My attention is drawn to the woman’s response to Jesus… “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman.  How can you ask me for a drink?”

The key here is the seemingly insignificant phrase ask me for.  On the surface, it would seem that she is questioning Jesus’ unusual request.  Consider the cultural implications. No Jew would share a cup with a Samaritan.  A Jewish man wouldn’t been seen talking to a woman in public, let alone a Samaritan woman.  In fact, a Jewish man would not even talk in the street with his mother, his sister, his daughter or even his wife!  There was even a group of Pharisees known as the “bleeding and bruised” Pharisees, because when they saw a woman approaching in the street, they would close their eyes.  They got their name because they were always walking into things!

And yet here we find Jesus, a Jewish Rabbi, asking a Samaritan woman for a drink.  What is significant about this phrase ask me for is the meaning behind it. 
The Greek word is aiteo, and it literally means to ask for, to request, to beg.  But it is the action of the word that is interesting, because it has the idea of a slave begging his master, or a subordinate appealing to his superior.  Now that might not mean much, until you compare it to the other word which can be translated as ask.  That word is erotao, which also means to ask or to request.  The difference between the two is this… erotao is used when one appeals to a peer or a friend for something.    It is the word used on every occasion that Jesus petitions His Father for something.  Do see the implication here?  Jesus, a Jewish man, asks for a drink of water from a Samaritan woman, with an attitude of humility and respect that one would expect to see from a slave to his master.

How extraordinary.  With one short request, “Will you give me a drink?”, Jesus manages to cut through hundreds of years of hatred and suspicion.  Just maybe, for the first time in her life, this woman at the well has been treated as a person of value.  This opened the door to a conversation that allowed Jesus to show the woman who he really was, the promised Messiah.

This story raises some big questions for me personally.  It also raises some big questions for the Church.  One of those questions is this… How do I treat the people I come across in life?  Do I see them as the enemy, as people to be avoided. Or do I see them as people who have value in God’s eyes?

Have you ever noticed that Jesus was tired from his journey?  The Greek word for tired is kopiao, which means weariness causes by a beating.  To put it in modern terms… Jesus was exhausted.  Question…  How can the Son of God be exhausted?  The answer is quite simple.  Jesus was a man who had just walked a difficult and demanding road through some very barren and harsh country.  It was more than likely hot and dry and it would seem that they were not carrying a lot of supplies.  I recon that if you or I had just walked 6 hours through an arid landscape, we would be a little exhausted too.   And so Jesus sits down, probably in the shade of a date palm, next to Jacob’s Well, near the town of Sychar.

He sat there, resting, while the disciples went on into Sychar to buy some food.  Once again, we are faced with a significant dilemma.  No self respecting Jew would ever eat Samaritan food.  In fact, there was a Rabbinical teaching that went like this… “Let no Israelite eat one mouthful of any thing that is a Samaritan’s; for if he eat but a little mouthful, he is as if he ate swine’s flesh”.  In other words… he makes himself unclean.

I wonder, did Jesus command them to go into the town?  We don’t know.  Perhaps Jesus’ character was beginning to rub off on them.  Have you ever  walked through a market place in a foreign country. I have. Every eye is focused in your direction.  People are watching, mostly out of curiosity.  In this case, the Disciples were being watch with suspicion.  ‘Why are there a group of Jewish men in our market?  And why are they buying food from us?  What do they want?’  Imagine how the disciples felt.  And yet there they were, shopping in a Samaritan market.

Meanwhile, back at the well, Jesus looks up to see a woman approaching.  I wonder if she saw him?  Imagine her surprise when, out of the shadows steps a man, who asks her for a drink of water.

As I have been reading through this story of the encounter that Jesus had with a Samaritan woman by a well, I have been particularly drawn to the way Jesus interacts with the woman.  For me, this story highlights God’s incredible love for the marginalised.

The following few posts are some of my reflections from this story…

Now he had to go through Samaria.  Almost straight away we are confronted by a glaring inconsistency.  The reality is that Jesus did not have to go through Samaria to get from Judea to Galilee.  In fact, no self respecting Jew would ever go that way.  Even though the direct route between Judea and Galilee was a three day journey through the heart of Samaritan territory, any Jewish person making that journey would head east, cross the Jordan River and skirt around Samaria, often adding many days to the trip.

