No one can help the circumstances they are born into. God fashions and forms our fragile frames and sends us forth into families and cultures which shape the way we perceive reality as we grow. We are not bound to these beginnings; however, it seems as though the more vile our roots, the more potent their inertia and unless we are shaken into the light we will likely recycle familiar tragedies, wearing them as stained hand-me-downs.
In John 3-5, the gospel writer tells of Jesus’ interaction with three individuals who, if they met at a social function, would likely have had nothing to do with each other. At first glance there is nothing which unites Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, and the cripple man lying beside Bethesda, save their profound need for a Savior. Jesus, from the water’s edge, calls each:
To Nicodemus:
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (3:5).
To the Samaritan woman:
If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water’ (4:10).
To the man at Bethesda:
When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him. ‘Do you want to be healed?’ The sick man answered him, ‘Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me’ (5:6-7)
Let’s begin with the Samaritan woman in John 4:
The view from Mount Gerizim toward a foggy Mount Ebal. Shechem (Nabulus) lies below.
Her History
The Assyrian Empire invaded and captured Samaria (the tribal territories of Ephraim and Manasseh) in 722 B.C. Many were beaten, bound and sent into exile. A few remained. The same fate befell Judah 150 years later. The temple was destroyed, few were able to avoid exile to Babylon (some fled to Egypt). After Babylon was defeated by the Persians, Ezra and (later) Nehemiah were allowed to return and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. The Samaritans were upset. Their severely shrunken community had remain faithful to the sacrificial system (atop Gerizim) throughout both exiles. For them, the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem had changed nothing. Darius’ (the emperor of Persia) granting permission for the Jews to rebuild was taken as an affront. Alexander captured Persia, the Greeks were kind to the Samaritans and the sacrifices continued. Two centuries later, the Maccabean revolt ignited. The Samaritans were understood as Hellenized half-breeds. A massacre ensued, the Samaritan temple was torn down, and Jerusalem solidified its place as the monotheistic capital of the world.
About 60 years after the Hasmonean (Maccabean) dynasty fell, Jesus shows up. At this point, both Samaria and Judah are definitively in the hands of the Rome Empire, but the angst between the Jews and Samaritans remains. Samaritans and Jews don’t associate with each other. While Samaritans point to Gerizim (the place they believe the Garden of Eden existed, Noah’s Ark rested, and the binding of Isaac occurred), the Jews point to Jerusalem.
The Samartian Levite we had the opportunity to meet with
Today, only 750 Samaritans remain. They are a proud people, they keep the bloody sacrificial ordinance of Passover, maintain strict devotion to the God of the Pentateuch (their Bible includes only the first five books of the Old Testament), and intermarry (unfortunately, their shrinking gene pool means that intermarriage often leads to devastating birth defects). Relations between Jews and Samaritans have softened over the years. The Samaritans are no longer understood as a threat, and Jews generally maintain a sort of curious tolerance toward the tiny sect. They speak Arabic, worship in an ancient Hebrew dialect, send their children to Arab schools and refuse to take sides in Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
His Mystery
After his interaction with Nicodemus, John tells us, “[Jesus] left Judea and departed again for Galilee. And he had to pass through Samaria” (4:3-4). The necessity had nothing to do with geography. One need not travel through Samaria in order to reach Galilee. There are other routes, and Jesus knew them well. For example, Mark traces Jesus’ final journey to Jerusalem as having gone through Jericho. Technically, Jesus could have taken the Rift Valley Route all the way from Galilee to Jericho, bypassing Samaria altogether. He didn’t have to go through Samaria (and he certainly didn’t have to go through the heart of Samaria–Shechem (Sychar). But Jesus has a habit of walking into places few would enter. The severity of his mercy demanded he go through Samaria. He had to pass through Samaria.
The Samaritan Village atop Mount Gerizim
Jesus is famished and “stumbles” upon a well. Did God not see this coming? The site: Jacob’s well. Thousands of years earlier Jacob’s daughter wandered into Shechem where the prince of the city (named Shechem) raped the young woman. Undoubtedly crushed and (in the Ancient Near Eastern cultural context) left without options, Jacob agrees to grant Dinah in marriage to her rapist. Her brothers have other plans. They plunder the city and kill the guilty men. The story closes without resolution, however. Dinah is no longer a virgin, does she ever get married? Does her rape carry with it a sentence of singleness and childlessness? Who will take care of her now? It is amid a mess of sexual sin, violence and hatred that Jacob’s well is established.
There’s a woman at the well. Five men have called her bride. She’s a Samaritan, a half-breed. No one can help the circumstances they are born into. God fashions and forms our fragile frames and sends us forth into families and cultures which shape the way we perceive reality as we grow. This particular woman allowed the inertia of her heritage to determine her trajectory. She lived according to what the religious Jews of her day believed her to be: a lost cause. The woman at the well fights through the shock that a Jew (and a Rabbi) would humble themselves to speak to a Samaritan and asks, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink form me, a woman of Samaria?” When Jesus asks her about her husbands, she refuses to walk down the road of her many mistakes and changes the subject, “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain (Gerizim), but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” She’s establishing distance, reminding Jesus of her heritage, her half-breed identity. Jesus invites her into a different story, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerualem will you worship…But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth…” Can you see Jesus’ aim?
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account (Heb. 4:12-13).
The words Jesus speaks to the woman at the well cut through history’s petty reasons why the two should not converse, pierce the hand-me-down story of her heretical heritage, wrap a flame around the roots of her sin before setting the whole thing on fire. Her and Jesus share the same well, the same watering bucket, the same particles of air pumping between their lungs…and now, they share the same Father. Everything has changed.
Lost in the Fog. Somewhere in Ephraim.
Our Reality
What do we do when our pasts beg us to be people we know we’re not? How did Jesus handle the scowls and snickers of those who believed him to be the bastard child of an unplanned pregnancy? How do we stand and fight when our past claws its way back up through the ground we buried it under?
“Father.”
It’s a word rarely attributed to God in the Old Testament. If God is distant and uninvolved, He’s probably angry with us all. Of course, He has the right to be. We all have stories of why we ought to be forgotten and forsaken by the One who created everything. But when He shows up at our dusty well, shrugs off our sins, our broken pasts, and calls us children…everything changes.
Coming soon: John 5
[...] 1, 2010 by bryanmc Jesus’ movement in John 4 & 5 from the woman at the well to the cripple man beside the Pool of Bethesda is intentional. It has a rhythm. In a sense, John [...]