Pulpit & P
ew
No Strangers
There is a story in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of John of a meeting between Jesus and a Samaritan woman. Jesus is on a journey from Jerusalem to Galilee and the author notes “he had to go through Samaria.”
The statement is symbolic. Jesus is a Jew and in Jewish culture of the time, Samaritans were outcasts and rejects. They were people to avoid contact with.
When Jesus meets the woman at the well it is noon. He is hot, tired and thirsty. He has no bucket to draw water from the well. We don’t know how long he waited for a drink. He was vulnerable. A Samaritan woman arrives to draw water and Jesus asks her for a drink. In doing so, he crosses several social boundaries. He should not be asking help or even talking to a Samaritan or a woman, in that culture. He becomes socially vulnerable as well as physically vulnerable.
Although they worship God in different places, they worship the same God. Nevertheless, they are not one community. Division defines them.
In conversation with the woman, he reveals that he knows all about her. He knows she has had five husbands and is living with a man she is not married to. Many readers of the story assume she is an immoral person; however, it is more likely that she is a victim. Maybe she is a widow five times over. Women could not initiate divorce. She may have been divorced for infertility or failure to bear sons. She likely would not have been drawing water in the heat of the day unless she felt estranged in her own community.
Jesus offers her “living water,” a life of salvation. He makes no determination of whether she is immoral or a victim. That doesn’t seem to be the point.
Life offers each of us many opportunities to be going through Samaria. We routinely encounter people who are different from us, people we don’t know and with whom we feel uncomfortable. Sometimes we judge them, rightly or wrongly.
The story challenges us to be vulnerable to the other, to start conversations, to listen, eliminate the distance, risk rejection and reveal our own fallibilities. Just as Jesus sought to create a community of faith with Samaritans, we are called to create community with one another. Those of us who are believers should be offering the “living water” of life, Jesus Christ, not just to our fellow believers but to strangers, outcasts, and people different from us.
— Rev. Dr. Stan Basler Galesburg United Methodist Church
