You are Samaritan. You are an outcast. You are a member of the conquered nation who
was forced to emigrate into Jewish land. The Jews who were exiled return to their land and
kindle a fiery hate towards you and your people. Your people are different than they are. Your
people served idols and mixed pagan and Jewish religious traditions. Your people did not stay
pure. You are stained with a stigma and they know it. There was a time when you would object
more passionately to the mistreatment you and your people suffer, but now it’s commonplace and
developed into a mutual animosity. You know mistreatment. You can identify with it. Others
don’t even have to voice their opinions of you anymore: you know what they’re thinking. You
know that, even years from now, if your story is ever told, people will probably read other details
into it. They’ll make assumptions about the outcast because it’s easier than identifying with the
outcast. After all, no one wants to admit they know how you feel.
When you’re a follower of Jesus, you’re willing to go deeper. When your very existence
can be summed up by one word – love – you don’t mind how silly you look. Leaving behind the
purpose you set out to accomplish, dropping everything to spread the word about a mysterious
stranger. You drop the waterpot. You drop your expectations. You drop the labels to which
you’ve grown accustomed and to which you’ve acquiesced. You now recognize those are no
longer important. So finally, you drop the act. You now recognize it’s useless to put up walls in
the presence of The Wall-Breaker. After all, everything you are has already been revealed. You
are vulnerable.
You once thought your identity laid in others: connections, associations, relations. You
once feared transparency and now your entire existence is on display – clear as the water in the
well from which you came to draw. You are see-through. Yet, you finally realize, it doesn’t
matter. You once thought your identity was attached to your wealth of resources. So what made
you become the person who drops the waterpot and sprints to the city, resourceless?
Yet, the point of the Samaritan story – the theme – is that there is a gateway. There is an
opening for you, there is a seat saved for you, there’s room at the inn, you belong. Regardless of
your personal spiritual location, you belong here. You are welcome here although I may not
always agree with you. You are welcome here although we are different. You are welcome here
because I’m willing to quiet my pride and discover your needs and to meet them. In being
vulnerable, we are set free. Free from societal demands. Free from the idols of life to which we
have clung so dearly. Is it that easy? Is it possible there could be a love so radical that it erases
ethnic boundaries and stamps out societal norms? A love so powerful that it could elevate the
marginalized? A love this earth-shattering could only come from above.
Like the woman at the well, we too are faced with the challenge of transparency. In her
story we learn that to be truly intimate with Jesus, we must first start with the truth that is born
only through self-reflection. Who are we really? In one of the Psalmist’s most intimate prayers,
he says “Search me and know me.” Do we want to be found? Do we want to be known? We most
often pretend we have all the answers and hide behind emotional walls. But, what would happen
if we were each the woman at the well – vulnerable and willing to admit we didn’t know
everything? I wonder if that was what was so compelling about her testimony – a vulnerability so
compelling that it led others to Jesus.