the woman at the well in 2017.
When I was in youth group, every year, we went to a youth event by the United Methodist Church called Pilgrimage. This event was a weekend gathering in November that hosted a speaker, a praise band, and many other acts, skits, and testimonies that churches of the Conference contributed, and the theme of every year was based on a story of the Bible. One year, that was especially memorable to me, focused on the story of Jesus and the Samaritan Woman. What I remember more than anything from this weekend was that the speaker introduced each message by saying: "in the middle of Samaria, there was a well...", and beyond that, I don't remember much else. I could paraphrase this story but I don't believe that I have ever read it on my own. The ideas that I have about this scripture are mainly a compilation of what I have been told to take from it, rather than my own discovery.
The message of this story is typically drawn from an interpretation that focuses on the sin of the Samaritan woman and the freedom of sin that Jesus gives her. In my interpretation, I think most of the story is missing. In this short conversation, based on how I would imagine people would be strongly attached to their religious beliefs at this time, I don't believe that this conversation was as smooth and quick as it is described. This woman, who in many ways was in strong opposition with Jesus, changed her mind about everything she had ever believed in and calmly accepted Jesus' criticism in about five minutes. I don't mean to be doubtful of Jesus' goodness and evident holiness, but my idea of Jesus is not that he is a magician and puts her in a trance, nor that he is a judge pointing people out and highlighting them by their sins which is what I imagined when I read this. For me, I think it is completely possible for someone to change my mind in such a way, and make evident to me the things that I am doing wrong, but not with ease. It takes a lot of time of building trust and a friendship, and dissolving my pride, for me to take words of criticism into consideration, even if they are right. Do I believe Jesus could have done that? Absolutely. But in the five minutes that is described in the Bible? No, to me it doesn't reflect the way that I think Jesus works. It is incredible that Jesus sees through our sin but to me, the most powerful part of the story is the much longer amount of time that I believe Jesus spent with the Samaritan woman.
With the recent passing of National Coming Out Day, a day that people can celebrate their courage and pride in being themselves, I have not been able to ignore the ridicule, threat, and the ostracizing that comes along with one's decision to come out. For many years in the United States, and still in many countries today, the concept of identifying as another gender or sexual orientation was, and is, a death sentence. People who fall into the LGBTQIA+ group of society face an exponentially higher risk in living their lives in every way than do cisgender heterosexual people. Freedom of expression, access to healthcare, legal assistance, the right to marry and have children, job opportunities, the right to not be bullied, abused, or killed and many other liberties are much less available to these individuals. While there are many social groups that are considered to be on the outside of society, to me, people of this group, especially those who are transgender people of color, live outside of the circle of consideration.
The Samaritan woman's interaction with Jesus was much more than two strangers sharing a cup and a conversation and a repentance of her sins. It was Jesus seeing her, as a person because if anyone has ever been an outsider, it was her.
What we know about the Samaritan woman:
The Samaritan woman was an outsider in her sexuality, gender, marital status, socio-economic status, race, religion, nationality and she was possibly sick, disabled, and/or homeless, but it didn't stop Jesus from reminding her of her holiness too. It didn't stop him from reminding her that even she is welcome into the arms of God. To me, that is the most significant part of the story. After Jesus reveals to the Samaritan woman that he was the Messiah that she is waiting for, it says "Just then the disciples came back. They were shocked to find him talking to a woman, but none of them had the nerve to ask, "What do you want with her?" or "Why are you talking to her?" (John 4:27). Even by Jesus' greatest supporters, the men who knew who he was, Jesus was still questioned and looked at differently because he was associating with the Samaritan woman.
By not reaching out to these groups, and by keeping the Church within the church, or the comfortable limits of the Church, how am I acting like Jesus? Or better yet, how am I not acting like Jesus?
If you and I went to a public water fountain and saw a homeless, black, trans woman, who was a prostitute with HIV, would we extend our peace and friendship to her? Because that's exactly what Jesus did, and that is what he is calling the Church to do too.
The message of this story is typically drawn from an interpretation that focuses on the sin of the Samaritan woman and the freedom of sin that Jesus gives her. In my interpretation, I think most of the story is missing. In this short conversation, based on how I would imagine people would be strongly attached to their religious beliefs at this time, I don't believe that this conversation was as smooth and quick as it is described. This woman, who in many ways was in strong opposition with Jesus, changed her mind about everything she had ever believed in and calmly accepted Jesus' criticism in about five minutes. I don't mean to be doubtful of Jesus' goodness and evident holiness, but my idea of Jesus is not that he is a magician and puts her in a trance, nor that he is a judge pointing people out and highlighting them by their sins which is what I imagined when I read this. For me, I think it is completely possible for someone to change my mind in such a way, and make evident to me the things that I am doing wrong, but not with ease. It takes a lot of time of building trust and a friendship, and dissolving my pride, for me to take words of criticism into consideration, even if they are right. Do I believe Jesus could have done that? Absolutely. But in the five minutes that is described in the Bible? No, to me it doesn't reflect the way that I think Jesus works. It is incredible that Jesus sees through our sin but to me, the most powerful part of the story is the much longer amount of time that I believe Jesus spent with the Samaritan woman.
