Welcome to Week 4 of Water Daily. And I’ve hit my first lectionary obstacle – I don’t want to spend the week ferreting out the Good News in the gospel passage appointed for next Sunday. It is one of those harsh, Jesus-having-a-mood-swing passages that are important to perspective but challenging. And hey, it’s still summertime. So I’m choosing another, a story that goes deep, and deeper still.
This is the story of an encounter between Jesus and a foreign woman, maybe even a loose woman, on a hot day. Jesus is on his way from Judea back to Galilee, and he has to pass through Samaria… foreign territory for a Jew. So the story takes place “out of bounds” – but in a historically holy place, near the well that the patriarch Jacob had given to Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
His disciples go off to town to buy some food, and Jesus rests by the well. A woman comes out to the well – high noon is not the usual time for drawing water. But it is a good time for a gunfight – and we’re about to see a good verbal skirmish. It begins when Jesus asks her to draw some water for him. She says, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.).
Samaritans were descendants of the original northern kingdom of Israel which, for a time under King David, was united with Judea in the south. But when the leaders in Jerusalem decreed that all worship was to take place in the temple there and no longer in the many other sacred sites of Israel, a division began which eventually separated Jews from Samaritans. Sometimes family feuds result in much deeper enmity than other conflicts.
So right away we see Jesus crossing – violating? – all kinds of barriers. There is an ethnic barrier, a gender barrier, a religious barrier – as a Jewish man and a rabbi, he should not be talking with a woman alone. As we will see, something amazing occurs because both Jesus and this unnamed woman cross those boundaries. We might even say that the life of God is always to be found when we go out of our comfort zone and into foreign territory, into the life of the Other.
Where have you encountered the life of God in a place or a person you did not expect?
Who are some “Others” you are leery of getting to know, whom the Spirit might be prompting you to discover? What boundaries of age, profession, gender, sexuality, race, political affiliation, opinion might you be invited to tiptoe across?
In prayer today, I invite you to hold an image of a problematic “Other” in your mind for a moment.
Ask yourself what you have in common with that person or group.
Ask God to show you what God loves in that person or group.
You might pray for God’s blessing on that person or group.
If you’re open to it, pray for an opportunity to have an encounter with someone very different from you, in which you might share yourself honestly and hear the other person's story.
(And if you’re not open to it… there’s another prayer.)
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