John 4 (part one)

Okay, let’s activate a little background knowledge. But I’m going to ask you to be honest here – you’ve done it before, right? What I mean is you’ve avoided “that” neighborhood on your way from one side of town to the other, haven’t you? Go ahead and admit it. We’ve all done it.

Sometimes your decision to take the long way around is a pragmatic one. You’ve read about the gang-related violence over there. Maybe you read about how a woman was abducted at a red light, taken to a secluded area, was raped and killed. Or maybe you’ve heard about the plethora of drive-by shootings in that area of town. So you just avoid it.

Or maybe we just don’t like the way people who live in a certain neighborhood look.

For whatever reason, we take the long way around.

I don’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable about your decision to avoid certain people. I’m just trying to help us understand the position of the “godly” Jews who would go miles out of their way in order to avoid going through Samaria.

The shortest distance between two points is, in the new millennium, a straight line. But that fact was true when I was a kid too. Mrs. Bulger, my tenth grade geometry teacher taught me that fact. I didn’t know it until then. My reputation at the time did not normally include listening to anything teachers had to say, but Mrs. Bulger was a particularly good-looking woman, so I hung on her every word. And I learned this very important fact.

So I am able to testify with absolute certainty that the shortest distance between two points was a fact way back when I was in school. As a matter of fact, it was also true in Jesus’ day. I don’t know – it is somehow one of those tested geometric principles that has endured throughout the ages.

It is therefore noteworthy that John records that when Jesus left Judea and went to Galilee he had to go through Samaria. The truth is that he did not have to go through Samaria. He could have done like all the other Jews did and take the long way around it.

To the Jews, Samaritans were an especially vile people. Half-breeds, they were rejected by the Jews, so they established their own temple in order to worship God. This of course only added to the hatred the Jews had for them. So intense was their hatred of the Jews for the Samaritans that some Pharisees would pray that no Samaritan would be resurrected.

So what did John mean when he stated that Jesus “had” to go through Samaria?

It could be that he had to go through his Samaria because he knew that he had a mission to fulfill. More than meeting the needs of the woman he would encounter at the well, he would make a statement about his purpose in coming in the first place – that regardless of ethnicity or even moral failure, the kingdom of God employs an open-door policy.

But there were other complications with his meeting this woman. Besides the fact that she was a hated Samaritan, she was also a woman. Much like the attitudes of many in the Middle East today, good Jews in Jesus’ day did not speak to women in public. It was beneath them. Women were not really human in the same way that a man was. Women were property, in subjection to men. In western cultures, there is no such prohibition, so it is difficult for us to understand how much Jesus speaking with this woman violated the prevailing custom. But rest assured, almost everyone would consider his behavior to be inappropriate even sinful.

But there he was not only speaking with her but initiating conversation. Worse yet, he was requesting that she give him a drink – out of her Big Gulp cup. Believe me – this was his biggest mistake of the day because Jews would never use the same utensils as a Samaritan especially a Samaritan woman.

If you are old enough and you grew up in the South, you might remember a similar and equally offensive custom that was codified in Jim Crow laws no more than thirty or forty years ago. Separate water fountains for black and white people. Most gas stations offered a restroom for women another for men and another for “colored” people. It was usually on the back side of the station and was often unkempt. Hospitals and other offices had different entrances for white and black people. It was a pervasive custom that seeped into every aspect of Southern culture.

The reason? Much like the attitude that the Jews had toward Samaritans and gentiles, black people were considered to be genetically and socially inferior to white people. Never mind that most Southerners considered themselves to be born-again Christians, this institutional disrespect continued until the United States government imposed equal rights on the region.

Religion is a funny thing, isn’t it? But more on that later – and the woman at the well too.