Reading Plan Text for March 6: John 4:1-9
If this passage and the next few after it seem familiar, it is because we read the story of the Samaritan woman at the well not long ago--on the Third Sunday in Lent. In fact, John's Gospel is featured prominently in our Lent and Easter readings this year. We will be revisiting several stories that we will have heard recently.
Often we forget that Samaria was, along with Judea, once part of David's kingdom. Conquests, intermarriage, and the strict adherence to purity codes by those who considered themselves the only true Israelites created two different nations. Spurned by the exiles returning from Babylon, the people who would become the Samaritans simply went on with their lives, building their own temple, and worshipping God. By Jesus' day, the Judeans avoided the Samaritans at all costs.
I cannot help but see the present tempest in the Anglican teapot echoing the enmity between the Judeans and the Samaritans. An emphasis by some on the purity codes rather than a common heritage. The growing distance until neither side is speaking to the other. We have not quite reached that point, but if things continue along the path they seem to be following today, the same kind of separation cannot be far ahead.
Yet Jesus decides to travel through Samaria on his way to Galilee. To avoid Samaria would have effectively doubled his travel time. And he talks to this person at the well who is not only a Samaritan, but a woman. Her first reaction is, as Burridge puts it, a "disbelieving, even sarcastic reply--'are you talking to me?!'"
If Jesus can talk to this unaccompanied Samaritan woman in the middle of Samaria, can we really not follow his example and engage each other in conversation?
Peace,
Jeffri
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