The Samaritan Revelation

The Gospel of John has a familiar account of Jesus’ dealings with a woman who lived in a town in Samaria. I’m sure I have heard scores of sermons and read numerous commentaries on this passage. There are many worthwhile lessons to be drawn from the situation; usually they focus on the fact that Jesus’ love and acceptance reached even to women (not common in His day) and more astounding, to a Samaritan.

Most of the sermons and commentaries reveal the reason for the Jews’ disdain for Samaritans. One must go back seven centuries before Christ to begin to understand. After Saul then David then Solomon ruled over the kingdom of Israel, it was split by a disagreement between Solomon’s sons over who should take their father’s throne. Ten tribes situated in the northern part of the kingdom chose to follow one son, and the other two tribes, Benjamin and Judah, followed another. This split became Israel in the north and Judah in the south bringing two centuries of troubled relations.

In 722 B.C. the Assyrians overwhelmed Israel and, as was their practice, took most of the population captive and spread them throughout their empire in hopes that they would lose their cultural identity and will to survive as a nation. The Assyrian tactic was successful, and from that time on the ten tribes of Israel were considered “lost.” The few Jews who remained in what had been Israel were forced to live with people of other countries whom the Assyrians deported there per their usual practice with conquered people. The culture that had evolved by Jesus’ time had some Jewish elements, but it was so corrupted by foreign influences that no self-respecting Jew from Judea (the former Judah) could accept a Samaritan on equal terms. So we are told.

 Here is where I had my eyes opened when I read John 4 in my devotional reading recently. I noticed first that the Samaritan woman considered herself to be a descendant of Jacob, hence “Jewish” in some sense. She asked Jesus, “You are not greater than our father Jacob, are you?” Later she explains that, “our fathers worshipped on this mountain,” linking herself to the historical tradition of her people. The Samaritans did use a version of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Jewish scriptures, and they considered Yahweh to be their God. What surprised me most was the expectation she revealed when she said, “I know that Messiah is coming.” I had never noticed that the Samaritans were expecting Messiah. The depth of their belief is displayed when the townsfolk invite Jesus to stay for a few days and eventually say, “we know that this one is truly the Savior of the world!”

The irony struck me that not long before this incident, Jesus had been escorted out of His hometown to the brow of a cliff where His neighbors intended to throw Him over the edge. The same irony appears in Jesus’ parable of the “Good Samaritan.” There are hints of Jesus’ inclusiveness elsewhere in the Gospels: the Canaanite woman, the Gadarene demoniac, the Roman officer’s servant. None of these persons was acceptable to a “good” Jew. The bigotry of the self-righteous Jews was being spotlighted by the Messiah for all to see. No wonder the religious leaders in Jerusalem wanted to kill Him.

My application of this may be alarming to some. I am going beyond the obvious lesson that Baptists should stop “hating” Catholics or that charismatics should stop belittling anyone who can’t speak in tongues. I scandalously suggested in my book, Lead a Horse to Water, that Christians might want to think of Mormons and Muslims as believers who need to be further educated. I am not implying that they have saving faith, only that they have misguided beliefs much like the Samaritans in Jesus’ day.

In the teaching at my church lately we have been encouraged to make every effort to see things as God sees them. Looking at things through Heaven’s eyes is the only way to see clearly. It occurs to me that in chapter four of his Gospel, John was putting flesh on the concept he had expressed so memorably in 3:16 that, “God so loved the world that He gave…” “The world” Jesus loved included the hated Samaritans. He loved them. That’s how God saw them: loved ones. Who is there in your world that you should love like Jesus loved? Who is your “Samaritan woman?”