Breaking the Rules

Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.


When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, ‘Will you give me a drink?’ (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)


Every society has its divisions. Leavers and Remainers; Conservatives and Progressives; Black and White. In first-century Judea, a major division was between Jews and Samaritans.  

The Samaritans claimed to be preserving the true faith of the ancient Israelites and the true version of the Jewish holy writings; the Jews regarded the Samaritan religion as a corrupt form of the faith introduced by a mixed-race community who were not really true Jews.

By the time of Jesus, the mutual hostility between Jews and Samaritans was such that the two communities did not mix and avoided any social or physical interaction with each other.

In this encounter at the well at Sychar, Jesus broke this social convention and started a conversation with a Samaritan woman who had come to draw water. It is one of many instances when Jesus appeared indifferent to the petty rules that govern human interactions, if these rules were harmful or hindered people from knowing God fully.

Decades later, Samaria would emerge as a centre of early Christianity. It seems as if this process began by an innocuous request for a drink of water in the heat of the day. 


You can read the whole passage we have looked at here.    

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