Patrick Comerford
The celebrations of Epiphany-tide continue today, and the week began with the Fourth Sunday of Epiphany (Epiphany IV, 28 January 2024).
The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers John Bosco (1888), founder of the Salesian teaching order. Before this day begins, I am taking some time for reading, reflection and prayer.
Christmas is a season that lasts for 40 days that continues from Christmas Day (25 December) to Candlemas or the Feast of the Presentation on Friday (2 February). The Gospel reading on the Sunday before last (21 January, John 2: 1-11) told of the Wedding at Cana, one of the traditional Epiphany stories.
In keeping with the theme of that Gospel reading, I am continuing with last week’s thoughts in my reflections each morning until the Feast of the Presentation:
1, A reflection on one of seven meals Jesus has with family, friends or disciples;
2, the Gospel reading of the day;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.
11, The meal that never was: the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4: 5-42):
In the story in Saint John’s Gospel of the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4: 5-42), the Disciples are already doing something unusual: they have gone into the city to buy food. But this is no ordinary city – this is a Samaritan city, and any food they might buy from Samaritans is going to be unclean according to Jewish ritual standards.
While the Disciples are in Sychar, Jesus sits down by Jacob’s Well, and begins talking with a Samaritan woman who comes to the well for water. And their conversation becomes a model for how we respond to the stranger in our midst, whether they are foreigners or people of a different religion or culture.
The Samaritan woman is an outsider because of her gender, ethnicity, religion and lifestyle. Yet she becomes one of the great pre-Resurrection missionaries, for ‘many … believed in Jesus because of this woman’s testimony’
I heard years ago about a wedding that was about to take place, but the bride’s brother could not travel home to Ireland because of fears about something.
It was in the days long before the fear of the Covid-19 pandemic. But it was also a time long before texts and ’phone messages. He thought about sending a telegram, but did not know how to say something that was appropriate yet different. He asked his local vicar for a perfect, but short, Bible quote that could be sent in a quick telegram.
The vicar thought for a while before he suggested, ‘There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.’
So, he wrote down every word – and the reference, I John 4: 18 – and headed to the post office to send the telegram. But he was short of a money and was taken aback when he was told he would be charged not just for each word but for each character and letter.
Cost overcame filial affection, and he decided to just send the Bible reference and one extra word: ‘Read I John 4: 18.’
When it reached the Best Man, something had gone amiss, the number I was missing and the message said simply: ‘Read John 4: 18.’
At the wedding, the best man read out words we in that Gospel reading: ‘You have had had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.’
I wonder how we would react or respond to the Samaritan woman if we were to meet her at the well, or in the local corner shop or pub?
She is an outsider in very sense: she is a Samaritan, she works in the mid-day heat, she is unaccompanied, she has a very questionable lifestyle. As if to underline how marginalised she is, she is left without a name, without a name that identifies her as human, as a child of God.
In the Bible, to be known by name is to be a child of God (see Exodus 33: 17; Isaiah 43: 1). So, let’s look at some details about this anonymous woman and her lifestyle.
She is a Samaritan, yet Christ constantly points to Samaritans as examples of how to live out a faith-filled life: the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 25-37); or the healed Samaritan who is the only one among ten to go back and say thanks (Luke 17: 11-19).
She is a Samaritan, which means she is a monotheist, but people refused to accept Samaritans worshipped the same God – perhaps the parallel today is the way many Muslims face Islamophobia.
The conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman is a model for all our encounters with people we see as different, or as strangers, or as having a lifestyle we do not understand.
This woman is theologically informed, to the point that she is able to argue with Jesus: where should we worship God?
She may be well versed in Scripture: it has been suggested that Samaritans were Biblical fundamentalists who would only accept the first five books of the Bible as authoritative Scripture – is she wedded to those five books and not open to God’s continuing revelation?
She is confident in a way that she might be described in that English way as ‘gobby’ – not afraid to engage with men in conversation as an equal.
But let us also look at this woman’s lifestyle. We might try to calculate the number of men in her life. Verse 18 says she has had five. Then Jesus says, ‘the one you have now is not your husband.’ This brings the total to six.
Jesus at the well, Jacob’s Well, now becomes the seventh man in her life. Seven is the perfect number in the Old Testament. It is the number of completeness, wholeness, and healing.
The story also illustrates the status of women in that time, among both Jews and Samaritans. Without doubt, there was an imbalance of power when it came to marriage. Divorce was relatively easy for men, but practically impossible for women.
