19.03.06 Michael The Woman at the Well John 4
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The
Samaritans were a minority in Israel – they worshipped on Mount
Gerazim, had their own Temple, and version of the Hebrew scriptures
and did not recognise – were not recognised – at the Temple in
Jerusalem. They were descendents not of the children of Abraham but
of Babylonians and other Mesopotamian peoples – they lived in
Samaria because the Assyrian Empire had moved them there generations
before today’s story, at the time of the Exile. 2 Kings 17 tells
the story and it is an intriguing passage. Empire still moves people
around even today – I could not help thinking when I reread this
story of the present invaders of Babylon and their attempts to
establish Western style capitalism and ‘democracy’ in Iraq. The
passage today speaks of lions going around among the people trying to
kill them – instead of the lions the occupying forces in Iraq face
car bombs but the analogy is clear – when we move to other
countries we need to learn their customs, their ways, we need to
understand their languages and traditions, and to respect their gods.
If we don’t do this we risk ill health, culture shock, mental and
even physical disorders.
I well remember visiting Malacca when we first went to Malaysia – Malacca had been successively settled by Portugese, Dutch and English and I, and hence we, were sent by the Bishop of West Malaysia for two weeks to take services there over Christmas and New Year in a Dutch style church which now serves as the Anglican Church in Malacca. We had a lot of time to look round and we climbed a hill in the centre of town where there was a cemetery and buried in it were many of those who had gone to this tropical town in previous centuries as missionaries and pastors and prematurely died. It was a sobering moment – we survived our five years in Malaysia and moved to another foreign land whose customs and tribal ways I am still trying to understand!
This story of the woman at the well is a story about displacement and exile, religious conflict and racial discrimination. The Samaritan woman is described as a harlot, a prostitute who has had five men and is living with another - prostitution is the Prophetic metaphor for idolatry and unfaithfulness to the God of Israel. Tradition had it that the Samaritans were descendants of five peoples moved to Samaria by the King of Assyria – the woman represents these five groups and their mixed religious practices – they set up their own gods, even sacrificed their children to them, and at the same time attempted to worship the God of Israel.
The position of the Samaritans was made still worse by their more recent experiences at the hands of Galileans. The memory of these experiences is clearly preserved in the Gospels, and particularly in this passage from Luke 9. 51:
When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem . When his disciples James and John saw this, they said, "Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" But he turned and rebuked them. Then they went on to another village.
Josephus, the first century Roman historian explains the background:
It was the custom of the Galileans, when they came to the Holy City at the festivals, to take their journeys through the country of the Samaritans. On their route lay a village called Ginea, which was situated on the border between Samaria and the Great Plain, and at this time certain persons fought with the Galileans, and killed a great many of them. When the leaders of the Galileans were informed of what had been done they came to (the Roman Procurator) Cumanus and desired him to avenge the murders; but he was bribed by the Samaritans to do nothing. The Galileans, indignant at this, urged the Jewish populace to resort to arms and to regain their liberty, saying that while slavery was a bitter thing but that, when it was joined with direct injuries it was completely intolerable....they entreated the assistance of Eleazar son of Dineus, a robber who had for many years made his home in the mountains, and with his assistance they set afire and plundered many villages of the Samaritans.
From their older history of forced migrations and exiles there remained great hostility between Jews and Samaritans that these three stories all in different ways represent. The incident described in the Gospels, and by Josephus, was so close to a civil war that the Romans punished it fiercely and beheaded and crucified hundreds, and also deposed Cumanus for another procurator.
In the light of this history this already extraordinary story becomes all the more remarkable. Jesus in talking with the Samaritan woman not only breaks the codes of hostility between Jew and Samaritan – something he also does in the parable of the Good Samaritan (a highly offensive idea to Jews and especially Galileans) but he addresses her as a real person when he asks for her help. Jesus does not hide that he is tired and thirsty and he asks her to give him a drink. She responds out of her own shame at being so asked for a drink but Jesus persists – he recalls the tragic past of her people, and offers hope that that past can be transcended in his offer of living water, an offer she at first mocks with heavy irony but soon comes to see as real. And by offering her living water Jesus offers her the possibility, out of her brokenness, to become a source of life to others.