With the recent passing of National Coming Out Day, a day that people can celebrate their courage and pride in being themselves, I have not been able to ignore the ridicule, threat, and the ostracizing that comes along with one's decision to come out. For many years in the United States, and still in many countries today, the concept of identifying as another gender or sexual orientation was, and is, a death sentence. People who fall into the LGBTQIA+ group of society face an exponentially higher risk in living their lives in every way than do cisgender heterosexual people. Freedom of expression, access to healthcare, legal assistance, the right to marry and have children, job opportunities, the right to not be bullied, abused, or killed and many other liberties are much less available to these individuals. While there are many social groups that are considered to be on the outside of society, to me, people of this group, especially those who are transgender people of color, live outside of the circle of consideration.
The Samaritan woman's interaction with Jesus was much more than two strangers sharing a cup and a conversation and a repentance of her sins. It was Jesus seeing her, as a person because if anyone has ever been an outsider, it was her.
What we know about the Samaritan woman:
- She was a woman. Rarely in the Bible, are women mentioned, and if they are, while there are few women that are described as courageous, there are mainly two roles that they play. The first is the woman who is obedient, pious, and pure; for example Mary, Ruth, or Sarah. These woman are calm and do not question or resist the commands of God or their husbands (even if they have other wives and concubines). The second is the maleficent or the temptress who plots or causes the demise of nations or individual Godly men, for example Eve, Jezebel, or Delilah. The fact that the Samaritan woman is mentioned at all, and the fact that Jesus was with her alone, is significant in relation to the Bible's normal portrayal of women.
- She was alone. In this day, it was both dangerous and telling of a woman to leave her house unaccompanied. Unless she is called somewhere by God, it is very rare that we read about a woman leaving her house without being joined by her husband or another woman. I do not know if the Samaritan woman was called by God to meet Jesus that day but I suppose it is a possibility, but normally, an unaccompanied woman could have signified that she was promiscuous. Considering that she is living with a man that she is not married to, and that Jesus pointed it out, we can assume that that was the case.
- She was out at "noontime". If she had time to travel to the well and sit down for a while, she was probably unemployed and poor. It also could have been a sign that she was not approved by the community and it would not have been safe for her to be at the well when other people were around.
- She was unmarried. While today, in some countries, being an unmarried woman is a decision that a woman can make, then, it was not. Unless the husband of a woman had recently died, being unmarried signified that some quality of the woman deemed her unworthy to be the wife of a man. This could have been something physical, such as a disability, an illness, or the inability to have children, or it could have been something conceptual like her family ties or her reputation. This woman had been married multiple times so her "defect" was probably a combination of a few of these things.
- She was a Samaritan. The Samaritans were a people that developed due to a split in a traditional Jewish belief, and over time, this division intensified. The alienation, the separation, and the focus on what made the two groups different from each other evolved into an extreme hatred, and in the eyes of a Jew, the Samaritans were unclean, uneducated, and dangerous.
The Samaritan woman was an outsider in her sexuality, gender, marital status, socio-economic status, race, religion, nationality and she was possibly sick, disabled, and/or homeless, but it didn't stop Jesus from reminding her of her holiness too. It didn't stop him from reminding her that even she is welcome into the arms of God. To me, that is the most significant part of the story. After Jesus reveals to the Samaritan woman that he was the Messiah that she is waiting for, it says "Just then the disciples came back. They were shocked to find him talking to a woman, but none of them had the nerve to ask, "What do you want with her?" or "Why are you talking to her?" (John 4:27). Even by Jesus' greatest supporters, the men who knew who he was, Jesus was still questioned and looked at differently because he was associating with the Samaritan woman.
By not reaching out to these groups, and by keeping the Church within the church, or the comfortable limits of the Church, how am I acting like Jesus? Or better yet, how am I not acting like Jesus?
If you and I went to a public water fountain and saw a homeless, black, trans woman, who was a prostitute with HIV, would we extend our peace and friendship to her? Because that's exactly what Jesus did, and that is what he is calling the Church to do too.
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