Jesus and The Samaritan Woman

            When we were in the Holy Land, we stopped at Jacob’s well where Jesus is recorded to have been on his travels, and where he met the Samaritan woman recorded in John’s Gospel in that wonderful story.  He asks her for a drink, and the woman says to him: what, you a Jew are asking me a Samaritan for a drink? It was the custom that Jews and Samaritans never did things for each other, going back to an ancient feud that erupted when Nebuchadnezzar conquered the Northern Kingdom and the population was integrated into the people who followed him and the tribes in the North simply disappeared.  The more or less faithful Jews in the South refused to have anything to do with those who were the people of Samaria in what had been the Northern Kingdom.

             When we stopped at the well, we bought a little ceramic jar with water from the well in it.  I still have it on a shelf in the bedroom.  It always reminds me of the story about that woman.  She and Jesus have an animated discussion that takes them very deep into theology and into her life. 

            Jesus tells her that if she knew who it was who was asking for water, she would ask him for a drink and he would give her living water, and she would never be thirsty again.  She asks him for some of this water and he tells her to go and get her husband.  She replies that she has no husband.  Jesus tells her that she speaks the truth; that she has had five husbands, and the man she is currently living with is not her husband.  She is astonished at this deep insight into her life by this man whom she has just met at the well. 

            What is marvelous about this exchange is how she reacts.  She goes into the town, where there are more people clustered around the town’s well and she tells them to come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done. Jesus has made a believer out of her, simply by having a non-judgemental conversation with her.

            What is wonderful to me about all of this is that the reason that she went all the way out of the town to Jacob’s well is that she didn’t want to be among the other women in the town because of their judgement and their conversation about her.  She got no judgement from Jesus, only love and acceptance for who she is. 

           

            That is a lesson for all of us in this repentant season of Lent when we are all trying to cleanse ourselves of our life’s blemishes in preparation for Easter.  It really isn’t helpful to judge others.  It always brings the reminder that when we judge others, we open ourselves up to judgement also. What continues my amazement is that the people of the town believed what she said and flocked into the desert to see this man that she described.  Her astonishment at him was so apparent that they couldn’t help but be impressed with her, and also with Jesus.  That to me is a profound lesson in evangelism.  Being ourselves is the issue, not what we say, but who we are.  That is how we attract others to the place where we have become comfortable in our faith.  Showing it in our lives is all that we are called to do.  Those who yell their faith the loudest seem to me to make the least difference.  St. Francis told his followers:  Go and preach the Gospel.  Use words if necessary.  That is all that we need to hear.