2020.03.22 The Good Samaritan and the Good Jew—In Conversation

People on planet earth in 2020 are arrested, quarantined because of a viral pandemic that is spread by human contact. We are to avoid each other when we need each other most. The virus, COVID-19, is particularly life-threatening to people over sixty, people with compromised immune systems, heart or lung disease, the homeless, and the poor.

How long, Lord? We are prescribed certain protective behaviors, yet there is no guarantee. We are told to avoid human contact and physically isolate. If we are obedient to all this, will we stay healthy? For how long?  We fear and we hope.

My own feeling is one of unsettledness, almost like being suspended between nothing and nothing, trapped like a spider in an intricate web of fear and hope, and I don’t know which thread to grab onto and trust. Which to choose, given that there is no definitive timeline?

Fear and hope interlock.

Is there a biblical story like this, a story in which fear and hope interlock? What popped into my mind was a story in John’s gospel in which two people, a Samaritan and a Jew, meet at an ancient sacred site, Jacob’s well. Centuries of cultural/religious prejudice about the enmity between Samaritans and Jews prescribed what each should do. Instead these two have a conversation.

You might expect me to say that the Samaritan was the one with fear, she being a woman of dubious reputation, having had several husbands and who knows what else, and Jesus was the righteous one who brought hope and all thing good. I would suggest however that if we freeze the scenario and look into it with open hearts we see two human beings, strangers, each with a need and a decision to make, each with fear and hope battling in their hearts.

Jesus was a traveling evangelist with a mission who had met with hostility because he had baptized more people than his cousin John the Baptizer. Enter sibling rivalry, even if it wasn’t true. Jesus decided to return to his home territory of Galilee. To do so he had to pass through Samaria— enemy territory. It was a long journey on foot, it was midday, and he was tired, sweaty, and most of all thirsty. There was the well of Jacob and his sons. Jesus knew the tradition of the ancients who came to worship at this well and of the hostilities that had evolved about land in Israel. Still, he was thirsty, and he had no bucket.

The woman knew all about history and her own situation. She was alone. She came to draw water. Jesus presented a challenge when he asked her to draw water and give him a drink. It could be risky. The wise thing to do would be to flee, but then she needed to fetch water, and she had something he needed. So she boldly engaged him in a conversation, a challenge really. “How can you a Jew ask a drink of me, a Samaritan? “ 

Why does she say yes, and why does he pursue the conversation? Leaving aside the temptation to project our own religious or gender biases, or to give Jesus the Christian edge, because John inserted a small and lovely homily about living waters, an obvious add-on. I want to stay with the two people. Jesus and the Samaritan woman stood on equal ground, each with something to say, each with a need and a choice to make, each with some fear and each with some hope.

Why does she say yes to an enemy, and why risk a whole conversation? I don’t think it was just because he magically knew all about her reputation and history; nor was it because she spotted her next potential husband; nor was it because he offered a new spirituality of living water for her soul. I think she gave him what he needed, because she had a bucket, because he did not condemn her, and because she had a warm heart.

Why did Jesus ask something of her, an enemy?  I do not think it was because he spotted an opportunity to convert her or make her into the latest greatest evangelist for his proclamation, nor because there was any sexual attraction. I think he asked because he was thirsty, she had a bucket, and because he saw her warm heart.

Together they made something new. In them we see hope and fear interlock. Can we do likewise in this time of hope and fear?