Today on my faith journey--for my first ever blog entry--I am thinking about the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:1-54. My initial question is that I am wondering why the lectionaries leave out important sections of this chapter, which is really one complex unit and a story within a story. I don't think I have ever heard this entire chapter preached on as a unit, and that is what I plan to do this Sunday at our little country church, Ebenezer Presbyterian Church, just a few miles north of Renville, Minnesota, on County Road 6. I am just beginning to think about what this chapter means to me and what it might mean to the people of faith in my flock. I want to meet them right where they are and this is a farming community, busy but nearly finished with the sugar beet and corn harvest.
If you get a chance to read this chapter today, tell me what stands out to you. So far I have noticed that Jesus seems to be deliberately going off on his own, after sending the disciples off to buy food. He goes to a place where good Jewish people do not go--to Samaria. And he goes to the well, a place where women of all sorts were likely to be found. Was Jesus really alone with the Samaritan woman--or were there witnesses to what must have seemed a scandalous interaction between a woman with "five husbands" who is living with a man who is not her husband? Did anyone overhear his conversation about "living water?" Why did He take so much time with this one person-- a woman of such low status, too? Did He know before He went there that she would be there and that she, a sinner, would be the one to listen to His message and believe that He was the Christ, the Messiah?
More on this later.... May God bless you through His Word, my dear companions, on this journey of faith.
Pastor Karen
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