SIT, DRINK, AND TALK

In Sunday's Gospel Reading from John 4, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman—someone doubly marginalized: ethnically suspect, religiously “other,” and socially vulnerable. Many readings treat her as the first missionary and this encounter as an evangelistic crusade template. I see two empire-wounded people meeting at a well, both shaped by histories larger than themselves. 

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. Both are truthful. And they talk about their people's hopes. Not one moment do they treat each other as estranged. 

The narrative challenges us to recognize ourselves not as neutral observers but as active conversation partners. Like the woman at the well, we bring our histories into the encounter. And Jesus meets us there—not demanding sameness, but celebrating difference as divine gift. 

My friends, I love this narrative. I pray you do too. God's miracles happen when people take time to sit, drink, and talk. 

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

P. S. S. Today, close to one billion women, many of whom are girls, spend hours each day just fetching safe water. I've always argued that the Samaritan woman was in a similar situation. 

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

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