This intense and bitter hatred between the Jews and the Samaritans had been stewing for centuries.  The most common view as to the origin of the Samaritans is that they were a mongrel breed who developed as a result of intermarriage between earlier Hebrews of the northern kingdom of Israel, and the Assyrian settlers in Israel following the captivity of the northern kingdom in 722 B.C. Over the coming decades, pagans from other lands moved into Samaria and were integrated into the Samaritan culture. This hatred ran deep.  In fact, there was a Jewish saying: “May I never set eyes on a Samaritan”.

And so we find Jesus traveling through Samaria on his way to Galilee.  The little phrase… he had to… is significant.  It implies that Jesus’ decision to go that way was intentional.  It was part of God’s plan for what He wanted to do through His son.  The journey through Samaria was no short cut… it was planned.

It had been just under a week since the wedding at Cana and Jesus’ family had hardly been home a few days when they all set off again, this time for Jerusalem. It was nearly time to celebrate the Passover.

Not long after arriving in Jerusalem, Jesus and the disciples went up to the temple. The streets around the temple were crowded and there was a carnival atmosphere in the air. The sights, smells and sounds were almost overwhelming. Some people were cooking and selling food. Others were selling material and woven goods like baskets and mats. And they were doing good business because there were so many visitors in the city for the Festival.

As Jesus and the disciples approached the temple, they could hear the sounds of the worshippers inside. They made their way into the courtyard and paused to take in the scene. Suddenly, without warning, Jesus rushed off towards one of the stalls. He grabbed some ropes and began swinging them around like a whip. What he did next took everyone, especially the disciples, by surprise.

He wen right up to the men who were selling oxen and sheep and started cracking his homemade whip. The noise caused the animals to bolt in every direction. Within a few seconds, there was complete pandemonium as Jesus chased the animals and their owners out of the temple complex. The disciples didn’t know what to do. They just stood there, their mouths opened in astonishment.

The dust had hardly settled when Jesus rushed back into the courtyard, went straight over to the money changing tables and tipped them over. Coins from all over the world went rolling all over the floor. The noise was deafening.

But it was the men selling doves that got the hot end of the stick. Jesus stormed up to them and yelled, “Get these thing out of here!” Looking around he continued, “Stop turning my Fathers house into a marketplace!”

The dove sellers started to gather their bird cages, worried that this crazy man might tip them over. The last thing they wanted was to loose their precious income. After all, it was the Passover and hundreds of visitors were coming to the temple and they needed to be able to buy something to offer as a sacrifice. Not there was anything wrong with. It was a common practice. Required even. But the temple was supposed to be a place of prayer, not a market.

I wonder what things crowd our ‘place of prayer’? Maybe it’s time to clear out a few distractions. Things that stop us from spending time with God. Noisy things that crowd our thinking. Maybe it’s time to get tough. Jesus was certainly passionate about it. I wonder, how passionate are we about the things that actually matter to God?

The mid afternoon sun belted down on the coarse river sand, making it almost too hot to stand on.  There was a slight breeze blowing down the valley as the two men stood at the edge of the river, discussing with their teacher the people who had been baptized that morning.  Without warning, the teacher pointed to a man who was walking along the top of the river bank.  “Look”, he said, interrupting the conversation. “The Lamb of God!”

The two men looked up. They had seen this man before.  Two days ago, their teacher, known as John the Baptist, had baptized him in the river.  Apparently , they were cousins.  And just yesterday this same man, who’s name was Jesus,  had turned up and John had started going on about how he was “…the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”

The two men glanced at each other, excused themselves from their teacher and headed up the steep river bank.  They weren’t entirely sure what they were going to say when they caught up with the man, but their curiosity had got the better of them and they wanted to see what this guy was all about.  As they came up behind him, he turned, catching them by surprise.  After an awkward pause, that seemed to last for ever, the man asked them, “What are you looking for?”  Fumbling for words, one of the men replied, “Rabbi, where are you staying?”  As soon as the words come out of his mouth he felt a little uncomfortable that he had asked such a personal question.

But to their surprise, Jesus warmly invited them, “Come, and you will see.”  So they followed him and saw where he was staying.  In fact, they spent the rest of the day with him, talking together.  One of the men was called Andrew, and he was so taken by Jesus that at some point during the evening, he went out to look for his brother.  “Simon, we have found the Messiah!”  So Simon went with Andrew to meet this man called Jesus.  His life would never be the same.

One of the great paradoxes of the Gospels revolves around Jesus being fully God and fully man.  At the same time.  I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately and I have come to be quite settled with this simple explanation…

Jesus had a God card, which he could have played at any time. He chose not to.

I can live with that.