SAMARITANS ALL John 4: 5-26 Dean Feldmeyer 03/23/14 In the story of Jesus and the woman at the well, some of which you heard read as our scripture lessons, this morning, Jesus breaks two cultural taboos within seconds of each other. First, he talks to a woman outside the presence of a male member of her family. This was simply not done in that place and time. In doing it he would have been inviting her to dishonor herself by answering him, which she did. And he would have been defiling himself, as women, especially foreign women, were considered religiously unclean. Secondly, not only was she a woman, she was a Samaritan woman. To explain this taboo, we have to step back about a thousand years or so. WHAT’S SO BAD ABOUT SAMARITANS? When David died in about 970 BCE, King Solomon became the third and last king of a united Israel. He reigned for about 40 years and was succeeded by his son, Rehoboam in about 930 BCE. Rehoboam had a half-brother, Jeroboam, who was more popular than he and many people thought he should have become king after Solomon. So Jeroboam raised an army, took his followers (ten of the twelve tribes of Israel) north and seceded from the united kingdom. They settled about 40 miles north of Jerusalem in a city called Shechem. In 880 BCE King Omri moved the capital of the northern kingdom, now known as Israel, another ten miles north to his newly built city of Samaria and the people became known as Samaritans. They considered themselves the true children if Israel and heirs of Abraham and they worshipped in a temple which Jeroboam built on Mount Gerizim near Bethel. Half-brother Rehoboam brought Solomon’s army to Shechem to put down the rebellion but lost the battle and fled to Jerusalem where he was joined by the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. The southern country would be known as Judah with its capital in Jerusalem and its temple there on the Temple Mount where David dreamed of it and where Solomon built it. The people who lived in Judah would become known as Jews. The two countries fought a continuous war for sixty years and, then, finally gave it up and decided to tolerate each other. For about a hundred and fifty years they would live side by side in varying degrees of war and peace, antagonism and cooperation, sometimes fighting, sometimes joining each other in war against their common enemies. Then, in 723 BCE, Israel (the northern kingdom) was invaded by Assyria and defeated. They city of Samaria was destroyed and about 28,000 men were enslaved and taken back to Assyria by king Shalmaneser V. Shalmaneser also ordered the country dissolved and parceled it out to the neighboring countries that helped him defeat it. Israel was invaded by several other countries and the people were absorbed into those populations. The country of Israel and its people simply vanished. Within a few years the ten northern tribes had ceased to exist geographically, politically, religiously, and ethnically. The southern kingdom of Judah lived on, interrupted only by the 70-year Babylonian captivity where all the leaders of the country were taken off to Babylon. But after 70 years they, or their descendants, were allowed to return and rebuild their country and their culture. Judah would continue to exist as a country for eight hundred years, right up through the time of Jesus. Interestingly, at that same time, there were people who were still claiming to be Samaritans. They claimed that just like the Jews came back from Babylon and re-established the country of Judah, so their ancestors came back from Assyria and re-established the country of Israel. In fact, they said that their religion was purer and closer to the original Hebrew religion of Yahweh-ism because the Jews went to Babylon with one form of Judaism and came back with another form that had been corrupted by Babylonian myth, legend, and tradition. The Jews answered that the Samaritan form of Yahweh-ism could not possibly be pure because their ethnicity was not even pure. They had been mongrelized by marrying into other races and ethnic groups that invaded Israel after the Assyrian army left: Assyrians, Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites, etc. So there you have it. The Jews say that the Samaritans are impure, ethnic mongrels whose religion was never really correct. And the Samaritans say that the Jews lost their Hebrew identity when they lived for 70 years in Babylon and it was a Babylonian version of their religion that they brought back with them. The essentials of both religions are virtually identical. The main division has to do with ethnic purity and where worship could be conducted. The Samaritans said that the only true temple was at Bethel and anyone could worship there; the Jews said that the only true temple was in Jerusalem and only ethnic Jews could worship there. Two groups, both insisting that their version of the Yahweh religion is the correct one and the other is not just wrong but willfully, stubbornly, and unrepentantly wrong. And so great is this division that they refuse to even speak to each other. To do so would leave you so defiled that you would have to bathe before you could enter the temple. I don’t know about you, but I’m sure glad that we modern people have managed to get past that kind of sectarian silliness.
MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE WELL As our story begins, this morning, things have gotten a little hot for Jesus down in Judah and he and the disciples decide that they need to get back to the area of Galilee, their home town area, until things cool off. Unfortunately, the only quick way to get there is to go directly through Israel/Samaria. (They could go around but it would add 2-3 days to their journey.) So they take the shortcut through Samaria/Israel and they come to a little town called Sychar which is built around a famous well called “Jacob’s Well” because it was, according to legend, dug by, well, Jacob. The disciples decide to go find some food but for reasons that are not explained, Jesus decides to stay and hang out around the well, which is what people did in those days. The well would have been a sort of gathering place in the village where people came to share news, gossip, and just kill time. If you were new in town it would be the place to go to get a feel for the local culture. So, for whatever reason, Jesus has decided to go to the well. As it turns out, this particular well is pretty deserted. Eventually, a Samaritan woman shows up and Jesus strikes up a conversation with her by asking if he can have a drink of water from her bucket. Now, there follows a sort of point-counterpoint type of conversation wherein we discover some interesting things about this woman. Not only is she a woman and a Samaritan, she’s not a very good Samaritan. She’s a widow and, since her husband died she has lived with a series of men but married none of them, including her current paramour. She is, as my grandmother used to say, a floozy; or, as the kids, today, prefer, a skank. She’s a skanky Samaritan. And, while laugh we might, we also feel kind of sorry for her, don’t we? We have known people like this. We have known women who do not feel whole unless they are on the arm of a man. We have known women who cannot relate to men except sexually. And we have known men who could not take care of themselves and needed a woman to do it for them; men who knew who they were only when they could see their reflection in the eyes of a woman. We have all known people who never learned to be whole, differentiated selves, who gave more credence to what others said about them than to what they knew themselves to be. Jesus sees that in this woman. There is no water, not even in the famous, historic well of Jacob that will sate the thirst that has parches her throat and will not go away. There is no man whose company will make her feel about herself the way she really wants to feel. There is no sacrifice she can make on any altar – in Bethel or Jerusalem – that will give her life the depth and meaning that she longs for. Jesus sees all of that and offers her something that will make of her life everything that she wants it to be. “The woman said to him, ‘I know that the Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am he, the one who is speaking to you.’” Though our reading ends there, the story goes on. She leaves here bucket at the well and goes to tell others what has happened to her, about this man, Jesus, who has seen the very depth and ground of her being. The disciples return with food and they have virtually the same conversation with Jesus that the woman just had with him only this time the metaphor is food instead of water. They don’t get it. The metaphor goes right over their heads. Nicodemus the Pharisee, the purest and most obedient of Jews did not get what Jesus was talking about in the previous chapter. Jesus’ own disciples did not get what he was talking about. But the Samaritan woman, the skanky, ethnically impure, theologically incorrect, Samaritan woman, gets it. She brings her friends back to meet Jesus and they believe in him and invite him to stay for a while and he does. He stays with them for two days before going on to Galilee. He stays in Samaria, among Samaritans. He eats and sleeps and talks and laughs and lives with Samaritans for two days and then he goes on to Galilee. And as he goes we are left to ask one compelling question: Who are the Samaritans? Who are the ones who are so impure, so theologically incorrect, whose religion is so absolutely crazy that they could not possibly be included among the People of God. Who are the ones who we have placed on the outside to look in at all of us who have it right? And to whom are we the Samaritans? Who are those who are so sure, so pure, so right and righteous that they will exclude us, reject us, anathematize us because we are impure and they fear that our impurity will somehow taint or pollute or contaminate their pristine perfection? Who are the Samaritans and what are we to do about them? SAMARITANS AMONG US Staff Sergeant Melvin Morris was 27 years old in 1969. He and his team of Green Berets were on a routine mission near Chi Lang, Vietnam, when they came under heavy enemy fire. He was approaching the edge of a village near where the forest began when he heard gunfire and he got a call from his team captain telling him that he was badly wounded and that their team sergeant had been killed. Morris and his team advanced to the position of his wounded team captain, who had already been evacuated by medical personnel by the time they arrived. Then, Morris got another call that another senior leader had been killed and he was suddenly in command.
Morris and his fellow troops were coming under fire from the enemy, but he was determined not to leave the body of the fallen team sergeant behind. By the time Morris got to his team sergeant’s body, the two men who had braved enemy fire with him had themselves been badly wounded. Morris took them back to safety before he once again set off with two additional squadmates braving intense fire to recover the body of his colleague. After successfully retrieving the body, Morris sustained three bullet wounds when he braved enemy fire yet again to bring back a map that contained sensitive U.S. military information. Melvin Morris received the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions that day but he was not awarded the coveted Medal of Honor. Forty years later a team of army researchers at the Pentagon uncovered the reason why Morris and twenty three other military servicemen who displayed meritorious courage under fire without regard to