In today’s Gospel we heard about the
Samaritan women who met Jesus at the well. After asking her for a drink and
receiving a shocked response, Jesus tells her: ‘if you
knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink and he would have
given you living water’ (John 4:10). At first she fails to understand
the significance of this, but He goes on to explain that ‘the water I give them will become in them a spring of water
welling up to eternal life’ (John 4:14). The promise of eternal life is
evident, but the most incredible part is that the woman to whom it is promised
doesn’t fit any of the stereotypes of someone who people in that time expected
to get to Heaven!
This
woman came from a race that historically did not associate with Jews. In fact,
simply by speaking with her Jesus would have been considered ceremoniously
unclean by others of His religion. She’d had five husbands and wasn’t married
to the one she currently lived with, which even today would draw judgement from
many people. So why did He approach
her? Why did He risk His reputation
for her? Because Jesus didn’t live for
safety or tradition. He lived to spread a message of love to all of
humanity. He was fearless in His radical
interactions with people who didn’t fit the cultural or religious ideal…
and in His radical attitude towards women. In this story Jesus’ behaviour is
radical for the time in several ways:
He ministered to an
outcast.
He interacted with a
woman.
He accepted a gift from
a Samaritan.
He forgave her sins and
made no judgement.
I love this photo because it’s one of the only ones I found
where the woman wasn’t kneeling at Jesus’ feet. Here Jesus is sitting with her,
casually talking to her whilst she carries out her work, and I think that’s how
their conversation would have been! Until the point where she leaves he remains
just a man to her, so she would have had no reason to kneel at His feet -
especially as her coloured past had likely hardened her to be independent and
self-protecting. Jesus didn’t have airs and graces. He humbled himself in
becoming fully human and didn’t lose any of that humanity by also being fully
God. He spoke with the woman on equal footing, showed her nothing but love, and
didn’t look down on her despite the counter-message of the society at the
time.
Countless times in the gospels Jesus
performs healing miracles and insists His identity is not revealed. In previous
instances He hid His identity as the Son of God because faith would not be
faith if it were forced rather than freely chosen. Yet in this seemingly simple
interaction He readily admits to being the Messiah – ‘I,
the one speaking to you – I am he’ (John 4:26). They are alone with no
witnesses, and He has performed no miracle so has not proven who He is. So by telling her He is the Messiah He still
offers her the choice of faith.
That woman went on to become one of the
first evangelisers. ‘Many of the Samaritans from that
town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony’ (John 4:39). Despite her past, her
culture and her religion, she was not afraid to tell her neighbours about
Jesus. The message of the gospel is a universal one, intended to be retold over
and over again by people of every nationality, age, gender and background. Too
often fear holds us back from telling it.
Like the Samaritan woman we, too, must find the courage to speak out.
Once she had encountered Jesus she knew her life would never be the same again, and neither will ours. The
compulsion to shout about the Good News is in all of us, we just sometimes
stifle it. The temptation to fall prey to the lie that we don’t have the words
is great, but we have a gift within us – the gift of the Holy Spirit who, if we
allow it, will speak for us.
‘A time is coming when worshippers will worship
the Father in Spirit and in truth’ (John
4:23). That can be the time we live
in. Today let’s receive the
gospel and allow it to blossom within us so that the sheer joy of it is too great to hold in.
Thank you for this nice post.
ReplyDelete