Even then, as I so often point out, the translation here is often very slipshod. The original text says: ‘For you have had five men [not husbands] (πέντε γὰρ ἄνδρας), and now the one you have is not your man.’
So, we cannot presume any marital status, or lack of marital status here.
Where else in the Gospels do we meet women who are in a similar dilemma?
In Saint Luke’s Gospel, we meet Mary Magdalene ‘from whom seven demons had gone out’ (Luke 8: 2). And Saint Luke’s Gospel (Luke 20: 27-38) also has the story of the Sadducees who posed the dilemma of a woman who is widowed in quick succession so she is married off to one brother after another, and when she dies she has been the wife and widow of seven men.
Once again, the priority of Jesus in that story is not morality or family property rights, but the right of the woman to her own integrity, her own inherit value, her own right to eternal life with equality in the eyes of God.
The woman who was married off to seven brothers never made herself the victim, never chose her own misfortune. She too is to be seen as a child of God.
Just as it was never a woman’s choice to be a widow, so it was generally true that it was never a woman’s choice to be divorced. At the time, women could often only acquiesce to what their husbands wanted to do.
In those days too, a woman who was divorced often ended up as being what was once spoken of as ‘damaged goods’. To this day, a divorced Jewish woman still cannot remarry without her former husband’s written permission, a controversial document known as the get (גט), which men may withhold as a means of controlling women.
Without that permission in first century Judaea, the prospects for a spurned and rejected women were dismal, financially and socially. For a divorced woman without a private source of income there were only two choices: remarriage or the streets.
This woman has been through the mill. Now she is living with a sixth man, even though they do not seem to be married.
Jesus offers no comment about her status. Instead, he treats her with dignity and respect. On that day, indeed, he is outrageous in transgressing the taboos of the day: a Jewish, single man, speaking to a multi-married, Samaritan woman in public; a rabbi discussing fine points of theology with a woman.
He could have condemned her lifestyle. Instead, he meets her deepest needs in her heart.
He is the seventh man in her life. He is perfect. Jesus is the man she has been looking for her whole life. Jesus is her living water. Jesus heals her heart. Jesus completes her creation. Jesus is her sabbath rest.
When the woman says she is waiting for the coming of the Messiah, Jesus tells her: ‘I am he.’
Just then, the Disciples return from their search for food in Sychar, although they may have come back with nothing. The meal with Jesus that had been planned and expected never seems to take place.
The empty-handed disciples are taken aback by the conversation they have come upon. They are so shocked by what they see and hear that remain silent. Their silence reflects their inability to reach out to the stranger.
These men made no contact with the people in Sychar, but this woman rushes back to tell them about Jesus. No one in the city was brought to Jesus by the disciples, but many Samaritans listened to what the woman had to say.
Because of this woman’s testimony, many of the people in Sychar believe, she brings them (literally) to Christ, and they come to believe for themselves that Christ is ‘truly the Saviour of the world’ (verse 42).
Mark 6: 1-6 (NRSVA):
6 He left that place and came to his home town, and his disciples followed him. 2 On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, ‘Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! 3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?’ And they took offence at him. 4 Then Jesus said to them, ‘Prophets are not without honour, except in their home town, and among their own kin, and in their own house.’ 5 And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. 6 And he was amazed at their unbelief.
Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 31 January 2024):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is: ‘Welcoming the Stranger – A Candlemas Reflection.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday by the Revd Annie Bolger of the Pro-Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, Brussels.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (31 January 2024) invites us to pray in these words:
We pray for Holy Trinity in Brussels and for their Community Kitchen – may it continue to provide hot meals to those who are in need.
The Collect:
God our creator,
who in the beginning
commanded the light to shine out of darkness:
we pray that the light of the glorious gospel of Christ
may dispel the darkness of ignorance and unbelief,
shine into the hearts of all your people,
and reveal the knowledge of your glory
in the face of Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Generous Lord,
in word and eucharist we have proclaimed the mystery of your love:
help us so to live out our days
that we may be signs of your wonders in the world;
through Jesus Christ our Saviour.
Additional Collect:
God of heaven,
you send the gospel to the ends of the earth
and your messengers to every nation:
send your Holy Spirit to transform us
by the good news of everlasting life
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s reflection (The Wedding Banquet, Matthew 22: 1-14)
Continued tomorrow (The Heavenly Banquet, Luke 14: 15-24)
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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