For Sunday, March 23 2014 – John 4:5-42
She knows the rules. A Jewish man should not share the water jug of a Samaritan woman. He should not even speak to her. Can’t we all, please, just follow the rules? There are rules for acceptable behavior and language, for education and career; proper religious, social and political paths; types of persons to date, marry or befriend and types to avoid at all costs; rules about the right food to eat and with whom to eat it; the right clothing to wear, made in the right places; proper degrees of grooming and hygiene; acceptable shopping and banking venues—it’s all there in the rules.
Then along comes Jesus. The woman beside the well knows the rules. At least enough to question them, and sometimes to break them. Enough to hide behind them. But does she know Jesus? Does she know what it means to be loved for herself alone more than for her success at keeping the rules? Do we? She knows enough of the rules to see herself as judged, a detested Samaritan, married multiple times and now living with another man, unmarried. Jesus sees so much more. In her he sees the soul’s longing, the holy thirst for encounter.
Even all the new and improved, enlightened “shoulds and should nots” we have created as antidote to the old oppressions, even these do not fulfill us. Try as we might to be satisfied, we never will find fulfillment by keeping rules or even by doing good work for good causes. The fight against racism and economic disparity and poverty and all manner of injustice is simply the response we make to the God we love. But what we long for most deeply? It is to wake up to wonder. In Mary Oliver’s words, it is “to be a bride married to amazement.” Married not to many rules, or many causes, but to the depths of encounter. Here, alongside the Samaritan woman, we see that to meet one another beyond surface identities, to share our thirst, is to discover who we are, more than creed or race or condition. We are vessels for amazement, created for communion, for wellsprings of wonder to flow fresh and free.
