perhaps! What we know with more certainty is that Jesus, the theological educator, needed a space of safety and comfort, was exhausted, and didn’t have the means (a jar or bucket) with which to draw water to satisfy his thirst.
The characters of our story find themselves at this place because of a common need (water), but the exchange begins because the teacher is at a disadvantage. He is the one who does not have the means to draw water from the well. What kind of theological learning can happen out of a situation like this? That is, what kind of learning can happen when the exchange begins not with an offer from the teacher but with his recognition that he needs help?
Beginning with a Common Need
Recognizing our common need does not automatically create solidarity between people, as the teacher learns from the woman’s perplexed and perhaps curt response: “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” We are no different today. Even when we meet, we can remain divided by the norms and expectations of the communities to which we belong. It is tempting to say that this is the woman’s problem, not the teacher’s: the woman was bound by cultural norms while the teacher transcends them. But this would not do justice to the fact that the teacher could not afford to abide by the expectations. He was thirsty! Not in a docetic way, in which he only appeared thirsty, but in a deeply embodied way. The teacher needs to transgress dividing lines to get water. The kind of learning that the teacher is cultivating begins not with the high-minded crossing of boundaries that always includes a kind of condescension, but with a recognition of the teacher’s own needs for the other.
Theological reflection that begins out of the need for life-giving water does not ignore the differences between the teacher and the woman; it needs to untangle them. The teacher must keep creating space to ask and receive questions. So, he continues the conversation with an evocative “If you only knew…” The teacher’s awareness of his own need does not keep him from offering what he has to his conversation partner. The teacher sparks the woman’s imagination by offering her water that isn’t stagnant but that bursts forth, water that’s alive.
The woman has so far brought to this exchange her cultural expectations. Now, as an astute and practical observer, she reminds the teacher that he has no means to satiate his own need for water: “You have nothing to draw water with and the well is deep.” After her practical assessment, she articulates a life-changing question laden with theology: “Are you greater than our father Jacob?”
The conversation moves forward because of the kindling of desire. The meaning of water becomes richer and more interesting, and so do the identities of the teacher and the woman. With her question, the woman creates space for the teacher to reveal a bit more about himself: “I can make you into a spring of living water,” he promises. Once he creates this space, she becomes the one who asks for water. Into that space she brings once again her orientation to practical matters; she is already thinking about putting this water to good use.
As we get to know this woman, it is easy to fall into the mistake of being condescending toward her. It is easy to assume that this “poor woman” couldn’t understand that Jesus was wanting to have a theological conversation with her, and that she couldn’t think beyond H2O and the practical needs of both parties. Such an assumption would only reveal how little we understand or appreciate the form of knowledge that she brings to the theological conversation. As we saw above, she was already asking theologically nuanced questions not just about the water but about the identity of the teacher who was offering her water. Her boundaries between the categories of material and spiritual needs are not ours; because of that, perhaps she understands the teacher not only better than we assume, but maybe even better than we understand him.
Does the teacher understand her? If he does, why does he say, “Go, call your husband and come back”? When I posed this question to a group of CETI students in a favela in the outskirts of São Paulo, Brazil, one of them raised her hand timidly and said, “If he is going to reveal himself, perhaps he wanted to make space for the woman to reveal herself as well . . . but I am no theologian.” This Brazilian woman was reading with deep insight, but she did not feel as if she belonged among the theologians. However, the fact that she spoke up during our meeting means that she felt as if she belonged in the faith community that had begun to study ecclesiology through a CETI module. Perhaps neither the Samaritan woman nor this Brazilian student might see themselves as belonging among the theologians. What kind of belonging should theological studies lead to, then? The conversation between the teacher and the woman proves fruitful again.
Excerpted from At This Time: Dialogues in Theological Education, edited by Corwin Malcom Davis and Ted A. Smith ©2026 (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.). Reprinted with permission from the publisher.
David Nacho, research associate, Vancouver School of Theology
