Who are the Samaritans?
The Samaritans were rejected by the Jews at that time because they were a mixed breed of people, between the Judean people and the Assyrian kingdom. So, what you have in there are not actually Jews but a sort of half-half and their existence was the biggest insult to the Jews. Not only that but an adulterous Samaritan woman speaking to a single man was a big no-no at the time.
This woman would have been heavily rejected, ridiculed and hated. Can you imagine? We are 99.9% certain that five men left her, and she didn’t leave them because a woman is destitute if she doesn’t have the support of a man in those days. So, you have a woman who really is the lowest rung of all of society, hated by the Jews, hated by her own people, hated by her own husbands and the one who lives with her despises her too much to even marry her.
If you look back in the Old Testament everyone who met the love of their lives or met their spouse, their bride and their groom met each other at a well. More often than not, they met each other at a very low point in their life:
- Jacob fleeing his brother Esau finds Rachel
- Isaac meets Rebecca after leaving his family
- Moses meets Zapora after fleeing Egypt due to his murder
So, everyone at the lowest point in their life at the well meets the love of their life. Meets the person that gives their life meaning. If you look here Christ came to the well to meet His bride. To meet the person who was at the lowest point in her life.
If you read the Bible this is the strongest theme.
Don’t worry about anything else you read in the Bible.
God comes to those who are dejected, poor, rejected and humiliated.
It is never to the mighty to the powerful or to the rich. Never. The one time he did that with King Saul, it was a perfect example of why he shouldn’t have done it. Instead, he goes to the rejected David.
This is when you read the Bible this should be the message that you absorb, if you’re exalted, if you are rich, if you are comfortable, if you’re happy and everything’s awesome it is very difficult to find God because you’re too relaxed.
It is said,
“though, the Lord is on high yet, he regards the lowly, but the proud He knows from afar.”
-Psalm 138:6
“Comfort yes comfort my people says your God speak comfort to Jerusalem and cry out to her that her warfare is ended that her iniquity is pardoned.”
-Isiah 40:1-3
It does not make sense to comfort those who are already comforted, but rather those who are downtrodden and rejected. This is the problem with our society now; it is that we live in a life of comfort, where we feel like we don’t need Christ’s comfort. The tiniest thing has brought us to our very knees as we’ve grown comfortable the things that comfort us is our lifestyle is our way of life; freedom, schools, comfort, air conditioning, freedom of travel. All of these things are our comfort.
We are now experiencing a time where they’re being shaken a little bit and I think whilst reading the Catholic epistle today, we have a beautiful reminder of this.
“Come now you who say today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city spend a year thereby and sell and make a profit, whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow for what is your life, it is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.”
There is no better message for today’s society. We live as if the next day is guaranteed, but the reality is not. We have grown too comfortable in the way we are living, and the viruses come, and it’s upended everything in a way that we have never seen before and with good reason, we are terrified and anxious and scared and worried, but should we be?
At this time is when as Christians we should be at peace.
This is a reminder that we are placing too much trust in things that are fleeting, that it is time to trust the One Person that is eternal, God. This is the moment where we have to run to God.
Even with the Church back in the day, we see that when the Church was really under the pump and a lot of Christians were being killed.
“This was when one was really a believer. When one used to go to martyrdom with courage in the church.”
-Origen
People didn’t flee and protect themselves. The Christians never did that.
‘I’ve got to protect my own.’ That is a concept completely foreign to Christianity.
It should be ‘I have to look out for everyone else. I have to serve everyone else.’
This is a Christian.
We don’t care for ourselves we care for everyone around us. We care for the world, by this, the world will know that we’re Christians.
Why?
As one of the early Church fathers says to “See how they love one another. See how much they love that if we don’t love and we behave worse the non-Christians. Then we’ve disgraced that holy name by which we are called.”
This is our time, this is the time of Christianity to demonstrate that Christ is in the world, that He is working. He hasn’t abandoned the world; He’s just waking it up. Let us not focus on my own but rather on all around, so that we may truly emulate Christ and reveal Him in all we do.
Just like the Samaritan woman, Christ comes to where we are, to come and heal us and dwell within us. So when we’re at home, we can make our home a little Church how when we go together with our kids, at the table and we eat food and we pray and we say ‘Thank you God for the food that you’ve given us, for the blessings you’ve put upon us.’ You are a little Church in your home, that is the church. Every night you stand in prayer and you lift up your heart to God and you are standing at His throne, it is exactly the same as if you’re in church standing before the throne of God. Because God is within you.