The Provocative Jesus

The Provocative Jesus--November 1, 2018

"So [Jesus] came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.  A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, 'Give me a drink.' (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, 'How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?' (Jews do you share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, 'If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, Give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water'." [John 4:5-10]

This is deliberate.  Jesus consciously and purposefully places himself in the midst of the territory of "the other," in order to cross boundaries, break down barriers, and create welcome.  This is a deliberate choice of Jesus, and if we are paying attention, we'll see that Jesus is laying down the gauntlet, so to speak, to his followers ever since, to place ourselves in situations that cross boundaries and create connections.

That sense of intentionality is important for making sense of this story and understanding the method to Jesus' madness.  We sometimes treat these story of Jesus like he haphazardly stumbled into situations he had no control over, as though Jesus ends up at Zacchaeus' house by random chance, or got himself into sabbath-day showdowns over healings by accident. Maybe we don't really give Jesus credit for how smart he is, or maybe we have a hard time accepting that Jesus is a provocateur. But it's true: he will purposefully shake things up and will create situations where the shaking cannot help but happen, in order to create moments for the Reign of God to break out and be seen in new ways.

And this is one of those moments.  Even though a verse before this passage says that Jesus "had to" go through Samaria on this trip, that's not completely accurate.  Plenty of good, faithful Judeans of Jesus' day would have avoided this territory and would have traveled the long way around Samaria in order to avoid coming into contact with them.  They were "the other," and the hostility between Judeans and Samaritans was always at least simmering in the background, and sometimes downright boiling over.  If you can recall, whether from your own life or the storytelling of an earlier generation, the invisible boundaries that separated white and black neighborhoods in the 1950s, or the rigid lines that separated Protestants and Catholic neighborhoods in the 1960s, maybe you're getting close.  You just learned from childhood that "We don't cross into that territory," even if it meant going out of your way around the neighborhood of "the other" group. And you knew--you were taught--not to go there, to cross that street, or go to the other side of the river, or what have you, because you had been told that "those people" were hostile toward you.  They were the "wrong kind" of people, you were taught, and it just wasn't safe for you to be on their turf.

We still perpetuate these kinds of lines and boundaries, and they surely weren't invented in the 20th century in the United States, either.  Jesus is dealing with one of those boundaries here in John 4, and that is precisely what makes this scene so compelling to me.  Jesus knows that he is breaking about a million rules by doing what he does here.  He has transgressed the boundary between "good, respectable Judean territory" and "unsavory Samaritan territory." And he has broken the long-ingrained cultural rule forbidding men to talk with women who were not biologically related to them out in public. And he has put himself in the social debt of the woman who had come to the well (at noon, quite possibly trying to avoid running into anybody else by choosing the hottest part of the day rather than morning or evening when others came to draw water) by asking her for a drink. Every one of those choices is a deliberate act of Jesus, chosen because it will bring him face to face with "the other," and intended to create connections where there had only been animosity and distance before.  

And really, what is most radical to me about Jesus' choice to come here to the well at Sychar is that Jesus puts himself in the position where "the other" now has a face... and where he and his disciples will not have the luxury of just talking about "them" and "those people."  Jesus brings his disciples into a scene where they will have to witness him breaking all those social rules and treating the woman with whom he speaks at the well like she is a real person with a real face.  Jesus has done this, in other words, not just for the sake of the woman at the well (although yes, by the end of the story, her life has been changed, too), but also for the sake of his followers being stretched and pulled beyond their comfort zones to see her face.  And once that has happened, the disciples will not be able to talk glibly and dismissively about "all them dirty and dangerous Samaritans." No--now they will forever have her face, her story, and her conversation burned into their memories.  And they will realize she is a real, full human being, and not the one-dimensional caricatures of "those Samaritans" that they had grown up with.

This brings up another important point about the amazing and infinite cleverness of Jesus.  He is accomplishing two things at once in this encounter with the woman at the well.  Jesus is both restoring life for this woman, who had been treated like a marginalized nobody, and he is opening up his disciples to a fuller life as well, and healing them from the captivity they have to the systems of prejudice in which they had been raised.  Jesus treats this woman like a real, full, thoughtful and insightful person by having a real conversation with her (and pulling no punches with her as the conversation goes on), and at the same time, Jesus provokes his disciples to see how they have been misshapen and stunted by accepting the divisions between "Jews" and "Samaritans" that had been taught to them from childhood. 

There was certainly plenty of risk on Jesus' part by striking up this conversation at this moment.  This could have gotten ugly, or dangerous, or difficult.  But Jesus risks it anyway, because not only is this woman worth the effort of helping her see her full worth and value as a human being, but also because his disciples need to be stretched beyond their comfort zones, and that is important as well.  

The question, then, for us, is whether we will recognize this scene as challenge for us as well. Jesus challenges us as well to deliberately place ourselves in situations, in conversations, and in connections with others where we are led beyond our comfort zones.  Jesus compels us to see that there are still these invisible boundaries we keep putting up (and allowing to fence us in as well) that separate people into "us" and "them" categories.  Jesus further provokes us to see that we are both complicit in putting up those unneeded borders between us and that we are held captive by them.  And from there, Jesus dares us to cross some of those boundaries ourselves: to see those we have just dismissed as "other" now as people with faces, to understand the stories of how we each ended up on our side of the tracks, and to be able to love these neighbors we had not wanted to acknowledge as neighbors.

Instead of keeping to myself today, then, and only talking with likeminded people, or only associating with people who look like me, Jesus just might be challenging me to cross the invisible lines and to get to know someone who might be quite different from me. Jesus might well be challenging me to see the faces of people, and to hear the stories of people, whom I have chosen to ignore until now.  Jesus also might be pushing me to ask the difficult questions about those arrangements--how did I get comfortable with the divisions and invisible boundaries between neighborhoods? How might I have helped to contribute to creating a system in which people can be treated just as "those people" and their faces ignored and discounted? Maybe it's just the push to reach out and talk to one person with whom you have never spoken before... and to risk crossing the invisible boundary today. 

Whatever the specifics are for you or me, the challenge of Jesus is at least this: to make the effort when the Spirit is prompting us to reach out across those invisible boundaries, to see people with faces, and to recognize that those faces, too, are beloved of God.

Lord Jesus, grant us the courage of Jesus so that we can see the people you see and to love them as you do.