Read: John 4:5-42

There’s a reason the Samaritan woman is at the well, alone, in the hot middle of the day. Most of the women in her village would have drawn their water in the cool hours as always. While there they could be a community together, chatting and reinforcing their busy time with each other. But the woman Jesus is talking with was clearly not welcome with them. It turns out, she does have a reason she’s alone: she’s simply been too wicked and has no friends.

Out of that abusive rejection from the other women, she finds herself, astonished, talking with a Jew. A forbidden conversation. Jews and Samaritans are supposed to have nothing to do with each other. And a woman alone, talking with a man, alone? Heresy!
Jesus, like God, knows all about her, and he doesn’t hesitate to engage her in serious conversation. The usual “rules” don’t apply in his mind. He opens the door for her belonging. She rushes to her usually hostile neighborhood and asks, “This man, he cannot be the Messiah, can he?” Who can resist checking that possibility out?

“And he stayed there two days.” These were people, and all people are his people.

Can we be open to others, all others, despite the conventions that we accept as behavioral law? It might be hard for us when we deal with people whose choices violate our own sense of the limits of relationship. But if Jesus can stay two days with a forbidden community, maybe, just maybe, I can include other difficult people in my understanding that they, too, are God’s children. They need to be heard. And I need to listen.

Dear Lord, thank you for the astonishing gift of acceptance. Help us to use that gift for your purposes. Amen.
-Tom Worrell