Choice Encounter
Have you ever gone out of your way to make a connection?
A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) - John 4:9-8
In today's Gospel reading, John tells us the story of Jesus encountering the Samaritan woman at the well.
We come upon the scene innocently enough, or so it seems at first. He and his disciples are headed back to Galilee and they are making their way through Samaria, through the city of Sychar.
This northern region was populated by people who had separated from the Jews who were taken captive. They had stayed and adapted to the local customs and belief, changing their faith enough to be considered outcasts.
Whether or not the disciples could have avoided the city on their way home, the encounter at the well of Jacob could have been avoided by Jesus, had he wanted it that way.
The woman could have gone about her business without having a conversation with him at all, but he chose to ask her for water.
In fact, he didn't really ask at all, but seemed to have demanded it from her. The encounter was his choice.
What follows is a conversation that leads to the conversion of the woman into a disciple. She would go on to tell the people of her city, people who rejected her because of her lifestyle, all about the man she met at the well, and this would spread throughout Samaria and beyond.
How cool is that?
How many of us would do something like that today?
When we read this story, we tend to focus not on her faith, but on her sins. We see a woman who had many husbands and is living with someone who is not her husband now, and we judge her. So, the conversion experience is one of redemption. She turns away from sin and follows Jesus.
But it is more than that.
She is an example of God's purpose in sending Jesus to us, to reach beyond the chosen to people outside our circle, people who believe something different, people who may benefit from knowing Jesus.
Even if we choose not to try to convert those who believe in other faiths, we could go out to find those who believe in nothing. Like Jesus, we could choose to make the encounter and when we so, be brazen about it. He didn't waste time telling her he could provide a better life for her.
So, rather than see this as a story about sinners needing redemption, we should see it as a story about our mission to reach out to those who are lost and forgotten, who have abandoned all hope in God, who are cast out from the faith.
They need us to butt in and shake them awake.
If we don't do it, someone else will, and they may have a completely different message.
More to come...