So the Word became human and lived here on earth among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the only Son of the Father. (John 1:14)

A Wounded Outsider

    If there ever was a lady with a wounded soul, this “outsider of Samaria” was one. She didn’t hide it. She couldn’t hide it. It was too obvious. Possibly her shoulders slumped from both the water jar and the weariness of her pain. Likely her eyes looked tired from ducking condemning glances fired in her direction. Her heart was scarred and calloused from the train of husbands who had said “I do” with their mouths, only to say “I don’t” with their lives. Her gait was difficult and slow as if each step were a trudge through the thick mud of her past. Perhaps half a dozen kids, each looking like a different daddy, tagged along stair-stepped behind her.

    Maybe Jesus wondered what she was doing there at noon. Most people came in the cool of the morning. Perhaps she came for no other reason than a hot day demanded an extra draw of water. Or more likely, “decent” people didn’t come to the well at noon. They cleared out so they wouldn’t have to rub shoulders with the riffraff. Perhaps, for this woman, being shoved to this hour with the “trash” wasn’t fun, but at least it cut down on the daily barrage of cheap comments and rude stares.

She was a wounded soul, this “outsider.”

    “Here she comes. They say she’ll sleep with any man.

    “Her kids are the worst on the street.”

    “Did you hear that she has a new lover?”

    “The last one left her.”

    “What’s love got to do with it?”

    She was a wounded soul, this “outsider.” It was worth a walk in the hot sun to be away from the words that wounded so deeply.

Bridging Social Chasms

    As surely as Jesus wondered what brought the woman to the well specifically at noon, she probably wondered what Jesus was doing there at all! One glance told her that he was a Jew. And in Samaria! “What was this Jew guy up to?”

    Jews avoided Samaria at all costs. The shortest line from Galilee to Judea ran through Samaria, but most Jews would walk the long way around, adding extra miles on foot, to avoid contact with Samaritans. “Might get contaminated.” “Hard to buy kosher foods.”

    But Jesus and his disciples deliberately walked smack into the middle of Samaria. He even stopped at a public watering hole-at noon-the hour of the riffraff, no less. He was again available, even to this despised Samaritan woman. That’s the way Jesus was. The way he still is! His feet tread the turf of the people he’s trying to touch.

    How can we connect with people if we step around the inconvenient times and unpleasant places where they live their lives? Jesus’ heart for people wouldn’t let him dodge the unwanted or steer clear of the unpopular. For him, each person was of immense value. So here again in Samaria, Jesus deliberately placed himself face to face with a person whom, apparently, no one else wanted. The real question for us is very simple: “Would we?”

 

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Excerpted from The Jesus Touch, ©2002, Howard Publishing Company. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Title: "The Abandoned Water Jar, Part 2"
Author: Lynn Anderson
Publication Date: July 24, 2002