John 4.1-42

When I read these words from vv25-26, I am broken and in awe - as if spoken to me, I am taken to the place where Christ first revealed Himself:

The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when He comes, He will declare all things to us.”
Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.”

but note verse 5 before Christ reveals Himself:
"So He came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph"

Sychar is a Samaritan city that's sometimes used interchangeably with Shechem. Why did Jesus come to this place to first reveal Himself? What had happened here before? In Genesis 34, Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, is taken by Shechem, the son of Hamor the Hivite. "Taken" is a gentle word for what occured, but there is also a sense that Dinah was not unwilling to be taken. After Shechem expresses a desire to marry Dinah, Simeon and Levi contrived a plan to deceive the men of Shechem. They agree to a covenant with the people of Shechem, in the land that will later be known as Samaria. This covenant was one that allowed their people to become part of Jacob's family - Jacob, who in Genesis 32:28 had been renamed "Israel." So they were given to be a part of the family of Israel. They sealed this covenant by being circumcised, just like the other descendants of Abraham, which would then grant that Shechem could wed their sister Dinah. These people had entered into a covenant with the children of Israel, to become a part of their family. And they upheld their part of the covenant - the men of Shechem were all circumcised. And then, instead of honoring the covenant, Simeon and Levi took revenge by killing them while they were still recovering from circumcision.

Why did Jesus come to Sychar? Why was this the first place, and the first person to whom He reveals He is the Christ? Why did He offer salvation first, of all the peoples in the world, to a person, and people who were not Jews?

-Because there was a covenant made in that place, with their ancestors, to become a part of the people of God, and His people had betrayed that covenant. Christ restored that covenant - and revealed Himself as the Messiah, He who is called Christ, to the Samaritans, of Sychar, or Shechem - before anyone else.

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1 Therefore when Jesus knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John
2 (although Jesus Himself was not baptizing, but His disciples were),
3 He left Judea and went away again into Galilee.
4 And He had to pass through Samaria.
5 So He came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph;
6 and Jacob’s well was there. So Jesus, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
7 A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.”
8 For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
9 Therefore the Samaritan woman said to Him, “How do You, being a Jew, ask for a drink from me, being a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
10 Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”
11 She said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water?
12 “Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle?”
13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again;
14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst—ever; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”
15 The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come back here to draw.”
16 He said to her, “Go, call your husband and come back here.”
17 The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’;
18 for you had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly.”
19 The woman said to Him, “Sir, I see that You are a prophet.
20 “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.”
21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.
22 “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.
23 “But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.
24 “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
25 The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when He comes, He will declare all things to us.”
26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.”
27 And at this point His disciples came, and they were marveling that He was speaking with a woman, yet no one said, “What do You seek?” or, “Why are You speaking with her?”
28 So the woman left her water jar, and went into the city and said to the men,
29 “Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; is this not the Christ?”
30 They went out of the city, and were coming to Him.
31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging Him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.”
32 But He said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.”
33 So the disciples were saying to one another, “Has anyone brought Him anything to eat?”
34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to finish His work.
35 “Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for harvest.
36 “Even now he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal; so that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.
37 “For in this case the saying is true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’
38 “I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored and you have entered into their labor.”
39 From that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who bore witness, “He told me all the things that I have done.”
40 So when the Samaritans came to Jesus, they were asking Him to stay with them; and He stayed there two days.
41 And many more believed because of His word;
42 and they were saying to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this One is truly the Savior of the world.”