Samaritans (John 4)

"We have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world." From the Gospel according to John, chapter 4, verse 42.

In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

     Since we have just heard a rather long Gospel reading, I promise to keep my remarks short. There is a lot in this reading to talk about, but I will stick to just two points.
     "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" If we let this remark sink in, and if we recall references to Samaritans elsewhere in the Gospels, the radicalism of this text will become apparent. Later in John's Gospel, someone says to Jesus, "You are a Samaritan, and have a demon!" In other words, you're not one of us, and you come from Hell besides! You can't be any more of an outsider, which is what a Samaritan is, than that! Yet here we have Jesus talking to a potentially dangerous outsider, and a woman too! We already know that Jesus made a point of emphasizing the importance of women, a radical thing to do in the society of the time. So for Jesus to talk to a woman who is also a Samaritan, is itself a teaching about just how new and different he and his teaching really are. Jesus's teaching is still radical, even in our time.
     Jesus makes his point about Samaritans, and so about outsiders generally, in Luke's Gospel, three times. In answer to the question, "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan. When Zebedee asks Jesus to call down fire from Heaven to consume the Samaritans, Jesus rebukes him. Jesus later heals a Samaritan, and praises him for his faith. In other words, there is no distinction between Jew and Samaritan, between insider and outsider. The Samaritans are not demon-possessed, are just as capable of faith, just as capable of good moral action, can have just as much faith as any insider. In the Kingdom, there are no outsiders, no demon-possessed enemies, no one incapable of faith. In the words of one commentator, Jesus "did not exclude the either the Samaritans or the Gentiles from salvation, from experiencing the power of the age to come."
      I was reminded of this the other day, when someone asked me, "Are you a minister?" "Yes," I replied, "an Episcopalian!" "Oh good," he said, "the best kind!" So, of course, I allowed myself to feel special, somehow better than all those non-Episcopalians, all those modern-day Samaritans. But I quickly realized that I was giving in to the ancient tribal desire to be an insider, to exclude the outsider. Not what Jesus would do!
     Now I promised to be brief, so I will make just one more point. "The woman said to him, 'I know that Messiah is coming, who is called Christ.'...Jesus said to her, 'I am he, the one who is speaking to you!'" Here Jesus is accepting the title and role of Messiah, without any qualification or evasion. And he accepts it, not from a Jew, but from a Samaritan! We must try to imagine how remarkable, how improbable, this is. An outsider, a woman no less, has enough depth of insight, of spiritual awareness, that she is able to see Jesus for who he really is. This is completely foreign to what traditionalists past and present, the right-thinking believers, would expect or want.
     Will the outsiders of our world perceive the Messiah in us, the Body of Christ? Will we see in outsiders, in people not like us, people who have the same invitation to the Kingdom that we do? Do we ourselves actually hear the Samaritans when they say, "We have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world?" 

In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.