"Jesus replied, "If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to..." (John 4:10 NLT)
Jesus was speaking to a Samaritan woman at a well in the middle of the day.
This sentence is unsurprising to us because of our culture and our familiarity with scripture. We know the story. We speak to strangers, foreigners and women all the time, without a second thought. In Jewish culture, however, such casual conversations did not occur. Not with Samaritans. And certainly not with women.
David Guzik writes about the rabbis fierce commitment to tradition. As a rule, they did not risk spiritual contamination in common areas. The priest in Jesus’ Samaritan parable was only following protocol, stepping to the far side of the street to avoid any contact with blood, death, and heresy. Most rabbis refused to speak to women in public, even their wives. (I can only imagine how well that went over in the privacy of the parsonage!) There are stories of ‘the bruised and bleeding’ Pharisees who close their eyes at the sight of a woman and wound up walking into walls and buildings.
Consider what it would be like to be a woman in such a culture. Marginalized. Invisible. Powerless. Preyed upon. This woman at the well, the one drawing water in the heat of the day, the one who had five husbands and a live-in boyfriend; she was making her way in a era that actively diminished the basic rights and value of women. Is it any wonder she wound up with so few choices?
Not only was she a woman, she was also a Samaritan. This is another tough concept for us to grasp. The Samaritan people date back to the Babylonian invasion of Israel in 597 BC. When the Babylonians conquered the Jewish nation, they intentionally stripped the the land of any valuable resources, including people. They rounded up all the skilled, intelligent and upper crust folks – those that had education or talent – and left behind the lower class. The destitute sat in a ransacked country for seventy years. It seems they did what they could to survive. They made treaties with neighboring nations through intermarriage. They assembled a more accessible temple on Mount Gerizim and they fell headlong into syncretism: a strange melding of Jewish faith and the superstitions of their bedfellows.
When Babylon fell and the more desirable Jews returned to Israel, they did so with great disdain for the folks forced to stay behind. A fracture developed between the Jews and the Samaritans. Hundreds of years only widened it.
Jesus knew all this and intentionally stepped around it. He saw the Samaritan women and treated her with dignity. He spoke with her and offered her wholeness, despite of her lineage and her personal sinful history. It was absolutely countercultural and unbelievably compassionate.
Today I am comforted by the fact that Jesus still sees what others refuse to look at or acknowledge. He speaks to the stranger, the social outcast, the syncretist, the woman of ill-repute. No one beyond His compassion and regard.
He sees and He knows. The woman at the well didn’t reveal anything about her life that Jesus wasn’t already all-familiar with. Jesus continues to operate with empathy for His people: the acceptable and marginalized alike. He is aware of every contribution that led up to our current condition: external and internal. He sees. He understands. And He offers a wholeness we cannot possess apart from Him. We are refreshed when we receive Him at His word.
"But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them external life." (John 4:14 NLT)
Lord, today we are grateful that You see us in any condition. What others avoid or insult, You acknowledge and address. You give dignity to those ravaged by sin. As spiritual paupers, we are overjoyed. May we receive Your word with delight and devotion. Restore us as we respond to Your disproportionate compassion. Amen.