As Jean Vanier comments on this passage:
Jesus invites her, and each one of us, to revisit our past in truth: not just to analyze and remain trapped in it but to be liberated from its hold. Jesus gently and lovingly touches on the heart of her problem with his words ‘go and call your husband and come back’ the conversation recalls the whole sorry history of her people – the five peoples, their five alien gods, their rejection by the Jews and their recent and terrible treatment at their hands. And it ends in that place of division where they remain – over the question of the truth of their religion – where to worship God, at their local cult or in Jerusalem.
Jesus’ answer – the Spirit will bring true religion, true worship, into the place of the heart. There will be no more need for a Temple, here or there, and no more occasion for being cut off from the grace and love of God.
And this message really gets through to her – at last she sees who is addressing her and from the fullness she receives, she rushes off to town to witness to her new found love.
It is hard for us perhaps to enter into the world of exile, forced imperial displacement, civil war, violent conflict. But perhaps not – it is not as if the news which we read or hear or see in our homes every day is not full of such stories.
The story of this transforming conversation at the well tells us quite clearly that acknowledging Christ as Lord offers us liberation from such terrors.
But HOW does it do this, for others or for us?
I was struck last week by the story of the Bristol vicar who could not forgive the terrorists who attacked tube trains and buses in July last year whose terror attacks had killed her son. She has decided to resign as vicar because she cannot forgive.
I thought this was a tragic story.
Some of us carry memories of being in exile, being hurt, being victimised, being the scape goat, being bullied or harassed or just left behind.
The story of Jesus and the Samaritan Woman can serve as a wonderful story about the healing of such memories. The point about this story is that it does not deny the terrible vicious history to which she, and her fellow Samaritans, had fallen victim, both in terms of violence, and of a culture corrupted by violence.
There are two ways to react to these kinds of experiences – one is to hold the hurt and then seek to revisit it on others. How often in life we encounter people – perhaps at work or in a family situation – who having been hurt themselves then make it their business to hurt others.
The other is to acknowledge the depth of the hurt, to be with the pain – to be realistic about its causes. This is what we find in this rich story. And then to go with Christ to a new place – and it is not an exterior but an interior place – neither in Samaria nor in Jerusalem – where He can heal us and renew us.
You may say easier said than done.
I recommend as a device meditation. It is the most effective means I know.
Take this passage and treat it Ignatian style – imagine you are the one Jesus meets at the well. Put yourself in the place of the Samaritan woman. Taste the water, feel the warm desert wind on your face and the sand under your feet, smell the warm air below the village on the hill, see the village in the desert, see the road along which Jesus approaches the well.
Then find yourself in a conversation with Jesus. Just like with the Samaritan woman he takes you through your own history of victimage, of suffering, of pain – and he sees to the heart of it and to its effects on your own heart, to your desires to protect yourself, to construct false identities, material bulwarks against the possibility of it happening again – these are the idols we set alongside our worship of God. We are driven to them not because we truly love them but because we dare not risk all having once been unloved, hurt, damaged; Christ says, as he says to the woman, let go of these false securities, they do not meet your real needs – any more than water for drinking can slake a longing to be loved, though other kinds of drink may dull the pain of having been unloved.
God is Spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.
The Spirit lives in us – the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, present to us now, analogous to Christ’s being present to the woman at the well.
After this intimate conversation with God we may find ourselves like the woman of Samaria after she saw Christ – unable to return to her old life as it was before, in love in a new way, and empowered to witness; to new possibilities, to new life, and to the joy of new and profound love as we are drawn to the source and object of our deepest longing.
The old sage has it ‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’. But from this story we learn, as Jean Vanier suggests that it is better to have been broken in love ‘for those of us who realize that we are broken, lost and unloved the revelation of Jesus is wonderful news. When we become aware of how lonely and thirsty we are and how much we need the love of God’ which Christ freely offers – and then we will ask of Christ, as the woman at the well ‘give me those waters that I may not thirst’.