their own safety in World War II, Korea, and Viet Nam were not awarded the Medal of Honor: As it turns out, they were modern-day Samaritans. That is to say, they were black, Hispanic and Jewish. And last week the Pentagon with President Barak Obama corrected that error. Not because the men who received the awards demanded or even asked for them. Twenty one of the twenty three are dead, their medals being awarded to them posthumously. The three living recipients were all surprised to find out they were being honored. They all were even somewhat self-effacing, insisting that others had done as much or even more than they and had not been recognized (a common concern of Medal of Honor recipients, it turns out). As in the story of the Woman at the Well, there is much we could learn from Samaritans such as these. MY SAMARITANS Let me conclude with a personal testimony. When it comes to excluding and cutting Samaritans out of the herd, I have sometimes caught myself being as guilty as anyone. When my children were young I was asked to write some curriculum material for the Board of Discipleship of the United Methodist Church in Nashville, Tennessee. This meant I had to go down there to a writers and editors conference so we could sit around a table and hash out what that year’s curriculum would look like and who would be writing about what. They flew me down to Nashville and I caught a cab from the airport to my hotel. As we drove to the downtown area to my hotel near the Vanderbilt University campus area the cab driver asked me where I was from and why I was in Nashville and I shared all of that with him. Then, as if to say, “Well, you’re not in Cincinnati any more, son,” he regaled me with some of the most hideous, racist, sexist, vulgar observations, stories, jokes and anecdotes I have ever heard. And, as he did so, I looked out the window, trying to just get through the ride, only to see hooded klansmen waving confederate flags and handing out literature on the street corners. I called Jean and the kids that night and said, “I will never live south of the Mason/Dixon Line.” And, for years, I held that opinion. While there may be some occasional exceptions, white southerners were, by and large, to my way of thinking, Samaritans. Not just wrong, but willfully, openly, stubbornly, defiantly, and proudly wrong. And then, a few years ago, Ben and Carrie called and said that Ben had accepted a job at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee. Now, anyone who has lived in Tennessee will tell you that the eastern and western parts of the state are as different as two areas could possibly be. The West, including Memphis and Nashville and Chattanooga are part of the deep south and has more in common with Louisiana and Mississippi than with Kentucky. The East, especially the northeast part of the state, where Knoxville is located, is just a few miles away from Ashville, N.C., where the people never joined the Confederacy and where a strong cadre of southern abolitionists fought against slavery, some even going to prison for their opposition to secession. But none of that meant anything to me. White southerners were all Samaritans to my way of thinking and I felt badly for my son and his wife that they had to go and live among them. Then the reports started to come back, the dispatches from Samaria, if you will. Their first two days in Knoxville they had been invited to church no less than six times. Well, I thought, there are churches and then there are churches. But, as it turned out, two of the invitations came from the Ebenezer United Methodist Church near their new home -where they had a woman pastor. And that church received them lovingly and supportively. And the sociology department at the university opened their arms to Ben and Carrie and, gave them a dogwood tree for their yard when Luke was born. And their neighbors came to them and welcomed them and helped them when their car broke down. And then, the cruelest blow of all – Jean and I accompanied them to church and saw in the parking lot, of all things, Obama bumper stickers. What was wrong with these people? Hadn’t they heard the stereotypes? Didn’t they know that they were Samaritans all -- ignorant, prejudiced, conservative, racist, fools? How dare they turn out to be good, decent folks who just talked kinda funny – y’all and yonder and stuff like that. Samaritans? Strangers from a strange land? Maybe. But they were my son’s surrogate mom and dad, and my grandson’s surrogate grandma and grandpa. And they were their Christian brothers and sisters. They were the woman at the well, and so was I, and the water we were drinking together as we worshipped together that day, was living water. AMEN
THE HISTORY OF THE NATION OF ISRAEL King Saul 1020 – 1008 BCE King David 1008 – 970 BCE King Solomon 970 – 930 BCE Ten northern tribes secede Activities of prophets below:
TWELVE TRIBES UNITED INTO ONE NATION: ISRAEL
Southern Kingdom – Judah Also referred to as Benjamin. Capital City: Jerusalem Temple located in Jerusalem Rehoboam 933-913 Abijah 915—913 Asa 912—872
865 Elijah in Israel 850 Elisha in Israel
755 Amos and Hosea in Israel 740 First Isaiah in Judah
Jehoshaphat 874—850 Jehoram/Joram 850—843 Ahaziah, bad, 843 BC Athaliah (queen) 843—837 Joash/Jehoash 843—803 Amaziah 803—775 Uzziah/Azariah 787—735
Jotham 749—734 BC
725 Micah in Israel
628 Jeremiah in Judah 612 Nahum in Judah 607 Habakkuk in Judah 593 Ezekiel in Judah
Ahaz 741—726 Hezekiah 726—697
Northern Kingdom – Israel Also referred to as Samaria or Ephraim. Capital City: Samaria Temple located in Bethel. Jeroboam 930-909 Nadab 909—908 Baasha 908—886 Elah 886—885 Zimri 885 Tibni 885—880 Omri 885—874 Ahab 874—853 Ahaziah 853—852 Joram/Jehoram 852—841 Jehu 841—814 Jehoahaz 814—798 Joash 798—782 Jeroboam II 793—753 Zechariah 753 Shallum 752 Menahem 752—742 Pekahiah 742—740 Pekah 752—732 Hoshea 732—722 722 BCE Assyrian Invasion – Israel defeated and dispersed.
Manasseh 697—642 Amon 641—640 Josiah 639—608 Jehoahaz 608 Jehoiakim 608—597 Jehoiachin 597 Zedekiah 597—586 Invaded and sacked, destroyed by Babylon in 586 BCE
586 Second Isaiah in Babylon Exiles return circa 540 BCE Rebuilt temple dedicated in 515 450 Malachi 380 Ezra, Nehemiah, Joel 165 Daniel written
Maccabean Revolt in 166 BCE 70 CE Destruction of the temple Judah dispersed.
United Israel re-established in 1948 CE.