The Gospel Account of the Samaritan Woman at the Well is found in St. John 4:1-41. I find that no matter how many times I have read it, how familiar I think I am with it, there is always some new word or sense that is waiting to reveal itself to me when I pick it up again. Could I suggest our doing just that?
Jesus is always on the road, so Polenov has put a walking stick in Jesus's hands — to steady himself as he makes his way around a land of uneven ground. We are also told at the start of these verses that Jesus is tired. Tired from his journeying in a hot climate, but perhaps tired as well from the contention that surrounds him wherever he goes. Here, he has just left Judea where Pharisees are in a jealous twist over who is baptizing and how many?
On his way to Galilee Jesus passes through Samaria. Was there another way around this "heretic" land ? Maybe. But you can be sure if Jesus is going to pass through the land of a cursed people he's going to use it as an opportunity to befriend them.
At noon, the hottest time of the day, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman. She is alone because as a Samaritan, she would not have been welcomed at the well when the Jewish women gathered to collect the water they'd need for the day. She's also not at the well in the afternoon when the Jewish men would have gathered to hang out.
The apostles have gone off food shopping and we are privy to perhaps the most lengthy conversation Jesus has with anyone in the Gospel. Jesus should not be alone with her — she is not his wife. Jesus should not be talking with her — she is a Samaritan. Everything about this woman is wrong — her people don't worship on the right mountain (maybe that's it in the background — Gerazim), they only read a bit of the bible and not the whole thing, they don't acknowledge the right prophets. They were considered worse than heretics. We get a window into the tension of that relationship in Chapter 8:48, "The Jews answered him, "Are we not right in saying that you are are a Samaritan and have a demon?"
Jesus cuts through all the nonsense, all the debates, and lays it out plainly, so plainly we may not be able to handle it.
"Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."
Could it be that Jesus knows, even into the future, that there's an awful lot of worship in holy places lacking spirit and truth?
Anyway, the conversation continues and (like the women of Easter Morning) this woman runs off happily, leaving her water jar behind. Of course, she's going to have to retrieve it later because her family will need it, but for the purposes of this conversation, she has found a deeper life-source in Christ. Along with that other Samaritan, who picked up, and cleaned up, the beaten up Jew (Luke 10:25-37) Jesus turns a marginalized heretic into a hero.
We like to think of our country as basically Christian. And white. And not a few people are unhappy that's changing. These people consider anyone who's not white and Christian to be a increasingly serious problem. That's why we have terms like "White Supremacy." They, and others who are sympathetic to their cause, see anyone who is not like them as "other." There's an old and ugly, poisoned pulse in the national heart. That this toxin perdures suggests a certain failure on the part of the Christian religion, which is the religion of heart-turning. But there are some churches, who when they put out an "All Are Welcome" sign, really mean it. I saw a church sign once that read, "Welcome! No questions asked." Bless them.
