THE WOMAN AT THE WELL

By the time of Jesus, the enmity between Jews and Samaritans had been ongoing for at least 600 years. Imagine the Jews being told over and over throughout the centuries that they are not the real Israelites: the Samaritans were. Thus, the Samaritans had the original Pentateuch written by Moses. [Incidentally, if you compare the Samaritan Pentateuch with the Jewish version, there are at least 6000 differences.] And that they worshipped God in the right place, Mount Gerizim in Shechem, and that the bastardized Jewish sect founded by Kings David and Solomon based in the Jerusalem Temple was an abomination before God.

Imagine the Chosen People being told over and over throughout the centuries that they are not really the Chosen People. The Samaritans were.

Sunday's John 4 lection notes this centuries-old enmity. Moreover, as the disciples's suprise show, Jesus was talking not just with the enemy, but a female at that!

I love this narrative. It is the longest pericope in the gospels where Jesus is in conversation with another person. This might be the one moment in the Gospels that Jesus meets his match. They speak as equals. They talk about their own faith traditions. They talk about their differences. And they talk about their people's hope. Not one moment do they treat each other as enemies.

My friends, I love this narrative. I pray you do too.

P.S. Let us not forget that a well was the setting for the unions of Rebekah and Isaac, Rachel and Jacob, and Zipporah and Moses.

*art, "Jesus’s and the Samaritan Woman," JESUS MAFA, Cameroon 1973, from the Vanderbilt Divinity Library digital archives.